Protecting Technological Advancement for the Public Good

Their elevated access to our lives comes without guarantees that commercially and personally sensitive information will remain confidential, without modification; often, it does not. Without this privacy and resiliency, the underlying principles of free markets, capitalism, and democratic freedoms — such as the preservation of fair competition and reward for innovation — are eroded.

Property ownership rights, especially those concerning the privacy and secrecy of intellectual property, trade secrets, and commercially valuable data, must be upheld. Efficient markets excel at de-duplicating knowledge, in a world where free markets are efficiently connected through globalization, digital transformation, economic contagion, and market arbitrageurs. If sensitive information not owned by a cyber-criminal or state actor is 'utilized' through cyber theft, sabotage, intelligence data brokers, or personal gain, the information's intrinsic value cannot be reabsorbed into free markets by its true owner later if its material value has already been plundered.

In regions where one's cloud data and physical computers are being targeted, plundered, pilfered and back-doored for such information, one must ask the question:  to whom are we really working for?  

• We represent the cyber-security of the global village first; no individual, firm or nation state(s) interests should take precedence above that.
• One cannot achieve digital cyber-security without first considering physical cyber-security; and enterprise wide, national and international cyber security cannot be achieved without first considering cyber-security of those individuals that exist within these spheres of influence.
• Mutual security is cyber-security; thus, we believe in physical and digital cyber-security as a ‘social equity for all’.
• A generalised defensive solution to any cyber security crisis can only be achieved through the thoughtfully privacy-preserving interchange of continual real-time theatre data such as indicators of compromise (IOC) and indicators of threat actors (IOTA) information through some means of confederated data cooperative. All other early warning and preventative methods are heuristic in nature, easily subverted and are the domain of other vendors.
• All entities whose data might be useful to a data cooperative should only be allowed to participate once they have opted-in to the data cooperative, and further, they should be able to specify in broad terms what use cases their data can be used to solve for (e.g., anti-terrorism, anti-CSAM, domestic cyber-defence, or preventing foreign cyber-espionage).
• All data interchange of 2nd and 3rd party data should be done in such a way that maintains the  anonymity and privacy of all those involved . This is extremely important, as it defines the line between utility maximizing cyber-defence and utility destroying mass-surveillance.
• Cyber-defence is a separate, preventative, early-warning function to cyber-intelligence and cyber-investigations; we only participate in cyber-defence, and do not participate in or enable the latter, ever.
• 'Threat intelligence' is a post-event crisis detection, management and cleanup thesis. We do not do 'threat intelligence', we do preventative, early-wearning, cyber-defence.
• WE DO NOT SELL DATA. We do, however, create decentralized tools that enables one to protect themselves and others by overtly sharing useful cyber-defence data points at a fair market price, in a privacy preserving manner so that one may choose wheteher to accept or reject internetwork traffic according to their own standards. The only way to do this at scale without transferring the actual data points themselves is through auction dynamics and the Efficient Market Hypothesis.
• Unqualified threat actors are entitled to the same anonymity and privacy as everyone else.
• In the cyber realms, and only in the cyber realms, one does not need to know with absolute certainty the identity of an adversary to respond defensively to them.
• Information asymmetry encourages the formation of intelligence agencies and always leads to war; conversely, information symmetry brings out the best in humanity and encourages peace and prosperity. It is therefore important that any data cooperative is accessible to everyone in such a way that encourages free market dynamics.
• It is important that all data exchanged in a data cooperative be at fair market value, as it encourages free market efficiencies and participation. In reputation markets – and only in reputation markets – it is not considered market interference, anti-competitive or even unfair to have differential pricing, if that pricing encourages positive, reputation improving dynamics. Without this, one would never contribute data; they would only ever consume it, at an ever-decreasing price (because of diminishing marginal returns).
• It is even more important that offensive attacks never be mounted from behind automated defences – whether they be cyber, air, sea or land defences – as it will cause an unstoppable arms race that only concludes when those defences are destroyed.
• No corporate, state or international security objective is sufficient reason to sacrifice reasonable community standards associated with western liberal democratic society. As such, protection for individual liberty and property by rule of law for all is a guiding principle in everything that we do.
• The sovereign rights of non-western liberal democratic states should also be respected.
• All internetworks are by definition open, and that openness means that all participants in any internetwork should have equal right to send whatever outbound traffic they so desire to the edge of any open internetwork; conversely, no internetwork is obliged to prioritize anyone’s traffic over anyone else’s, however they may choose not to transit it. Further, every individual, firm and autonomous system or organisation should have the right to not accept incoming internetwork traffic from whomever they like, and should have access to the means to do so in a constructive and self-preserving manner that is not motivated by profit or greed. ‘Constructive’ here means that it does not cause harmful internetwork fragmentation.
• First-strike cyber offence, cyber-espionage and mass-surveillance should never be pursued; it is technically easy, highly anti-social, an act of war and leads to universal cancel culture that negatively affects the economic prospects of all parties involved, and the underlying productivity of those they represent. This is because of the chilling effects, decentivization and sub-optimal return on equity impacts to long-term scientific and technological advancement at a global scale.
• Technology should never impinge on one’s right to self-determination; Whether one is an individual, a firm or a sovereign state, they (or their nominated/elected representatives), should always be given the opportunity to participate in any decision making which materially & adversely affects them and their stakeholders in their cyber-realms. This applies to software automation and artificial intelligence as much as it does to enforcement agencies and international policy.
• International rule of law and policy standards should be followed by all at all times, including but not limited to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Geneva Convention and it's additional protocols re-interpreted from the perspective of cyberspace, The Nuremberg Code and The Tallinn Manual.
• The UN Sustainable Development Goals should be considered in everything that we do.
• We believe in and uphold the Internet Rights & Principles Coalition's Charter of Human Rights and Principles for The Internet(s).