History of Internet Security

Internet security and privacy has become a popular subject in the news lately. Back in October of 2016, President Obama’s administration put into place a set of rules that would put limitations in place for Internet Provider Services (ISP’s) and the new presidential administration just repealed it.  But the concerns of internet security has been a growing issue for several decades before the internet was accessible by the world. In 1969, ARPANET –  the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – created a network that sent information between a computer and server. However, it was said to be very easily accessible from outside sources. With the birth of the internet in 1983, ARPANET was quick to create a protocol via TCP/IP making it a global standard. A key concept in creating a standard that could lead to managing the safety of the Internet. And in 1986, Congress would go on to create laws in order to protect people’s information from internet thefts. But this will not keep people for hacking the networks, The Morris Worm was the first case to be tried under the CFAA. A graduate student created a program that ended up endlessly duplicating itself on about 10% of the 60,000 computers in the world, ultimately, crashing all of them. The case was to be an example for the CFAA and those tried under it but many professionals believed it was not the right case for it but it did bring up the flaws in internet safety. We currently see this be true.

By repealing the FCC  broadband privacy rules that were set to go into place in December of 2017, government has allowed the entrance of ISP’s into the targeted advertisement market with no harsh rules. ISP’s had argued in previous years that internet based services like Google and Facebook had the liberty to use your information by creating a profile on you based on your searches. Early this year, Trump signed off on the laws that services like Comcast and other ISPs can use your information gathered by total internet use to sell your information to advertising sites. This brings up concerns due to the limited Internet Service Providers and the unfairness of the consumer always being a target of marketing. Ultimately creating a larger monopoly within the ISP market. 

Personally, my opinion on the matter is conflicted. On one hand, I want my information to be private – giving me ultimately the option to give my data to someone or not (i.e. using services like google, facebook, and other network applications). However, with the new proposed laws that any ISP can do the same as Google or Facebook or even Target to use your information, search history, or even purchase history to obtain info that will ultimately be used against your will as advertisement is terrifying. That is because we have no choice. To get on the internet we have to use ISPs and since bureaucracy already narrowed down the market, essentially creating a monopoly, there are no ISP’s that won’t do this. They also have access to way more information than that of facebook, amazon, google and other search engines. But on the other hand, striking down these laws close other markets like VPNs, or ones that have not been created in the realm of internet security.