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online privacy
What Has Happened to Our Grand Experiment, the Internet?
With AI threatening to diminish everything that’s been good and useful about online life while creating unprecedented levels of geopolitical chaos, Congress needs to reinstate the Office of Technology Policy.
Jan 07, 2025
By virtue of luck or just being in the right place at the right time, I was the first journalist to report on the advent of the public internet.
In the early 1990s, I was editor-in-chief of a trade magazine called Telecommunications. Vinton Cerf, widely considered to be “father of the internet,” was on our editorial advisory board. Once Sunday afternoon, Vint contacted me to let me know that the federal government was going to make its military communication system, ARPANET, available to the general public. After reading his email, I more or less shrugged it off. I didn’t think much of it until I started investigating what that would really mean. After weeks of research and further discussions, I finally realized the import of what Vint had told me with its deeper implications for politics, society, culture, and commerce.
As the internet grew in size and scope, I started having some serious concerns. And there was a cadre of other researchers and writers who, like myself, wrote books and articles offering warnings about how this powerful and incredible new tool for human communications might go off the rails. These included Sven Birkerts, Clifford Stoll, and others. My own book Digital Mythologies was dedicated to such explorations.
By default, and without due process of democratic participation or consent, these services are rapidly becoming a de facto necessity for participation in modern life.
While we all saw the tremendous potential that this new communications breakthrough had for academia, science, culture, and many other fields of endeavor, many of us were concerned about its future direction. One concern was how the internet could conceivably be used as a mechanism of social control—an issue closely tied to the possibility that corporate entities might actually come to “own” the internet, unable to resist the temptation to shape it for their own advantage.
The beginning of the “free service” model augured a long slow downward slide in personal privacy—a kind of Faustian bargain that involved yielding personal control and autonomy to Big Tech in exchange for these services. Over time, this model also opened the door to Big Tech sharing information with the NSA and many businesses mining and selling our very personal data. The temptation to use free services became the flypaper that would trap unsuspecting end users into a kind of lifelong dependency. But as the old adage goes: “There is no free lunch.”
Since that time, the internet and the related technology it spawned such as search engines, texting, and social media, have become all-pervasive, creeping into every corner of our lives. By default, and without due process of democratic participation or consent, these services are rapidly becoming a de facto necessity for participation in modern life. Smartphones have become essential tools that mediate these amazing capabilities and are now often essential tools for navigating both government services and commercial transactions.
Besides the giveaway of our personal privacy, the problems with technology dependence are now becoming all too apparent. Placing our financial assets and deeply personal information online creates significant stress and insecurity about being hacked or tricked. Tech-based problems then require more tech-based solutions in a kind of endless cycle. Clever scams are increasing and becoming more sophisticated. Further, given the global CrowdStrike outage, it sometimes seems like we’re building this new world of AI-driven digital-first infrastructure on a foundation of sand. And then there’s the internet’s role in aggravating income and social inequality. Unfortunately, this technology is inherently discriminatory, leaving seniors and many middle- and lower-income citizens in the dust. To offer a minor example, in some of the wealthier towns in Massachusetts, you can’t park your car in public lots without a smartphone.
Will AI Wreck the Internet?
Ironically, the Big Tech companies working on AI seem oblivious to the notion that this technology has the potential to be a wrecking ball. Conceivably, it could diminish everything that’s been good and useful about the internet while creating unprecedented levels of geopolitical chaos and destabilization. Recent trends with search engines offer a good example. Not terribly long ago, search results yielded a variety of opinions and useful content on any given topic. The searcher could then decide for her or himself what was true or not true by making an informed judgment.
With the advent of AI, this has now changed dramatically. Some widely used search engines are herding us toward specific “truths” as if every complex question had a simple multiple-choice answer. Google, for example, now offers an AI-assisted summary when a search is made. This becomes tempting to use because manual search now yields an annoying truckload of sponsored ad results. These items then need to be systematically ploughed through rendering the search process difficult and unpleasant.
We need to radically reassess the role of the internet and associated technologies going forward and not abandon this responsibility to the corporations that provide these services.
This shift in the search process appears to be by design in order to steer users towards habitually using AI for search. The implicit assumption that AI will provide the “correct” answer however nullifies the whole point of a having a user-empowered search experience. It also radically reverses the original proposition of the internet i.e. to become a freewheeling tool for inquiry and personal empowerment, threatening to turn the internet into little more than a high-level interactive online encyclopedia.
Ordinary citizens and users of the internet will be powerless to resist the AI onslaught. The four largest internet and software companies Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google are projected to invest well over $200 billion this year on AI development. Then there’s the possibility that AI might become a kind of “chaos agent” mucking around with our sense of what’s true and what’s not true—an inherently dangerous situation for any society to be in. Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about the dangers of authoritarian thinking, gave us this warning: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Summing up, we need to radically reassess the role of the internet and associated technologies going forward and not abandon this responsibility to the corporations that provide these services. If not, we risk ending up with a world we won’t recognize—a landscape of dehumanizing interaction, even more isolated human relationships, and jobs that have been blithely handed over to AI and robotics with no democratic or regulatory oversight.
