"Do We Need a New Internet?" asks the New York Times, driving up the number of old people terrified of the Internet ten-fold. "But whatever happens, Conficker (a computer virus from last year) has demonstrated that the Internet remains highly vulnerable to a concerted attack."

You mean there are cyber…terrorists??

“If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships streaming toward us on the horizon,” Rick Wesson, the chief executive of Support Intelligence, a computer consulting firm, said recently…

In fact, many computer security researchers view the nearly two decades of efforts to patch the existing network as a Maginot Line approach to defense, a reference to France’s series of fortifications that proved ineffective during World War II. The shortcoming in focusing on such sturdy digital walls is that once they are evaded, the attacker has access to all the protected data behind them. “Hard on the outside, with a soft chewy center,” is the way many veteran computer security researchers think of such strategies…."

But in case you're too young to be scared by World War II scenarios, lets have the Times drive the point home with something a little more recent.

Even the most heavily garrisoned military networks have proved vulnerable. Last November, the United States military command in charge of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars discovered that its computer networks had been purposely infected with software that may have permitted a devastating espionage attack.

So what's the solution? "Internet gated communities," where you give up "certain freedoms and privacy" for the peace of mind that only security can bring. Wow, this is all sounding so familiar.