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Internet urgently needs more regulations, speaker says

The Internet poses a greater threat than ever due to lack of content regulation and an increasing number of hackers, speakers said at Harvard University on Monday.

Internet security expert and author Cliff Stoll and Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain spoke about the growing risks in Internet security to an audience of about 30 people.

In the early days of the Internet, the web was a safe haven for information and research resources, but as the years passed, security issues have come to surface, Stoll said.

“We’re watching the Internet being used to exploit other nations’ infrastructures and especially to track down people who are considered bad guys to various agencies,” he said.

In a world that is increasingly reliant on the Internet, online threats present an even greater problem, Zittrain said.

“More and more, if you lost connectivity for a week, your life would be in greater disarray than even a few years ago,” Zittrain said. “We have a grave problem. I don’t think it’s business as usual.”

Stoll said hacking by governments and individuals poses the most significant threat to web users today.

“The Internet may become an excuse for doing mean things and spreading paranoia,” he said.

Stoll said since the birth of the Internet, U.S. government agencies such as the FBI, the CIA and the NSA began paying more attention to political dissidents and hacker networks from around the globe, who attempted to steal or hijack important military documents.

Today, Internet security officials face a predicament in distinguishing between hackers fueled by their own patriotic motivations and networks of national cyber espionage, the speakers said.

Stoll also emphasized the difficulty of differentiating between individuals and government hackers, citing the need to separate the “freedom-fighters from the terrorists.”

Zittrain said that precautions to protect the web and improve Internet safety should be taken now before it’s too late &- otherwise a far-reaching change is needed.

2009 Boston University graduate alumna Ruha Devanesan said she thought Stoll was “entertaining,” although she “didn’t understand a lot of the technical language.”

Discussions about the potential future of information war are undoubtedly “very scary,” Devanesan said.

Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government student Tim Naurer said he “liked the mix between the physics professor and the law professor.”

Naurer said he was not sure what direction the nation was heading in the world’s struggle against information warfare, but the biggest obstacle impeding progress toward increasing safety and security is the “lack of a coordinated approach in the government.”

Peter Cassidy, Secretary General of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, summarized the matter simply.

“It’s a big problem,” he said.

Cassidy also noted the disparate nature of cyber crimes, which occur both on small day-to-day levels and on more complex levels of a national scale.

“If we get a handle on [smaller] crimes, it’ll help us get a handle on national security issues,” Cassidy said.

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