In 1961, then FCC Chairman Newton Minow spoke at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters. He observed that television had a lot of work to do to better uphold public interest and famously described it as a “vast wasteland.” While that description is hardly apt for the current status of the internet and social media, its future status may come to resemble a “black forest” of chaos, confusion, misinformation, and disinformation with AI only aggravating, not solving, this problem.
What then are some possible solutions? And what can our legislators do to ameliorate these problems and take control of the runaway freight train of technological dependence? One of the more obvious actions would be to reinstate funding for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. This agency was established in 1974 to provide Congress with reasonably objective analysis of complex technological trends. Inexplicably, the office was defunded in 1995 just as the internet was gaining strong momentum. Providing this kind of high-level research to educate and inform members of Congress about key technology issues has never been more important than it is now.
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'Much-Needed': FTC Bolsters Privacy Rules to Protect Kids Online
"Anyone who believes that children deserve to explore and play online without being tracked and manipulated should support this update."
Dec 20, 2023
To ensure that tech giants will not have "carte blanche with kids' data," as one advocacy group said, the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday unveiled major proposed changes to the United States' online privacy law for children for the first time in a decade, saying that companies' evolving practices and capabilities require stronger protection for young people.
"Kids must be able to play and learn online without being endlessly tracked by companies looking to hoard and monetize their personal data," said FTC Chair Lina Khan as she announced proposed changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998.
For more than two decades the law has restricted companies' online tracking of children through social media apps, video games, and advertising networks by requiring firms to obtain parental consent before gathering or using young users' personal information.
Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have sought to comply with COPPA by prohibiting children under age 13 from having accounts and requiring users to provide their birth dates, but regulators have accused several tech companies of failing to adequately protect children, and firms including Amazon, Google, and Epic Games have been hit with multimillion dollar penalties for COPPA violations.
Under the proposed changes, companies would be:
- Required to obtain verifiable parental consent to disclose user information to third parties including advertisers, "unless the disclosure is integral to the nature of the website or online service";
- Prohibited from using personal information to send "push" notifications urging kids to use their services or platforms more;
- Required to establish and implement a written children's personal information security program;
- Required to establish and make public a written retention policy for children's data; and
- Prohibited from using any retained personal user information for any secondary purpose or from retaining the information indefinitely.
Education technology firms would also be permitted to collect and use students' personal information only for school-authorized educational purposes and not for commercial use, and COPPA Safe Harbor programs—industry groups which are permitted to seek FTC approval for self-regulatory guidelines that are the same as or stronger than COPPA's—would be required to publicly disclose their membership lists and report additional information to the FTC.
Haley Hinkle, policy counsel for children's digital advocacy group Fairplay, said the proposed rulemaking builds on the FTC's recent enforcement actions against companies including Epic Games—which charged users, including children, for unwanted purchases—and Meta, which misled parents about controls on its Messenger Kids app and about who could access kids' data.
"With this critical rule update, the FTC has further delineated what companies must do to minimize data collection and retention and ensure they are not profiting off of children's information at the expense of their privacy and well-being," Hinkle said. "Anyone who believes that children deserve to explore and play online without being tracked and manipulated should support this update."
Katharina Kopp, director of policy for the Center for Digital Democracy, said that strengthened online safeguards are "urgently needed" as markets and web companies increasingly pursue children "for their data, attention, and profits."
The rule will "help stem the tidal wave of personal information gathered on kids," Kopp said.
"The commission's plan will limit data uses involving children and help prevent companies from exploiting their information," she added. "These rules will also protect young people from being targeted through the increasing use of AI, which now further fuels data collection efforts. Young people 12 and under deserve a digital environment that is designed to be safer for them and that fosters their health and well-being. With this proposal, we should soon see less online manipulation, purposeful addictive design, and fewer discriminatory marketing practices."
Khan said the updated rules will make clear that safeguarding children's data online is the responsibility of tech firms.
"The proposed changes to COPPA are much-needed, especially in an era where online tools are essential for navigating daily life—and where firms are deploying increasingly sophisticated digital tools to surveil children," she said. "Our proposal places affirmative obligations on service providers and prohibits them from outsourcing their responsibilities to parents."
Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of the Design It for Us coalition, said the proposed rules, which are subject to a 60-day public comment period before the FTC votes on them, "will make kids and teens much safer online."
"We applaud the FTC's new proposed rules that strengthen COPPA by centering the experience of children online, rather than Big Tech's bottom line," said Qureshi. "The proposed rule directly targets Big Tech's toxic business model by requiring the invasive practice of surveillance advertising to be off by default, limiting harmful nudges that keep young people coming back to the platform even when they don't want to, and including protections against the collection of biometric information."
"The FTC is acting where Congress has failed to, imposing strict rules for Big Tech who have spent years profiting off our personal information and data," Qureshi added. "This proposal should signal to Congress to act quickly in 2024 to advance bipartisan kids' privacy and safety legislation."
