DAMMAM, 7 October —The Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has not only changed world politics but has also given a totally new dimension to the cyberworld. Many questions, raised in the early 1990s when the Internet was a new concept, are now surfacing again. In the United States as well as in Europe, a plethora of Internet issues are now being debated. It appears that in the not too distant future, the cyberworld might undergo some drastic changes. Last week the debate centered on decrypting of the e-mail messages. Experts and businessmen opposed the move while bureaucrats and officials favored it on the pretext of containing terrorist threats.
The debate has now expanded to a very basic question — Internet freedom and cyber terrorism. Experts say that almost every constitution in the world guarantees freedom of expression and the Internet is a form of communication and hence falls within the idea of freedom of expression. Based on this logic any move to curtail the Internet freedom is opposed.
But officials, mainly at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA in the United States as well as other security agencies, refute this logic. They say that the foremost human right is to live and to secure this right, the curtailing of another right is justified. They advocate certain checks and balances on the use of the Internet.
These officials say that Internet could be a “great vehicle” for terrorists’ nefarious designs. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the FBI in the United States, and the Pentagon suspect that the terrorists, who masterminded the Sept. 11 attack, planned and coordinated their actions over the Internet.
Experts do not deny such a possibility but say that if any mechanism were devised to check the Internet, then “bad people would opt for software to counter those devices.” These experts mention the tapping of telephones to nab criminals. “Criminals know that their phones could be tapped and so adopt preventive measures, scramblers and other sophisticated devices. The same will happen in the case of Internet and in the long run, the common man will suffer and feel insecure.”
The experts also believe that such a move would provoke cyber terrorism with the world witnessing the worst kind of hacking and code-breaking. Although Internet security experts feel confident that any terrorist threat to the cyberworld could be countered, they agree that the chances of cyber terrorism has greatly increased in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
But experts say that the most effective means to counter cyber terrorism was to increase awareness among the users. “A gag is no solution,” he said. Experts in the United States, Belgium, India and Germany agree with the findings of their governments that cyber terrorism is likely to hit the Internet. “The result will be catastrophic. Business will come to a standstill and billions of dollars will be lost. These experts say that the industry is working out ways to counter terrorism. We will soon have antidotes,” said a security expert in the United States.
Officials around the world are caught in a very tricky situation. If they put a gag on the cyberworld, there will be a tremendous uproar from human rights groups who will question all claims of democracy and freedom. And if the officials succumb to such pressures, then the threat of terrorists using Internet will always be hanging over their heads. Is the cyberworld entering its most crucial phase? Will it really undergo a major change and, in the process, lose its point? Only time will tell but will the final scenario become clear only after terrorists hit the Internet?