2. Opinion leaders map out current Internet challenges

All of the opinion leaders surveyed for this study are heavily involved in the current and future development of the Internet and Internet-related policy. Many of them are also avid Internet users themselves – always eager to try out the latest devices and applications, and to discover new communication and participation opportunities for themselves. Their interest in the Internet – and the is- sues that is raises – is great and, in their view, it is an issue of increasing relevance due to four main developments:

a) Massive changes on the Internet, and a rate of change that has accelerated in the last three to five years. The increased penetration of online infrastructure and services into everyday life, new data scandals, and market concentration on a few large companies are but a few examples.

b) Increased sensitivity – and vigilance – with regard to trust and security on the Internet: alert users, new interest groups, new debates on fundamental issues

c) Perceived time pressure. Players from various sectors feel that there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to assert oneself into the debate, to participate in the process of configuring the future Internet according to one’s needs and requirements, and to initiate possible re-direction processes

d) There is still no common language on Internet issues, i.e. no agreement yet on fundamental orientation/direction or with regard to areas of responsibility and accountability.

The following chapters will provide a broad look at current discourse about the Internet with a focus on challenges related to trust and security on the Internet. First, one must consider whether the opinion leaders on these issues have a fundamentally different perspective on the Internet than the general population. One difference between these two groups is that opinion leaders inevitably approach the issue from a different perspective and judge developments according to how these developments directly impact their own field or area of responsibility. With an eye for both technical and cultural aspects, opinion leaders might bring a broader perspective on the issue of risk on the Internet, for example. Or they might be focused on a very specific field and bring more detailed knowledge. While not all opinion leaders necessarily have a more comprehensive view of developments on the Internet, taken together, they provide a broad and far-reaching guide to the current challenges, adding facets that expand the associative field of the public. The following graphic provides an overview of the perceived challenges. It highlights main themes and illustrates the interconnected- ness of the individual issues:

Overview of the perceived challenges on the Internet

This map does not yet prioritize the specific action areas, but highlights instead the major themes gleaned from the many interviews. One such major theme is the increased dependence on online infrastructures combined with the growing uncertainty regarding its vulnerability to disruption, break- down, etc. On the Internet, criminal activity is contingent on technical structural weaknesses. This opens up another area where the need for further discussion and action has been identified. Interesting here is the significance of social challenges that result from the tension between the culture of users and culture of providers.

The following chapters will demonstrate how opinion leaders approach these challenges from their respective fields, which objectives they pursue and how they achieve these objectives. Their respective views are often shaped by their underlying attitude towards the Internet and digitalization. Their proposed solutions for increased trust and security are influenced by their own perception of the relationship between analog and digital life. The study was able to identify three distinctive attitude types underlying these individual perceptions:

a) Equivalence principle. These individuals stress quite emphatically that the discourse on this issue is nothing new. Security challenges, they maintain, exist both online as well as offline („it has always been this way …“). Accordingly, it is not about creating new agreements and regulations, but about transferring existing regulations and applying them to the online context. They make comparisons to examples from the analog world (road transport, house construction, etc.) and invoke the idea of historical relativization (“every new medium has triggered some kind of hysteria”).

b) Summation principle. There are indeed areas where existing regulations can be transferred and adapted, but there is also the need for new guiding principles and regulations because transfer is not always possible (in the case of cyber war or clouds, for example) and we are seeing new forms of organization and thought.

c) Permeability principle. In the future, the distinction between online and offline will be made less and less, as major industrial and service infrastructures will be controlled online. There will be continual feedback loops as existing analog-world regulations will be transferred to the Internet and, at the same time, new mechanisms and rules will be created for the Internet that will be transferred to the analog world.

The following chapter will introduce the players in the various sectors and consider their perceptions of current developments on the Internet, their self-perception, their appraisal of other Internet players and what they consider to be the main challenges. The subsequent two chapters will then outline various perspectives on security, responsibility and trust and address the similarities and differences among these players. The findings will then be consolidated and summarized in the conclusion.