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To 'Uphold Human Right to Privacy,' Global Coalition Demands Safeguards for Encrypted Services
"The need for privacy has never been more urgent," said one advocate. "Encryption is a shield that protects everyone but most especially the most targeted and vulnerable communities."
May 03, 2023
A global coalition of more than 40 companies and digital rights groups on Wednesday urged governments around the world to publicly vow to "protect encryption and ensure a free and open internet."
The coalition sent its open letter to policymakers in Australia, Canada, the European Union, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States on World Press Freedom Day because digital privacy safeguards are particularly important to journalists and their sources, though advocates stressed they're essential to preserving democracy and human rights at large.
"Encryption is a critical tool for user privacy, data security, safety online, press freedom, self-determination, and free expression," states the letter. "Without encryption, users' data and communications can be accessed by law enforcement and malicious actors."
"Government attacks on encrypted services threaten privacy and put users at risk," the letter continues. "This might seem like a distant problem primarily faced in authoritarian countries but the threat is just as real and knocking at the doors of democratic nations."
"Policymakers understand the importance of privacy when it comes to opening someone else's physical mail, accessing their banking or other private information, but limit such protections online."
As the coalition, organized by Tutanoa, Fight for the Future, and Tor, explained, the value of end-to-end encryption "in defending privacy cannot be overstated, but is also seen as a threat to law enforcement who argue that the ability to freely access individuals' communications is critical for criminal investigations."
Law enforcement's narrative "has spurred worrying initiatives such as the Online Safety Bill in the U.K., the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act and EARN IT Act in the U.S., India's Directions 20(3)/2022 – CERT-In, Bill C26 in Canada, the Surveillance Legislation Amendment Act in Australia as well as the proposed rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse in the E.U.," the coalition noted. "These laws aim to take away the right to privacy online by forcing encrypted services to weaken the security of their users and give law enforcement access to user information upon request."
In a statement, the coalition condemned the aforementioned proposals as "alarming examples of democratic governments following in the path of authoritarian governments like Russia and Iran, who actively limit their citizens' access to encrypted services thereby weakening their human rights."
Pushing back against such measures, the letter calls on "democratic leaders" to "protect encryption and uphold the human right to privacy."
Specifically, signatories implored all governments to:
- Ensure that encryption is not being undermined via overreaching legislative initiatives;
- Ensure that technologies providing secure, encrypted services are not being blocked or throttled; and
- Revisit any bills, laws, and policies that legitimize undermining encryption or blocking access to services offering encrypted communication.
"Encrypted services are at the forefront of the battle for online privacy, freedom of the press, freedom of opinion and expression," says the letter. "Many journalists, whistleblowers, and activists depend on secure, encrypted solutions to protect their data as well as their identity. Access to these tools can be literally life or death for those who rely on them."
The open letter echoes United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' fresh warning that "in every corner of the world, freedom of the press is under attack."
"Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy and justice," said Guterres. "It gives all of us the facts we need to shape opinions and speak truth to power."
"Meanwhile, journalists and media workers are directly targeted on and offline as they carry out their vital work. They are routinely harassed, intimidated, detained, and imprisoned," he added. "At least 67 media workers were killed in 2022—an unbelievable 50% increase over the previous year."
"Many policymakers believe they can have a 'magical key' to access encrypted communication—completely ignoring technical facts: Encryption is either securing everyone or it is broken for everyone."
While legislative and regulatory attempts to undermine encryption are especially hazardous to reporters and dissidents, experts made clear that weakening digital privacy ultimately endangers everyone.
"Encryption is a necessary tool for safeguarding our digital rights and the principles of a free and open society. By upholding encryption within messaging apps, websites, file sharing, and other online services, we empower journalists to report on important issues while protecting their sources without fear of surveillance and retribution," said Isabela Fernandes, executive director of the Tor Project. "The Tor network is underpinned by encryption, and we have partnered with many news outlets and social media sites to launch Onion Sites that bypass censorship and allow people to safely and anonymously access, share, and publish information."
Fight for the Future campaigner Eseohe Ojo argued that "the need for privacy has never been more urgent."
"Encryption is a shield that protects everyone but most especially the most targeted and vulnerable communities," said Ojo. "This ranges from journalists and activists to LGBTQ+ folks, abortion seekers, [and] ethnic and other minorities. Why take away the tools needed to help protect them at a time they need these tools the most?"
"Policymakers understand the importance of privacy when it comes to opening someone else's physical mail, accessing their banking or other private information, but limit such protections online," she added. "Encrypted services protect and empower individuals. It is about time governments recognize and safeguard access to these tools."
Tutanota co-founder Matthias Pfau lamented that "many policymakers believe they can have a 'magical key' to access encrypted communication—completely ignoring technical facts: Encryption is either securing everyone or it is broken for everyone."
"If policymakers want a 'magical key,' they will ultimately destroy the security of all citizens, including journalists and whistleblowers who depend on encryption to expose abuses of power or other grievances in society," Pfau warned. "That's why we at Tutanota will never weaken our encryption. If governments outlaw encryption, they need to block access to our encrypted email service, just like Russia and Iran are already doing."
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