"What is the Internet and What Will It Become?"

Well, readers, here it is: my last blog post of the semester…

Today was our final seminar meeting, and as assigned by Professor Waldo and Dean Smith, we chose the topics of conversation and readings for our discussion. We chose to talk about the impact of the internet on this past election, and the internet in developing countries. On the whole, I thought we did a pretty good job and that we had more than enough to talk about for the two hours. Hopefully we’ll all get a pass for the semester…

Anyway: the internet and the election. I thought the question of whether or not Donald Trump is a twitter genius was a really interesting one. My take is that no he is not…and that’s exactly what made him a twitter genius in this election cycle. The fact of the matter is that people were not looking for someone who is a genius in any field whatsoever so much as they were looking for someone who was original, unapologetic, and seemingly successful. Donald Trump’s twitter might have been the epitome of his identity as exactly that. While he may not have made use of systematic targeting on social media like the Obama campaign, Trump was startlingly original and unapologetic on his twitter account. He was by no means trying to be a genius or to manipulate people ingeniously, and this strategy was itself quite ingenious because it allowed him to maintain an identity as a genuine candidate (in contrast to the rigid and seemingly manipulative Hilary Clinton). Twitter was also the perfect channel for Trump because it was a non-alternative channel for a presidential candidate to communicate serious opinions to the general public, and Trump was a seriously non-traditional candidate. Twitter allowed him to cement his status as non-washington, non elite. Finally, Trump made convenient use of twitter because many of his opinions and policy suggestions were based on “twitter facts” – a one sided fact that could be fit in under 140 characters and likely has no substantiation or evidence. He was able to paint a picture of a country being suffocated by liberal policy with broad, short attacks and jibes. Indeed, even much of his debate performance was twitter-esque; he rarely responded with lengthy, detailed, multifaceted answers, and he often said the same thing over and over again.

As for the internet in developing countries, it was quite interesting just how different government policy on the internet and technology is in other places. The US could learn a lot from developing countries about utilizing the internet for everyday events and emergencies, and about integrating internet apps into government. Specifically, the use of WhatsApp for government services was interesting and surprising to me.

Well, that’s it folks. The final Blog post is complete. Maybe I’ll be back. Maybe not. We’ll see. For now….Wishing I had come up with a signing off phrase that I could use dramatically for a final time…see you later.

Yesterday we heard from Jonathan Zitrain, a Harvard Law professor and an expert in internet crime. I had the eerie experience of recognizing our guest but not being able to place him until I hear his name. It turned out that I recognized him from the internet. In my expos class, our preceptor sometimes shows videos from the Harvard Writing Center website in which faculty members from different disciplines weigh in on the fundamentals of writing essays. I had seen Professor Zitrain in one of the videos, and it was very interesting to hear from him live yesterday too.

In particular, the hypothetical of a Google email “scan” to catch terrorists was very interesting. While such a scan might not raise the same degree of privacy concerns as a full on reading and storing of people’s emails, I personally still found it troubling in some ways (especially because everyone else was ok with it). If you’ve seen my blog before, you’ll know that that’s kindof my style, but nevertheless I feel justified in my reservations in this particular case too.

Professor Zitrain’s hypothetical involved a Google algorithm that could locate the email address of a terrorist by matching a document in his email to a document possessed by the government/Google without actually having to look at the document or see any other emails in the inbox. Only once the document was found would humans examine the contents of the mailbox, thereby theoretically protecting people’s privacy.

Although such a scan might not involve the explicit searching of everyone’s mailbox, it still does raise privacy concerns and issues of consent. Consider the example of the police obtaining grounds for a search warrant  of a house suspected of growing Marijuana by driving by the house using heat detectors to determine if there are heat lamps inside. Such a scan does not require that the authorities enter the house. For an even greater parallel with the Google scan, imagine that the heat sensors are driven by a self driving car so that no humans are involved, just like the Google scan involves only an algorithm that does not have access to the email inbox. In this situation, it is true that the house and the inbox are not breached, but the fact that there is a scan taking place, that there is scrutiny of any kind is concerning nevertheless. For one, I (and I would assume most people) do not welcome increased government scrutiny in their personal lives. Moreover, even in the case of such a minimally invasive scan, it is impossible to tell if the government is only scanning for and collecting information on heat, or if they are searching for something more: The Google scan could only be searching for a particular terrorist document, or it could be searching for documents containing unpopular political views, or contact information for immigration lawyers, or some other kind of personal information that is frowned upon by the state, or even for information that might benefit Google’s own interests. There is truly no way to know.

There is also the question of consent in this situation. Does google need a user’s consent or a search warrant to scan someone’s email without actually accessing it? According to the doctrine described by Professor Zitrain in which it is only legal to obtain evidence that could be discovered by a civilizan, I think that they would. Although Google might be able to gather information on people’s emails without actually looking inside them, the average person simply can’t access metadata on people’s emails. Obtaining such information requires resources that an average person would never be able to use. It is very possible to imagine such a scan taking place without consent, however.

On the whole, even though the scan is not as invasive as a full on search, it is still important to consider the implications of such action and the privacy and consent concerns they raise.

Our discussion yesterday about net neutrality and the regulation of internet service providers to ensure that access to the internet remains open and relatively evenly distributed certainly shed light on some worrying potential possibilities. If net neutrality were to somehow become subject to deregulatory sentiment in the eyes of ill informed politicians, the power of internet service providers would be frightening. As we mentioned, the toll of ISP dominance on internet surfers would be quite high in that we would only be able to access certain websites and we would need to pay high fees to access more. What we didn’t discuss so much was the toll of ISP dominance on small companies, businesses, and individuals seeking to have websites of their own. While big companies would be able to afford to be included in ISP website bundles, smaller internet entities would unable to maintain their online presence for lack of visitors. Without the internet to level the playing field, giant companies would dominate their smaller counterparts. Moreover, much of the discussion and diversity of opinion available on the internet would cease to exist. This blog and others like it, for example, perhaps might not be able to exist in a world where ISP’s were completely unregulated and able to determine which sites are available to average users. The regulation of internet service providers to ensure net neutrality is certainly a pressing issue going forward. We can only hope that as of tomorrow morning, the future with regards to this issue will be bright…