Craig Mundie Wants "Internet Driver's Licenses"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Craig Mundie, Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer, called for the creation of an 'Internet Driver's License' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying, 'If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.' Of course, there are quite a few problems with this. For starters, internet use cannot yet cause death or dismemberment like car accidents can; and this would get rid of most of the good of internet anonymity while retaining all of the bad parts, especially in terms of expanding the market for stolen identities. Even though telephone networks have long been used by scammers and spammers/telemarketers, we've never needed a 'Telephone Driver's License.'"

Comments

major loss for privacy, dissent

[hguorbray]

Although Google, et al can chip away at our privacy this would completely stifle free speech and dissent.

I know that some view ACs and their ilk as idiots clogging up discourse, but for a flip side of the coin how about the efforts to 'Out' Prop 8 contributors in Calif so they can be harrassed by gay activists?

-Not that I supported prop 8, but I do mod ACs up if they have something useful/interesting to say.

On the other hand, I don't disagree that there should perhaps be some required qualifications for hosting/administering websites, dealing with credit card transactions, userdbs, etc, but that is very different than (what I think) is being proposed.

I'm just sayin'

Schneier already covered this recently

[StreetStealth]

Bruce Schneier had a pretty good takedown of this kind of argument just the other day.

Accept that you'll never truly know where a packet came from. Work on the problems you can solve: software that's secure in the face of whatever packet it receives, identification systems that are secure enough in the face of the risks. We can do far better at these things than we're doing, and they'll do more to improve security than trying to fix insoluble problems.

Ham radio

[KC1P]

So this is like a ham license for landlines which sort of *act* like public airwaves. It's actually not SUCH a bad idea -- it sure keeps the S/N ratio up in the ham bands. Even if the test is virtually unfailable, the overall sense of earned-privilege vs. god-given-right seems to add a few percent to the general level of maturity you get. It'll never happen though!

It's been proposed before, and it still won't work

[Adrian Lopez]

1. It would probably be illegal for the US government to require "drivers licenses" for general Internet use. The Internet is primarily a medium for the dissemination of speech, and the US government is prohibited from demanding that people obtain permission before speaking.

2. Even if done privately, requiring people to identify themselves for any and all uses of the internet is likely a bad idea.

Don't become South Korea

[BlueFiberOptics]

As much as I like to joke that some people need licenses to operate a computer or use the Internet, this would be a bad thing. We'd all end up with license numbers and sites would start to require us to register with those numbers if we wanted to use those services. For many Internet-based services in Korea, you must enter a citizen ID.

Questions

[bXTr]

Civil rights issues aside, there are other questions about this "proposal".

• What authority would be responsible for issuing these licenses?
• What are the criteria one would have to pass when obtaining a license?
• Assuming one would have to pay a fee for the license (nothing is free in this world), how much would one have to pay?
• What exactly would the monies collected in license fees be used for?
• What authority would be responsible for policing and enforcement of being licensed?
• What would be the benefit to the licensee? What would we get in return that we don't already have now?
• How will the information being collected from licensees be safeguarded from abuse by those within and without the licensing authority?
• If I'm traveling to another country, would the license be valid there, or would I need to obtain yet another license from that country?
• What about businesses that allow Internet access to their employees? Would the individual license be valid at work, or would the company have to obtain its own license?
• Would government agencies also be required to obtain licenses?

Those are only the few questions I could come up with in ten minutes time. There are certainly many more beyond these. I would like to hear Mr. Mundie's answers to these questions along with the complete plan for putting this into place. I'll wait.