For Michel Arnaud, Big Brother is not the worst of all evils

Web-surfers are giving up their personal data on the Internet more and more easily. The French researcher Michel Arnaud would like to ensure that this data will not be put to criminal ends. 'There are two opposite positions: on the one hand, security pressure is increasing with the state asking, in the name of the anti-terrorist struggle, for personal data all the time; on the other hand, civil society is digging in its heels, set against the restriction of personal freedoms. There is perhaps a middle way that could conciliate these two apparently incompatible positions, ... [by installing] a central database of identities ... [which] would be independent of all political power, preserving identity as private property. ... Perhaps we will be told that this is Big Brother. But in view of the situation, maybe we had better organise the management of identities by controlling their circulation, protecting them from piracy."

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