The Internet and The Right to Be Left Alone

In 1997-1980 I was Vice Chairman of a Presidential Committee at the NAS to study the evolution of the Internet. One of the issue I brought up was the idea of being anonymous, being left alone.

As Warren and Brandeis write in their famous text, The Right to Privacy, in 1890:

Then the "right to life" served only to protect the subject from battery in its various forms; liberty meant freedom from actual restraint; and the right to property secured to the individual his lands and his cattle. Later, there came a recognition of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. Gradually the scope of these legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life--the right to be let alone, the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every form of possession-- intangible, as well as tangible...

Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone." Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons; and the evil of the invasion of privacy by the newspapers, long keenly felt, has been but recently discussed by an able writer. The alleged facts of a somewhat notorious case brought before an inferior tribunal in New York a few months ago, directly involved the consideration of the right of circulating portraits; and the question whether our law will recognize and protect the right to privacy in this and in other respects must soon come before our courts for consideration.

The "right to be left alone", albeit not in the Constitution expressly, was what Warren and Brandeis were getting at. Thus one of the things I was asking for the folks to consider a decade ago was the right to just look at something without having to identify myself. When I buy a NY Times on the street no one asks for my ID card. They do now in every building in New York, and that is somewhat reasonable, it is private property, but the news stand is not.

In a recent story on CNET it appears as if the current Administration is seeking to get every one's Internet ID so that at the drop of a hat or otherwise they can find out what each of us has done, seen, looked, at, bought, and the like, apparently without any prior cause, no Constitutional protection. It is as if the Internet was now a Government building, and if you want to enter you must show ID. It no longer is the corner news stand.

CNET states:

President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

 They continue:

"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities." 

The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said. 

Details about the "trusted identity" project are remarkably scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. 

Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential, if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said. 

 In fact the right to be left alone may very well be infringed. The issue is the assignment and tracking of IDs. Why the Commerce Department, a front, a charade for another entity, well there was NTIA but Commerce was always technically the least astute entity involved in any way in telecom. NSA would make sense but it would be illegal, the FBI, but they are really cops, the CIA would be illegal, the FCC, all lawyers, so where. Well it's the current Administration so set up a new Department, why not.