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US No Longer the World's Internet Hub
museumpeace brings us a New York Times story about how internet traffic is increasingly flowing around the US as web-based industries catch up in other parts of the world. Other issues, such as the Patriot Act, have made foreign companies wary about having their data on US servers. From the NYTimes:
"Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications. Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States."
Americans would also be up in arms if most of their traffic was routed through China.
The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized.
Besides, why should the US carry all the rest of the world's traffic? The world is a globe, which doesn't have a center. Why should Europe / East Asia connections pass through the US? Let them build their share of the interconnects. They've got way more people, and we need all our bandwidth for ourselves, just like anyone else.
The US invented the Internet. We should be exporting equipment and expertise, so the rest of the world can do business with us (and with each other our way), and get paid right to do it.
--
make install -not war
He, who would rather be helping Russian or Chinese agencies, really ought to sleep in the bed they are making for themselves...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Other countries wouldn't have a problem with routing their traffic through the United States if we had good public relations...
"For every packet your country sends through the U.S., you will automatically be entered in a drawing for one of your citizens to win an all-expenses paid trip to exotic, sunny Cuba!"
That would get them excited!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Another example of how the failed GOP policies are moving progress backwards in this country.
to stop this harmful globalization of our internet. i mean, its america where the tubes are and it needs to stay that way. globalization of the internet harms our way of life, and the future of our children.
why, just last week a boy in arkansas was forced to GeoIP his way to a foreign server so he could has cheezburger. what next? rich icons like goatse and the fat lightsaber guy? but only in that weird numa numa language? the mustard man hosted in russia?
Good people go to bed earlier.
good
See, our paranoia and fear is now hurting our economy. And as a result it's hastening our decline. Maybe this will be a wake up call to the powers that be.
Thanks, Washington. Between the patriot act and the DMCA, you've managed to legislate one of the few booming industries we had out of the country.
Used to be, there were four things we did better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery
You're really trying to cross things off that list as fast as you can, aren't you?
Over time the Internet will turn into islands of privacy and security, in a sea of spam, surveillance, and people who at one time would have used AOL.
My blog
Probably has nothing to do with the US telecoms infrastructure falling behind the rest of the world.
This is a free market at its best. The United States provides a poor service (allow us to carry your data, and we will spy on it), so foreign telecomms decide the better value is not to route traffic through the United States. Our own laws that promote spying, snooping, invasion of privacy, and generally going against the spirit of the Constitution (I say spirit because it does not apply to foreign citizens in most cases) will be used against us. Other nations will decide that we are increasingly irrelevant: our dollar is on a trend of weakening against foreign currencies due to the massive trade deficit which in turn puts our balls squarely in the hands of countries such as China. This weakens our clout in international markets. This story is just one facet of the weakening of the United States as a superpower and our downward slide into becoming a third-world country. Our politicians and corporate executives are so concerned about maintaining their wealth that they are willing to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
No, I am not cynical. I am also not sarcastic.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Not only is the data traffic going around the USA, the flow of passengers in airplanes should also follow that trend because of those interesting "hand over the laptop" policies.
It seems ironic to me that the USA government is moving towards a more controlled (shall we say police state?) environment while focusing everyone's attention on other countries (i.e. China) while claiming that those guys are in fact way worse in terms of privacy issues.
I believe such hub has been established somewhere in Europe a while ago, and supposedly the US has complete, undisturbed access to all traffic.
That the GOP and Bush admin (and many blue dog dems) are dead set on destroying America from the inside out.
So not only are airplane passengers less likely to route through the USA (because of those interesting "hand-over-the-laptop" policies) but now the actual traffic of data is also getting routed around for the same concerns?
Isn't it ironic that this general trend of anti-privacy actions is happening while the government of the USA is focusing everyone's attention outside on other countries with even worse privacy situations (ie China)?
Welcome to America, the Land of the Free! Err.. scratch that.. Welcome to America.
You just got troll'd!
Relocation. It's not just for tax reasons anymore.
In the long run, I don't think it matters that some countries are routing traffic around the United States. The truth of the matter is simply that the U.S. intelligence agencies will find new ways to get the data by either covertly installing monitoring and capture equipment in the countries of interests or by strong-arming those governments to send traffic our way. Yes, I realize that governments don't centrally control most internet hubs in most countries but you can bet that when money or other aide is at risk, they'll find a way to make it happen.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
don't spy on the communications in and out of their countries? The US does not have a monopoly on signals intelligence. This is one of those issues where any country that has any sig int capabilities are using it to monitor the tubes.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This article can't be correct. The second paragraph claims the internet was created by "American Scientists in the 1970s", when everybody knows it was created by Al Gore!
