The proof that this capacity for regulation will emerge is the subject of the next chapters. To end this chapter, we need only answer one question. Assuming that these architectures for identification will emerge, what follows about the regulability of cyberspace?

The answer, I trust, is obvious: putting to one side the question of identifying content (which I consider in detail in chapter 12), an architecture for selective certification would dramatically increase the power of local governments to impose requirements on their citizens. Sites would be required to condition admission on the certificates held by users, and the Internet would shift from being an essentially unregulable space locally to a highly regulable space. Rules imposed by local jurisdictions could be made effective through their recognition by other jurisdictions. Servers, for example, would recognize that access is conditioned on the rules imposed by jurisdictions.

The effect, in short, would be to zone cyberspace based on the qualifications carried by individual users. It would enable a degree of control of cyberspace that few have ever imagined. Cyberspace would go from being an unregulable space to, depending on the depth of the certificates in the space, the most regulable space imaginable.

One final line of resistance: even if these architectures emerge, and even if they become common, there is nothing to show that they will become universal, and nothing to show that at any one time they could not be evaded. Individuals can always work around these technologies of identity. No control that they could effect would ever be perfect.

True. The control of a certificate-rich Internet would never be complete. But there is a fallacy lurking in the argument: just because perfect control is not possible does not mean that effective control is not possible. Locks can be picked, but that does not mean locks are useless. And in the context of the Internet, even partial control would have powerful effects.

A fundamental principle of bovinity is operating here, and elsewhere. Tiny controls, consistently enforced, are enough to direct very large animals. The controls of a certificate-rich Internet are tiny, I agree. But we are large animals. I think it is as likely that the majority of people would resist these small but efficient regulators of the Net as it is that cows would resist wire fences. This is who we are, and this is why these regulations work.

One final twist to this bovine account. So far I’ve been discussing a relatively cumbersome technology for identification—certificates. These are cumbersome because to tie the certificate to a person (as opposed to a machine), we still need some sort of link—through, for example, a pass-phrase. These phrases can be a hassle; if they change, they can be easy to forget.

There is an easier way. Already computer manufacturers are exploring biometric devices that would make it simple to tie a person to a machine. Compaq, for example, is considering a thumbprint reader: when you sit at your keyboard, it would verify that you are who you say you are. Who needs a password when you have a thumb?¹

So what will happen when these technologies become cheap and easy? When you can choose between remembering a pass-phrase, typing it every time you want access to your computer, and simply using your thumb to authenticate who you are? Or if not your thumb, then your retina, or whatever body part turns out to be cheapest to certify? When it is easiest simply to give identity up, will anyone resist giving it up?

Footnotes

¹ See Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked Society, edited by Anil Jain, Ruud Bolle, and Sharath Pankanti (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999); see also Amanda Lang in “Mytec Braced for Lucent’s Challenge,” Financial Post (Toronto), May 15, 1997, 6. At a conference where these technologies were described, a participant recalled a question he had asked the manufacturer of a device that identified people based on their hand: “Does it have to be a live hand?” The company representative turned white. “No,” was the response. Edit Delete