IP: .NET and the fourth amendment

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>From: AcmeWriter@aol.com
>Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 12:45:39 EDT
>Subject: .NET and the fourth amendment
>To: dave@farber.net
>X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 138
>
>My colleague Doug Brown and I wrote a piece that looks at the numerous
>privacy concerns, including 4th Amendement issues, regarding .NET.
>
>Hope you think  it's worth passing on to your list. An excerpt is below;
>readers will have to go to InteractiveWeek.com to see the whole story -
>ZDnet, which usually picks up our stories, only printed the excerpt.
>
>Connie Guglielmo
>Editor-at-Large
>Interactive Week
>
>In Microsoft Do You Trust?
>By Connie Guglielmo and Doug Brown, Interactive Week
>April 16, 2001 12:00 AM ET
>
>Microsoft envisions a future with computing as pervasive as air, and it sees
>itself as the oxygen.
>
>The question is: Will the rest of the world buy what Microsoft plans to
>bottle and sell?
>
>To breathe in the electronic environment of Microsoft's .Net imaginings,
>consumers must first hand their private information over to Microsoft, and
>trust the Redmond company to store it securely and parcel it out judiciously.
>
>Some think it's an impossible goal for a company with already questionable
>records on trust, privacy and security. But its success is crucial to
>Microsoft, which is banking its future on its .Net initiative.
>
>"This particular kind of service would require the most trusted vendor," said
>Rob Enderle, vice president and research leader at Giga Information Group,
>and one of the leading analysts on Microsoft. "Microsoft is not well-trusted,
>and recent security exposures have many concluding that it is not
>well-protected either."
>
>Microsoft has long wrestled with hackers breaking into the company's sprawl
>of networks, undermining trust in its ability to safeguard private
>information. And the company's public image, which for years has struggled
>with Big Brother and Evil Empire comparisons by its many critics, was further
>tarnished during the epic antitrust trial between the company and the
>Department of Justice.
>
>Now, with the recent unveiling of HailStorm - which will be a major component
>of the .Net vision - Microsoft is asking the public to fork over their most
>personal information, like address books, calendars and credit-card numbers.
>It promises to hide that information from the World Wide Web outside of
>Microsoft if the customer desires anonymity. At the same time, however, it is
>cautioning lawmakers on Capitol Hill against passing new laws that would
>guarantee Netizens the right to such privacy.
>
>Critics charge that Microsoft specifically - as well as any one company in
>general - should not be trusted with such a deep pool of personal
>information. To date, Microsoft has repeatedly failed to stop hackers, and
>the richer, more vast reservoir of information envisioned by the company
>would represent a particularly choice target for digital crooks and online
>merchants desperate for consumer data. With its address books, calendars and
>purchase history, the database would also represent a particularly detailed
>data jackpot for law enforcement officials. And Microsoft's failure to
>endorse even the idea of federal legislation, critics say, raises questions
>about the company's commitment to consumer privacy.
>
>But Microsoft officials counter that the HailStorm architecture is
>revolutionary in that it for the first time gives users choices over how - or
>whether - their personal information will be used on the Web. The .Net
>project, they say, advances consumer privacy instead of eroding it, and it
>does a better job of protecting consumers than any law.
>
>"Privacy is a personal value that each individual has a different approach
>to," said Richard Purcell, Microsoft's chief privacy officer. "HailStorm will
>not say there is a one-size-fits-all privacy policy. It will have the
>flexibility to say the user is in control.
>
>"We are assuring people that there is a basis for controlled consent," he
>added. "A very major information campaign has to be mounted."
>
>But analysts and privacy advocates aren't so sure.
>
>"Public relations alone won't do it," said Chris LeTocq, research director at
>Gartner Group. "They have to be able to say, you know, 'Here are these third
>parties that are going to audit us, here are concrete offerings which are
>going to somehow convince people we are somebody to be trusted.' Given the
>negative publicity they have gotten from the Department of Justice suit, they
>have a long way to go."
>
>The .Net initiative, LeTocq said, represents Microsoft's attempt to "recast
>the Net as they wish it had been written in the first place. From Microsoft's
>perspective, the Net is far too much of an egalitarian structure for them to
>make money. What you are seeing here is Microsoft rewriting the Net to look
>like Windows."
>
>Among other things, for .Net to work, Microsoft will have to be willing to
>work closely and openly with the bulk of the online commercial world.
>
>But Microsoft "does not have a history of egalitarian partnering," said Frank
>Prince, senior analyst in e-business infrastructure at Forrester Research.
>"People can apply to Microsoft a joke that they used to apply to IBM: IBM + X
>= IBM."
>
>...continues at
>http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2707840,00.html



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