Sovereignty and Network Sovereignty

National sovereignty is the basic subject of the theory and practice of contemporary international law, occupies a crucial position. In order to studying the sovereignty of internet, we need to have an accurate cognition on the traditional concept of sovereignty. In this chapter, we introduce sovereignty from three perspectives: the historical background of traditional sovereignty, the adaptability of sovereignty in cyberspace or network sovereignty, and the sovereignty in the cyber era. Finally, we define sovereignty in cyberspace from the perspective of jurisprudence.

Interpretation of Network Sovereignty

In recent years, with the integration of the Internet and various economic and social fields, the security situation in cyberspace has been changing rapidly. There are more and more network games at the national level and the network attack and defense have become more intense. Network sovereignty has become one of sovereignty that all states are striving for. Cyber war against national targets has emerged and will not abate. Major countries have successively set up cyberspace forces. These facts have demonstrated the existence of a new frontier for humanity, national interests, and digital sovereignty in cyberspace, and demonstrated the absence of international rules or laws that effectively coordinate the management of this space. The chaos in the online media during the US presidential election in 2020, in which the incumbent US president has been banned from several public accounts by major online social media, shows that there is still a long way to go in terms of citizens’ digital human rights and the reasonable and orderly legislative and judicial administration of domestic cyberspace management. All of these topics are discussed in detail in this chapter.

Architecture of Sovereignty Network

Although the early design concept of the Internet was decentralized, the control of the basic technology architecture showed a strong centralized form. Therefore, it is imperative to put forward a new network architecture to meet the demand of future network development and realize decentralized management of domain names by technical means. Sovereignty network based on MIN Architecture proposed in this chapter effectively realizes multilateral co-management and co-governance of cyberspace, and ends centralized management under the single IP identifier. At the same time, it protects the network of all countries from the risk of DNS disappearance and blinding caused by the smear of ICANN root zone or hacker attack. Combining multiple security mechanisms, sovereignty network guarantee the endogenous security and reliability, which help to construct secure and private networks. With the construction of the sovereignty network, the co-governance and self-management of all parties in cyberspace can be truly realized.

Prototype of Sovereignty Network and Application of Private Network Based on MIN

Multi-Identifier Network (MIN) is compatible with IP network, and supports naturally and gradually de-IP, which will be promoted by users and the market for its performance gains rather than by compulsively. It is a predictable circumstance that the IP network may still be mainstream at United States of American in the future. But other countries will move away from IP to MIN in order to safeguard their sovereignty over cyberspace, and the connectivity between them and IP network are guaranteed through MIN. In other words, IP network will become the internal network of the United States, while other countries will constitute a multilateral governance network system based on MIN. In brief, the applications scenarios of Co-governed Sovereignty Network based on MIN could be classified into three scales: the small-scale scenarios such as high-security private networks for enterprises, industries, and government departments; the medium-scale scenarios of industrial Internet, private network of Internet of vehicles and smart city; the United Nations of Cyberspace: raplacing the current IP network with the large-scale high-security cyberspace for multilateral condominium and sovereign autonomy.

Key Technologies of Sovereignty Network

In order to realize all functions of the sovereignty network while guarantee the security at the same time, what key technologies should be used in the architecture? This chapter will elaborate on the key technologies of the sovereignty network. Firstly, on application layer, we proposed a large-scale multilateral managed consortium blockchain technology named as Proof of Vote to construct the multi-identifier system (MIS) for all nations in the world to jointly and equally co-manage the top-level identifiers, which assures the intercommunication between different nations. Meanwhile, each nation owns autonomy on low-level identifiers of its corresponding top-level identifiers, which reflects independent of cyberspace sovereignty. Then, we proposed some efficient algorithms to support inter-translating and addressing for multi-identifier and huge size of hundred billion identifiers, together with the hyperbolic routing scheme forming the core technologies of network layer in MIN Architecture. Technologies for guaranteeing privacy, security, and transmission control, etc. were also presented.