Get caught up on this series Part I, Part II and Part III.
Well, it goes to show how quickly the internet works. LulzSec calls it quit, see NY Times article. However, in my opinion this doesn't change a whole lot about what I said in my previous posts. There will be another group that decides to do the same sort of thing. I'm sure the individual members of LulzSec will be active with groups like Anonymous and perhaps join up with some other hacking group out there.
At any rate, it's important to discuss the overall structure of the internet. While many users believe the internet should be free and anonymous and all those things. It's starting to become apparent that this is not going to be the case. With major US ISPs deciding to go after pirating directly, it seems that deep packet analysis is going to be the way of the future. Wait, what is deep packet analysis? Well, when you send information across the internet it's broken up into smaller pieces and sent to the end point through many different routes. This ensures that the data all makes it to the other side in the fastest manner possible. Initially, it was difficult to determine what this information was. Now there are many different suppliers that allow ISPs to figure out what these packets of data are. This gets to the root of the Net Neutrality debate. I haven't talked about that yet, which I'll do later this week I believe.
Anyway, since the ISPs know what you're sending, you're already less anonymous there. They know where you live, who you are and how you are paying your bills. They know a lot of other information about you too. Next, the EFF has shown that based on your browser and plugins that it is likely your browser configuration makes it unique like a finger print (article). On top of that you have a lot of "Cookies" based on the websites you've visited. These are useful to you and to commercial websites. It stores personal information and allows you to get your recommended books list from Amazon. This means that over time, you've accumulated a great deal of identifying information on your computer that is accessible through your browser. Using your browser it is easy to identify you and your online habits. However, the EU just implemented a law about requiring consent for websites to use cookies (BBC article).
Sadly, these are not the only structures that we need to be aware of. Many companies like Google are required by the US government to have a backdoor for them to execute warrants and do general snooping of the email systems. I'm sure Facebook is also required to do this, but I haven't directly heard this yet. This has caused at least one acknowledged case of hacking by a Chinese group on Google (article). With these backdoors there is only so much an individual user can do to protect themselves. In cases like this, the strongest password in the world wouldn't have protected your emails.
Groups like Anonymous, LulzSec and Ninja Hackers are trying to increase the amount of freedom and anonymity users have on the internet. The Government and businesses are trying to decrease it. The US government does want to initiate a national level internet ID, which basically would tie all your information together. While easy for users, it could be very high risk for them as well. The difference in how these groups feel that the internet should be operating is the root cause of the "Softwar." This will not stop, and we, the users, will be stuck between these two sides, unless we force our government to decide one way or the other.
Additional Reading:
Lawrence Lessig Code 2.0. Many of the ideas I got for this post are discussed in this book, which I'm currently reading, you can download it for free legally here.
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