Ms Kobi Leins

Kobi Leins is a Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics in the School of Engineering and a Non-Resident Fellow of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

Leins is currently conducting research on the existing laws relating to cyber in Australia. One major challenge is a lack of understanding about what law already exists in Australia.

An example of this ignorance is the map created by Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (BDI) and Deloitte showing that Australia has “no dedicated cyber security law”.[1] The misunderstanding arises because, while Australia has no piece of legislation dedicated solely to cyber security, it has a range of laws with similar effect that operate in areas such as critical infrastructure protection, criminal law, telecommunications regulation, privacy, and consumer law.

Phase I of the project will create a map of Australian laws that impact on cyber security and cyber resilience, to be made available via the web in a Wikipedia style page, in order to both a) enhance national and international understanding of Australian law in this area and b) to build a community of experts and practitioners in this area appraised of developments in adjacent cyber law.

Phase II of the research will identify gaps in the existing law that require rectification or further regulation.

Phase III of the research will develop a matrix for other countries to similarly map their legal capabilities and gaps in the law.

In her pre-academic life, Leins managed programs and teams in the areas of administrative law & justice, humanitarian law, human rights law, and disarmament with the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2006, Leins worked with the International Service for Human Rights in New York to advocate for the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, after which she worked for the United Nations Secretariat. In 2005, she liaised with States, scientists and stakeholders to raise awareness of, and compliance with, the Biological Weapons and Chemical Weapons Conventions. In 2004, Leins worked as a Legal Officer at the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva under the auspices of a Security Council Resolution analysing and presenting claims for environmental damage following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, having escaped commercial law to do so. Leins also prepared a matrix for review of domestic compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, which many States adopted. Leins has submitted her PhD with the University of Melbourne on whether the use of nanotechnology enhanced or based weapons is prohibited or limited in an armed conflict.