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Kaspersky CEO Wants End To Online Anonymity
Andorin writes "Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of well-known computer security company Kaspersky Labs, is calling for an end to the anonymity of the Internet, and for the creation of mandatory 'Internet passports' for anyone who wishes to browse the Web. Says Kaspersky, 'Everyone should and must have an identification, or internet passport ... the internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the US military. Then it was introduced to the public, and it was wrong ... to introduce it in the same way.' He calls anonymity 'the Internet's biggest security vulnerability' and thinks any country that doesn't follow this regime should be 'cut off.' The EFF objects, and it's likely that they won't be the only ones."
He may be correct that the internet shouldn't have been opened up like it was. I've been online long enough to remember when you could assume (perhaps wishfully) that nearly anyone obviously misbehaving badly on it could be identified with a couple e-mails or phone calls to the right sysadmins, and the notion of banning a user or cutting off a rogue node was plausible. I kind of miss the relative safety and decorum of that internet. But the ship of general unrestricted access set sail a couple decades ago, and that horse has long since left the barn. If you want an internet with the kind of accountability that Kaspersky is taking about... it can't be the internet that everyone's already hooked up to. That bell can't be unrung... and if you need any more metaphors for this, I can supply them. :)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Security expert wants a more secure system. Freedom experts want a free system. Unsurprisingly these two views clash - because they are designing things for different use cases.
My Journal
This isn't pure rhetoric and sarcasm, whether the author meant it that way or not.
Credential Grab: I'm a doctoral candidate, and this is in my area of research.
The right solution, without considering feasibility, is that traffic may be anonymous, but that receivers should be able to refuse to receive anonymous traffic, and should also be able to refuse to grant resources (such as incoming network capacity) to that traffic. The current Internet architecture doesn't make this technically feasible, as the sender is generally in control of your inbound network capacity. There's a research push toward architectures that remove this limitation, such as the Internet Indirection Infrastructure (i3). (Not one of my favorites, but it illustrates the point.)
My personal goal is that we develop an internet architecture which allows for provisioned virtual network links on shared physical infrastructure. Then Kaspersky (and anyone who agrees with him) really can have an isolated network, carried on the same physical infrastructure, while those who think anonymity is an important goal can have their own isolated network, sharing hardware but with neither able to impact the other. Network overlays can do all of this right now except for the provisioned links, and MPLS and similar technologies could already enable provisioning if they were widely adopted and deployed.
(My own research is into high-speed overlay hosting platforms.)
--Somebody infect me with a
Eliminate anonymity, and then sell products that mostly, but far from perfectly, protect against abuses of that information.
One of the other technicians where I work recently used a computer with Kaspersky on it. I watched their scanner merrily let spyware through while actively stopping some of the techniques and programs we use to get rid of spyware. Delete an infected registry key? "Kaspersky has stopped a change to your registry!" Unregister a spyware-installed DLL? "Kaspersky has stopped a change to your critical system files!"
In light of this, I suggest changing "sell products that mostly, but far from perfectly, protect against abuses of that information" that to "sell products that appear to, but don't, protect against abuses of that information".
But your freedom is defined by your government. If your government thinks you should not have the right to free speech, then it has no problems making it prohibited by law.
Indded! I just moved from South Korea, and my last few months there were made difficult by its new Internet ID requirements. Suddenly, I couldn't comment on (or sometimes simply log into) many large websites. Foreigners living in Korea are not able to log into or comment on Korean sites at all, though ironically, ethnic Koreans living overseas are able to register for an ID number.
This has a real chilling effect on speech (and I'm not talking about anonymous trolls). There is no way for a well-meaning whistle blower to escape the reach of Korea's oligopoly and political in-fighting.
Even sadder is that the whole system is strongly tied to IE and ActiveX (just like the banking). Sigh. I'm happy to be out of that situation. If the rest of the countries of the world adopt similar systems, we'll see the Balkanization of Internet. That shattering of communication (and a non-neutral Internet) may be inevitable.
Put identity in the browser.
You are the receiver. Your ISP is a carrier. You elect to connect to private networks, who may charge subscription fees of you. For use of the ISP's network, those same private network owners may pay for their provisioned capacity.
This is possible, sure. Just as, today, the same lobbying group could attempt to force the government to mandate that your ISP sniff your every packet to detect that you're pirating Steamboat Willie. However, bear in mind that the goal is to add an economic incentive to the ISP to fight restrictions. The ISP wants to sell services to as many private network providers as possible because they are being paid for the reserved capacity. When the copyright cartel meets the ISP lobby in Congress, there's at least a chance that things could improve. As it stands, the only ISP incentive to fight it is the cost of the monitoring equipment, and I'm sure the copyright cartel would be thrilled to provide it to them, along with their own custom software....
Either I have not explained things adequately or you have misunderstood. The goal is to enable disruptive, innovative network technologies which cannot currently be deployed because they might conflict with the existing technologies. (For a particularly disruptive example, look at Decongestion Control [PDF].) There's no desire to block existing technologies, and I'd fully expect the existing Internet to continue alongside the new networks. Retaining the existing Internet is a primary goal of the research thrust, and I'd reject as unworkable any new architecture that didn't enable it.
Really, the most undesirable thing about the model is that it enables a lot more nickel-and-diming from the ISPs and the network providers. You might pay a base fee for ISP connectivity, followed by an additional fee for access to the base Internet, then you pay a fee to connect to the SpamFreeEmailNetwork, and so forth ad nauseum. But at least you only need to pay for the services you use, and I could see package deals (analogous to cable channel bundles) becoming a selling point, too.
--Somebody infect me with a
Kaspersky. See the name? He's a Slovak - I would say Polish, but Slovak for sure. He lives in Russia. He's no young puppy. The man grew up under the old Soviet. His values are not the values of the western world. I don't mean to be judgemental, per se, but I recognize that he ain't like me.
While most of us in the western world tend to deny it, there is comfort to be had inside of a totalitarian regime. You know your place, you know everyone else's place, you do your job and keep your nose to yourself, and everyone gets along. It's easy to sell to the masses, and Joe Sixpack manages alright unless and until some silly sumbitch decides to sacrifice Joe for the "good of the party".
So, Mr. Kaspersky has a touch of nostalgia for the good things from the Soviet, and forgets about the bad things. People tend to do that. Right here in the US, we have all kinds of people who remember the '50's (or whichever decade they were teenagers in) as Utopia. Life was simpler then - mostly because they were kids with no responsibilities.
For that matter, I can probably find a few million people right here in the US why would fall right in line with Mr. Kaspersky's ideas, because it just makes sense. No one needs to be anonymous, unless they are up to no good. Hell, with my own relatively open mind, I think kids are goofy for wearing hoodies. Why cover your face, and try to hide your features, if you're not ashamed of what you are doing? But, I don't make a big deal of the hoodies, because I know the cops aren't always right, or even always honest.
Yeah, I could easily find several million people in the US who will agree with Mr. Kasperski. Some kind of a psychological analysis would be nice to look at. Or, the conclusions drawn by the psych people, anyway.
Any takers?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br