Alan Wexelblat

About the author: Alan Wexelblat is a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge.

The National Information Infrastructure (NII) could be used by government and especially corporations to acquire personal information in order to categorize individuals. This would cause the NII to become more of an information prison than superhighway. The NII would resemble a panopticon, a prison in which the guards can view all prisoners but prisoners cannot view the guards. Through the NII, corporations could act as "guards" with undue control of individuals' personal information. Individuals, the "prisoners," would be unaware how their personal information was acquired and used. At the other extreme, cryptography could electronically safeguard individuals' personal data from scrutiny. The future of personal information transmitted via the...