IP: Policing the Internet: Anyone but Government

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/022000internet-security-review.htm

Policing the Internet: Anyone but Government



By STEVE LOHR


he attacks on eBay, Yahoo, E*Trade and other big Web sites earlier this 
month showed the Internet to be surprisingly vulnerable to a few 
laptop-toting cyber-vandals. This is a pressing public concern, surely, as 
the nation increasingly comes to rely for commerce and everyday 
communication on this chaotic, global computer network.

But when President Clinton met last week with more than two dozen 
representatives of the Internet community, a big role for government was 
not on the agenda. The president asked what could or should the Government 
do. Not a lot, the Internet elite told him. The message: It's an industry 
issue.

"No one in that room was asking the government to fix this problem," said 
Nicholas Donofrio, senior vice president for technology at I.B.M., who 
attended the meeting.

The gathering epitomized the main thrust of Government policy in the 
Internet arena. Government, the theory goes, should offer a forum and be a 
cooperative partner, so as to facilitate the rapid rise of Internet 
commerce. That stance was set in a July 1997 policy document on E-commerce 
written by Ira Magaziner, a senior White House policy adviser at the time. 
His document extolled the "breakneck speed of change in the technology" and 
stated, "Government attempts to regulate [the Internet] are likely to be 
outmoded by the time they are finally enacted."

The hands-off approach, however, will be challenged more and more as the

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