Cyber space: The possibility to control the controllers

The internet was praised as a democratic instrument where all are or can be equals and where they can find information, exchange it easily and publish their opinion as well as organize themselves globally in groups of members with similar interest. The more, nearly every technically important aspect of work is or will be transferred to the internet (contact forms, documents of governments to fill in by citizens, electronic bills to pay easily online, and so on). Since we have knowledge about the dismantling of top secret information by Edward Snowden in 2013 (a former employee of NSA) that the US- and british secrect services are able to control the worldwide online activities, followed by the Pegasus scandal in 2021 with software used by states to specifically spy on single persons we know that we could be controlled in our online activities. And it is not quite sure that these activities would be interpreted in a correct way as people struggle with potential hackers, persons who do use their platforms to publish information, if it might be welcome or not  A lack of global rules might be one reason why countries like China and Abu Dhabi, e.g., are spying on the online activities of their citizens to filter movements against the state (one reason might be that their power is not democratically legitmated in a western understanding), and the former US foreign minister Mike Pompeo was maybe right, when he was saying at a conference 2020 in Munich that allowing the 5G-Huawei technology would be a trojan horse of the chinese secret service (quoted in Le Monde diplomatique, see information below).

So even if governments are able to control the global online activities there might be, as a consequence, a certain risk that they could be controlled by other governments. And surely information must exist somewhere, therefore, about cyber wars - but this might be ignored if there is no danger for the state security, or - otherwise - cyber wars could even be used and manipulated as an instrument for states to achieve certain goals. But as global laws are absent in the cyber world, the reality is surely simple: no plaintiff, no judge.

(Source: "Die Datensammler von Abu Dhabi", Le Monde diplomatique, swiss edition, January 2023)