Do We Need a New Internet? - NYTimes.com

Do We Need a New Internet? - NYTimes.com

YES WE DO!

For the primary reason that a user on a network should not have the right to remain anonymous. I have argued that point for years, even before regulators when Caller ID was a big issue in terms of privacy and anonymity.

There may be a slew of technical improvements that a 'new' Internet would produce, but the one element that it should not permit is user anonymity. A person should have no inherent right to be anonymous on the Internet for the purpose of evil deeds, certainly. If that continues, the bad guys have too many ways to hide.

"...For all those efforts, though, the real limits to computer security may lie in human nature.

The Internet’s current design virtually guarantees anonymity to its users. (As a New Yorker cartoon noted some years ago, “On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.”) But that anonymity is now the most vexing challenge for law enforcement. An Internet attacker can route a connection through many countries to hide his location, which may be from an account in an Internet cafe purchased with a stolen credit card.

“As soon as you start dealing with the public Internet, the whole notion of trust becomes a quagmire,” said Stefan Savage, an expert on computer security at the University of California, San Diego.

A more secure network is one that would almost certainly offer less anonymity and privacy. That is likely to be the great tradeoff for the designers of the next Internet. One idea, for example, would be to require the equivalent of drivers’ licenses to permit someone to connect to a public computer network. But that runs against the deeply held libertarian ethos of the Internet."

Proving identity is likely to remain remarkably difficult in a world where it is trivial to take over someone’s computer from half a world away and operate it as your own. As long as that remains true, building a completely trustable system will remain virtually impossible.


Here's another take on it, that basically blames humans for not doing their part to protect privacy and insure security on today's Internet.