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The U.S. government says it must govern Internet technology more closely to protect against cyberattacks.

The U.S. Department of Defense may have funded the research that led to the Internet, but freewheeling innovation created the patchwork of privately owned technology that makes up the Internet today. Now the U.S. government is trying to wrest back some control, as it adjusts to an era when cyberattacks on U.S. corporations and government agencies are common.

At the RSA computer security conference yesterday, representatives of the White House, U.S. Department of Defense, and National Security Agency said that safeguarding U.S. interests required them to take a more active role in governing what has been a purely commercial, civilian resource. But some experts are concerned that the growing influence of defense and military organizations on the operation and future development of the Internet will compromise the freedom that has made it a success.

The DoD is being compelled to remove half a trillion from its budget in the next decade, but spending on cyber defense will increase, said deputy secretary of defense Ashton Carter in a keynote at the conference. "Ships, planes, ground forces, lots of other things are on the cutting room floor, not cyber," he said. "The investments are at the level of several billion, [and] we are continuing to increase our investments."

Comments made by colleagues of Carter later in the day made it clear that this cash will not just be used to strengthen government systems. The NSA and DoD intend to shape the way private companies build and use Internet infrastructure, and have corporations help them respond more actively to detect and clean up after an attack does take place.

"Our systems are dependent on security products and infrastructure from the private sector," said Debora Plunkett, director of the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate, which oversees cybersecurity for all national security systems. She said that the NSA wanted to encourage private companies to automate the tedious, manual, and often neglected basics of securing computer networks. "We need industry's help," she said. "We're spending too much time on network hygiene: missing patches, poor passwords, known vulnerabilities."

The kind of automation Plunkett wants to see would significantly change the way Internet infrastructure functions. It should be possible, she said, for a company or agency to quickly instruct pieces of network hardware to drop connections or isolate computer systems when an attack hits, something that goes against the tradition of Internet hardware being independent and not easily subject to centralized control. Well-funded startup company Nicira recently launched technology that might achieve some of that, and it is known to be working with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Plunkett also said that she hoped the NSA could develop and encourage use of technology that makes mobile devices more secure, inside and outside of government. "One of my biggest priorities is delivering secure smart phones and tablets," she said. Although government departments arelike many in the private sectorditching their BlackBerrys for smart phones running Apple or Google software, the latter are considered to be relatively low security devices that can be weak points that allow in attackers.

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Defense Department Wants More Control over the Internet

United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay on Wednesday expressed concern about Internet restrictions and the arbitrary detention of bloggers.

"The Internet has become an indispensable tool for people to receive information beyond that prepared and disseminated by traditional mass media," said Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Speaking at a panel discussion during a Human Rights Council session, Pillay, a former judge, noted that websites are blocked in many countries, sometimes "during specific periods of political significance".

"Bloggers and human rights defenders who legitimately exercise their right to freedom of expression continue to be arbitrarily arrested, tortured and unjustly sentenced to imprisonment on the pretext of protecting national security or countering terrorism," she said.

Pillay added that "we have also witnessed how courageous individuals strategically used the Internet to mobilise and support others in demanding their human rights".

She said human rights defenders have used audio-visual and crowd-sourcing platforms that the Internet offers to document human rights violations and share them in real time with a global audience.

It was not surprising that this resulted in a backlash and intensified attempts to restrict access to online content or the Internet.

The UN rights chief recognised that the Internet can be used for criminal activities and said what it carries is not always verifiable, noting there is a need to combat criminal activities that abuse the Internet.

But she said "there is also a real concern that methods to identify and track down criminals may be used to crack down on human rights defenders, suppress dissenting voices and withhold 'inconvenient' information".

She also noted that there are "well-intended legislative initiatives" such as those to protect intellectual property rights, "which impose onerous obligations" and "could thereby stifle freedom of information".

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UN rights chief voices concern over Internet restrictions

2 hrs.

John Roach

What would you do if had if you had an Internet service that could download a 2-hour movie in about 5 seconds?

You could, of course, watch a bunch of movies. City officials and investors in Chattanooga, Tenn., hope you have some other creative business ideas that take advantage of its 1-gigabit-per second Internet.

That is, the city has an Internet that is 20 to 200 times faster than what's available to customers anywhere else in the country. They want innovators to figure out what to do with all that speed.

If you think you've got some ideas, hurry up and submit them to the Gig Tank competition. There's $300,000 in seed investment and prize money at stake. The deadline for entries is March 1.

There are two tracks in the competition one for students and another for entrepreneurs. Organizers expect more than 100 entries, Jack Studer, a partner with VC firm Lamp Post Group, told me Wednesday.

On the student side, ideas range from collaborative teaching and learning projects that involve high-definition video streaming to applications that take advantage of all the data stored in the cloud.

Entrepreneurs with business plans in hand are heavily focused on healthcare applications such as telemedicine and ways to share massive files in real time.

"An MRI is a couple of terabytes of data so you can't really share that in real time unless you've got some pretty massive bandwidth from point to point," Studer noted.

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'Gigabit' ideas wanted for superfast Internet

Will constant access to the Internet make today's young people brilliant multitaskers or shallow, screen-bound hermits? A new opinion poll finds that technology experts believe the answer is "all of the above."

According to a new survey of 1,021 technology experts and critics, hyperconnectivity is a mixed bag. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed agreed that the Internet has wired the under-35 crowd differently, and that this rewiring is a good thing, stimulating multitasking talent and an ability to find relevant information fast online. But 42 percent of experts believe that the hyperconnected brain is shallow, with an unhealthy dependence on the Internet and mobile devices.

BLOG: Does the Internet Make You Smart or Dumb?

"Short attention spans resulting from quick interactions will be detrimental to focusing on the harder problems, and we will probably see a stagnation in many areas: technology, even social venues such as literature," Alvaro Retana, a technologist at HP, responded in the survey. "The people who will strive and lead the charge will be the ones able to disconnect themselves to focus."

Dire predictions

According to the Elon University Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Internet Project, which conducted the survey, the technology expert split is closer to 50-50 on whether the rise of the Internet is a boon or a bane. Many people who responded that Internet-savvy Generation Y is at a mental advantage tempered that opinion with warnings about the dark side of connectedness. [10 Facts About the Teen Brain]

BLOG: Is There a Gender Gap Online?

"While they said access to people and information is intensely improved in the mobile Internet age, they added that they are already witnessing deficiencies in younger people's abilities to focus their attention, be patient and think deeply," Janna Anderson, director of Elon's Imagining the Internet Center and a co-author of the report detailing the findings, said in a statement. "Some expressed concerns that trends are leading to a future in which most people are shallow consumers of information, and several mentioned Orwell's '1984.'"

George Orwell's 1949 book described a dystopian society where information was strictly controlled. One respondent who mentioned the book was Paul Gardner-Stephen, a telecommunications fellow at Flinders University.

"[C]entralized powers that can control access to the Internet will be able to significantly control future generations," Gardner-Stephen wrote. "It will be much as in Orwell's '1984', where control was achieved by using language to shape and limit thought, so future regimes may use control of access to the Internet to shape and limit thought."

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Internet Makes Us Smarter & Dumber

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire -02/29/12)- RSA Conference USA 2012 -- Just thirty years from its initial appearance on the world's computing stage, the Internet is now so embedded in business and society that life without it is almost unthinkable. Yet there are key aspects of life on the Internet -- security, privacy, reliability -- that constantly threaten to overwhelm its benefits. That ongoing threat is the driving force behind a new cross-industry, non-profit being launched at this year's RSA Conference, called the Trustworthy Internet Movement.

The Trustworthy Internet Movement (TIM) is a vendor-neutral organization with a mission to resolve major lingering security issues on the Internet, such as SSL governance and the spread of botnets and malware and to ensure that security is built into the very fabric of private and public clouds. Founding principal and veteran of the information security industry Philippe Courtot, Chairman and CEO of Qualys, has personally pledged $500,000 in seed money to get the initiative off the ground.

"With two billion people relying on the Internet for much of their personal and business lives, it is incumbent upon the industry to put its collective heads together and resolve the problems of online security, privacy, and reliability once and for all," says Courtot. "This is no longer just an issue of technology but of society as a whole."

Drawing on individual talent in large corporations, cloud providers, and industry groups as well as tapping into the resources of technology leaders and the venture capital community, TIM will fund and foster collaborative innovation through working groups between these stakeholders. Together, members will identify the hard issues to be solved and create solutions to address them.

TIM FundamentalsThree core pillars will guide the work and focus of TIM: Innovation, Collaboration and Individual Expertise.

Criteria for membershipThe group will be actively recruiting for membership in TIM during the RSA Conference USA 2012; participation is invited on the following bases:

Courtot encourages anyone and everyone with a stake in the future of the Internet to visit http://www.trustworthyinternet.org and sign up to participate.

"We have a unique opportunity with the rapid spread of cloud-based services to leverage the power of the industry and the wider community of Internet users to resolve the issues that are holding back the Internet from fulfilling its true potential," said Courtot.

About the Trustworthy Internet MovementThe Trustworthy Internet Movement (TIM) is a non-profit, vendor-neutral organization that leverages the resources of the technology industry, information security professionals, and the venture capital community to resolve the problems of Internet security, privacy and reliability. The organization will fund and foster collaborative innovation through focused working groups to identify specific issues and create new solutions to address them. TIM was launched at the RSA Conference USA 2012 in San Francisco, California. More information at http://www.TrustworthyInternet.org.

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Trustworthy Internet Movement Initiative Launches at RSA Conference USA 2012