We didn't break the Internet, and none of American policy wonk Jeffrey Hunker's solutions to fix it have much to do with "us." Former Clinton administration cyber-security higher-up Hunker's core prescriptions for healthy, happy surfing are almost entirely institutional. They are policies to be implemented by governments, international bodies and corporations. Once these policies are implemented, the Internet will be a much safer place for us to shop, bank and have helpful interactions with our various beneficent institutions.
If there is a fundamental error in this book, it's that Hunker fails to acknowledge that corporations, institutions and individuals often have diverging interests and needs. There isn't one big happy "we" who all want the same thing.
But let's start at the beginning. The first half of this book consists of chapters such as Washington, We Have a Problem and Modes of Attack. It aims to convince us that the Internet is a city so beset with gangsters, thieves, terrorists and liars that it's on the verge of not functioning at all. This part of the book goes on way too long and is largely underwhelming.
We finally get to the heart of Hunker's argument in Chapter 8. Here, some nice writing, comparing the Internet to early-industrial-age London, sets up his main point: Policy slowly turned London from a fire-prone, bacteria-ridden death trap to a functioning city; it was public policy that put in place sewers, waste-disposal rules, fire-resistant building standards and so on. Until public policy steps in to shape Internet security, the World Wide Web could basically go up in flames at any moment.
But we can't wait the century it took for public policy to introduce safety and hygiene standards to Dickensian London. We have to act now. Hunker offers us his suggestions for a new "social contract, in which cyber security is regarded as a public good, much as health is." This social contract consists of four elements: a new framework for Internet governance; tort liability for software vendors and network service providers; cyber-attack insurance for businesses; and data-collection systems that will reveal how much cyber evil is going on and how effective we are in reducing it.
Hackers, thinkers (right and left) and anyone who believes in the Internet as a last frontier of human ingenuity will not like Hunker's suggestions much. Those who just want to shop, watch pets dressed like people play the piano and update their "status" to reflect what they are watching and buying will like what Hunker has to say.
Hunker's prescriptions are highly institutionalized changes that have just about nothing to do with empowering "us" to save the Internet. In fact, almost all of his suggestions would stifle "us" in that they would almost certainly reduce small-scale innovation, significantly raise prices for software, Internet access and related services, and maybe even put an end to simple things like letting us register our kids for swimming classes online instead of requiring us to line up at 6 a.m.
Who would write a simple, useful program or app and sell it for a few dollars if they are open to innumerable lawsuits? The new Net, which would seek to eliminate the ability of shadowy mobsters to operate with impunity, might also make it impossible for, say, anti-regime activists in Iran to safely get their message out.
Hunker addresses some of these issues briefly, others he ignores altogether. Longer, more substantively thought out arguments could have made this book a must-read.
Hal Niedzviecki is the author most recently of The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbours.