IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2016 - 85

to consider policy change, which limits any additional
human suffering.
The information gathered by humanitarian cyber
operations will come from a variety of sources, depending on need to acquire, based on other intelligence
already gathered and on which systems are vulnerable
and in reach to penetrate.
In humanitarian cyber operations, communication
between dignitaries and administrators who arrange
for crimes against humanity can be copied, including
orders delivered, and the reports back can be copied
as well, which would verify intent, actions, and gather
evidence. Information systems that are crucial for the
execution of these atrocities can be destroy or severely
degraded, such as system systems that support logistics and transportation. Even in a degraded environment, the system failures will create delay and
confusion. The perpetrating nations databases used
for separating individuals after political belief, ethnicity, religious belief, or any other separator that can be
used in an atrocity can be destroyed. If the atrocities
are not organized, but the regime organizes information and prepares, then evidence gathering is a primary task for building a case to draw the international
community's attention, and to lay a foundation for a
case presented to the United Nation and other international forums.

Humanitarian Cyber Operations
Provide New Policy Options
By following well-established principles of international
humanitarian law's responsibility to protect, repressive
regimes can lose protection against foreign intervention, with other state's utilizing offensive cyber operations if there are valid concerns about respect for
human rights. Humanitarian cyber operations offer several policy options that were not previously available,
allowing policy makers to utilize a less confrontational
intervention in another state's domestic affairs. Humanitarian cyber operations will then also increase the
quality and granularity in the information at hand for
decision making. If an escalation to full-scale military
intervention is needed, they can provide information
about where human relief is needed.
Cyber operations can also provide evidence to support apprehension of the perpetrators. Due to the fact
that humanitarian cyber operations are publically
announced, the targeted nation and its nomenclature
are made aware that operations are ongoing, which
could have a deterring effect at the individual level.

september 2016

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The lower echelon potential perpetrators will have to
trust that the networks of the repressive regime are not
compromised; otherwise they will not fully obey criminal orders because of the risk for future repercussions.
Even if 20% of the lower echelon henchmen are diehard
in their beliefs and do not care about the consequences, 80% will still covertly respond less eagerly to authority, with a direct impact on the actual execution of
atrocities. If a technologically superior nation conducts
humanitarian cyber operations against a less technologically advanced authoritarian regime, it is likely that systems are compromised with information leak out of the
networks of the perpetrating nation. The complexity of
information networks, and the general assumption that
major democratic powers are able to conduct deep
offensive cyber operations, are likely to create and seed
doubt in the minds of individuals who are supporting
the atrocities and who are assessing the consequences
of participating in crimes against humanity.

Acknowledgment
The views expressed herein are those of the author and
do not reflect the official policy or position of the Army
Cyber Institute, the United States Military Academy, the
Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.

Author Information
Jan Kallberg is with the Army Cyber Institute at West
Point, United States Military Academy, Spellman Hall
4-33, 2101 New South Post Road, West Point, NY 10996.
Email: jan.kallberg@usma.edu.

References
[1] United Nations, "The responsibility to protect," Office of the Special
Adviser of the Prevention of Genocide, 2016; http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/responsibility.shtml.
[2] A. Tusa, The Nuremberg Trials. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
[3] J. N. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2001.
[4] B. Warf, "The Hermit Kingdom in cyberspace: Unveiling the North Korean
Internet," Information, Communication & Society, vol. 18.1, pp. 109-120,
2015.
[5] International Telecommunication Union (ITU), "Mobile-cellular telephone
subscriptions," 2014; http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/statistics/2015/Mobile_cellular_2000-2014.xls.
[6] C. Mims, "Cellphones can spark change in North Korea," Wall Street J.,
Dec. 7, 2014; http://www.wsj.com/articles/cellphones-can-spark-change-innorth-korea-1417999101.
[7] A.J. Bellamy, "A chronic protection problem: The DPRK and the responsibility to protect," Int. Affairs, vol. 91, no. 2, pp. 225-244, 2015.
[8] L. Glanville,"The responsibility to protect beyond borders," Human Rights
Law Rev. vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1-32, 2012.
[9] A. Nove, "How many victims in the 1930s?," Europe-Asia Studies, vol.
42, no. 2, pp. 369-373, 1990.

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