It's true. I think the all or nothing comes in when they look at the distributed anarchic network and try to figure out how to solve problems like security - it seems impossible, so they turn to the tried and true solution of making the whole thing "belong" to someone. It reminds me of a recent article about the prosecution in the Pirate Bay lawsuit trying to understand the structure of authority. The problem is that the question doesn't really even make sense, but when you have a cultural predicated on ownership and hierarchy, the only way to solve these problems is to conceptually impose structure on the anarchic system.

Which I guess why Rick is totally right about the language thing: using "internet" in terms of the physical and non-physical entities that make up the network gives it a concrete conceptual identity and makes it possible to ask questions like "who owns the internet." I mean, this question would still come up, even if we made up some other random term for the specific extant network ("who owns the 'puppyweb'"), but it might be less confusing? Maybe it would be more confusing, as I think most people don't use the term 'internet' to refer to a social condition ("the internet is down" is usually not making a statement about human communications). Maybe it would be more clear to abandon "internet" to the ravages of common usage and develop a new term for interconnectedness?

-- TheodoreSmith - 24 Feb 2009

It's interesting that the terms of the debate is always put in all-or-nothing trade-offs. Either we keep the problem-laden, insecure, and ill-conceived "Internet" or we trade off open platforms, anonymity and privacy for "something better". There seems to be a bit of a disconnect in Markoff's piece. He moves from challenges to network security (like the Conficker story) and, in an unusual non-sequitor, concludes that the libertarian ethos of anonymity and privacy built into the Internet's code is a big obstacle to addressing security concerns. But really, the problem posed by Conficker and the other anecdotes about botnets and malware have nothing to do with privacy and anonymity. They're the result of network software and operating systems badly written by people who care little about end-user security concerns. Sure, isolated incidents of hacking or informational espionage are network and national security challenges, but this happens not because of any inherent TCP/IP vulnerability or weakness, but network administrators not doing their diligence; or industry coders getting programs out on the market for consumption without properly locking things down for security purposes.

-- JonPenney - 23 Feb 2009

For example, how can we effectively communicate that the quantity of American lives lost to terrorism (3,000 lives lost on 9/11 + 400 in Afghanistan + 4,300 in Iraq averages out to about 1,000 per year) pales in comparison to the 750,000+ deaths per year caused by conventional medicine (of which around 100,000 are the results of drugs which may have been misprescribed because of our permissive attitude toward privacy)? Can we ever convince America to accept terrorism as an acceptable cost of freedom as we do with, to take a slightly more benign example, the the 40,000 deaths per year resulting from automobile accidents? The national security cost-benefit analysis seems to be horrendously misperceived compared to policy areas like automobiles, where we easily accept these mortalities as an acceptable cost of the gained freedom and autonomy to go from point to point more efficiently. We could, but don't, eradicate this autonomy by banning cars and having a totally public transportation system created at incredible cost for the sake of saving lives and "increasing security." Freedom and autonomy both require accepting certain losses, and Americans lack either the desire or ability to comprehend the bargain in the case of national security.

-- RickSchwartz - 22 Feb 2009

I think Kate's other point is right on. Politically, what you are asking law enforcement, etc. to do is to become less effective for the sake of people's privacy. You can argue that the trade-off is too great, or that the agencies forced behind the screen would not actually lose effectiveness, but all it takes for a counter-argument is a single publicized event that could have been avoided by information sharing. I think it is too easy for the powers that be to point to a murder or child abduction and say, "we would have been able to stop this if we had access to more information." The dangers of the slow erosion of privacy are difficult to paint in such concrete and effective terms.

-- TheodoreSmith - 22 Feb 2009