Restrictions on the use of information in one country (to protect privacy, for example) tend to lead to the export of that information to other countries, where it can be analyzed and used on a selective basis in the country attempting to restrict it. “Data havens” may emerge reminiscent of the role played by the Swiss in banking, with few restrictions on the storage and manipulation of information.
Predictor: Noam, Eli
Prediction, in context:The 1997 book “Computers, Ethics, and Society,” edited by M. David Ermann, Mary B. Williams and Michele S. Shauf, carries a reprint of the Sept./Oct. 1991 The Humanist magazine article “The Constitution in Cyberspace” by Laurence H. Tribe. Tribe, a Constitutional scholar, suggests a Constitutional amendment that would clarify the relationship between new technologies and fundamental constitutional protections. He writes: ”Eli Noam’s First Ithiel de Sola Pool Memorial Lecture, delivered last October at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes that computer networks and network associations acquire quasi-governmental powers as they necessarily take on such tasks as mediating their members’ conflicting interests; establishing cost shares; creating their own rules of admission, access, and expulsion; even establishing their own de facto taxing mechanisms. In Professor Noam’s words, ‘Networks become political entities’ – global nets that respect no state or local boundaries. Restrictions on the use of information in one country (to protect privacy, for example) tend to lead to the export of that information to other countries, where it can be analyzed and used on a selective basis in the country attempting to restrict it. ‘Data havens’ may emerge reminiscent of the role played by the Swiss in banking, with few restrictions on the storage and manipulation of information.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Jurisdiction/Control
Name of publication: Computers, Ethics, and Society (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: The Constitution in Cyberspace
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 212
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne