The issues of security of personal data, their leaks and the growing "power" of large IT corporations are increasingly worrying not only ordinary network users, but also representatives of various political parties. Some, such as those on the left, offer radical approaches, from nationalizing the internet to turning tech giants into cooperatives. About what real steps in this direction such "perestroika in reverse" undertaken in a number of countries - in our today's material.
A photo - — unsplash
What exactly is the problem
Over the past couple of decades, undisputed leaders have emerged on the IT market - companies whose names have already become household names occupy a large (sometimes overwhelming) share in a number of IT segments. Google more than 90% of the search services market, and the Chrome browser on the computers of 56% of users. The situation with Microsoft is similar - about 65% of companies in the economic region EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) with Office 365.
There are positive aspects to this arrangement. Large companies create a large number of jobs - as CNBC, between 2000 and 2018, Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon hired more than a million new employees. Such businesses accumulate enough resources to carry out large-scale research and development in new, sometimes high-risk areas in addition to their core activities. In addition, companies are also forming their own ecosystem, within which users solve a wide range of tasks - they order all the necessary goods at once, from food to technology, on Amazon. According to analysts, by 2021 it will half of the American e-commerce market.
The presence of IT giants on the market is also beneficial to its other players - investors who make money on the stock exchange: their shares are usually reliable and bring a stable income. For example, when Microsoft confirmed its intention to acquire GitHub in 2018, its shares on 1,27%.
A photo - — CC BY SA
However, the growing influence of the largest IT businesses is cause for concern. The main one is that companies aggregate a large amount of personal data. Today they have become a commodity and are used for a variety of purposes - from complex predictive analytics systems to banal targeted advertising. The aggregation of large amounts of data in the hands of one company creates a whole range of risks for the public and certain difficulties for the regulator.
In autumn 2017 years about "draining" the credentials of 3 billion accounts in Tumblr, Fantasy and Flickr, owned by Yahoo! The total amount of compensation that the company undertook to pay, 50 million dollars. And in December 2019, information security experts an online database with the names, phone numbers and IDs of 267 million Facebook users.
The situation worries not only the users themselves, but also the governments of individual states - primarily because they cannot control the data collected by IT companies. And this, according to some politicians, "creates a threat to national security."
A photo - — CC BY SA
In the West, a radical solution to the problem comes from supporters of various left and radical left movements. Among other things, they propose to make large IT companies public-private structures or cooperatives, and the global network - universal and government-controlled (just like other territorial resources). The logic of the leftists’ reasoning is as follows: if online services cease to be a “gold mine”, and they begin to be treated as housing and communal services, the pursuit of profit will end, which means that the incentive to “exploit” users’ personal data will decrease. And despite the initial fantasy, the movement towards a "common internet" in some countries already started.
Infrastructure for the people
A number of states already , fixing the right to access the Internet as a basic one. In Spain, Internet access is in the same category as telephony. This means that every citizen of the country should be able to access the Internet, regardless of his place of residence. In Greece it's right, in general (Article 5A).
Another example is back in 2000 Estonia for the delivery of the Internet to remote regions of the country - villages and farms. According to politicians, the worldwide web is an integral part of human life in the XNUMXst century and should be available to everyone.
A photo - — unsplash
Given the growing importance of the Internet — the role it plays in meeting people's basic needs — representatives on the left are calling for it to be made shareware, like television. Earlier this year the British Labor Party a plan to massively switch to free fiber optic Internet in his campaign program. According to preliminary calculations, the project will cost 20 billion pounds. By the way, they plan to raise funds for implementation through additional taxes for Internet giants like Facebook and Google.
In some US cities, ISPs are owned by local governments and cooperatives. There are about 900 communities in the country its own broadband networks - where all segments of the population, without exception, have access to high-speed Internet. The most popular is the city of Chattanooga in Tennessee. In 2010, with the support of a federal grant, the authorities launched a gigabit network for residents. Today, throughput has grown to ten gigabits. The new fiber is also connected to Chattanooga's power grid, so residents no longer have to manually submit meter readings. Experts say that the new network helps to save up to $50 million in the budget annually.
Similar projects implemented - for example, in Thomasville, as well as in rural areas - southern Minnesota. There, the RS Fiber provider, which is owned by a cooperative of ten cities and seventeen farms, is responsible for Internet access.
Ideas consonant with the socialists are periodically expressed at the very top of the US government. In early 2018, the Donald Trump administration 5G network is state property. According to the initiators, this approach will make it possible to develop the country's infrastructure more quickly, increase its resistance to cyberattacks and improve the quality of life of the population. Although at the beginning of last year the idea of infrastructure nationalization . But it is likely that this issue will be raised again in the future.
Accessible to all, cheap or even free Internet access is a tempting prospect that is unlikely to cause disapproval from anyone. However, in addition to hardware and infrastructure, software and applications remain an integral part of the network. On the account of what to do with them, some representatives of the socialist and other leftist movements also have a special opinion - we will talk about it in more detail in the next article.
The site we are leading . There we talk about cloud technologies, IaaS and personal data security.
We also have a section". In it we inform about the latest innovations of our service.
We have on Habré (with a huge number of comments on the materials):
Source: habr.com