I was at a discussion panel on internet security and, I’ll say it, it was terrifying. Between individual frauds, organized crime, corporate and state espionage, things are very dangerous out there. Something which, according to one of the panel speakers, is worsening exponentially.
There are extremely complex problems that even the smartest of the smart would admit cannot be easily solved. However, Craig Mundie, head of research at Microsoft, proposed an amazingly simple solution that shows a good starting point for tackling all these problems: driving licenses for the internet.
The problem with the internet is that it wasn’t deliberately designed to be a global mass communication system. A few dozen people who knew each other started the network. The anonymity that has become the core and beloved feature of the internet didn’t exist at the beginning: it was clear who was who.
As the internet started expanding and gathering more users, it stopped being a place where everyone knew who the others were, but at no point did things change in how they work. The web started becoming a space of non-identification, and it continues to be so until today. Anyone can go online and no one needs to say who they are. This is what allows a large volume of cybercrime: if you suffer an attack from a computer, you can locate exactly where this machine is, but there is no way to take one more step and find the identity of the computer that hacked the computer that hacked you.
What Mundie suggests is that identification should be enforced. He makes an analogy with car usage. If you want to drive a car, you must have a driver’s license (plus insurance, etc.). If you do something wrong with this car, for example, if you break the law, it is likely that you will lose your driver’s license and be forbidden from driving again in the future. In other words, there is a legal and social framework that enforces discipline. Mundie envisions that there will be different kinds of identities for use on the internet: one for people, one for machines, and one for programs (which often work as proxies for the other two).
Of course there are some obstacles for this plan to become reality. Even here where I am, in the mountains of Switzerland, I can hear the global outcry: “But we have the right to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Do you have it? How did you come up with something like that?
Mundie pointed out that in the physical world we feel completely comfortable with the fact that there are specific places we are not allowed to go without identifying ourselves. Can you walk down the street without anyone knowing who you are? Absolutely. Can you enter a bank machine without giving your name? No.
It’s easy to envision the same kind of differentiated structures for the Internet, said Mundie. He didn’t give any examples, so I thought of one. If you want to go to Time.com and read what’s happening in the world, that’s fine. Nobody needs to know who you are. But if you want to create a site that accepts donations, via cards, for the earthquake victims in Haiti? Fine, you’ll need to show your identity to do it.
The truth about this matter is that the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, there is no law here. However, as more and more people enter the internet, this lack of laws becomes an increasingly bigger problem. As human societies evolve, they develop stricter standards for themselves in order to control their quantitative growth. There is no reason to think that this cannot apply to the Internet.
This does not mean that something like this will happen soon. Governments are certainly talking with each other about this issue (although, by definition, any effective effort should be international in nature), but even in Europe, where there is a cybersecurity agency, only half of the continent’s countries have signed up to participate in it.
A somewhat confusing issue that was pointed out in today’s discussion: government intelligence services are the biggest beneficiaries of Internet anonymity. They were monitoring everyone even before the web, but how much easier has it now become to move around cyberspace without anyone noticing them?
Therefore, do not expect changes soon. But know that those who are responsible – as almost everyone who has responsibilities for anything related to the Internet – are thinking about it.
This was written by sociologist Barbara Kiviat in the American establishment time. We translated her entire article. When did she write it? Yesterday? Perhaps the day before, or at least a few months ago?
No. It was exactly 11 years ago. On January 30, 2010…
It is our duty, as autonomous workers, to warn as clearly as possible about the “preparation” of the future, about the capitalist and state trends, going back as far as needed to identify the traces of historical paths… We have been doing the same through cyborg for 5.5 years now on a series of issues related to “new technologies”, including biotechnologies… The fact that people are reluctant to detach themselves from their daily friction and misery, refuse to understand what determines their lives, and that we are de facto marginalized (because we are clean from every perspective…) greatly limits the scope of all this work, for which we have no “personal” benefit.
We will continue, however, as much as we can. The 2010 article sheds light (we hope) clearly on what has begun aggressively regarding censorship and control in cyberspace since 2020; in the name of, as we know, “health”… But it is not the only warning sign from the past for what is already happening and will happen (as everything indicates) much more systematically and methodically in 2021.
Two years before the writing of the above article, Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and one of the founders of Creative Commons, spoke at the Fortune’s Brainstorm technology conference in Half Moon Bay, California. And there, among other things, he said this:
… At some point, at a dinner where Richard Clark was also present, I asked him “Is there something equivalent to the Patriot Act – an i-Patriot Act – that is waiting for a major event to provide the justification for its implementation, radically changing how the Internet works?”. And he replied “Of course there is…” – and I swear that’s exactly how he said it – “… and Vint Cerf won’t like it very much”.
