# Technology, Security and Cyber Arbitration

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 1999-02-04T00:00:00Z
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.31859/19990204.0000

An article I prepared for the Inter-Pacific Bar Association about Cyber Arbitration.


For the Inter-Pacific Bar Association Newsletter
February 4, 1999
by Joichi Ito
Technology, Security and Cyber Arbitration

As the technical advisor for the Cyber Arbitration program 
  held at the IPBA annual conference in Auckland last year and for the Cyber Arbitration 
  program to be held at the IPBA annual conference in Bangkok this year, I am 
  responsible for providing assistance and advice regarding the technical requirements 
  of the Cyber Arbitration programs and providing guidance as to what the future 
  will hold for Cyber Arbitration. In this article, I would like to discuss the 
  technology used at the Auckland program, future technical possibilities, and 
  various security concerns related to Cyber Arbitration.
 

Auckland Cyber Arbitration Demonstration

At the IPBA annual conference in New Zealand, we conducted 
  the Cyber Arbitration demonstration using PictureTel video conferencing technology, 
  which is widely used internationally. PictureTel has many configurations with 
  various quality levels. We chose to use the 128K system, which is equivalent 
  to two ISDN channels, because ISDN is either deployed or is being deployed in 
  most countries and is the most common transmission speed used for video conferencing 
  today. The purpose of using such technology was to give a true-to-life example 
  of what a Cyber Arbitration might look like using widely available technology. 
  Because a videoconferencing bridge was used to allow split screen multi-point 
  video conferencing this also caused an inevitable delay in sound and picture 
  transmission since the bridge has to decode everyone's video signals and create 
  a multi-screen signal to send to each participant.
 

Cyber Arbitration and the Internet

Although the Auckland Cyber Arbitration demonstration showed 
  that an arbitration using multipoint videoconferencing technology was feasible 
  even given the low-level of current widely available technology (and, per force, 
  will be much more feasible with the rapid advance of the general level of technology), 
  one of the critical issues highlighted by the demonstration was cost. ISDN, 
  telephone and leased lines offer dedicated circuits which allow high quality 
  communications, but the cost of creating a network of high speed ISDN connection 
  worldwide for several hours can become prohibitive. 



This is where the Internet comes in. The Internet promises 
  to lower the cost of communications by allowing multiple users to share circuits, 
  making communications much more efficient, thus lowering the cost. Nevertheless, 
  at present, one of the primary problems with trying to conduct video conferencing 
  over the Internet is that the Internet is what is called "best effort" connectivity. 
  On the Internet, one traditionally does not have a dedicated circuit, but instead, 
  shares the circuit with everyone else who happens to have their routes going 
  over the same lines. When any segment of the chain of routers, leased lines 
  or servers that one would go through to reach each other gets crowded, the connectivity 
  slows down and video frames freeze up and audio starts to cut out. This sort 
  of "lossy" video is now quite common on the Internet, but is used primarily 
  for non-critical or entertainment applications. It is absolutely inadequate 
  for the requirements of a real Cyber Arbitration, and is why we were unable 
  to demonstrate a Cyber Arbitration using the internet in Auckland.



Nevertheless, high quality video transmission and video conferencing 
  is currently being tested around the world. Using high speed lines with special 
  routing technology, Internet service providers will be able to guarantee bandwidth 
  to users requiring high quality and high speed lines. Applications are being 
  developed to allow personal computers and hardware from many vendors to communicate 
  using open standards, thus lowering the price of video conferencing equipment. 
  It is likely that, over the next several years, it will be quite common to find 
  video conferences being conducted over the Internet at quality levels equivalent 
  to, if not superior to the quality currently being achieved using 128K ISDN 
  and PictureTel. Until such time, however, it will still be of benefit to use 
  the infrastructure and technology available to us today to work out many of 
  the legal and procedural issues that we can identify only through actually conducting 
  Cyber Arbitrations.


