A Digital Red Cross: What Would It Defend Against?

On November 18, 1991, after enduring a three-month artillery assault, the city of Vukovar in Croatia fell to what was then known as the federal Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and Serb paramilitary forces. After JNA units took control of a hospital where hundreds of sick and wounded were located, they removed approximately 300 men of whom at least 200 were later murdered at the nearby town of Ovcara. Years later, the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charged those responsible for this atrocity with war crimes.

For over 150 years, the Red Cross, Red Crescent, and later the Red Crystal symbol have endured as indelible images of protection during warfare. We reserve these emblems for people and places that are entitled to a rare privilege of safety and security while providing medical and humanitarian assistance during armed conflicts. The urge to expand their protection to other realms is understandable but requires caution and attention to technical, political, and operational challenges.

A Digital Protected Emblem

Recently, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced an innovative proposal to identify the digital presence of certain humanitarian and healthcare organizations during armed conflict. The hope is that identifying protected digital infrastructure “would make it easier for those conducting cyber operations during armed conflict to identify and spare protected facilities – just as a red cross or crescent on a hospital roof does in the real world.”

The proposal is a creative attempt to protect the digital presence of those humanitarian organizations entitled to the protections afforded by the Red Cross. The digital health of those organizations is essential to their ability to provide services, such as life-saving medical care. Malicious cyberattacks could, among other things, potentially deprive a facility of critical medical information that is necessary to treat patients. The Digital Red Cross proposal represents an attempt to bridge the gap between how International Humanitarian Law (IHL) applies in the physical world with the unique dimensions of the cyber domain. But if a Digital Red Cross system is…