The Moral Future of the Internet

Investigative journalist Joseph Menn, author of the recently released Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World has a history of writing books to explain the often-complicated intersection of history, technology and moral decision-making. His latest book traces the origins of a once ...

Governments Shut Down Internet Access to Stem Protests

  Bottom Line Up Front A growing number of countries are taking steps to limit internet access for their citizens to suppress unrest and anti-government protests. The Algerian government has tried to shut down internet access ahead of elections, but the restrictions have failed to prevent the spread of protests. ...

The U.S. Has Abandoned Leadership of the Internet

A hundred years from now historians will write that one of America’s greatest contributions to the world was the Internet. Though other countries and foreign citizens contributed to the effort, U.S. government funding and American academics and technologists created the Internet. As U.S. dependence on the Internet for our economic ...

The End of Net Neutrality: Implications for National Security

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 on Thursday to dismantle their authorities to enforce net neutrality rules that prohibit internet service providers, such as Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast, from interfering in the traffic streams that take place over their infrastructure. The reversal of the FCC’s 2015 decision means the ...

The Global Commons is a Great Good

How governments view powerful tools like the internet often determines how they treat them. In the West, governments have sought to let citizens freely and openly engage with cyberspace – for trade, culture, and civic discourse. Others, such as Russia and China, see the internet as a powerful tool to ...

Piecemeal Measures Regulate Cyberspace

It is a problem for the U.S. that many of the core concepts that guide internet policy date to the 1990s. One such concept is that the internet is a virtual alternative to the Westphalian state, without borders and where sovereignty does not apply. The problem with this concept is ...

The Worldwide Struggle to Claim Cyber Sovereignty

The year was 1648. Europe had just negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, ending the 30 years of war that had ensnared the continent. The series of peace treaties that came out of the negotiations established the concept of sovereignty, a political order of co-existing states, establishing a norm against interference ...