ARTS & FARCES internet

Why do we tend to use 8.5-inch by 11-inch paper? How did a dollar bill come to exist in its present size? What determined the choice of musical notes that created a chord? Why are the logarithms in the growth stages of a peacock’s tail the same as those in a daisy? What makes some spaces inviting and other stressful? Why are some things just plain easier to learn than others?

We are surrounded by the above phenomena daily, yet it’s usually children that stop to ask such questions. Why? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that these phenomena feel so natural, so organic to us that they become transparent. What is it about a thing that allows it to become more transparent than another? Attempting answers to many of these questions is the subject of György Doczi’s book, The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture.

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On October 1, 1996, the Clinton administration offered what it called a “compromise” to the computer industry with regard to the export of cryptography. The proposed policy, released by Vice President Al Gore, offered to remove export restrictions on cryptography technology if the corporations that market the technology would agree to allow law enforcement to decrypt any encrypted material. Critics immediately began referring to the policy as Clipper 3.1.1.

It’s little surprise that this new compromise is championed by the U.S. intelligence community. Law enforcement officials wouldn’t need the actual keys used to encrypt a message, you see. Instead, officials with the proper warrant could obtain the cooperation of two “outside parties” also referred to as “trusted agents” to help decrypt the information.

IBM developed the new technology, referring to it as a “key recovery” system to differentiate it from the “key escrow” systems that drew strong opposition a few years ago. In practice, the differentiation is in name only.

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Public outrage has a way of knocking the wind out of misguided misanthropes whenever our collective privacy is threatened. Remember when Lotus quickly withdrew its Marketplace CD-ROM product after thousands of citizens let the company know what it could do with the disc?

A few months ago Lexis-Nexis thought it would be a good idea to let anyone find anyone else’s Social Security number simply by entering a name in a search form within the company’s P-TRAK Personal Locator service. In addition to Social Security numbers, P-TRAK provides up to three addresses, all known aliases, telephone numbers, and maiden names. While there are restrictions on how the government can use Social Security numbers, there are no regulations over private use by organizations or individuals.

It didn’t take long for folks to realize that this was a Bad Idea and let Lexis-Nexis know about it in no uncertain terms. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in rocket science to see immediately just how bad of an idea this is. With someone’s name and Social Security number just about any sort of identification fraud is possible.

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In late July 1996 the G7 nations announced plans to monitor online communications as part of a concerted attempt to curtail international terrorism. A little-known provision of the Antiterrorism Bill (H.R. 2703; S.735) that became law in April 1996 requires the United States Justice Department to conduct a 180-day study of bomb information available on the Internet.

At the same time, new legislation was introduced in the United States by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would criminalize publication of bomb-making information in both electronic and print media. Companion legislation was introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). Although Feinstein’s bill doesn’t draw a distinction between various media, the California senator has consistently drawn attention to what she describes as the easy availability of such information in cyberspace. In a Cable News Network (CNN) interview, Feinstein made specific reference to Internet sites that provide instructions for making pipe bombs. Some observers feel that this is an attempt to restrict certain types of speech in electronic media that are protected in print media.

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Hold on to your virtual wallets, secure electronic commerce on the Internet—long promised but never quite delivered—is suddenly a lot closer to being real. IBM, MasterCard, Microsoft, and Visa have formed an alliance to support a new standard for providing secure transactions over the Internet. The new standard, Secure Electronic Transactions (SET), is based on public-key cryptography and digitally signed electronic certificates issued by credit card companies and banks. Customers will send these certificates to merchants who will use them to authorize the transaction with the credit card company or bank. Microsoft, lately quick on the trigger, has announced that it will build digital signature technology into its MS-Windows operating system.

Most of us think nothing of handing a credit card over to a merchant in the physical world, but hesitate to do the same in the virtual world. This is something I’ve never quite understood, and I’ve chalked it up mostly to the resistance of commercialization inherent in the Internet culture. Another part of the problem is related to the difficulty Net-based businesses experience in dealing with credit card companies and banks to obtain a merchant account. Add to the mix the historical lack of support for new electronic commerce technology by merchants, credit card companies, and the banks and it’s no surprise why Internet-based commerce has been mostly ignored.

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