Should the Internet Be Secure By Default? (esecurityplanet.com)

darthcamaro writes: There are lots of tools and different secure protocols that could be used by internet service providers to embed security into the fabric of the internet, making the internet secure by default, but that's not something that Facebook's Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos wants to happen. Instead of security by default, his view is that carriers should be neutral and let malicious traffic do whatever it wants.

"I believe strongly in the end-to-end principle, I think we should have neutral carriers in the middle and it should not be the responsibility of ISPs to secure the internet," Stamos said in a press conference at the Black Hat USA conference last week.
Slashdot reader Darth Technoid disagrees, calling a lack of security "the Original Sin of the Internet," and speculating that Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe "thought that future technology would resolve the issues." What do other Slashdot readers think?

Should the internet be secure by default?

Comments

Define "security."

[ErikTheRed]

Security means different specific things in different specific contexts. Security in transit, which seems to be what this is focusing on, is mainly a defensive step against nation-states. Most of us don't worry horribly about organized crime tapping Internet backbone switches - for now that's the domain of intelligence and military organizations. At that point the entire conversation veers off from science into philosophy - the proper role of the state (if any) in monitoring communications for stuff it doesn't like. This tends to break down better on the newer and cleaner authoritarian / libertarian axis than it does the older and more muddled conservative / progressive axis. Authoritarians want more control so that they can implement and enforce their agendas. Libertarians want less control because they (generally) believe that authoritarian structures - even those created and begun with the best of intentions - eventually get taken over by thugs and then are used for totalitarian purposes.