[Chapter-delegates] NY Times article "Where the Internet Goes"

Mon Dec 30 22:33:07 PST 2013

Very interesting, Glenn. Thanks so much for sharing!

Mike
On Dec 30, 2013 7:29 PM, "Glenn McKnight" <mcknight.glenn at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/science/viewing-where-the-internet-goes.html?ref=science?src=dayp&_r=0
>
> Viewing Where the Internet Goes By JOHN MARKOFF<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.html>
>
> Will 2014 be the year that the Internet is reined in?
>
> When Edward J. Snowden, the disaffected National Security Agency contract
> employee, purloined tens of thousands of classified documents<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/us/how-edward-j-snowden-orchestrated-a-blockbuster-story.html?_r=1&> from
> computers around the world, his actions — and their still-reverberating
> consequences — heightened international pressure to control the network
> that has increasingly become the world’s stage. At issue is the technical
> principle that is the basis for the Internet, its “any-to-any”
> connectivity. That capability has defined the technology ever since Vinton
> Cerf <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/932769/Vinton-Gray-Cerf>
>  and Robert Kahn<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/932776/Robert-Elliot-Kahn>sequestered
> themselves in the conference room of a Palo Alto, Calif., hotel in 1973,
> with the task of interconnecting computer networks for an elite group of
> scientists, engineers and military personnel.
>
> The two men wound up developing a simple and universal set of rules for
> exchanging digital information — the conventions of the modern Internet.
> Despite many technological changes, their work prevails.
>
> But while the Internet’s global capability to connect anyone with anything
> has affected every nook and cranny of modern life — with politics,
> education, espionage, war, civil liberties, entertainment, sex, science,
> finance and manufacturing all transformed — its growth increasingly
> presents paradoxes.
>
> It was, for example, the Internet’s global reach that made classified
> documents available to Mr. Snowden — and made it so easy for him to
> distribute them to news organizations.
>
> Yet the Internet also made possible widespread surveillance, a practice
> that alarmed Mr. Snowden and triggered his plan to steal and publicly
> release the information.
>
> With the Snowden affair starkly highlighting the issues, the new year is
> likely to see renewed calls to change the way the Internet is governed. In
> particular, governments that do not favor the free flow of information,
> especially if it’s through a system designed by Americans, would like to
> see the Internet regulated in a way that would “Balkanize” it by preventing
> access to certain websites.
>
> The debate right now involves two international organizations, usually
> known by their acronyms, with different views: Icann<http://www.icann.org/>,
> the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and the I.T.U.<http://www.itu.int/en/about/Pages/default.aspx>,
> or International Telecommunication Union.
>
> Icann, a nonprofit that oversees the Internet’s basic functions, like the
> assignment of names to websites, was established in 1998 by the United
> States government to create an international forum for “governing” the
> Internet. The United States continues to favor this group.
>
> The I.T.U., created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Convention<http://www.itu.int/en/history/Pages/PlenipotentiaryConferences.aspx?conf=1&dms=S0201000001>,
> is the United Nations telecommunications regulatory agency. Nations like
> Brazil, China and Russia have been pressing the United States to switch
> governance of the Internet to this organization.
>
> Dr. Cerf, 70, and Dr. Kahn, 75, have taken slightly different positions on
> the matter. Dr. Cerf, who was chairman of Icann from 2000-7, has become
> known as an informal “Internet ambassador” and a strong proponent of an
> Internet that remains independent of state control. He has been one of the
> major supporters of the idea of “network neutrality” — the principle that
> Internet service providers should enable access to all content and
> applications, regardless of the source.
>
> Dr. Kahn has made a determined effort to stay out of the network
> neutrality debate. Nevertheless, he has been more willing to work with the
> I.T.U., particularly in attempting to build support for a system, known as
> Digital Object Architecture, for tracking and authenticating all content
> distributed through the Internet.
>
> Both men agreed to sit down, in separate interviews, to talk about their
> views on the Internet’s future. The interviews were edited and condensed.
