[Seattle-editorial] FP: The Internet could become a tool of corporate and government power

[sheri at speakeasy.org]

hi,
i really think we should be covering these "kinds" of issues on our site, perhaps a space devoted to this with links to other resources.  but whether you take a more or less alarmist point of view on this, we need to be educating people about the threats to the tools of communication we are relying on.
sheri

A Net of Control
Unthinkable: How the Internet could become a tool of corporate and
government power, based on updates now in the works
http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3606168&p1=0
Christoph Niemann for Newsweek

By Steven Levy
Newsweek International

Issues 2004 - Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that
encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse.
Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where
the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive)
ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the
imprimatur of Big Brother. Some prognosticators are saying that such a
construct is nearly inevitable. And this infrastructure is none other than
the former paradise of rebels and free-speechers: the Internet.

To those exposed to the Panglossian euphoria of Net enthusiasts during the
1990s, this vision seems unbelievable. After all, wasn¹t the Internet
supposed to be the defining example of empowering technology? Freedom was
allegedly built into the very bones of the Internet, designed to withstand
nuclear blasts and dictatorial attempts at control. While this cyberslack
has its downside‹porn, credit-card fraud and insincere bids on eBay‹it was
considered a small price to pay for free speech and friction-free business
models. The freedom genie was out, and no one could put it back into the
bottle. 

Certainly John Walker believed all that. The hackerish founder of the
software firm Autodesk, now retired to Switzerland to work on personal
projects of his choosing, enjoyed ³unbounded optimism² that the Net would
not only offset the powers of industry and government but actually restore
some previously threatened personal liberties. But in ‹the past couple of
years, he noticed a disturbing trend. Developments in technology, law and
commerce seemed to be directed toward actually changing the open nature of
the Net. And Internet Revisited would create opportunities for business and
government to control and monitor cyberspace.

In September Walker posted his fears in a 28,000-word Web document called
the Digital Imprimatur. The name refers to his belief that it¹s possible
that nothing would be allowed to even appear on the Internet without having
a proper technical authorization.

How could the freedom genie be shoved back into the bottle? Basically, it¹s
part of a huge effort to transform the Net from an arena where anyone can
anonymously participate to a sign-in affair where tamperproof ³digital
certificates² identify who you are. The advantages of such a system are
clear: it would eliminate identity theft and enable small, secure electronic
³microtransactions,² long a dream of Internet commerce pioneers. (Another
bonus: arrivederci, unwelcome spam.) A concurrent step would be the adoption
of ³trusted computing,² a system by which not only people but computer
programs would be stamped with identifying marks. Those would link with
certificates that determine whether programs are uncorrupted and cleared to
run on your computer.

The best-known implementation of this scheme is the work in progress at
Microsoft known as Next Generation Secure Computing Base (formerly called
Palladium). It will be part of Longhorn, the next big Windows version, out
in 2006. Intel and AMD are onboard to create special secure chips that would
make all computers sold after that point secure. No more viruses! And the
addition of ³digital rights management² to movies, music and even documents
created by individuals (such protections are already built into the recently
released version of Microsoft Office) would use the secure system to make
sure that no one can access or, potentially, even post anything without
permission.

The giants of Internet commerce are eager to see this happen. ³The social,
economic and legal priorities are going to force the Internet toward
security,² says Stratton Sclavos, CEO of VeriSign, a company built to
provide digital certificates (it also owns Network Solutions, the exclusive
handler of the ³dot-com² part of the Internet domain-name system). ³It¹s not
going to be all right not to know who¹s on the other end of the wire.²
Governments will be able to tax e-commerce‹and dictators can keep track of
who¹s saying what.

Walker isn¹t the first to warn of this ominous power shift. The Internet¹s
pre-eminent dean of darkness is Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University
guru of cyberlaw. Beginning with his 1999 book ³Code and Other Laws of
Cyberspace,² Lessig has been predicting that corporate and regulatory
pressures would usurp the open nature of the Net, and now says that he has
little reason to retract his pessimism. Lessig understands that restrictive
copyright and Homeland Security laws give a legal rationale to ³total
control,² and also knows that it will be sold to the people as a great way
to stop thieves, pirates, malicious hackers, spammers and child
pornographers. ³To say we need total freedom isn¹t going to win,² Lessig
says. He is working hard to promote alternatives in which the law can be
enforced outside the actual architecture of the system itself but admits
that he considers his own efforts somewhat quixotic.

Does this mean that John Walker¹s nightmare is a foregone conclusion? Not
necessarily. Certain influential companies are beginning to understand that
their own businesses depend on an open Internet. (Google, for example, is
dependent on the ability to image the Web on its own servers, a task that
might be impossible in a controlled Internet.) Activist groups like the
Electronic Frontier Foundation are sounding alarms. A few legislators like
Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota are beginning to
look upon digital rights management schemes with skepticism. Courts might
balk if the restrictions clearly violate the First Amendment. And there are
pockets of technologists concocting schemes that may be able to bypass even
a rigidly controlled Internet. In one paper published by, of all people,
some of Microsoft¹s Palladium developers, there¹s discussion of a scenario
where small private ³dark nets² can freely move data in a hostile
environment. Picture digital freedom fighters huddling in the electronic
equivalent of caves, file-swapping and blogging under the radar of censors
and copyright cops.

Nonetheless, staving off the Internet power shift will be a difficult task,
made even harder by apathy on the part of users who won¹t know what they¹ve
got till it¹s gone. ³I¹ve spent hundreds of hours talking to people about
this,² says Walker. ³And I can¹t think of a single person who is actually
going to do something about it.² Unfortunately, our increasingly
Internet-based society will get only the freedom it fights for.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
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