Jonathan Zittrain - Security

Security

After Zittrain joined the staff at Oxford, Zittrain and John Palfrey at the Berkman Center founded StopBadware.org in 2006 to function as a clearinghouse for what has become proliferation of malware. Borrowing Wikipedia's "ethical code that encourages users to do the right thing rather than the required thing", the organization wished to assign the task of data collection—and not analysis—about malware to Internet users at large. When its scans find dangerous code, Google places StopBadware alerts in its search results and rescans later to determine whether a site thereafter had been cleaned.

One of StopBadware's goals is to "preempt" the stifling of the Internet. The founders think that centralized regulation could follow a serious Internet security breach, and that consumers might then choose to purchase closed, centrally managed solutions like tethered appliances that are modified by their vendor rather than owner, or might flee to services in walled gardens. In Zittrain's word, "generative" devices and platforms, including the Internet itself, offer an opening forward. In 2007, he cautioned, "...we're moving to software-as-service, which can be yanked or transformed at any moment. The ability of your PC to run independent code is an important safety valve."

Reactions in the Boston Review accompanied the publication of his book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, in 2008. Support came from David D. Clark and Susan P. Crawford. Criticism ranged from Richard Stallman's finding no evidence of a flight to closed systems and his message that software developers need control and software patents must end, to a request for cost-benefit analysis, to the belief that netizenship won't scale to the business world to faith that consumers will buy only open, non-proprietary systems.

Directed by Palfrey and Zittrain, StopBadware receives high-level guidance from its advisory board: Vint Cerf of Google, Esther Dyson, George He of Lenovo, Greg Papadopoulos (formerly CTO of Sun Microsystems), and Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology. The working group, which has included Ben Adida, Scott Bradner, Beau Brendler, Jerry Gregoire, Eric L. Howes, and Nart Villeneuve at various times, frames the project's research agenda and methodology and is the body which helps to inform the public about StopBadware's work. StopBadware has been supported by AOL, Google, eBay/PayPal, Lenovo, Trend Micro, and VeriSign and its use has been advised by Consumer Reports WebWatch.