UNCLASSIFIED Position Paper on New Zealand’s Participation in the February 2020 Session of the 2019-2020 Open Ended Working Group on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security Purpose This paper aims to support the Chair in his development of a report for the Open Ended Working Group on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security. It outlines the major elements of New Zealand’s interventions at the second substantive session of February 2020, which the Chair may wish to consider for inclusion in the development of the Group’s final report. Overview New Zealand reiterates its commitment to the previous consensus decisions of the UN General Assembly to endorse the reports of UNGGEs on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security, including with respect to the application of international law online, and the norms of responsible state behaviour online. New Zealand associates itself with the statements Commonwealth and the Pacific Islands Forum. delivered on behalf of the New Zealand acknowledges that there is not agreement among the full UN membership as to next steps for increasing cyber stability. It is important that we use this process – and its report – to build trust and confidence among the membership. To this end, we encourage the group to focus on concrete, practical, meaningful and achievable outcomes. We ought to build trust and confidence now, so that we might make progress on more difficult issues in future. We believe there are clear areas of convergence which can form the basis of any report. In this document, we highlight where we believe those areas may be. Existing and Potential Threats We believe that the OEWG’s report should take a technology-neutral approach, focusing on state behaviour rather than specific technological developments. This ensures our work is enduring – and is not made obsolete by technological developments. With respect to these behaviours, New Zealand is particularly concerned about, among others, the trend toward malicious compromises of mass personal data; targeted efforts to undermine political systems and elections; the cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including from academic and research institutions; and the potential for IOT devices to be utilised by states for malicious purposes. INTS-37-1285 UNCLASSIFIED