January 17, 2000 New Thinking:
As open as a trap
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January 17, 2000
As open as a trap
By Gerry McGovern
The Internet was built upon the foundations of openness. It is openness, in all its contexts, that has allowed the Internet to grow. However, in 2000 and beyond the Internet faces many challenges that if not dealt with properly will rock its very foundations.
“As open as a trap” is a line of poetry from Irish poet Seamus Heaney that has imbedded itself deep in my mind. The juxtaposition of two seeming opposites intrigued me. Then it struck me that a ‘web’ is also a trap woven by a spider. Could the World Wide Web end up as a system that trapped people, I wondered? Maybe not people themselves but information on people?
Privacy and security are issues which we have barely scraped the surface on in relation to the Internet. The ensuing debates and the resultant legislation will shape the Internet far more than all the new software we can think of. Because the Internet is about present and future society, and privacy and security are two of the linchpins upon which society depends.
I believe in examining words because most words have hidden depth charges of meaning. Take the word ‘firewall’, for example. It is made up of ‘fire’ and ‘wall’. A fire is a very visible emergency, something that you can really target. But a lot of security breaches today show no signs of fire or even smoke. They are stealth attacks.
A wall keeps things in and out. We used to have walled cities. But as cities grew and people began to commute and trade far and wide, the concept of the walled city became redundant. The walls function was replaced by security and police forces. The organization BI (Before Internet) very often operated like a walled city. The firewall and other walled thinking is of diminishing value to the organization AI (After Internet).
Moving forward, security needs to be preventive, observant and capable of reacting at short notice. "Security is not a product. It's a process," Bruce Schneier, author of the highly-acclaimed book, Applied Cryptography, told Business Week recently.
In the Internet Age, security is going to be one hell of a problem. As the Internet becomes more open and interconnected, as it imbeds itself deeper and deeper into day-to-day business and daily life, it also becomes more open to attack.
"As software gets more complex, the number of potential security flaws goes up exponentially," Schneier told Business Week. “Hackers with malicious intent have a good grip on this dynamic. And increasingly, they are homing in on points of interaction among features in a program, or among programs… I am downbeat about the future of security. The Net itself is complex. You could avoid many security issues by ripping the Net down, but nobody wants that to happen."
So, how do we deal with the problems of security and privacy? First off, we need very wide ranging debate on all the issues. We need to scope the full extent of the problem, which has not been done.
Government needs to become far more engaged from a legislative point of view. Nobody would even contemplate allowing a city to be policed by private police forces funded by private companies, so why has the crazy logic of allowing industry groups protect the privacy of consumers been given so much credence?
The Internet is no longer something on the edge of society, but is now rather something that is defining present and future society. Tackling the fundamental issues of security and privacy requires a broad-church approach. And it needs to start now.
Gerry McGovern
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