14 DAY TRIAL // In an article addressing Internet security in general and cyber crime and criminals in particular, Patrick J. Dempsey, Chief Information Security Officer for Janney Montgomery Scott, and former FBI agent, had an interesting and yet disturbing solution to the problem. He proposed creating a second Internet, one for which users should be required to register in order to be able to use.
"[?] Knowing all the possibilities with disguising or 'spoofing' one's information on the Web, I'm not sure that there is a way to truly 'protect our borders' when it comes to the Internet. The solution might be to establish two Internets -- the current Internet and a new, more secure Internet where users would be required to register prior to gaining access. Once again, though, we're confronted with the issue of what would be the governing body that would manage the user registrations? Would it be an organization similar to the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) or InterNIC that would manage user registrations on the 'new' Internet, or do we need to establish an entirely new entity to manage a more secure Internet?," he wrote on internetrevolution.com.
The problem of the governing body was covered by him pretty well, but what Dempsey left out was that with this alternative to the Internet, there would be no anonymity after registering. The two go hand in hand, and if the comfort of being known to others just by an online persona should disappear, there would basically be no point to join this more secure variant.
Other than that, there's the issue of international cyber crime that still roams the Internet we are using right now. Provided the users that want to be secure migrate to the alternative, the others would be exposed like never before. Cyber criminals from all over the world would grow in power, up to the point in which they would be swapping targets and techniques. It would be a lot easier and less costly to just stick to the one we are using right now and have legal cooperation between countries. Could a new branch of diplomacy be founded, that of Internet diplomacy?