In this day and age of tabloid photographers and billion dollar military spy satellites it is of no surprise that the issue of personal privacy has become somewhat of a hot topic. Whether it is a reporter jumping over a wall to shoot a pic of OJ or the NSA reading our license plates from hundreds of miles above the question should still remain clear. What is considered going too far?
But it doesn't. Philosophers, politicians, families, and others have taken their turn debating as to where to draw the line that changes through both time and cultures. Now, not to be outdone, the Internet has taken on this burden of decision. A person's right to privacy is just as blurry in cyberspace as it is sitting at home in front of the TV. In both worlds one must contend with the issues of encryption, censorship, active viewing controls, and now new governmental regulation. Let's first take a glance at how some of those relate to the Internet specifically.
The US Government has written a book called "The Orange Book". The National Computer Security Center(NSCS) put in this book a definition table of security levels. These levels are: D, C1, C2, B1, B2, B3, A1 where D is the equivalent of a PC or Macintosh sitting on a desk and A1 is protection of such a degree that only one computer system in the entire United States(at Honeywell) has been approved as an A1 system. UNIX is a C1 system. Consider how close UNIX is to a nonprotected D level computer and you can see why we need extra tools to protect our privacy.
Modern broadcasters of such pay services like cable and satellite have been using encryption standards since the eighties to help stop pirating of their signal. Modern cellular telephones are now employing digital technology in part to defeat personal scanners. On the Internet, you now have an option to encrypt personal e-mail.
Pretty Good Privacy, known as PGP, is a simple and powerful tool used to encrypt private messages. It uses a proven algorithm to scramble a text message into a code than can only be deciphered with a text based "key" that only you have. The only way people can decipher the message is if you provide them with a copy of your key. It is the most secure way of sending and receiving e-mail on the Internet.
The program is so secure that the Justice Department in conjunction with the Office of US Customs has convened a grand jury to investigate the program's author, Phil Zimmerman. Their claim is that the software violates the export of arms because it uses encryption that only the government formerly had access to. An decision to indict has yet to be made.
In the meantime, PGPhone has recently been released. This is a utility using the same algorithm but it allows people to hold secure telephone communications over networks. In its beta form the program only works on Macintosh's linked directly, but plans are for cross-platform versions and Internet support.
Next we come to the highly divisive and contested issue of Censorship. During the last Congress(104th) the "Communication Decency Act" was approved by the Senate. The House version is beginning committee debate as we speak. The CDA establishes the Internet as under the domain of the FCC and grants it the same privileges as "Mass Media Speech." This angered many who thought the Internet should be granted the same privileges as private mail and Bulli ten Board Systems.
These opponents to the CDA scored a major victory on June 30 when representatives Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced an alternative to the bill. This bill, called the "Cox/Wyden 'Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act'" was approved by a vote of 420-4 on August 15. This bill would prohibit the FCC from imposing content regulations on the Internet and would ease the creation of parental controls on the information their children have access to. Both the CDA and IFFEA require approval by both houses of Congress before they become law.
While legislation is pending active controls have been created to allow a user to protect their identity in e-mail and the newsgroups. While the idea of anonymous mail has been around for a while just recently it has come into the spotlight.
A company in Finland has been running an anonymous e-mail service at anon.penet.fi for many years. Anyone can get assigned an anonymous account through their server and route mail through it pretty easily. The only place where your name is recorded is in their personal databases. No ID had ever been compromised. There are about 20 other anonymous servers in the world.
This all changed when Finnish police authorities forced the operators to reveal the name of a specific user. The incident stems from the publication on the Internet of information from The Church of Scientology that was copyrighted and supposed to be held in secret. In their attempt to find the individual who leaked the information authorities in Arizona asked the Finnish government to find the name of a person who used an anonymous account at anon.penet.fi to distribute the information. No arrests were ever made.
That was the first time they had ever given up a user's real name. However, it showed a need for a more secure method of sending anonymous mail. This is where remailers come in. Remailers are a collection of servers that take e-mail, strip them of all identifying features, and then mail them off to the target. By using many of these remailers at once a person can almost ensure anonymity.
Use of these remailers is under extensive debate. While many liken it to sending postal mail without a return address, others like to compare anonymous mail to telephone prank calls. Like any powerful feature, it is the responsibility of the user to decide how to discipline themselves. Basically, if you are not mature enough to know the serious benefits of remailers and why not to abuse them, then you shouldn't use remailers. Like I said, there is much debate on this and I advise you to the information I provided in the table so that you can see it all for yourself.
Finally, the Clinton administration, with Al Gore as the point man, is pursuing the implementation of a device known as the "Clipper Chip". This device would replace all other encryption standards available to private citizens. It would be placed inside computers, telephones, and anything that encryption can be applied to.
The idea behind the new program is to keep terrorists and other criminals from defeating the government's ability to tap telephone lines by using their own encryption standard. The Clipper Chip has two keys to it and both must be obtained to decipher the code. The only way the government would be granted both keys is if a specific search warrant was approved by a judge much the same way permission to tap telephone lines can be obtained.
Opposition to this proposal has skyrocketed in the computer industry and over the Internet. Questions about the security around where both keys will be kept, the usefulness of such a program in face of modern terrorism which seems to be anti-technology (And not likely to use encryption), and the ability of one to protect themselves from government spying have been raised. The White House has since agreed to change the program(also known as Key Escrow) into a more moderate form, but the exact changes have yet to be made clear.
In summary, you can choose from many options on many levels to protect your own privacy. First, you must ask yourself what levels of privacy do you support? You have to decide whether your right to watch Hard Copy or Inside Edition outweighs Joe and Jane Superstar's right to keep their lives private.
None of us want to live in a world of walls and mirrorshades. We just have to read reports about the former Soviet Union to know what that is like.
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