The 64th Installment
Net neutrality, censorship, spying: what future for internet?

by Antoine BOSSARD,
Assistant Professor, Master Program of Information Systems Architecture

I. Web 2.0: goodbye privacy

Interestingly, people are increasingly and willingly diminishing their private spheres, making more and more personal information public. Facebook profiles, Twitter updates, blog posts are some examples. Considering this trend, some have even called this era egocentric: anything would be done to gather more followers, “friends”, etc. A few years earlier, no one would have considered revealing the name hidden behind a pseudonym. One can hint at the fact that the internet population has significantly changed over the years. At first consisting mainly of technology enthusiasts, and now of literally “everybody”, it is no wonder that internet utilisation has evolved as well.
We are now putting online our lives almost completely: work documents in the cloud, leisure pictures on Instagram, contacts in Skype, music in iTunes, etc. This is a gold mine for government information agencies: data is now easily accessible, gathered in the same place. And this is without mentioning the incredible amount of information available for advertising companies through web tracking.

II. Net neutrality, censorship, spying

Obtaining collaboration from data providers and cloud managing companies is usually a matter of politics, and 2013 data leaks have especially shown that it is widespread around the globe (something that many had previously suggested). Using legal loopholes, governments of our democracies (?) do not hesitate to invade citizens’ privacy; information control (censorship) is next as already demonstrated by many dictatorships.
An important problem is that people often fail to acknowledge the loss of freedom, shouting loud and clear that they “have nothing to hide”. This is our role to educate people and show them that they have been misled into such conviction. Deliberately granting a government the right to spy on its citizens, almost always demagogically advertised for increased “security” (more precisely “security feeling”), is the source of dictatorship and the end of freedom. Simply imagine what would happen in the case of dissent from citizens towards the government after a legitimately questionable bill is passed. Granting a government the right to invade privacy is clearly a threat to any kind of political opposition, which is, a fundamental of democracy.
Internet providers also play a significant role inside this picture. By enforcing Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)-like measures, they are aiming at monitoring, and eventually controlling, internet users’ activity. Effectively, such actions would allow providers to enforce traffic discrimination and offer different quality of service, for instance favouring a partner’s service over another one.

III. What future for internet?

With our lives now online, internet privacy is an increasingly concerning matter. As often, the first critical step is for people to understand what is at stake: their freedom, their rights. Another important question is “Whom to trust?”. In a non-friendly environment (e.g. outside your home LAN), some are defenders of the “I trust no one” alternatives: TOR, Freenet… or even good old typewriters (as revived in Russian administration recently) are some examples. This is where cryptography has a decisive role to play. But hold on. With the computing power of super calculators reaching new heights every year, it is now generally admitted that current cryptography principles and algorithms (such as RSA) will soon be unable to protect our communications. Worrying, isn’t it?