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Vint Cerf on Differential Traceability on the Internet (acm.org)
Addressing the bad behaviors on the Internet, that range from social network bullying and misinformation to email spam, distributed denial of service attacks, direct cyberattacks against infrastructure, malware propagation, identity theft, and a host of other ills require a wide range of technical and legal considerations, says Vint Cerf, even as he steers clear that he supports encryption. But is there a way to bring more accountability and traceability on our actions on the internet without compromising our privacy? He has a proposition: What is of interest to me is a concept to which I was introduced at the Ditchley workshop, specifically, differential traceability. The ability to trace bad actors to bring them to justice seems to me an important goal in a civilized society. The tension with privacy protection leads to the idea that only under appropriate conditions can privacy be violated. By way of example, consider license plates on cars. They are usually arbitrary identifiers and special authority is needed to match them with the car owners (unless, of course, they are vanity plates like mine: "Cerfsup"). This is an example of differential traceability; the police department has the authority to demand ownership information from the Department of Motor Vehicles that issues the license plates. Ordinary citizens do not have this authority.
In the Internet environment there are a variety of identifiers associated with users (including corporate users). Domain names, IP addresses, email addresses, and public cryptography keys are examples among many others. Some of these identifiers are dynamic and thus ambiguous. For example, IP addresses are not always permanent and may change (for example, temporary IP addresses assigned at Wi-Fi hotspots) or may be ambiguous in the case of Network Address Translation. Information about the time of assignment and the party to whom an IP address was assigned may be needed to identify an individual user. There has been considerable debate and even a recent court case regarding requirements to register users in domain name WHOIS databases in the context of the adoption of GDPR. If we are to accomplish the simultaneous objectives of protecting privacy while apprehending those engaged in harmful or criminal behavior on the Internet, we must find some balance between conflicting but desirable outcomes.
In the Internet environment there are a variety of identifiers associated with users (including corporate users). Domain names, IP addresses, email addresses, and public cryptography keys are examples among many others. Some of these identifiers are dynamic and thus ambiguous. For example, IP addresses are not always permanent and may change (for example, temporary IP addresses assigned at Wi-Fi hotspots) or may be ambiguous in the case of Network Address Translation. Information about the time of assignment and the party to whom an IP address was assigned may be needed to identify an individual user. There has been considerable debate and even a recent court case regarding requirements to register users in domain name WHOIS databases in the context of the adoption of GDPR. If we are to accomplish the simultaneous objectives of protecting privacy while apprehending those engaged in harmful or criminal behavior on the Internet, we must find some balance between conflicting but desirable outcomes.
I rather like the idea of someone, something, being able to reach out and touch all those people who use the internet to commit felonies. I can't do it. One of the reasons I can't is because I have pretty well given up on the idea of being able to identify who is on the other end of this weeks scam. I can't even identify what country they are in.
I like the idea of a big brother who could reach out and smite on my behalf. Problem is, I can't think of anyone who I would trust with that power. How do I keep the RIAA away from my music ? How do I keep my state from checking that I haven't bought any straws lately, or the wrong laundry detergent?
The ancient romans expressed it as "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? " or (loosely translated) who will watch over the people who watch over you? I have no answer to this problem but do understand the desire to address it.
Good luck with this problem, Mr. Cerf, good luck.
The internet has gotten along well so far...
Has it?
Foreign countries interfering with our democracies using fake accounts. Trolling getting to the point where people are dying e.g. swatting. Endless scams (Nigerian princes etc.), phishing...
The internet isn't some magical other dimension, it's just a part of everyday life and part of its immense power is that things that happen online have real world consequences. And that includes what bad actors get up to.
Personally I don't like this scheme because it's impractical and would give authorities far more power than car licence plates do, but the other extreme isn't much better.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
IPv6 with RAD includes privacy extensions by default and dead easy to deploy (even easier than DHCP on a home router.) While with typical IPv4 nat, someone who wants to map your home network just has to find your subnet, then has 255 or fewer addresses to ping. In contrast, using bog standard IPv6 (the privacy extensions became standard fifteen odd years ago?), you need to search 2 billion internets worth of addresses to map each home network, which will, at least, take much longer, but really, it is practically infeasible.
The addresses used by IPv6 privacy extensions rotate more rapidly than IPv4 DHCP4, because they run multiple addresses at once. To argue that IPv4 is more privacy oriented than IPv6 is idiocy. Don't be an idiot.
As soon as we all switch to IPV6 and they stop NAT we will all be assigned our own IP address and we will all no longer be anonymous, but that day is a long way off, there are too many bits and pieces that cannot do IPV6 and that are too expensive to just switch off.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.