In the U.S., safety & security almost always takes a back seat behind commerce. This historical principle is in evidence in almost any field: numerous (unfortunately) examples of this have been documented in fields as diverse as infrastructure – dams, bridges, traditional & nuclear power; travel — automobile, rail, & air travel; building codes, pharmaceuticals, children’s toys, & the Internet. The concomitant & moderating advances in the safety & security fields within the disciplines of science, law, & social policy inevitably lag behind the technological innovation & first-to-market principles that have traditionally driven the US money engine.
Take the matter of 19th Century steamboat boiler explosions. At the time, steam travel was miraculous – a technology that, along with steam locomotives, had gained instant – almost magical — popularity. But these wonders came with a price.
Steam boiler explosions.
Big ones that killed thousands of people in steam & fire. In fact, the worst maritime disaster in US history – worse than the loss of the dreadnought, Yorktown, at Pearl Harbor – occurred when at least three of the SS Sultana’s four boilers exploded near Memphis, TN in the spring of 1865.
More than 1800 people perished.
In the Sultana’s case, operator error – driving the boilers above their rated pressures in order to make headway against spring currents – may have been the root cause of the catastrophe; however, in general, high-pressure steam engine designs, first introduced in the U.S. in 1816 by Oliver Evans, had, over time, increased the internal pressure of boilers from the original 7.5 pounds per square inch to almost 150 lbs. per square inch. Boiler design safety and the strength of material used to build boilers had not kept pace.
The Internet faces similar growing pains. In its current state, the Internet:
Enables the collection of new types of personal information
- Facilitates the collection and geo-location of personal information
- Enabled the evolution of “Big Data”, birthing new capabilities for government & private entities to analyze personal information
- Creates new opportunities for commercial use of personal data.
- Has created new attack vectors for behaviors, both criminal & in the national defense
The notion of privacy is at the heart of the first four bullets. At the same time as organizations disperse their computing power & needs into the cloud, individuals are increasingly targeted – the center of the bull’s-eye of any government or corporate attentions. Point 5 summarizes two important aspects of the Internet – crime & warfare. The list above could be rewritten as:
- Privacy
- Crime
- War
All of this creates complications for regulation given the trans-national, yet geo-neutral nature of the Internet, & the inevitable gap between new technologies & their cognate legal/policy updates mentioned above.
