Submission + - Ex-NSA Chief Supports Separate Secure Internet
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Nextgove reports that Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the CIA, says the United States may seriously want to consider creating a new Internet infrastructure to reduce the threat of cyberattacks and several current federal officials, including U.S. Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander, also have floated the concept of a ".secure" network for critical services such as financial institutions, sensitive infrastructure, government contractors, and the government itself that would be walled off from the public web. Unlike .com, .xxx and other new domains now proliferating the Internet, .secure would require visitors to use certified credentials for entry and would do away with users' Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. "I think what Keith is trying to suggest is that we need a more hardened enterprise structure for some activities and we need to go build it," says Hayden. "All those people who want to violate their privacy on Facebook — let them continue to play." Clay Dillow writes that on the existing internet everyone does everything online anonymously, and while that’s great for liberties, it’s also dangerous when cyber criminals/foreign hackers are roaming the cyber countryside. Under the proposed .secure internet "you may not be able to go to certain neighborhoods of the Web without showing your papers at a checkpoint--and perhaps subjecting yourself to one of those humiliating electronic pat-downs as well," writes Dillow. "Those who want to remain anonymous on the Web can still frolic about in the world of dot-com, but in the dot-secure realm you would have to prove you are you.""
