Online Privacy

We now have a glimpse of what extreme publicacy looks like from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who leads the World Wide Web Consortium which oversees the web's standards and development.

• Remember, "publicacy" -- is a new word to describe the opposite of privacy, and to capture the increasingly-common view in the tech community, that if technology can make information more public -- it should be made more public.

Per Gordon Crovitz' WSJ column today we learned more about the future of extreme "publicacy" on the Internet:

• "Mr. Berners-Lee now advocates what he calls "linked data," to go beyond today's hypertext and make readily accessible digital information stored in any format from any source. There's a huge amount of data now in various digital formats, but it's hard to find new relationships or correlations. He said the Web could be reorganized so that well-tagged tables of structured information can easily be linked to others. For example, scientists could link data about proteins and genomics to tackle Alzheimer's. Mr. Berners-Lee led the TED crowd in a chant of "Raw data, now!""

The 'publicacy' trend, where technology increasingly makes public what used to be private, has reached another noteworthy milestone -- the popularization of location tracking of people via smart-phones. 

• Google just launched a new free app for smart phones, Google Latitude, that uses location-technology to track users' physical movements and to and share those movements or locations with others.  

  Lets look at how this new development increases tension underneath the growing "privacy-publicacy faultline" that I described in my post on World Privacy Day last month.

  • I have three takeaways.

  First, the obviousness of the "creepy" publicacy factor in this instance -- forced more respect for privacy concerns.

Given that January 28th is World Data Privacy Day, its instructive to examine why there is such increasing tension underneath the surface of the Internet over the issue of privacy. I believe there is a growing "faultline" between two opposing tectonic forces -- one that believes in online privacy and the other which believes in the opposite -- online publicacy.

• (I coined the term "publicacy" in my July 2008 House testimony on online privacy because Internet technology has created the need for an antonym to describe the opposite of privacy.
• Many in the Web 2.0 community believe in the "publicacy ethos" where if technology innovation can make information public, it should be public and that there should be no permission or payment required to access, use or remix this new 'public' information.)

  I.  Why are there opposing tectonic plates of privacy and publicacy?

  A.  The growing pressure for privacy is captured in a Consumer Reports Survey from 9-28-08: "Consumer Reports Poll: Americans Extremely Concerned About Internet Privacy: Most Consumers Want More Control Over How Their Online Information Is Collected & Used."

I consider one of the most troublesome aspects of the broader "open" movement for an Open Internet, net neutrality, free culture, and unauthorized tracking online, is the core Internet ethos that one should "ask for forgiveness, not permission." This ethos also goes by "innovation without permission."

This perverse Internet ethos can turn true Internet freedom on its head in that it self-servingly justifies one unilaterally usurping the freedom of others -- their freedom from harm, freedom of privacy, or freedom of safety.

• In other words, it is an irresponsible ethos where one can do whatever one wants on the Internet, and if people object, just ask for forgiveness and stop doing it. 

The problem is that the proverbial bell can't be un-rung on the Internet because with caching and the viral nature of linking, once a harm or an invasion of privacy is done on the Internet -- it can't fully be undone. 

• This ethos can be looked at as self-licensing to do whatever one wants, without regard to potential damage or harm.

One of the highest profile and recent manifestations of this "ask for forgiveness not permission" ethos is Google's Streetview effort. 

"A 'Cyber Katrina' is inevitable" according to George Foresman, a former Undersecretary  for Preparedness at the Department of Homeland Security.

I strongly urge you to read an outstanding, sobering and succinct post by USA Today's Byron Acohido: "Cyber Katrina is upon us" which:

• concludes "Cyber threats are accelerating;"
• highlights 8 "proof points" from respected Internet security sources that highlight "a continual increase in malicious and criminal activity on the Internet."

Byron Acohido adds:

• "Given these gloomy metrics, is there any reason to hope this cyber cyclone can be subdued? Vint Cerf, the man most often referred to as the father of the Internet, painted a dark scenario in this recent Guardian interview. When it comes to Internet security, “it’s every man for himself. . .in the end it seems every machine has to defend itself.”

Kudos to Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz for their tenacious and continuous focus on this under-reported, but critically important Internet issue -- and for their excellent book on the real and shocking gaps in everyday Internet security: Zero Day Threat.    

WSJ columnist Gordon Cravitz rightfully focuses in this week's  column on the fact that "Internet attacks are a real and growing problem."

• Cravitz notes "...that system of open protocols brings the enormous benefits of the Web to civilian life. But the Web has also become an open field for cyber warriors seeking to harm the U.S."
• He spotlights a new cybersecurity commission report  by CSIS that soberly concludes cybersecurity is a "battle we are losing."

Has the obsession for Internet "openness" resulted in turning a collective blind eye to cybersecurity? 

Building on my previous post: "Internet Co-designer: "It's every man for himself," the Internet's co-designer, Google's Vint Cerf, made a similarly ominous comment about the future of the Internet to the New York Times last week.

In John Markoff's outstanding front page NYT article: "Thieves winning online war, maybe on your computer" the Internet's co-designer painted a bleak portrait of the safety and security of the Internet going forward.  

• "Many Internet executives fear that basic trust in what has become the foundation of 21st century commerce is rapidly eroding."
• “There’s an increasing trend to depend on the Internet for a wide range of applications, many of them having to deal with financial institutions,” said Vinton G. Cerf, one of the original designers of the Internet, who is now Google’s “chief Internet evangelist.”"
• “The more we depend on these types of systems, the more vulnerable we become,” he said.

Other experts agree. As Mr. Markoff reported yesterday: a government/technology industry panel is pressing the new Administration in a new report to make cyber-security a high national security priority.

Thanks to the Guardian for an illuminating and not-to-be-missed interview with one of the two designers of the Internet, Google's Vint Cerf, who also  served as the first President of the Internet Society, and as a past Chairman of ICANN.

Mr. Cerf's take on the prospects for cleaning up the Internet: 

• "It's every man for himself," he says, grinning. "In the end, it seems every machine has to defend itself. The internet was designed that way."  
• "...every machine that can be compromised is a potential hazard. A machine that was OK yesterday is certainly not OK today: it may have ingested an infected memory stick...."
• "My bias right now tends to be 'It's every man for himself' - you need to be suspicious whether you're inside the trusted cloud or not, and when it fails, the house of cards tends to collapse."

On the security/privacy flaw inherent in the Internet's design:

• ..."The idea of a virtual private network was not part of the original design," says Cerf, with a grin. "It was actually an oversight. It didn't occur to me that it would be useful until afterwards."

A tremendous amount to ponder...

I consider myself of like mind with my friend Adam Theirer of PFF on most all issues of substance, however, I must take strong exception to his misguided take on Google and Googlephobia. 

In Adam's post "Googlephobia: Part 6 - the Left Begin to Turn on Google":

ConsumerWatchdog.org is doing some excellent work on Google's privacy problems. If you are interested in privacy, please view this six mintue video by ConsumerWatchdog.org; it is especially helpful and illuminating.