The General Director of Informatics from the Ministry of Communications, Miguel Gutiérrez Rodríguez, brought up during a UN working group meeting that Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) must be used peacefully, for humanity's common welfare and to promote the sustainable development of all countries.

Cuba denounces the hostile use of telecommunications by the U.S.A.
Retrieved from Prensa Latina

United Nations, September 9th (Prensa Latina) The IT Director from the Cuban Ministry of Communications, Miguel Rodríguez, denounced today the hostile use of telecommunications by the U.S. Government to subvert legal and political regulations in Cuba.

Such actions violate the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, remarked Rodríguez during a General Assembly's workgroup's first session on the progress in the field of IT and Telecommunications in the international security context.

Cuba stands against any unilateral measure that hinders the universal access to the benefits of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and particularly against the financial, commercial and economic blockade imposed to Cuba by Washington, he stated.

The Cuban radio spectrum is constantly attacked from abroad through radio and TV broadcasts by transmitting programs that are specially designed to bring down the constitutional order established by the people, he said.

In 2019, he explained, these broadcasts have been taking place illegally for 1 865 weekly hours through 21 channels from U.S. territory, breaching the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, international law and the dispositions of the International Telecommunications Union.

'We urge, one more time, that these aggressive and damaging policies towards Cuba's sovereignty be ended since they do not contribute to the development of cooperative and respectful bonds among the States', he added.

According to what he said, the authorization by the U.S. Government, in September 2018, of the use of offensive cyber-weapons and cyber-offensive operations is a concerning fact, which also includes the possibility of delivering preventive cyber-attacks to discourage their rivals.

'We reject these aggressive doctrines that consider the use of the force as the right response to a cyber-attack. It is intolerable for a State, with no evidence whatsoever, to identify a potential source of threats based on the use of ICT and to carry out a punitive attack on it ', he pointed out.

Information and communication technologies should be peacefully used, for humanity's common good and to foster every country's sustainable development, recalled the Cuban official.

We hope that this group reaches an agreement on rules, standards, and principles concerning the responsible behavior of all countries in the information field, and on the implementation of institutional arrangements to deal with this issue inside the UN, he noted.

Through the discussions that are taking place here, we hope to achieve a common international understanding of the current threats, and the potential ones, in the branch of information security. We also want to come up with the possible cooperation measures to face them, he added.

In Rodriguez's opinion, this intergovernmental process will contribute to the adoption of a legally binding international instrument that allows to effectively find a solution for those important legal loopholes that nowadays exist regarding Cybersecurity.