John Markoff reports that DARPA “considered but rejected another surveillance idea: tagging Internet data with unique personal markers to make anonymous use of some parts of the Internet impossible.”
The plan, known as eDNA, called for developing a new version of the Internet that would include enclaves where it would be impossible to be anonymous while using the network. The technology would have divided the Internet into secure “public network highways,” where a computer user would have needed to be identified, and “private network alleyways,” which would not have required identification.