Thank God!
oh nos? who is cheating this time?
someone underaged?
something faked?
guess the bronzes isn't worth the SAME afterall than copper (or gold, or silver)
... the more computer systems slip through your fingers.
Every time the U.S. acts to abuse its position of relevance in the world, the world will take steps to make the U.S. less relevant. The U.S. has had major controls over the communications across the world and that is changing. The U.S. has major controls and influence over the price and flow of oil in the world and that too is changing with China buying up major influence in the middle east and in Africa. The banking systems are controlled by some elite individuals that even the U.S. cannot claim 'ownership' of but it won't be long before even those entities are displaced as they abuse the governments and citizens of the world.
The thing about the Patriot Act is (theoretically at least), the US government needed it to give them permission to do certain things. In a lot (most?) of countries such an act would be unnecessary because the government already feels free to do whatever it wants. Does anyone actually think China, or Russia, or the UK won't be doing the same thing, just not as openly? I mean, you could maybe make an argument that some of the more enlightened Scandinavian countries may be trusted to put human rights above paranoia, but it's a very small group.
Other issues, such as the Patriot Act, have made foreign companies wary about having their data on US servers.
No. Other forces such as wanting increase profit margins are probably having a bigger influence.
WRT legislation, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has probably had a greater impact on influencing companies on their move. Provisions within S-OX require companies to provide access to data to allow for full data audits. That would include emails, internal reports, etc.
I piss off bigots.
Not really knowing network technology as in depth as some around here.... is there a way to ensure your IP traffic doesn't pass through the United States? If I wanted to email someone in Brazil from Canada, is there a way I could explicitly route my email message around the U.S.A? Or is all this talk just that, for the little guy?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Thanks, Washington. Between the patriot act and the DMCA, you've managed to legislate one of the few booming industries we had out of the country.
Used to be, there were four things we did better than anyone else:
music
movies microcode high-speed pizza delivery You're really trying to cross things off that list as fast as you can, aren't you?
Snow Crash. I keep on meaning to read that book...
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
How about we have an international network that is completely free from politics and that politicians can't touch?
don't spy on the communications in and out of their countries? The US does not have a monopoly on signals intelligence. This is one of those issues where any country that has any sig int capabilities are using it to monitor the tubes.
Exactly what I was thinking. We may have had a hand in pioneering SIGINT, but there are certainly others that have done their best to perfect it (cough, China, cough).
Oh, and for those who still have dirt in their hair from head-in-ground syndrome, Mother Russia hasn't exactly turned all it's SIGINT facilities into potato farms.
"The complete and utter arrogance of our Government and it's treatment of, not only us, but the rest of the World is starting to bite us in the ass."
Is it? Can you honestly tell me that other countries not only don't spy on their own citizens, but they don't spy on other countries for intelligence and economic gain?
The internet is supposed to be global, so having the traffic spread out is a good idea anyway. I'm all for having major "hubs" all across the world. Of course US would go "big brother" on the data that flows through it, not surprised. I'm pretty sure other countries do the same, but it's not advertised. Unless you have something to hide, who cares? Right? :)
so now when George W. Bush refers to the Internet in plural, it will actually make sense?
They don't have laws against it that the break in order to do it. It's the lack of order that causes problems. The USA claimes to be rule-driven, but then breaks its own rules. Other countries, like China are easier to operate in. They have no real rules, and if you fall on the wrong side of one, you pay someone off and everything is ok. The US has some twisted concerns about bribery (it's legal if you call it a "contribution" but not if you fail to report it, and we outlaw a non-US citizen bribing someone in a foreign country as a regular necessary part of operating in that country). So we just don't get it sometimes. But even China can be easier to operate aa business in than the USA.
Learn to love Alaska
"The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized."
True. However, you missed the most important point. Because of "intelligence" agency surveillance in the U.S., commerce in the U.S. is no longer safe. So companies are taking their business elsewhere.
It's not just internet traffic. Software from the U.S. cannot be trusted. All of the U.S. government's many secret departments believe that they can a) order executives of companies that do business in the U.S. to provide any help they want so that they can accomplish surveillance, and b) put the executives in prison if they reveal the corruption. So, any software that has ever been under U.S. control, or has been corrupted by the U.S. government, cannot be trusted.
