CNN Transcript - Saturday Morning News: Internet Privacy Becomes Tangled Web

Saturday Morning News

Internet Privacy Becomes Tangled Web

Aired February 5, 2000 - 9:14 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: At issue this morning, the tangled web we have woven. The explosive growth of the Internet has touched and transformed so many aspects of our lives, but as society moves online en masse, it brings with it some old-fashioned issues and concerns.

You don't have to be a former CIA director with a classified cache on your hard drive to be worried about privacy. That concern is leading to a very public debate, which, like the Internet, transcends geographic borders.

More from CNN's Allison Tom.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALLISON TOM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Privacy protection over the borderless Internet is raising concerns for consumers who live and do business in different parts of the world.

TARA LEMMEY, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: I think that privacy and sort of the nature of your identity and how you transfer your identity is a very important global issue.

TOM: Next week, senior U.S. and European Union officials are to meet in Brussels in hopes of negotiating an agreement on how consumers' private information will be protected on the Net.

But a trans-Atlantic accord may not be so easy. The European Union bars companies from exchanging personal consumer information with businesses outside the E.U. that do not have adequate privacy protection. But so far, the United States does not have any comprehensive privacy laws.

AMBASSADOR DAVID AARON, COMMERCE DEPARTMENT: We want more self- regulation. Technology is moving too fast, and business practices are changing too fast for governments to be able to anticipate every little thing.

TOM: Internet privacy and, you could say, these differences, make it challenging for the U.S. and E.U. to come up with one solution. In the meantime, consumers should be cautious.

LEMMEY: And it's important for people around the world to not assume that their local laws for privacy and data practices the way they've currently considered them in their everyday lives are the way it's going to be when they're on the Internet.

TOM: Some say one likely approach between the U.S. and Europe may be a combination of self-regulation and legislation.

But the hard part will be effectively enforcing it. Despite the problems, the U.S. and E.U. hope to have an agreement by the end of March.

Allison Tom, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Whatever and whenever there is an agreement, the best advice we can offer you is, surfer beware. While we and the media focus on computer viruses and hacking attacks on government and business sites, you and your hard drive are by no means safe from cyberburglars and electronic peeping Toms.

Cormac Foster is an expert on this subject with an outfit called Jupiter Communications. He joins us from New York City with some basics on privacy protection.com.

Cormac, thanks for joining us.

CORMAC FOSTER, JUPITER COMMUNICATIONS: Oh, it's great to be here.

O'BRIEN: All right, what's the one -- number one tip for folks who are just casual users, dialing up online, using your standard ISP?

FOSTER: Well, the number one tip, I think, is really to surf sites where you feel comfortable. And you really have to take responsibility for yourself here. You can't count on anyone else to. So it's important that you surf sites that have well -- you know, readily available privacy policies.

O'BRIEN: That's not a common thing to see these days on the Internet, is it?

FOSTER: It's becoming more common, but no, it's not. There are really a lot of Web ventures out there that haven't taken the responsibility to post their privacy policy even if they have one.

O'BRIEN: Do you think a lot of these sites will unilaterally decide to do this, trying to stave off the possibility of government control?

FOSTER: I think they will in time. But I think right now, the reason they would do that is simply because the users aren't coming, because they're scared. I think that's really a much more pressing matter.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's say you suspect, for whatever reason, that your private files have been tampered with or used or whatever. Who's suspect number one?

FOSTER: Suspect number one is probably someone within your own home.

O'BRIEN: Ooh.

FOSTER: Because this -- there's really safety in numbers.

O'BRIEN: The plot thickens, Cormac.

FOSTER: Absolutely. There's really safety in numbers. If you're one of millions of users out there, it's highly unlikely that someone's going to hack into your personal machine unless you happen to be a target. So unless you are the director of the CIA, there's a very good chance that the breach came from within your home, either a -- you know, a family member might have done something, someone who was over at a party.

So the first place to look, whether you're at home or in a corporation, is really at the machine itself.

O'BRIEN: All right. I wonder if Tom Clancy is taking notes. This could be grist for a thriller, I suppose, your own family being the people that are turning you in.

Let me ask you this. What about some of these programs which -- they call them add-ons or little attachments to your Netscape browser or your Microsoft browser that allow you to run distinct programs, Java, for example. Now, that's an actual program which goes from the site onto your computer. That in itself is a security risk, isn't it?

FOSTER: In theory, yes. There are some things that the folks who created Java have done to try to box it off, to make it a little more secure than actually downloading, say, a video game and playing that on your system. But in theory, any time you run an application from somewhere else on your computer, you are at risk.

O'BRIEN: So should you take the drastic step of, say, disabling Java on your browser?

FOSTER: I personally think that's a little extreme. I think one thing that everyone should do is run some kind of antivirus software on their computer. And there's antivirus software out there that will also identify malicious Java applications.

O'BRIEN: All right. One other trend that we've been watching here in the Internet world is folks at home getting these high-speed connections. DSL is one of the popular ones from the phone companies. And what that does is, it puts you online pretty much all the time, as long as your computer is on.

Is that inherently riskier?

FOSTER: It can be, because what you often get with DSL is what they call a static IP address, which allows people to locate your computer in the same place on the Internet all the time. Additionally, since you have more bandwidth, it's much easier -- it's much more realistic for someone to actually host their own Web site on their computer. And once you have a Web server running on your computer, then you're really opening yourself up to attack.

O'BRIEN: All right. And finally -- we don't have a lot of time -- but any time I hear discussions of trying to control the Internet, I chuckle a little bit, because of the fact that there's jurisdictions which literally go around the world. Is there any likelihood that there'll be any sort of controls that will stick?

FOSTER: They may stick, but I really don't think they'll be that effective. You know, within the European Union, they've done some things that work well for them. I think that the technology really is advancing too fast right now, and for the next several years, at least, users really have to take responsibility for themselves.

O'BRIEN: All right. Surfer beware. Cormac Foster with Jupiter Communications, thanks for being with us on CNN SATURDAY MORNING.

FOSTER: Thanks for having me.

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