The pursuit of positive accountability in the cyber domain

Abstract

Debates about accountability in cyberspace are dominated by state-centric and security-driven approaches that disregard the complexity of the institutional ecosystem in cyberspace and the diverse ways through which different stakeholder groups may pursue accountability. Such an approach has contributed to a flawed interpretation of accountability in cyberspace as applicable solely to malicious actors who need to be punished for their actions. Despite greater policy and research attention to this line of reasoning, holding states accountable for their behaviour has yielded limited results due to the legal, political and technical complexities. At the same time, the non-malicious activities in cyberspace that might have unintended negative effects remain exempted from scrutiny. Cyber capacity-building activities, which aim at supporting governments and societies in strengthening their cyber resilience, illustrate this point well. This article introduces the concept of positive accountability to describe accountability for actions that are not malicious in their intent. It argues that the anticipatory potential of mechanisms like deliberation, joint problem-solving, interactive learning and competition plays an important role in strengthening accountability by eliminating or minimising any unintended or undesired spillovers. It concludes with a proposal that broadly defined capacity building might also be considered a form of anticipatory and deliberative accountability mechanism.