U.S. to consider a new, secure Internet

While Iran thinks about instituting a national Internet in order to minimize the “poisoning” of Iranian minds with Western ideas and culture, the U.S. is toying with the idea of setting up a new Internet infrastructure for critical services in order to minimize the cyber attack threat.

According to Nextgov, the idea is currently being considered by a number of federal officials, among whom is also Gen. Keith Alexander, the current U.S. Cyber Command chief.

The inability of the U.S. government to perform deep packet inspection of Internet traffic and to monitor private network traffic without breaking privacy laws is thought to be part of the reason why nations like China seem to have an easier time defending their online assets.

This proposed new “.secure” network would be easier to keep safe because users could access it only if they renounced their right to privacy and used their real names and certified credentials. There would be no anonymity, and authorized network operators would be able to review all the traffic.

According to cybersecurity specialist James Mulvenon, there could also be a middle ground between the public Internet and the “.secure” network. He speculates that this level could be the .edu domain, where anonymity would also be non-existent, but where users would be required to give up less personal details than for the “.secure” one.