INFORMATION & TECHNOLOGY LAW

The Threat to the Internet

By Jon M. Garon*
As published in Interface Tech News, January, 2002

The national tragedy of Sept. 11 has undoubtedly changed virtually everything. The terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the U.S. airline industry left America reeling. An unidentified bio-terrorist threat from Anthrax further jangled the public's nerves. While President Bush's declaration of war against terrorism and the Taliban regime have galvanized the public, the impact of the threat is only now beginning to be tallied.

The Internet may be the ultimate victim of the new America that values security over freedom, and fears intrusions into privacy from the public more than that same intrusion from our government. So soon after the start of this new reality, it may be impossible to assess the impact, but some trends are starting to develop.

There are some benefits to the Internet, though admittedly minor in scope. E-mails are gaining additional adherents as traditional mailrooms struggle to deal with new safety protocols. Teleconferencing suddenly seems less cumbersome and annoying than the difficulties of airport security checks and the unarticulated sense that business travel often has no relevance to the lives of the travelers. Combine these three trends and it becomes clear that corporate training will migrate even faster to the Internet.

Another effect on the Internet has made imperative the need to fix the traditionally lax security provided by corporations on their Internet systems. Internet security assessment requires a pervasive review, from equipment redundancy to hiring practices. Password practices, dial-up back-doors, employment policies, back-up systems, and every aspect of data protection is suddenly under intense scrutiny as corporations fear being vulnerable to an unfathomable threat. At the system-wide level, the Internet itself remains vulnerable. I will avoid detailing those aspects of the system that I think could be effectively attacked or electronically, since I believe a detail of those potential faults could do far more harm than any theoretical good their exposure would do. Nonetheless, the distributive, loosely-organized system becomes a hindrance at times like these when it becomes necessary to harden its defenses.

All of these issues, however, are secondary. The greatest threat to the Internet comes from the destruction of the American illusion that the Internet is the ultimate marketplace of ideas, an indomitable bastion of Free Speech. America Online reports 31 million users and 80 million using its instant messaging service. Its usage policy includes strong language limiting the types of content its members may post. As the Washington Post recently reported, Yahoo, the leading Internet portal, has also been quietly enforcing its "terms of service" policies to delete material considered offensive.

The Washington Post identifies what may be typical of the policies being enforced, any language prohibiting distribution of material deemed "unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable."

What the Washington Post fails to identify, however, is that these policies are not limited to postings by individual subscribers to their ISPs. The policies are also utilized by co-location services and other corporations that allow most businesses to connect to the Internet. As a result, even if a liberty-minded ISP chose to create an "anything goes" bulletin board, the ISP will be hard pressed to provide competent service without finding itself required to sign a contract that limits its ability to do so.

Even in academia, much of the early openness has eroded. In the early days following Arpanet, universities made up the bulk of the Internet's access points and these had almost no policies on how the system was used or who could access it. Today, university policies are much more stringent. Policies often require the content be related to school activities. Even for students at state-owned colleges where First Amendment principles still apply, schools often require conduct policies to control the demeanor — if not the message — contained in the speech. But today, this is a minor portion of the Internet's total usage.

*Jon M. Garon is admitted in New Hampshire and California.

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