Richard Clark was the “national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counter-terrorism” in the US from 1998 to 2003. He was subsequently hired by the emirates’ oil company, and built for it a cyber-surveillance structure, allegedly to monitor “extremists.” The toxic rulers of Dubai use it, of course, against everyone: from female activists to FIFA officials… Clark should have no problem: he has participated in various “dirty” campaigns of the American state…
Vint Cerf (Vinton Gray Cerf) is one of the pioneers in creating the internet as we know it, and together with Bob Kahn (creator of the TCP/IP protocol) they are considered “the fathers of the internet.” So it’s easy for anyone to understand why he wouldn’t like an …i-Patriot Act… (Meanwhile, some videos with related statements by Lessig have disappeared from the internet…)
We have, therefore, the following data. First, for 1.5 (possibly more) decades there have been American/Western plans for the disciplining “of traffic on the internet.” Certainly through the strict personalization of all those who enter either the entirety of cyberspace or certain areas of it (the former is quite likely).
Secondly, during this entire period (since the beginning of the 21st century), technologies for “disconnecting” access to various areas of cyberspace have been created and imposed by states, “for the protection of citizens.”
Third, within the hysteria raised by the sanitarian campaign, apart from biosecurity, the issue of cybersecurity has also been raised high and equally demagogically. Systematic censorship, which for now, and pending official state legislation, is carried out through decisions by private companies/platforms of antisocial media, is only one side of this development. Accusations of cyberattacks (in the US…) attributed either to Moscow, or to Beijing, or to Pyongyang, whether real or provocative, constitute another side. And the fact that with the spread of 5G communications, much larger volumes of data will circulate on the internet (having become an indispensable element for numerous capitalist and governmental functions…) has already made cybersecurity the number one issue in international discussions among the elites; and in the search for the technological and legal measures to be taken.
What remains somewhat unclear for the time being is the kind of justifications that will be invented to legitimize, as much as possible, the Western “traffic regulation” on the internet (in other parts of the world it is already happening…), and most likely with far greater strictness than the physical traffic regulation on the roads. Will it be the so-called “fake news” that pollute the “consciences” of citizens, preventing states and authorities from having a monopoly on “truth”? Will it be a “major cyberattack” attributed to some rival state and deemed “destabilizing,” so that the dilemma of “internet or freedom,” just like “health or freedom,” will bring the subordinates to heel? Will it be a combination of both? Something else entirely? Will there be a cleansing of cyberspace from “suspicious content from the past” (something akin to “books on fire” in a digital version)? For now, the trends suggest that all these scenarios are extremely likely.
One of the most infamous scoundrels of the era, Klaus Schwab of the W.E.F., who has undertaken the promotion of his bioinformatics-security complex schemes by making various apocalyptic prophecies, predicted last July an upcoming «cyber pandemic» (He has also predicted a «collapse of electrical grids»… He leaves the catastrophes through much deadlier viruses to his friends’ jurisdiction…)
If, at this specific historical moment we are living through, the political significance of forecasting the upcoming “new enclosures” in cyberspace holds weight, it is not merely due to this particular field of restructuring within the 4th industrial revolution itself. But also because of its combination (with this specific forecast) and the campaign for the reconstruction of bodies and social relations already underway, under the code name “covid-19″…
There will be quite a few optimists or simply hasty people who will argue that “the internet cannot be controlled” or that “controlling it will reduce its productivity, which is crucial for capitalism.” They are sadly mistaken! The cyberspace is already controlled, almost suffocatingly; it’s just that those who control it don’t advertise the fact. As for the “decline in productivity due to digital enclosures”; such an issue would arise only if a large percentage of internet users were to abandon it in protest over the many and large-scale coups taking place there. But that is unlikely. Moreover, all that would be needed are periodic “lockdowns” to impose the idea that “there is no life outside the internet” – even if everyone is officially and clearly marked!
Beyond these, no issue of technical difficulties arises. Ten, fifteen years that the “experts” have been searching the issue, you say they haven’t created anything applicable, no application? The only problem was/is “psychosocial”: how will all these hundreds of millions who still believe that cyberspace is “their space of freedom” be tamed. (Many also believe it is “their space of privacy”…)
When, however, it becomes possible to convince these hundreds of millions that they are “in danger of dying” (because this is what the “magicians” of techno-science have said), that the states and the bio-info-security complex will save them, but that they must barricade themselves in their homes and polish the doorknobs so as not to “get infected,” when this has been accomplished, what is impossible for the masters and their mechanisms to achieve?
From a certain point on, there are of course social reactions. That is “something.” There is also their suppression… In a transitional period, not everything succeeds (from the bosses’ side). What, however, makes the difference and is a source of strength and optimism is not the reaction as a reaction, the irritation and grumpiness per se. The bosses have learned these things for decades, on various occasions, and know how to handle them. What (will) make the difference is the deep and precise awareness of what is what, of what is happening and why. And the collective organization based on this awareness.
Aaa… If additional evidence is needed for the value of the hygiene terror campaign, it’s right here: