- We need strong privacy protection, but no expectation of anonymity. Data you send should always be traceable to a particular computer and/or person. Removing anonymity would improve Internet behavior immeasurably and immediately. Think of this as not answering the phone when the Caller ID doesn't display.
- We need a system of national routers and firewalls capable of, in the worst case, sealing our cyberfrontier in the event of cyberattack. This is the Internet equivalent of the much-discussed missile defense system with one difference: This would actually work.
- These firewalls might be set to block anything they don't recognise--unapproved encryption schemes, business transactions without tax information attached, emails without a valid signature, whatever. Want to stop illegal Internet gambling? The firewall could, for example, block both access to the sites and their credit-card transactions.
- We need national borders on the Internet, perhaps with a "most trusted nation" status for countries that share our data and network protection policies and a "rogue state" designation for countries whose networks would be quarantined from the rest of the world.
- Internet-based economic sanctions--an e-commerce embargo--would be used to bring nations into line, mirroring events in the physical world.
- An Internet "border patrol" or "coast guard" would protect us from external threats, while an Internet unit of the FBI would assist state and local law enforcement in solving criminal cases.
- Every region--and soon every major city--would have a computer crime lab comparable in size and function to their physical evidence collection and evaluation units.
- The Internet Customs Bureau would exist to ensure that proper taxation and trade policies are followed. Not attaching the proper financial information to certain transactions would be a crime of tax evasion.
If all this sounds like I am creating a cyber police state, well, that's what I thought you (well, some of you) would think. But what I am actually describing are well-known features of the physical world--defense, taxation, law enforcement--applied to the Internet. And as the Internet becomes more and more the fabric of our business and personal lives, I feel quite certain many of these things will come to pass.
For the Internet to become civilised, it will need to become a real civil society in which rules matter and violators are punished.
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