I listened to a presentation by Bruce Schneier at the Educause Conference on “Information Security - Ten Trends.”
It was very interesting and informative about where data and information security in general are headed on the Internet.
What struck me as I listened to the talk was that the real-world concept of communities and neighborhoods has been misunderstood on the Internet.
There are communities and neighborhoods, just as in the real world. They just don’t have some critical features that provide protection and comfort to people in real world neighborhoods.
One critical difference is the absence of distance and barriers. Communities of all kinds are effectively cheek by jowl with all of the other communities on the Internet. Some communities have gates (logins and/or passwords), but these are nowhere near as effective as people believe the analog versions are.
Everyone of us has to travel near or through these other neighborhoods just to get to our own homepage. We often know next to nothing about what those neighborhoods are like. We may not even be able to know with any certainty.
As a result, it’s very hard to keep unsavory characters out of my computer.
Another feature of online communities is that they lack the level of “membership” control that the real world has. This isn’t a problem specific to communities, it’s a general tendency of the Internet.
To gain greater use or benefit, we have given up a greater degree of control over our lives and what others know about us.
To quote Tim Berners-Lee:
The less inviting side of sharing is losing some control. Indeed, at each layer — Net, Web, or Graph — we have ceded some control for greater benefits.
The analogy for all this is a public park.
- Some of the visitors come in vehicles with doors and locks (strong computer security practices)
- Some come in those kinds of vehicles, but they’ve left the doors or windows unlocked (poor or default implementation of the security protocols - one of Schneiers main complaints)
- Some come in and set up tents (weak protection, suitable only to protect against innocent or non-aggressive snoopers)
- Some appear to just be laying on the ground (wide open or unused security)
I’ll post more on this topic of neighborhoods and security.