>
> *The Internet Ambassador*
>
> After serving as a program manager at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced
> Research Projects Agency <http://www.darpa.mil/>, Vinton Cerf joined MCI
> Communications Corp., an early commercial Internet company that was purchased
> by Verizon <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/business/07verizon.html> in
> 2006, to lead the development of electronic mail systems for the Internet.
> In 2005, he became a vice president and “Internet evangelist” for Google.
> Last year he became the president of the Association for Computing
> Machinery <http://www.acm.org/>, a leading international educational and
> scientific computing society.
>
> *Q. Edward Snowden’s actions have raised a new storm of controversy about
> the role of the Internet. Is it a significant new challenge to an open and
> global Internet?*
>
> *A. *The answer is no, I don’t think so. There are some similar analogues
> in history. The French historically copied every telex or every telegram
> that you sent, and they shared it with businesses in order to remain
> competitive. And when that finally became apparent, it didn’t shut down the
> telegraph system.
>
> The Snowden revelations will increase interest in end-to-end cryptography
> for encrypting information both in transit and at rest. For many of us,
> including me, who believe that is an important capacity to have, this
> little crisis may be the trigger that induces people to spend time and
> energy learning how to use it.
>
> *You’ve drawn the analogy to a road or highway system. That brings to mind
> the idea of requiring a driver’s license to use the Internet, which raises
> questions about responsibility and anonymity.*
>
> I still believe that anonymity is an important capacity, that people
> should have the ability to speak anonymously. It’s argued that people will
> be encouraged to say untrue things, harmful things, especially if they
> believe they are anonymous.
>
> There is a tension there, because in some environments the only way you
> will be able to behave safely is to have some anonymity.
>
> The other side of this coin is that I believe that strong authentication
> is necessary. We must support the entire spectrum here. In some cases you
> want whistle-blowing kinds of capacity that will protect anonymity. Some
> governments will not tolerate anonymity, and in our government it’s still
> an open question.
>
> *Can the Internet be governed effectively?*
>
> I’m deliberately arguing that new institutions are not necessary.
>
> *How significant is the danger that the Internet will be balkanized, as
> critics of the I.T.U. fear?*
>
> Balkanization is too simple of a concept. There is an odd mix of
> permeability and impermeability in the Net. You won’t be able to
> communicate with everyone, and not every application will be accessible to
> everyone. We will be forced to lose the basic and simple notion that
> everyone should be able to communicate with everyone else.
>
> I’m disappointed that the idyllic and utopian model of everyone being able
> to communicate with everyone else and do what they want to do will be —
> what is the right word? Inhibited is the wrong word, because it sounds too
> widespread — maybe variable is the best way of saying it. End-to-end
> connectivity will vary depending on location.
>
> *How has your original design weathered the test of time?*
>
> Everything has expanded by a factor of a million since we turned it on in
> 1973. The number of machines on the network, the speeds of the network, the
> kind of memory capacity that’s available, it’s all 10 to the sixth.
>
> I would say that there aren’t too many systems that have been designed
> that can handle a millionfold scaling without completely collapsing. But
> that doesn’t mean that it will continue to work that way.
>
> *Is the I.T.U. and its effort to take over governance a threat to an open
> Internet?*
>
> People complained about my nasty comment. I said that these dinosaurs
> don’t know that they’re dead yet, because it takes so long for the signal
> to traverse their long necks to get to their pea-sized brains. Some people
> were insulted by that. I was pleased. It’s not at all clear to me that
> I.T.U.'s standards-making activities have kept up with need. The
> consequence of this is that they are less and less relevant.
>
> *Beyond the mobile Internet and the Internet of things, what else do you
> see on the horizon?*
>
> There are a couple of things. One of them is related to measurement and
> monitoring. It gives us the ability to see trends and to see things that we
> might not see if we under-sample. That, plus being able to see large
> aggregates of what we hope is sufficiently anonymized information, can help
> us reveal states that we might not otherwise see.
>
> It is like being able to figure out flu trends. I think of it as a kind of
> sociological or a socioeconomic CT scan that is helping us to see the
> dynamics in the world in a way that we couldn’t otherwise see. And of
> course it leads to all kinds of worries about privacy and the like.
