If we were to "fix" the Internet today, would we get it right?

Prof Alan Woodward of Surrey University presents an interesting viewpoint today on the state of our current Internet infrastructure. Practically all of the present "security" features were shoehorned in on top of an infrastructure that was never really designed with security in mind. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe what we need is simply a new infrastructure, designed from the ground up to meet our current needs and use, be that in terms of security or other features.

On the other hand, security isn't the only feature absent from basic Internet infrastructure because it was not thought of in the 1970s. It is probably for similar historical reasons that the Internet crosses many political boundaries that some of our current governments appear to wish it didn't cross.

So if we were to re-design the Internet today, some questions arise:
- the infrastructure that we have today met the needs and capabilities of the 1970s; how would we guarantee that a new infrastructure invented today wouldn't simply be reflecting the needs and capabilities of 2012? In 20 years time, would there be a similar conversation ("well, you see, quantum decryption wasn't a real threat back in the 2010s")?
- what would the political pressures be on an Internet infrastructure invented in 2012? How many back doors into the security features would governments try to force into the specification? How much pressure would there be for the application of content filters and bandwidth allocation to reflect the degree of bribery (sorry, "funding") provided by such-and-such corporation to the political parties involved in legislating the infrastructure?

We should also be careful not to mask political failure as being a purely technological problem. On some level, identity theft and other cybercrimes occur both because our technology permits it and because, one way or another, our political structures still leave the risk-benefit tradeoff stacked in favour of the criminals in question.

The lawmaking process and technology

A process is currently underway in the UK to reform the libel law. Before people outside the UK click their "back" button thniking this is just a piece of local trivia, I'd like to suggest that the procedure highlights some more general symptoms of how the Internet may be understood (or not) by those involved in the lawmaking process which are probably applicable in many countries.

In this session, various members of the science community who have in one way or another been on the receiving end of libel cases (notably Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre for their attempts to alert the public to instances of bogus medicine) give their opinion on changes that they believe should be included in the reform. Very telling are several instances where they appear to be educating the panel on some basic concepts about the Internet, blogs and ISPs. Some key points to look out for:

- at 17'50, where Simon Singh is practically describing what the Internet is
- at 18'10, where Ben Goldacre is pretty much explaining what a blog is, and making some very fundamental statements about how basic and prevalent they are to the Internet
- at 18'27, where it is asked what the witnesses think of a "Prior system whereby a claimant could write to a web host ... and the web host would be under the obligation to put up a notice alongside the story", and Ben is forced to explain some extremely basic information about the relationship between ISPs and their clients.

Now on the one hand, I should emphasise that I don't begrudge this level of transparency in a world where not all citizens are so fortunate in seeing their lawmaking process in action. On the other hand... I worry about how this demonstration of an apparent oblivion to basic technology and "social infrastructure" is going to be translated into a new law that truly fulfils the wishes of those calling for reform.