Former FBI Agent Calls for a Second Internet

An anonymous reader writes "Former FBI Agent Patrick J. Dempsey warns that the Internet has become a sanctuary for cyber criminals and the only way to rectify this is to create a second, more secure Internet. Dempsey explains that, in order to successfully fight cyber crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with international law enforcement officials. The problem is various legal systems are unprepared for the fight, which is why he claims we must change the structure of the Internet."

Comments

Also...

[TheWizardTim]

... the FBI want's a pony.

Second Nigeria

[Viking Coder]

If only we could create a second, more secure Nigeria.

i'm gonna go build my own internet!

[Deanalator]

.. with blackjack, and hookers!

spam is just a special case of "cybercrime"

[Darkforge]

so we can re-use our old forms. It's a bit surprising how effective this is.

--

Patrick J. Dempsey, your post advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting international "cybercrime." Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from nation to nation.)

( ) spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) legitimate Internet uses would be affected
(x) no one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) it is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) it will protect us for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) users of the Internet will not put up with it
(x) microsoft will not put up with it
(x) the police will not put up with it
(x) requires too much cooperation from criminals
(x) requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) many users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

specifically, your plan fails to account for

(x) laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) lack of centrally controlling authority for the Internet
(x) open relays in foreign countries
( ) ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) asshats
(x) jurisdictional problems
( ) unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) huge existing software investment in the Internet
(x) willingness of users to install os patches received by email
(x) armies of worm riddled broadband-connected windows boxes
( ) eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) extreme profitability of international crime
(x) joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) technically illiterate politicians
( ) extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with criminals
(x) dishonesty on the part of criminals themselves
( ) bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
(x) smtp headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) blacklists suck
(x) whitelists suck
( ) we should be able to talk about viagra without being censored
( ) countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) sending email should be free
(x) why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(x) incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(x) i don't want the government reading my email
( ) killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

furthermore, this is what i think about you:

( ) sorry dude, but i don't think it would work.
(x) this is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) nice try, assh0le! i'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

In light of the real issue:

[merc]

Dempsey explains that, in order to successfully fight cyber crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with international law:

I call for a second FBI.

Actually, yes.

[Max Littlemore]

"Former FBI Agent Patrick J. Dempsey warns that the Internet has become a sanctuary for cyber criminals

Any time you have a new community or resource to exploit, there will be criminals. However, calling it a sanctuary is hardly apt. I can think of more than a few places that are a sanctuary for criminals, yet you won't see the government razing those neighborhoods and starting anew, would you? Besides, who gets called a criminal?

Actually, the internet is a sanctuary for cyber criminals. You don't find cyber criminals holding up armoured trucks at gun point, regular meat criminals do that, you find cyber criminals on the interwebs. That's why they're cyber criminals. The intertubes are a sanctuary for cyber criminals for exactly the same reason that the FBI is a sanctuary for corrupt FBI agents.

I totally recommend creating a second internet, and a second FBI, a second stock market, a second local primary school. Everything.

No one thing should get all the cred for harbouring criminals. If people want to be paranoid and really stupid, let them be paranoid and really stupid and have a good laugh at their expense.

Re:Ummmmm, no.

[tsm_sf]

Pulling common sense into a discussion about law enforcement is practically unamerican. We want more criminals, but harder penalties. Prevention doesn't fill jails, buddy.

Re:Restricting to VPN

[r_jensen11]

requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction. I would love to see the results of only restricting convicted pedo's to only VPN's.

Pedo 1: a.s.l?
Pedo 2: 13, f, nyc. u?
Pedo 1: 12, f, nyc 2! Hmm, a network of only 13-year-olds.... So the real question is, would it be one giant digg?

Re:Hmm...

[phpmysqldev]

"Will the second internet have Third Life?"

No, no! Its a multiplier so it would have 4th life. Which raises the question of what happened to 3rd life?

Which is why I will be producing the new online sensation "5th Life: Search for 3rd Life"

Dont even get me started on the currency conversion.

Re:Hmm...

[spun]

I don't think the bicycle analogy is very good. I agree. This is Slashdot; we only use car analogies here. Of course we do. A good car analogy is like a finely tuned race car. It gets you where you need to go faster. Although it's loud. And it's probably not street legal. And sometimes your car analogy crashes into someone else's car analogy and there's a big wreck but the fans love that anyway. And you need a lot of gas, did I mention the gas?