>
> *The Engineer*
>
> An official with Darpa from 1972 to 1985, Robert Kahn created the Corporation
> for National Research Initiatives <http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/>, based
> in Reston, Va., in 1986. There he has focused on managing and distributing
> all of the world’s digital content — as a nonproprietary Google. He has
> cooperated with the I.T.U. on the development of new network standards.
>
> *Q. The Snowden affair raises a paradox. The Internet made it relatively
> easy for him to do what he did, and at the same time it enabled the
> dramatic increase in surveillance that alarmed him. How do you sort that
> out?*
>
> *A. *I would push back on that a little bit. You could say oxygen made it
> possible for him to do that, because without it he wouldn’t be alive. Or
> his parents made it possible for him to do that.
>
> *Does the scandal imply anything about the future of the Internet more
> generally?*
>
> You can’t gaze in the crystal ball and see the future. What the Internet
> is going to be in the future is what society makes it. It will be what the
> businesses offer, it will be new products and services. It’s the new ideas
> that show up that nobody thought of before.
>
> *And looking farther down the road?*
>
> If you ask me what it’s going to look like in 100 years, I’m sure there
> are going to be some things that are similar. That is, everyone will say we
> know we need connectivity between computational devices. We all know that
> access to information is important, so what’s different? It is just the
> same as it was back then.
>
> You can say the same thing about transportation. What’s new about
> transportation? Well, people still need to get from here to there, and
> sometimes it’s not safe. You can get there faster, but that’s just a
> parameter that’s changed.
>
> *Has the Snowden scandal changed the dynamics surrounding privacy and
> surveillance? How will it affect the debate?*
>
> There have always been ways in which people can access things, so instead
> of being able to log in because he had a key to this file, or this password
> or this firewall, he had a key to a physical room or a key to a safe.
>
> Thievery of this sort is not new. The question is, did it change the scale
> of it. Probably. If it had been actually physical stuff, someone would have
> said, “What are you doing with these trailer trunks walking out the door?”
>
> *Is there a solution to challenges of privacy and security?*
>
> In the 1990s when I was on the National Internet Infrastructure Advisory
> Committee, Al Gore showed up as vice president, and he made an impassioned
> pitch for Clipper chip<http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/24/business/of-privacy-and-security-the-clipper-chip-debate.html>[an
> early government surveillance system]. He said, “We need to be very aware
> of the needs of national security and law enforcement.” Even though the
> private sector was arguing for tight encryption, the federal government
> needed [to be able to conduct surveillance]. It never went, and it’s not
> anywhere today. I think it’s probably easier to solve the
> Israeli-Palestinian problem than it is to solve this.
>
> *Can the Internet be governed? What about the disputes between the
> different standards-setting bodies over control of the network?*
>
> No matter what you do, any country in the world is going to have the
> ability to set its own rules internally. Any country in the world can pull
> the plug. It’s not a question of technical issues, it’s not a question of
> right or wrong, it’s not a question of whether global Internet governance
> is right or wrong. It’s just with us.
>
> I used to do the Icann [management] function myself with one 3-by-5 card
> in my pocket, and when I got two of them, I asked Jon Postel<http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/19/us/jonathan-b-postel-a-pioneer-of-the-internet-is-dead-at-55.html> if
> he would take over. You have to put it in perspective. Now it’s a huge
> business, and it gets caught up in a few things.
>
> *Would it be possible to start over and build a new Internet to solve the
> problems the current Internet faces?*
>
> You can’t do a wholesale replacement. If you think there is too much spam
> today, tell me what your solution is for it, because if you design a clean
> slate Internet and you don’t have a solution for spam, you’re going to have
> spam on your clean slate Internet and you’re going to have an argument for
> yet another clean slate Internet because that one didn’t work. It’s like
> saying we have crime in society, so let’s blow up the planet and build a
> new one. There will probably be crime on the new planet.
> Glenn McKnight
> mcknight.glenn at gmail.com
> skype  gmcknight
> twitter gmcknight
> .
>
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