Driver's Licenses for the Internet

Source: ALL ABOUT JAZZ
February 9, 2010
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The conversation about where to draw the line between privacy and security is as old as society itself.

I didn't mean to so forcefully insert myself into the middle of that debate when I wrote about a Microsoft executive ruminating on the possibility of driver's licenses for the Internet. Alas, here I am.

That original blog post is already one of the 15 most-read of all time on the Curious Capitalist (it warms my heart that the top post remains “What if oil weren't priced in dollars?"), and I am being assailed up and down the Internet for backing what one commentator calls a “web ID system that would outstrip Communist Chinese style net censorship"at times even being personally threatened.

And yet here I go again. More thoughts on driver's licenses for the Internet.

First a recap:
About a week ago I attended a panel discussion entitled “Securing Cyberspace." Panelists included the CEO of a company that routes about 20% of all Web traffic, the head of the U.N. agency for information technology, a U.S. Senator and member of the Committee on Homeland Security, the CEO of a Swiss company that does security work for digital media, and Microsoft's head of research and strategy. It was the sort of group you'd expect to be sure-footed on a topic like cyber security, and yet the panelists were visibly on edge. Cyber attackswhether from individual fraudsters, organized cyber gangs, or nation-states undertaking espionageare getting exponentially worse, they said. Protection, let alone retaliation, is incredibly complicated by the fact that even moderately sophisticated attacks can be difficult to impossible to trace. Yes, computers have IP addresses but crooks don't use their computers, they remotely hijack yours.

Since the baseline anonymity of the Internet provides refuge to so much criminal activity and spying, one way of starting to tackle those problems, suggested Microsoft bigwig Craig Mundie, would be to take away some of that anonymity. Hence driver's licenses for the Internet.

As careful readers can tell you, I did not endorse driver's licenses for the Internet. I think it's a fascinating construct.