The United States, Russia, and China did not sign the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, a global cyber pact, released Tuesday at Paris Peace Forum by French President Emmanuel Macron. The pact was signed by 51 countries, 224 companies, and 92 non-profit organizations and advocacy groups. The pact is a “high-level declaration on developing common principles for securing cyberspace.” Signatories to the pact commit themselves to “increase prevention against and resilience to malicious online activity; protect the accessibility and integrity of the Internet; cooperate in order to prevent interference in electoral processes; work together to combat intellectual property violations via the Internet; prevent the proliferation of malicious online programmes and techniques; improve the security of digital products and services as well as everybody’s ‘cyber hygiene;’ clamp down on online mercenary activities and offensive action by non-state actors; work together to strengthen the relevant international standards.” Other countries that didn’t sign the pact include Iran, North Korea, and Israel. In its current form, the pact doesn’t include penalties for signatories who have program the agreements clauses. However, the pact does include a pledge to reconvene at the Paris Peace Forum in 2019 and at the Internet Governance Forum in Berlin in 2019.
