Comcast, U.S giant internet agency, is lobbying U.S. lawmakers against the encryption of web traffic. This turns the situation harder for internet service providers to find the browsing history of users. This has been stated by Motherboard based on the leaked presentation obtained by it.
Google is planning to implement a new plan soon, according to which it enforces the encryption of DNS data. People who care for privacy is appreciating Google’s move. However, internet service providers (ISP) are not happy with it, as shown in the presentation. Tech experts are taking it as a positive change because, after its implementation, it will be difficult for ISP to leverage user’s data for advertisement.
Looking at the positive benefits of this encryption, now Mozilla is also planning to Apply it in the Firefox browser. The senior director of Mozilla for the ‘Trust & Safety’ department said that “The slides overall are extremely misleading and inaccurate, and frankly I would be somewhat embarrassed if my team had provided that slide deck to policymakers”.
He further added that “We are trying to essentially shift the power to collect and monetize peoples’ data away from ISPs and providing users with control and a set of default protections.”
Comcast has revealed some key points of presentation where it is clearly evident that it will be the major turning point in the use of the internet and will centralize the power to Google.
In the presentation that Comcast said that “The unilateral centralization of DNS raises serious policy issues relating to cybersecurity, privacy, antitrust, national security and law enforcement, network performance and service quality (including 5G), and other areas.”
The DNS service aids the web browser to translate the domain into the real IP address. Some top IT companies have their own DNS servers which are available public users as well.
In the presentation, there was a section read as ‘Why is Google in such a rush?’. It was written there that, “Congress should demand that Google pause and answer key questions.” Well, whatever be the reactions from privacy activists and other agencies, it was announced by Google that it is soon going to test the DNS on HTTPS and DoH.
In the last month of a September, Kenji Baheux who is a product manager of chrome had written on his blog that “As part of our long-standing commitment to making the web safer to use, we will be conducting an experiment to validate our implementation of DNS-over-HTTPS (aka DoH) in Chrome 78.”
Many of the tech experts are raising the issue that Google is trying to hold a monopoly over internet data and security. This is also evident from the leaked presentation which reads as, “If Google encrypts and centralizes DNS, ISPs and other enterprises will be precluded from seeing and resolving their users’ DNS.”
However, Google is not at all forcing Chrome users to only make use of Google’s DNS service. Overall, a lot of efforts have been made by Google to make internet browsing completely private.
