See You on the Darknet; Why we don't really want Internet security.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 14:26:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () SIMS Berkeley EDU>
Subject: See You on the Darknet; Why we don't really want Internet security.
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>


http://slate.msn.com/id/2094336/

See You on the Darknet; Why we don't really want Internet security.
By Paul Boutin

I have a game I play whenever I read an essay on politics written by a
techie: How long until the first reference to George Orwell? Autodesk
founder John Walker, in a recent 28,000-word monograph ponderously
titled "The Digital Imprimatur," wastes no time: His piece is
subtitled "How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie
back in the bottle." If your eyes don't glaze over right then, they
will as soon as Walker begins to explain how by signing up for cheap
broadband service, with its firewalls and dynamic IP addresses, you've
already compromised your freedom.

Walker goes on, listing spam filters, antivirus software, even those
perennially just-around-the-corner micropayment schemes as further
nails in the coffin of liberty. "I have been amazed at how few
comprehended how all the pieces fit together in the way I saw them
inevitably converging," he says, in the patiently condescending tone
of a Bond villain. But Walker's heavy-handed prose would be funnier if
he didn't have a point.

True, his final forecast is standard tech-blog fare: Totalitarian
governments (you know, like the one in 1984) will clamp down on the
Net by instituting a digital Mark of the Beast, a personally assigned
crypto-certificate that tags every online transaction, letting
authorities track exactly who did what, where, and when. But Walker
also argues that the rest of us (the ones who aren't yet peons in
Orwellian regimes) will voluntarily sign up for similar surveillance
when the certificate system is marketed to us as a cure for spam,
fraud, and other Internet annoyances. He's right that we'll be sold
this stuff. The question is, will we buy it?

Personal ID certificates are already an essential part of the Next
Generation Secure Computing Base, a content-control system for PCs
being developed by Microsoft (which owns Slate) and an industry
consortium that includes Intel and other chip makers. Together, the
alliance hopes to build an uncrackable data vault into future PCs, one
that works in tandem with the Windows operating system. Users would
need to present the right certificates before being allowed to
transfer data into or out of the vault. Those who try to pick the
locks may find they've left digital fingerprints all over the place.
The system will be opt-in, as noted in the working group's FAQ (See
No. 25: "It can be disabled permanently," unlike Orwell's
telescreens).

I'm all for that kind of security where it belongsI sure hope my bank
adopts it. But as Walker notes, an always-on ID would take a lot of
the fun out of idle Web surfing. Advocates tout secure computing as a
way to protect your medical records from hackers. But who are they
kidding? The biggest beneficiaries would be music companies and
Hollywood studios, whose downloadable songs and movies would be much
harder to pull from the vaults of individual computers and trade
around the Net.

So why would we opt in to such a restrictive system? The FCC and
Congress could mandate itthey're already being lobbied to create a
national Internet driver's license on the grounds it'll stop
everything from spam to libel to pedophilia to terrorism. Even Howard
Dean plugged this proposal in a speech two years ago (he got to Orwell
on Page 6). But Walker is right. It's more likely that private
companies will begin to require people to present digital IDs in the
name of a better customer experience. E-commerce and entertainment
sites could require them as antipiracy measures. Corporate networks
could insist all inbound messages be digitally signed to minimize spam
from outsiders. How would we respond? Walker thinks that with such
constant incentives, average users, the people who don't spend every
moment obsessing about the potential repercussions of a certificate
system, might just leave the ID system on permanently.

Walker's scenario is credible enough that Newsweek covered his essay
in an article that only de-Orwellized it to the extent of changing Big
Brother to "Big Government." But Newsweek also added the missing part
of the story: a more nuanced sense of how Internet users would react
to such a system. Using the Net without the feeling you're being
watched, downloading and uploading stuff you'd get in trouble for
leaving on your deskcome on, that's a major part of its appeal. Any
privacy clampdown would boost outlaw computing as surely as Jimmy
Carter's 55 mph limit did speeding. "Picture digital freedom fighters
huddling in the electronic equivalent of caves, file-swapping and
blogging under the radar of censors and copyright cops," Newsweek
concluded. They might as well have added: Cooooooooooool.

An ad hoc alliance of techno-rebels covertly transferring unauthorized
data in defiance of network authoritiessound familiar, Neo? It's such
a popular scenario that the same Microsoft researchers leading the
company's secure computing efforts wrote a paper two years ago
describing this inevitable backlash, which they dubbed the darknet.
The darknet! Jeez, are they trying to make piracy cool? Who'd want to
hang out on the boring old Internet when the other kids are on the
darknet? The term has been picked up by mainstream publications
including Rolling Stone, which defined darknets (plural) as
"file-trading networks created by and for small, private groups of
people." Instead of relying on KaZaA, these groups use programs like
WASTE that let them swap wares on discrete networks without being
remotely tracked. Even a cop with a subpoena would be hard-pressed to
detect such a network's existence.

Microsoft's paper flatly warns that trying to shut down these networks
could backfire:

"There is evidence that the darknet will continue to exist and provide
low cost, high-quality service to a large group of consumers.  This
means that in many markets, the darknet will be a competitor to legal
commerce. From the point of view of economic theory, this has profound
implications for business strategy: for example, increased security
may act as a disincentive to legal commerce."

That's already happening, according to BigChampagne founder Eric
Garland, whose company tracks and reports file-swapping behavior as a
marketing tool for entertainment companies. "You see people opt out at
every turn," he says, when they encounter antipiracy mechanisms
affixed to music and video downloads. Garland's research finds that
average Net users balk at even the free-and-easy user ID system in
Apple's iTunes. The result: 50 million Americans trade illegally on
P2P networks, while only a few hundred thousand buy legal downloads.
"It's a terrible mistake to underestimate the average Internet user,"
Garland told me. "They want to deal with the Internet on their own
terms. They're not all computer savvy, but they're savvy enough to
find someone who is." And the 50 million veterans of the music wars
will be hard to sell on the security or convenience of any system that
takes away their options.

Wondering how the security vs. privacy struggle might play out, I
e-mailed Steven Levy, the respected tech journalist who penned the
Newsweek article. "I'm currently at CES," he replied, "which is
shaping up as a celebration of the stuff that gives Hollywood
chillsdistribution, ripping, burning, of all sorts of content (for
personal use, of course)." Exhibitors avoided discussing security
systems that might get in the way of all that fun, Levy noted. "If
it's onerous out of the box"i.e., if it requires a digital driver's
license that keeps users from enjoying the full benefits of the
darknet"people won't use it, and won't want to buy computers that have
it."

Walker's manifesto spells out the ugly truth: As the Net gets more
powerful, other powers will feel increasingly threatened by it and try
to take it under control. But to do so, they'll need the complicity of
those who build the hardware and software. If the Consumer Electronics
Show is any clue, the gadget makers have figured out that if the
powers that be get their digital imprimatur and their secure Internet,
the real money will be in darknets.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Lorenzo Hall                    http://pobox.com/~joehall/
Graduate Student             blog: http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb/

"The potency of cheap wine and cheap music should never be
underestimated." --Cole Porter, as quoted by John Nova Lomax in:
http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2004-01-08/racket.html/1/index.html

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