A 2014 inductee into the Internet Hall of Fame, Paul Vixie is the founder and CEO of the California-based Farsight Security, which uses real-time contextual information about domain usage and the registration of domain names to detect threats and prevent potential cybercrimes.
Even with his company’s six-year database of more than 13 billion domain name systems to help keep personal information safe, Vixie said in a recent interview with the Irish Times that the sheer amount of data available online has the developed world on track to have some painful privacy conversations in the near future.
“America had its day of reckoning with Big Tobacco and we’re going to have to have it now with Big Data,” he said. “I don’t love that we’re having this problem but I do love that everybody finally wants to talk about it, because it’s been clear for a long time that we’re on the slippery slope toward losing the fundamental freedoms that in the West, in general, were inviolate.”