The Internet and Security

One of the primary concerns in the age of open networks is 
  security. E-mail and other internet communications (such as the types that would 
  be necessary to conduct Cyber Arbitrations) are typically transferred through 
  several servers and travel over open networks. It is a trivial matter for even 
  a minimally computer-literate individual to, for example, intercept and even 
  replace e-mail while it is traveling between a lawyer and his client. In the 
  age of advanced digital technology, wiretaps are not conducted by people "listening" 
  to phone calls, they are conducted by voice recognition software which can scan 
  thousands of connections or scan stored conversations in databases. E-mail is 
  searched by keyword or intelligent pattern matching software that can search 
  through and organize billions of pages easily. Not surprisingly, therefore, 
  thousands of computers which serve mail are penetrated each year and corporate 
  espionage on computer networks has become a growing concern and a real threat. 




This is why cryptography and digital signatures are essential 
  to ensure the integrity of a Cyber Arbitration system. Digital signatures using 
  public key cryptography are becoming more and more widely used. Digital signatures 
  allow e-mail or any other form of electronic message to be digitally signed 
  by the sender and for that signature to be verified by the recipient. Digital 
  signatures are typically authenticated by a certification authority ("CA"). 
  The CA uses some method of identification verification and then certifies the 
  key which is used to sign documents.

Using public key cryptography, documents can also be encoded 
  in a way that allows only the holder of a particular key to decode and view 
  the document. Public key cryptography is unique in comparison to other forms 
  of cryptography in that the key used to encode (encrypt) the document is different 
  from the key used to decode (decrypt) the document. The key used to encrypt 
  the document is referred to as the public key and the key used to decode the 
  document is referred to as the secret key. By distributing one’s public key widely, 
  anyone who receives the public key can then send confidential encrypted documents 
  to the holder of the secret key without fear of the un-encrypted (plaintext) 
  data falling into the hands of unauthorized viewers.

In combination with digital signatures which use the same public 
  and secret keys as public key encryption technology, public key technology allows 
  people to conduct private and authenticated communications over the internet. 
  It also allows the creation of tamperproof documents and allows electronic documents 
  to be presented "in writing" which can not be modified without breaking the 
  digital signature associated with the document.

The risk that a public key that you believe belongs to a trusted 
  colleague is not actually the correct key is supposed to be managed by the CA. 
  The problem with the CA is whether one can trust the CA. Companies running CA's 
  are not infallible and possibly more importantly, they are overseen by government 
  agencies which may be incentivized to allow forgeries or deception to occur 
  in order to collect information about unfriendly governments, organizations 
  or individuals.

A CA managed by the IPBA with an identification verification 
  procedure which is open, capable of being audited, and conducted face to face 
  at the IPBA’s annual meetings could easily become one of the few trusted forms 
  for authentication of keys. Such an authentication mechanism could be used not 
  only to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of Cyber Arbitrations, but 
  also could be used to manage membership, standardize document execution, store 
  and date evidence, conduct encrypted telephone and video conferencing, and a 
  myriad of other applications.


Conclusion

New technology will allow international arbitration and negotiation 
  to become faster, more efficient and less expensive. Although procedures and 
  law will have to be developed and modified as technology develops, many of the 
  issues (including security issues) will only become apparent as these new technologies 
  are deployed and tested by real lawyers and arbitrators. This is why continued 
  research and development of a Cyber Arbitration system by the IPBA is so important 
  to ensuring a bright and new technological future for international arbitrations. 
  The IPBA is in a unique position to create a testbed for developing a workable 
  Cyber Arbitration system and should not let this opportunity slip from its grasp.



By Joichi Ito


Bibliography

  Nobuo Miyake, Esq., The Future is Now: The IPBA and Cyber Arbitration, 
    IPBA Journal, September 1998, pp. 16-18
  David F. Day, Esq, Conducting the Electronic Arbitration, IPBA Journal, 
    September 1998, pp. 19-20
  Jasna Arsic, International Commercial Arbitration on the Internet, 
    Journal of International Arbitration, pp. 209-231


Release Notes

  Draft Version 1by Joichi Ito February 3, 1999
  Edited by Joseph Gourneau February 4, 1999 for submission to IPBA
  Edited by Joichi Ito February 16, 1999 for web publication (In particular, 
    modified the 128K = ISDN edit by jg and re-included the bibliography)

 



Copyright 1999, Joichi Ito






---

#### Categories

Emergent Democracy