A set of technical standards being developed behind closed doors by a United Nations agency that would potentially curb users’ ability to remain anonymous on the Internet has privacy advocates and technologists alarmed, according to a Friday report. The standards are proposed by the Chinese government and the US National Security Agency is also part of the IP Traceback drafting group, named Q6/17. Headed up the by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union, the group is due to meet next week to work on the proposal, though the meeting will be closed to the media and public, the report suggests.

I've been groping around this for awhile, but it just hit me like a ton of bricks last week. Data is the Singularity. That is to say, that every "problem" we have as a society can be solved by more and more accessible data.

Disease control and eradication? Data.
Economic stability and growth? Data.
Safer and healthier food? Data.
More effective medications? Data.
Weather and environmental stability? Data.
Health and well being? Data.

You already see it. Informatics against large and complex data sets are yielding unprecedented gains in understanding, development, and refactoring. With the net now ubiquitous (ahem, telecom infrastructure investment notwithstanding), and people conditioned to contributing content to it, the cost of acquiring data is next to zero and moving closer all the time. Aggregating data is still a tricky thing, but that is getting cheaper and easier all the time as well. Put those two things together and you have the ability to divine incalculable knowledge for the benefit of society.

The price? Loss of anonymity, privacy, and the rising potential for abuse. But what do you want? To be omni-prescient or obscure?

Data is the new Singularity | Internet anonymity endangered by UN agency project