Often employees of U.S. government secret departments take jobs in commercial companies, and pretend to be normal employees, while serving illegal purposes of the secret departments. So even companies in other countries cannot be trusted to be free of corrupt surveillance, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
It's not like any of that is a big secret. There are plenty of books and articles about U.S. government surveillance. However, most people in the U.S. just don't want to believe the level of corruption.
US export regulations have a way of being over-broad, just for the ease of legislating. As the Rather than protecting one or two key components, the export regulations tend to protect an entire assembly.
To quote from the article referenced by the parent post (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11965352): "IN THE spring of 2006 Robert Bigelow needed to take a stand on a trip to Russia to keep a satellite off the floor. The stand was made of aluminium. It had a circular base and legs. It was, says the entrepreneur and head of Bigelow Aerospace in Nevada, "indistinguishable from a common coffee table". Nonetheless, the American authorities told Mr Bigelow that this coffee table was part of a satellite assembly and so counted as a munition. During the trip it would have to be guarded by two security officers at all times."
If that sounds a bit off-center, then perhaps I might add a personal anecdote. In the 1980's I corresponded with someone in a Dutch consultancy. Their company had just won a contract from some Dutch ministry to move a lot of data and Fortran software from a mainframe to a PC environment. They had figured to dump the lot on tape, get the tape to their offices, and then read the tape using a 9-track tape drive connected to a PC on their LAN, recompile the Fortran code on PC, and process the data on PC.
They had (accurately) budgeted for the purchase of a 9-track tape drive and needed one in a hurry. I was asked for a name of good a US manufacturer (they didn't even consider any other source) of 9-track tapes, which I found in 10 minutes and gave to them. So far so good.
That's when the trouble started.
They were careful people and actually phoned the US embassy in The Netherlands to see if they could just order that tape drive, and what the import/export formalities would be. It's well that they did, because, yes, there were some difficulties. Just the formality of an export license. Asked how to obtain one, the embassy responded that not they, but the manufacturer would have to get the license. And that it would take anywhere between 3-4 months to process the paperwork.
Yes, that's right. In order to export a 9-track tape drive to The Netherlands in the nineteen eighties (NATO partner and all) there would be a 3-4 month wait while the paperwork cleared!
Well ... that wasn't an option for them, since the deadline on their contract was only 6 months away. So they went and bought another make. I believe it was Japanese. Or French. Which was duly bought and installed in their offices two weeks later. They successfully completed the move too and delighted the ministry they were working for by much quicker turnaround times (on high-end PCs; the software being CPU-bound) at a fraction of the cost they would incur on the mainframe.
But in the mean time the US Inc. lost an order for a rather ordinary and fairly innocuous 9-track tape drive, which could be second-sourced on the open market within a week or so, while starting off as the *only* name on the shortlist. And all because of some well-intentioned but rather inept export regulations.
As we move towards mobile computing and get off the wire again, the whole conversation becomes moot -- the US will just intercept your communications directly out of the air as you navigate from your blackberry.
The internet is a redundant fault tolerant network. It routes around damage. Censorship is damage. Monitoring is damage. Theft of the commons by rights holders is damage. What did they think was going to happen?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just like the STUPID encryption export laws a few years ago, that prevented U.S. companies from competing internationally, and did not slow down foreign research one whit.
We MUST get our government to KNOCK OFF THE BULLSHIT, because it is hurting us a great deal. Both in domestic freedom, and in our opportunities to compete internationally.
don't spy on the communications in and out of their countries? The US does not have a monopoly on signals intelligence. This is one of those issues where any country that has any sig int capabilities are using it to monitor the tubes.
You are exactly right, and I agree with you, because I myself have worked in Signals Intelligence Collection and Analyst while stationed at NAVIOCOM Maryland(NAVSECGRUACT Ft Meade). There is a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors that regular people do not even know, and thusly they can only hypothesize or theorize what is going on.
They don't have laws against it that the break in order to do it. It's the lack of order that causes problems. The USA claimes to be rule-driven, but then breaks its own rules. Other countries, like China are easier to operate in. They have no real rules, and if you fall on the wrong side of one, you pay someone off and everything is ok. The US has some twisted concerns about bribery (it's legal if you call it a "contribution" but not if you fail to report it, and we outlaw a non-US citizen bribing someone in a foreign country as a regular necessary part of operating in that country). So we just don't get it sometimes. But even China can be easier to operate aa business in than the USA.
