Friday, December 03, 2004

When I was young, the Internet was open to all

Tenet calls for Internet security -- The Washington Times
Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."
...The Internet "represents a potential Achilles' heel for our financial stability and physical security if the networks we are creating are not protected," Mr. Tenet said.
He said known adversaries, including "intelligence services, military organizations and non-state actors," are researching information attacks against the United States
... Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.
Mr. Tenet called for industry to lead the way by "establishing and enforcing" security standards. Products need to be delivered to government and private-sector customers "with a new level of security and risk management already built in."
The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said.

Once upon a time there was a thing called freedom.

What is Tenet calling for? Nothing new. He means:

1. a strong chain of authentication.
2. regulated encryption
3. the elimination of open source solutions
4. the regulation of computer hardware

Palladium, hardware authentication, encryption across the computer, biometric authentication, authorized-only access to the internet, regulated encryption with government held keys, etc. None of this is new, all of it has surfaced in one form or another since the 1980s. There was a big push for regulated encryption with private key registration back when Al Gore was a senator.

Microsoft is a major supporter of the "authenticated internet" and of this solution set. It's the ultimate way to lock out all other solutions. I suspect Tenet will shortly be on the board of Microsoft -- if he isn't already.

It will be ironic if, 10 years from now, the only "free" internets will be run out of central Africa.

No comments: