So... as of yesterday, people flying from Canada to the U.S. need a passport. Next year, you'll need one for any form of travel (land, sea or air).
What is a passport, really? Well, if it is a bona fide document, it's essentially an assurance by one government to another that the bearer is a citizen of that country and it is, theoretically, an irrefutable description of the person that can be used by another government to ensure that the bearer is who they say they are.
I had a number of conversations today about geo-fencing on the Internet. What's geo-fencing? It's the practice of limiting access to sites and services based on the supposed location from which a person is accessing the Internet. I say 'supposed' because geo-fencing is a flawed technology that relies on often inaccurate or easily manipulated information. Even when it works properly and is not circumvented, geo-fencing only identifies from where the access attempt is being made - it tells nothing about who is attempting the access. Geo-fencing will block a Canadian travelling in Helsinki from accessing sites that he could readily access were he in Canada. The most common usage I've seen for geo-fencing is to protect media access from other countries. Canadian-based Internet users, for example, can't stream Studio 60 from nbc.com. Likewise, American-based users can't watch Studio 60 at ctv.ca. And if someone circumvents the system and does get the content from the wrong side of the virtual border - so what? The consequences are insignificant in the great scheme of things. The fundamental difference will only be in what advertising they see (which has minor related financial impact).
But what about content / data that has more serious implications? This got me thinking about electronic passports. Will the day come when we need one to establish our identity in cyberspace? Will someone surfing the web who wants to go to, for example, an American site need to present some sort of electronic equivalent of a passport each time they cross the virtual border? I know it sounds a bit far fetched, but stranger things have already come out some governments -- including the current U.S. administration. Wouldn't some governments love to control - and track - all access (domestic and foreign) to their portion of the Internet? We tend to think of the Internet as being without boundaries, or at least we do in the free world. In the current - and probably perpetual -- climate of global terrorism, though, is it really inconceivable that a government might create virtual border crossings to control (and track) cross-border cyber travel -- both inbound and outbound? And, at least to some extent, maybe that's not such a bad thing. If it makes sense to prevent undesirables from physically entering a country, does it not, perhaps, make similar sense, in this era of hyper-computerization, to prevent them from electronically crossing the border, too?
The upside of everyone having an irrefutable and infallable identification mechanism could be the end to the tens or hundreds of unique user identifiers and passwords we tend to have today. That one credential would serve as your identifier for every site you ever visit.
The scary downside of this, of course, for the honest and law-abiding citizen, is the huge loss of privacy. I wonder, though, if that may someday be considered the inevitable price of 'freedom'?
What is a passport, really? Well, if it is a bona fide document, it's essentially an assurance by one government to another that the bearer is a citizen of that country and it is, theoretically, an irrefutable description of the person that can be used by another government to ensure that the bearer is who they say they are.
I had a number of conversations today about geo-fencing on the Internet. What's geo-fencing? It's the practice of limiting access to sites and services based on the supposed location from which a person is accessing the Internet. I say 'supposed' because geo-fencing is a flawed technology that relies on often inaccurate or easily manipulated information. Even when it works properly and is not circumvented, geo-fencing only identifies from where the access attempt is being made - it tells nothing about who is attempting the access. Geo-fencing will block a Canadian travelling in Helsinki from accessing sites that he could readily access were he in Canada. The most common usage I've seen for geo-fencing is to protect media access from other countries. Canadian-based Internet users, for example, can't stream Studio 60 from nbc.com. Likewise, American-based users can't watch Studio 60 at ctv.ca. And if someone circumvents the system and does get the content from the wrong side of the virtual border - so what? The consequences are insignificant in the great scheme of things. The fundamental difference will only be in what advertising they see (which has minor related financial impact).
But what about content / data that has more serious implications? This got me thinking about electronic passports. Will the day come when we need one to establish our identity in cyberspace? Will someone surfing the web who wants to go to, for example, an American site need to present some sort of electronic equivalent of a passport each time they cross the virtual border? I know it sounds a bit far fetched, but stranger things have already come out some governments -- including the current U.S. administration. Wouldn't some governments love to control - and track - all access (domestic and foreign) to their portion of the Internet? We tend to think of the Internet as being without boundaries, or at least we do in the free world. In the current - and probably perpetual -- climate of global terrorism, though, is it really inconceivable that a government might create virtual border crossings to control (and track) cross-border cyber travel -- both inbound and outbound? And, at least to some extent, maybe that's not such a bad thing. If it makes sense to prevent undesirables from physically entering a country, does it not, perhaps, make similar sense, in this era of hyper-computerization, to prevent them from electronically crossing the border, too?
The upside of everyone having an irrefutable and infallable identification mechanism could be the end to the tens or hundreds of unique user identifiers and passwords we tend to have today. That one credential would serve as your identifier for every site you ever visit.
The scary downside of this, of course, for the honest and law-abiding citizen, is the huge loss of privacy. I wonder, though, if that may someday be considered the inevitable price of 'freedom'?
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