Benjamin
Franklin is famous for the following quote on freedom versus security in a
civilized society: “Those who would give
up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety”, which, in more modern a wording, reminds us that
“Those Who Sacrifice Liberty for Security Deserve Neither”.
If this
quote is famous for its relevance in political science, why should it make up
the first lines of a compilation of papers on Internet Security? Because the
whole theme of this series of papers is precisely to remind us, to make the
point that Internet will not last if insecure and that its security will
require freedom in its very design. Or in other words, if we bet that Internet
will last whatever decisions people, companies or government will make,
Internet will eventually be both secure and free, or else, another Internet
will loom as a – free and secure – substitute.
This is not
a mere wish, a dream or a prayer that some lunatic would hope to come true,
like if from some technology god. All the contrary. It is a claim rooted in
realism. Internet is now and will be onwards a net where mostly people
interact. Yes, today, it is still highly used and kept busy by traffic
generated by companies, state organizations and e-commerce activity. But its
actors are individuals, and more and more, with Facebook as a major hint, it
will become our second life, for us all.
Eventually, every one of us will be
interacting to some degree with anyone of us thanks to the net. Internet is not
the realm of collective entities, but that of individuals. It is thus the next
free market, will behave as such and will follow the related economic and social rules.
And because
it is made of individuals interacting, like the next free market, it will see
similar mechanisms emerge. Mechanisms that emerged in the human society to
enable safe and free interactions. Because why should I interact with you if I
see you as a danger – unless I am forced to? The use of Internet does and will
more and more rely on mutual trust. I buy on Amazon because for various reasons
I trust their ability to meet my expectations whilst not forcing me to buy in any way. Trust is an expression of free will, of our individual freedom to adopt
or not – Internet like anything else. Trust in turn assumes security: I need to
identify and authenticate my counterpart, I may need to have confidence in
their dependability and honesty, their ability to ensure confidentiality, or that they are not tampered with by some
third party.
Nevertheless,
security and interactions do not mean exactly the same as in the real world,
and we need to have this awareness to be able to build security right. IT
systems and the virtual world have a completely different set of features from
which many concepts stem. For instance, IT risks do not follow the same logic
as physical ones, mainly because IT has not a stochastic nature. The challenge
for security professionals is thus to find the right balance between IT realism
and social realism.
Freedom and
liberty, at least their social principles, have proven to be those best adapted
to make up a just and prosperous society – even if many in the political world
may dispute this. There is simply no alternative than to have the Internet
adopt them entirely, to embrace them fully – though with all the differences
there are between the normal life and the virtual one – if Internet is to continue
to grow and become the decisive driver to a happy and better future for the
human race.
The
objective of the series of articles to come is precisely to explain and
illustrate the importance of a secure and free Internet, whilst articulating
how its distinctive features and its virtual nature require our social
mechanisms to be revisited to that end. There are many facets to this umbrella
objective, the series promises to be fruitful.
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