[FYI] (Fwd) FC: NYT: Pentagon considered plan to tag Net-traffic, limit anonymity

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Sat, 23 Nov 2002 18:25:24 -0500
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: NYT: Pentagon considered plan to tag Net-traffic, limit
 	anonymity
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com



http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/politics/22TRAC.html

November 22, 2002
Agency Weighed, but Discarded, Plan Reconfiguring the Internet
By JOHN MARKOFF

The Pentagon research agency that is exploring how to create a vast
database of electronic transactions and analyze them for potential
terrorist activity considered but rejected another surveillance idea:
tagging Internet data with unique personal markers to make anonymous
use of some parts of the Internet impossible.

The idea, which was explored at a two-day workshop in California in
August, touched off an angry private dispute among computer scientists
and policy experts who had been brought together to assess the
implications of the technology.

The plan, known as eDNA, called for developing a new version of the
Internet that would include enclaves where it would be impossible to
be anonymous while using the network. The technology would have
divided the Internet into secure "public network highways," where a
computer user would have needed to be identified, and "private network
alleyways," which would not have required identification.

Several people familiar with the eDNA discussions said such secure
areas might have first involved government employees or law
enforcement agencies, then been extended to security-conscious
organizations like financial institutions, and after that been
broadened even further.

A description of the eDNA proposal that was sent to the 18 workshop
participants read in part: "We envisage that all network and client
resources will maintain traces of user eDNA so that the user can be
uniquely identified as having visited a Web site, having started a
process or having sent a packet. This way, the resources and those who
use them form a virtual `crime scene' that contains evidence about the
identity of the users, much the same way as a real crime scene
contains DNA traces of people."

[...]




----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing
list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this
notice. To subscribe to Politech:
http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is
archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs
are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Like Politech? Make a donation here:
http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles:
http://news.search.com/search?q=declan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
---

------- End of forwarded message -------


-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: debate-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: debate-help@lists.fitug.de