If you ever sit down with me and we talk about why I’m in communications law and why tech fascinates me, you’ll probably hear about my theories on communications infrastructure and how greatly they influence the type of society in which we live. You’ll also hear that I am fairly certain that we are living in a time during which all the tools that are needed to strictly control access to (and thus things learned from) that communications infrastructure are being built. Not as part of any particular grand conspiracy, but in the service of separate self-interested industries and institutions. Once those tools are in place, however, I think it won’t be too long before a lightbulb goes off somewhere, and it will become almost irresistible to use them as a whole for commercial and political ends.
Here’s an example:
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organization that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users.
[ . . . ]
The idea is to bring the concept of an identity card, like a driver’s license, to the online world. Rather than logging on to sites with user IDs and passwords, people will gain access to sites using a secure digital identity that is overseen by a third party. The user controls the information in a secure place and transmits only the data that is necessary to access a Web site.
So here’s a seemingly innocuous (at first glance) solution to the practical annoyance of multiple user IDs and passwords. Cool, have at it. But note that it is also, by definition, a proposal to tie everything you view online to your physical body, and pass that information through a single database (which also has the capacity to control what you view in the first place). What could possibly go wrong?
I mean, it’s not like the government would ever have any use for a centralized data repository. Or that a presumably-private “third party” in control of this database would ever cede access to the government for anything illegal.
Watch this. Whenever you hear about the development of tools – or adoption of laws – that make it easier to identify and control access to online content, ignore the stated purpose (it’s all piracy and terrorists, these days) and imagine how those mechanisms might be used to control the flow of information in general. And I hope that after 7 years of the Bush Administration, and about as many of lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, there’s no question that there are very motivated entities – private and public – that would like to control exactly what you can see.