International Strategy in Cyberspace

I consider myself a fortunate person. Of course that starts with a wonderful and supportive family (it would be nice for the kids to get part-time jobs so they can contribute to that college education ..... but that aside) but for me I enjoy my work. It gives me some great opportunities and I do not mean just the traveling but it gives me opportunity to be involved with people who make a difference.

Today I was in a meeting of a group that I became involved with over a decade ago that was doing some great work on Critical Infrastructure Protection. That group morphed over the years, and in particular after the creation of DHS, into a group that focused on economic security. Now that may not have sounded all that interesting to many people 7 or 8 years ago but now with the importance of the cyber world to our economy .... things get a bit more interesting now.

Today David Edelman from the National Security Staff was there to discuss the White House's document on International Strategy in Cyberspace. This paper had input from lots of people including many that I had worked with that decade ago, including Dan Hurley from NTIA and Howard Schmidt, who a decade ago was with Microsoft and of course now is at the White House. The document itself is an interesting document and I saw in it and in the discussion a lot of ideas that Richard Clarke (some would say one of Howard's predecessors) had brought out in Cyber War.

I will likely mention this paper again in the coming week as it is interesting but I wanted to focus for a minute on one thing that David brought up - the idea of the Nationalistic Internet. In the paper the administration promotes an open and interoperable cyberspace. The nationalistic Internet is of course not that. When you think of the nationalistic Internet you can think of China and the restrictions it has placed around information and companies operating there. Another example is the recent discussions coming out of Iran speaking of an Iranian Internet. This view of controlling the citizenry through what they have opportunity to see is certainly not what was thought of oh so many years ago when people like Vint Cerf started to think about how to extend what was being done in closed communities out into a bigger world.

Now there are definitely times when we want to know where information is coming from and who is gaining access to it but generally speaking having access to a broad set of information so that we can evaluate sources and ideas around a single topic before we make a decision sounds like it would lead us to a better place. Restricting information, in most cases, is simply wrong. I say most cases as there are sets of information, things like child pornography, that should never be available.

Of course we also need to be careful because we do need to understand that the internet is not solely about information it has become a major commerce tool. Restricting access or sites at a national level changes some of that paradigm as well and overall success and growth of commerce without broad access will in the long term be limited.

The paper is a great starting point for the discussion on how to successfully use the Internet as a tool for growth, both economic and social. Tying this paper into what is being done in the US with NSTIC makes it even more interesting and I will talk about that over the next few days.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad