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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."
"We need a second Internet so we can make it easier to spy on you and track you."
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
***
Some years ago, I was investigated by the police following a web page in which I disparaged a spammer (where I live, there is no freedom of speech). The spammer managed to convince that the page was somehow illegal; it took something like 5 months to the police to figure out who I really was, and all along the way I could hear them loudly stomping like the fuckingly clueless marching morons they are. When they finally directly got to me, I told them to fuck-off, as they didn't happen to have jurisdiction. Despite the thinly veiled threats of siccing the local cops on me, I held firm, told them to fuck-off, and eventually, I learned that they would not press charge as they weren't convinced that the charges would hold in water...
"Doing law enforcement is getting harder, so let's change the rules"
I see this now in almost every arena of law enforcement... and for good reason. It *is* getting harder to do low enforcement. The thought process is something like this: "As law enforcement, we know we're failing; we can't really stop the criminals, so let's treat everyone as a suspect." Basically enforcing laws is a traditional behavior. It is the way to maintain stability and control on society and in a similar way that traditions maintain cultural norms. Traditional behaviors are the antithesis of innovation.
Technology is changing at a breakneck pace, and increasing in the speed of change. It is hard, nigh impossible for large, bureaucratic, rules-based organizations to keep pace with innovation in technology, and the concomitant adoption by criminals.
The disturbing thing is that instead of law enforcement innovating to keep up with the demands of the job, many in law enforcement have lobbied successfully to change the rules of the game. This is most true in the United States over the last five years with the tired dirge: "give up your liberties or the terrorists will win".
I think the correct solution is to change the way we do law enforcement. Change the people who do it. Make smaller, more nimble organizations. Change the speed with which law enforcement operates. Remove entrenched, non-technical savvy deadweight from organizations. Incorporate the latest technology. Change quickly with the rest of society and keep the fundamental principles that make open society possible and successful.
And for christ's sakes, please stop degrading people by forcing them to take off their clothing and shoes to board an airplane. I know, it seems totally off topic, but the same idea we can't really stop the criminals, so let's treat everyone as a suspect.
I suppose that you'll need to have a national ID card before connecting to this second internet.
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Actually, it has little to do with stupid. What started as random voices against the internet from various corners several years ago is now solidifying into a very firm and well-funded opposition to a the free internet.
The reasons of the different parties vary, but they are all pushing consistently for the same outcome -- a monitored and controlled internet. Most worryingly, their lobbying and scare tactics are increasingly getting results.
First, everyone under the hat of IFPI and the various Recording and Movie Ass. of wherever are in the game as their business model is evaporating. They want more restrictions and more monitoring, so that they can eat into your consumer surplus better. Most other copyright and related rights owners jump on this bangwagon, as they have strong vested interest in having their monopoly to be extended in various ways.
Then, there are the newspapers and the TV -- in addition to belonging in the first group, they feel their revenues are being eaten by a random collection of bloggers, aggregators and other uncontrollable internet evils that deliver more targeted and interesting commentary faster and at lower cost. Besides, their relevance as propaghanda tool (and their position as "the fourth power") is also threatened, and they'll fight hard to keep it.
Finally, there is the government. The establishment want to know more about you so that they can tax you (and, in general, manage you) better. Surveillance is always a boon to them, and anything that can bring more is very welcome. Especially lobbying groups like those above, who make seemingly "legitimate" cases for more surveillance and control. But it doesn't end there. The internet is also a threat to the establishment in that it allows exposure of their questionable activities; it keeps track of their past deeds. This threat makes the life of the establishment politicians hard, and they'll fight to remove it. Bribery is a big source of income, and threats to it are hardly welcome. Finally, the internet allows "fringe politicians" and large groups of people to gather behind a cause quickly and efficiently. This tends to make, among everything else, lobbying less efficient, and decrease the amount of legal bribery income.
And, this push against the free internet is happening everywhere. Draconian internet laws have sprung fast virtually everywhere in the past year or two - the US, Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea, which suggests what happens is not a random process at all.
Just like you need a driver's license to use the public road system, or a passport to fly, you will need a Internet license.
requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction.
The smart criminals have been using encryption (and steganography) to communicate with each other since before the government figured out that export controls don't keep strong encryption out of the hands of foreigners.
They'll happily keep using encryption, too, on top of whatever "second internet" you force everybody to use. This isn't about not being able to spy on scary cybercriminals who are hiding from the law, it's about being able to spy on people who don't realize they have anything to hide.
It has been a long time since I've seen such a terribly written post filled with so much garbage reach the score 5 on Slashdot. I have no choice but to debunk the entire post piece by piece.
requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction. also much easier to implement than trying to build an internet around catching crooks.How would this help catch anyone? How would you enforce it? How do you propose that you try to catch someone violating their VPN lock? Do you expect them to post to their MySpace while they're stealing credit card infos?
so what do you do with the criminals from Africa who are connected to organized crime, who have whole 'internet cafes' and people standing watch so they can get out of there if the 'police' come, who are more than likely on the take anyways...Seriously, you don't need your own accomplice cafe to be anonymous on the internet, much less to skirt some stupid probation condition like "only use the internet through our proxy/vpn." ---- Shit, okay I need to go see a woman, apparently, so I'll just end with this:
although i Seriously doubt they're going to make it easier for the movie and music industries to track down users, and catch them 'in the act' what is going to get targeted is the stuff that really steals from the banks, and the rich and gives it to the criminals.if i had the money I'd bet a billion dollars that within a decade hacking will be traceable world wide, through hardware ids before they get the money transfered from one bank account to another one.
Why do you need a billion dollars? I'll give you 10:1 odds on any amount you name. You don't understand anything, I am really embarrassed that Slashdot even ran this story, let alone give a post like yours a score of 5.
Seriously Slashdot, you guys fucking suck now.
I can't end this post though without commenting on the original article.
This is one of the worst written articles I've ever seen on Slashdot. It contains absolutely nothing that cannot be solidly labeled "FUD." The article itself is all over the place, devoid of real-world examples you might get from a real journalist, and reads like it has been written by a child. It's very clear to me that Patrick J. Dempsey is not very intelligent, and does not understand the types of challenges that exist for internet security, nor does he understand the liberties we're used to enjoying here in The United States of America. Case in point: this guy's argument could be made in favor of putting cameras on every street corner and requiring everyone to carry federal (or international) identification cards.
A 'harden the borders' approach can solve many problems. Problem with Illegal aliens working in your country and siphoning the money home to their families? Catch the wire transfers going across the border!
Unfortuntely, that is also known as protectionism, and it wrecks havoc on the ability of companies to globalize.
Oh noes! How will we remain buzzword compliant?
And for me? How will I sell vintage microcontrollers to geeks in Japan??
(the answer, of course, for me personally is PayPal)
Why America needs a military censorship? America entered the period of deep difficulties. The image of secure haven was destroyed on 9/11. It is not cool anymore to live or to invest in the USA.
To remain a superpower the USA needs Siberia. Madeleine Albright declared that the resources of Siberia belong to the "whole humanity" (read the West). America and its European satellites prepare for the Great Crusade. Iraq and Iran are just a springboard.
The leaders of the USA realize that the financial and economical crisis are just the first signs of the decline. At the same time the BRIC countries experience 8 - 9 % growth, and the general opinion among economists is that it's just a beginning.
Why Siberia? The territory of Russia alone is almost 5 times larger that of the whole EU. Almost all resources of the world, energy, metals, etc. are in Siberia. Who controls Siberia - controls the world economy.
The USA occupied shortly the Siberia in 1918 and 1919 but was fought out by the bolshevics. They want to replay it. America prepares for the war. The radars, the record military budget, the 700 military bases, the expansion of NATO are parts of this historical process.
The price of the gas in the USA exceeded 3 USD, soon it will be 4+. Those who were in the USA and know how it is built realize that Amrica simply will not be able to function with the expensive petrol.
When Vladimir Putin was asked of his opinion on this Madeleine Albright's ideas he answered that it showed that the course on the strengthening of the defense was correct. So the world is nearing the new great war. That is why the military censorship, the second Internet for the "democracies", is needed.
I wouldn't care if the "new internet" is highly censored, controlled and governed by tough international rules laws and security restrictions - as long as I can switch on the good old internet 1.0 aka the "anarchy net". Bank affairs and work goes through Internet 2... pr0n, IRC chatting, Quake playing, warez hunting and wikileaks reading goes through internet 1.
There may be a need for a "new" net, but the goals would be completely different.
Such a network would need to provide things like distributed caching by default and censorship resistance, as well as anonymity.
For example the network would cache all cachable protocolls by default, as often as it can be done. Then no site could be slashdotted again as many of the routers in between would just cache the content. A great side effect is that the identity of the originator of the request would be obscured by the routers.
Another important point is that it must not have any "single points of control" like the DNS-system or IP allocations.
Furthermore we would need to focus on every participant beeing able to route. The network must not be tree-like anymore. If you have wireless LAN and your neighbour has, too, there must be automatic peering.
Another idea would be to make it work on scaresly connected networks. Imagine you have a mobile device. It could try to fetch your encrypted (!) e-mail and fetch it whenever you have a connection. Every router in the connection would try to accept the request and cache the response until you have a connection again.
"Well, that is almost true. With certain Windows exploits, you can be doing perfectly normal things on your PC and still become infected. You can even have a firewall and anti-virus/anti-spam spam filter."
Sure, and that's why the only solution is to boot from the flash drive.
A trojan could of course run the flash drive in a virtual machine, but this is one case where the Trusted Platform Module could be used for good instead of evil (DRM).
Additionally, it gives the bank power to root your machine, but all you have to do is make sure the hard drive activity LED doesn't light up even once, since it doesn't have any business accessing it. The most paranoid users would just use two machines, since even a 10 year old machine would be powerful enough.
My Sig: SEGV
Why do it the hard way? I have a cryptographic key In my hand. If I tell you my Password is fluffybunnies88 at my Chase bank account it will not help you. you need the 6 digit code my key is giving me every 30 seconds AND the cryptographic key on my thumb drive. this stops the thiefs dead cold. Even the low security version that ebay and Paypal is wildly successful and only fails if they do a man in the middle attack and echo your info inside the time window and then reconfigure your account to disable the extra security.
There are craploads of solutions. Keyloggers cant get past keyscrambler for firefox (I tried for a long time to write a keylogger that can get in front of keyscrambler, Installing a new "driver" seems to be the solution but it brakes keyscrambler and alerts the user.)
All of those solutions will give the security experts time. time to make something different to drop in place the moment they think the criminals found a way around it.
The problem is getting past the inherent laziness of the average human. They dont want to find their keyfob and then type in it's number, so the acceptance of these systems is low. The banks need to force it upon the customer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Law enforcement is probably the lowest form of job. I'm sorry, the police suck. They aren't the guys on TV. Most of the time they are stupid. They have no real concept of scientific method and most criminal investigation is nothing more than a witch hunt. Most of the time they are lucky because most criminals are just as dumb as the police.
The gods help you if one of these reptiles accuses you of a crime. They decide guilt before collecting evidence. Then they make their case that you are guilty. It is far easier to paint a picture that someone is guilty using the stuff laying around rather than actually thinking about the evidence.
The police would like nothing more than to track and have information on every person, find it inconvenient that things like civil rights get in the way, or that beating up a "suspect" is a bad thing. They are driven by power and the ability to intimidate people. In the locker room they joke about giving people shit. I know this because I know a lot of cops, and I've only met a couple who were decent people and they had to quit because they couldn't take it.
The police mind set is antipathy for freedoms we hold dear. When the police want to change something that exists, they will use "crime" as the excuse, but make no mistake, it is about control. Unfortunately politicians are not much removed from police.
Exactly how long does he think it will take before someone, somewhere, installs a router between the old Internet and the New Internet?
I would guess it might take slightly longer than a nanosecond. But not by much. Most of the first New Internet routers will be installed in schools, to protect the children. I'm pretty sure that there is at least one evil grad student in one of our schools who is fully capable of configuring a router.
On second thought, the New Internet would probably be connected to the Old Internet before it even boots up for the first time.
Hence the recommendation of a one-time pad on a separate boot disk. Then one does not need to know if one's hard drive is clean.
Captcha: trusty...