Efforts Urging Responsibility on Net Call for a Pause to Reflect, Teach

It’s commonplace now to hear about how different “Internet time” is from merely ordinary time--Swatch, the Swiss watch company, even sells a wristwatch that displays “Internet time.”

Internet time is said to be dramatically speeded up compared with ordinary time. A few months in Internet time is equivalent to a year or more of ordinary time.

The chief characteristic of Internet time is a headlong rush into the future, with no time available for contemplation, reflection or pondering alternative futures.

But some computer experts are beginning to question whether the widespread acceptance of the Internet’s acceleration of everything in life is wise or good for society.

So late last year, computer scientists Peter Neumann and Lauren Weinstein launched a new effort they call People for Internet Responsibility (https://www.pfir.org) because, as Weinstein explains, “Things need to slow down somewhat. All this is happening in the absence of any thoughtful technical, legal or regulatory framework.”

And the blockage of Web sites this month due to denial-of-service attacks--which brought down Yahoo, Amazon.com, E-Trade, CNN and several other high-profile online services--has given PFIR some new visibility and urgency.

After the attacks, Weinstein wrote, “For now, it might be advisable for everyone to remember that the Internet, for all its wonders, is in many ways very fragile. We must not allow ourselves to get into a position where being cut off from a site for a few hours--or even longer--puts people or property at risk. Our lives should not revolve around guaranteed 24/7 access to EBay, or Yahoo, or any site on the public Internet, regardless of its importance.”

Neumann says, “This craze to get on the Internet, irrespective of whether it’s secure or not, is ridiculous.”

Weinstein notes that the Internet was designed for collaboration, not for e-commerce. There are things that can be done to make the network more secure, but for the foreseeable future the public needs to understand the network’s vulnerabilities and capabilities, and there’s little financial incentive for companies to educate people in this way. That’s what PFIR is all about, he said.

Neumann and Weinstein are not just curmudgeons.

Neumann, a researcher with SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., is the longtime moderator of the Risks Forum on the Internet, the premier place for technical experts to share information about the perils of using computers and networks.

And Weinstein, of Vortex Technologies in Woodland Hills, is the moderator of the Privacy Forum, the most-respected and longest-running conversation on the Internet about privacy and technology. His experience with the Internet goes back to the days of the ARPAnet, in the 1970s.

Weinstein and Neumann have pointed out that with the current rush to get nearly everything we do onto the Internet, and as quickly as possible, long-established principles of safety, security and system reliability are being compromised. And there’s insufficient reflection about the possible impacts.

“Do people really stop and think about what it might mean to vote on the Internet?” asks Weinstein. “Or about the vulnerability of their health information?” Once data are revealed from a system, he says, “you can’t put it back in the bottle.”

Neumann concurs.

“Privacy is an issue that’s just being trampled on.”

Weinstein says that it’s equally ominous that legislatures or policymakers may, in a rush, adopt Internet-related laws and regulations that are not well designed.

Neither Weinstein nor Neumann is exactly sure what PFIR is, for now. Weinstein says they’re in a “request for comments” phase. The use of this term is an appeal to the kind of people who helped develop the Internet and who may be increasingly alarmed by what it’s turning into.

“We’re interested in ideas about how we can get across critical information about the Internet to citizens and policymakers. The key thing is to keep important information about system security, vulnerability, risks, privacy and other issues in the public eye,” Neumann said.

“We intend to take a hard, objective, nonpartisan look at problems that have yet to be addressed.”

Neumann said that he thinks PFIR will not be a grass-roots organization, such as Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) in Palo Alto, “but we will need grass-roots support.”

Both Weinstein and Neumann are pursuing this without any compensation, but they are open to financial support “from institutions that have no desire to shape the message,” Neumann said.

There have been quite a few efforts in the past to develop a form of “civil society” for the computing and networking field--a form of dialogue and influence that is independent of both private sector enterprise and the government.

Unfortunately, not many of these efforts have been wildly successful.

CPSR is still around but not very influential. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is in the same straits. The Internet Society has been flourishing but has yet to tackle the kinds of issues that might divide their professional constituency.

The most successful examples of a “third way” have been the loose collaborative efforts of the technical professionals who built the Internet itself, and the ongoing work of the Open Source software movement.

Neumann and Weinstein appear to be mapping PFIR to these models, which they not only understand but deeply respect. The open question is whether an international class of selfless technical experts can turn their attention to policy issues, including some in which their employers will have specific interests.

If that happens, if Weinstein and Neumann are successful, we may be able to keep the Internet aligned with the public interest.

*

Gary Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project at the University of Texas in Austin. He can be reached at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.