Download - Future of the Internet – And how to stop it.

Strategies for a Generative Future 185
of network security ought to include the endpoints as well as the middle of the
network—with a generative principle to determine whether and when it
makes sense to violate the end-to-end principle—our far-ranging debates on
network neutrality ought to be applied to the new platforms of Web services
that in turn depend on Internet connectivity to function. At least Internet connectivity
is roughly commoditized; one can move from one provider to another
so long as there is sufficient competition, or—in an extreme case—one can
even move to a new physical location to have better options for Internet access.
With open APIs for Web services there is much less portability; services built
for one input stream—such as for Google Maps—cannot easily be repurposed
to another, and it may ultimately make sense to have only a handful of frequently
updated mapping data providers for the world, at least as much as it
can make sense only to invest in a handful of expensive physical network conduits
to a particular geographic location.
Maintaining Privacy as Software Becomes Service
As Chapter Five explained, the use of our PCs is shrinking to that of mere
workstations, with private data stored remotely in the hands of third parties.
This section elaborates on that idea, showing that there is little reason to think
that people have—or ought to have—any less of a reasonable expectation of
privacy for e-mail stored on their behalf by Google and Microsoft than they
would have if it were stored locally in PCs after being downloaded and deleted
from their e-mail service providers.
The latest version of Google Desktop is a PC application that offers a “search
across computers” feature. It is advertised as allowing users with multiple computers
to use one computer to find documents that are stored on another. 40
The application accomplishes this by sending an index of the contents of users’
documents to Google itself. 41 While networking one’s own private computers
would not appear to functionally change expectations of privacy in their contents,
the placement or storage of the data in others’ hands does not hew well to
the doctrinal boundaries of privacy protection by the U.S. Constitution. These
boundaries treat the things one has held onto more gingerly than things entrusted
to others. For example, in SEC v. Jerry T. O’Brien, Inc., 42 the Supreme
Court explained: “It is established that, when a person communicates information
to a third party even on the understanding that the communication is
confidential, he cannot object if the third party conveys that information or
records thereof to law enforcement authorities. ... These rulings disable respondents
from arguing that notice of subpoenas issued to third parties is nec-