There are rules in play when you work at any of the intelligence agencies they are called USSID's United States Signals Intelligence Directives. many of them outline such activies as eavesdropping and wiretapping and who and what we can collect on. USSID 18, for example, deals with collection of information on US Citizens, Businesses, and Our Allies. Violation of such rules and guidelines can get your clearance suspended or in some cases completely revoked, and never to be re-instated. If you get it revoked, you are promptly escorted out of the building by security guards with personal effects in a box. In worst of cases you are also read your miranda rights. Not many people understand that portion, yet claim the IC can do what they want because they are the Government and are above the laws, which totally ass backwards.
There's an old adage that says that "the Internet detects damage and routes around it."
Way to piss away our competitive advantage. Maybe if we stop the 2-party system I might actually still have a job in 30 years. Doubtful that will happen though.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
then i'm ok.
"those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States."
Because those countries don't have similar policies, right? Except that they do. . .
What if the rest of the world bypassed and then disconnected the United States from the Internet.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It's not ruin. It's opportunity. Lots of market for free and open bandwidth, and lots of jurisdictions who don't care how you kibble your bits. Offshore hosting looks like a chance for the banana republics to build their online economies. It will happen there as well as here, not instead, so everybody benefits.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The result, as you can see, is ruin.
Um...let's not call it ruin quite yet.
You'll have that sometimes...
Other countries abuse their positions just the same as the US does. The difference is that the US has had a lot of power compared to other countries for the past century. This power never came from being trusted and respected by other nations, because we weren't.
It comes from our high level of industrialization and the resulting productivity associated with it. When we stopped really building new infrastructure in the '70s it was only a matter of time before other nations caught up.
"The banking systems are controlled by some elite individuals that even the U.S. cannot claim 'ownership' of"
That's not really true. All the $$$ in the us are "made" by the FED giving loans to the nations major banks. The FED chairman and board of governors is appointed by the president.
While security of data plays a small role, economics is playing a larger role. FTFA
International networks that carry data into and out of the United States are still being expanded at a sharp rate, but the Internet infrastructure in many other regions of the world is growing even more quickly.
The traffic in and out of the US isn't going down, it's still climbing. As countries develop around the world, it makes economic sense that they would develop their own intraregional connections. China is natrually going to build more tubes to it's developing regional trade partners. You have a situation where there is more global communication being generated elsewhere, which results in a reduction in the % of traffic through the US.
This is less about security policy, and more about the reduced economic reliance on the US.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
So, more internet traffic will be routed through Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nicaragua, etc...
It appears that a good number of posters to this article believe that the US intelligence agencies are the only ones that listen in on foreign and domestic communications. If you do honestly believe that, it's time that you reread a little world history.
Morons...
Does anyone else here think this has more to do with the fact that the US isn't the center of the technological world any more? Earth is a big, big place and the United States is a small part of it, why should we expect to be the Internet's hub in any case? Isn't it a lot more plausible that routes that don't go through the US are preferred because they're better?
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized.
To get technical, the Internet is decentralized, but not distributed. Here's a good illustration of the differences:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420/RM3420.chapter1.html
In a truly distributed network all nodes are (relatively) equal, with (roughly) the same number of links between all the nodes. In a decentralized network, there is no centre (duh), but there are nodes that are "larger" than others, and are 'hubish'. These more concentrated nodes (i.e., ISPs) talk to the edge nodes as well as between themselves.
The above illustration is from Paul Baran's original RAND memo:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420/index.html
This might spoil the tin foil hat party but all these changes are almost certainly due to market forces and the growing ubiquity of network hardware and services getting much cheaper after the 2000 bubble hit and companies were forced to reduce prices and cut back on pie in the sky stuff and concentrate on basic network service. The article bandwidth plot showed the decreasing trend in bandwidth started in 1999-2000 before 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Plus as developing nations build up their networks, they're going to go the cheaper route, they don't have to go to the US anymore because this hardware is all a commodity now. It's cheaper to reduce unnecessary connections and keep your services closer, if Egypt wants a international connection they can get less latency by going to Europe than the US, ten years back there wasn't a choice.
Porn!
We Canadians have made a business of spying on you americans. Our biggest customer is your government.
If I am a secret service, my job is to supply infomration by eavesdropping - also on the Internet. I may build something like ECHELON, tapping both sattelite communication and cables both at land and the sea. But if I am clever, I ask the market leaders of routers to include a tiny little piece of code in their products, which nobody will notice. This little code will be a trojan-boot-loader (TBL). It will listen to certain commands embedded in traffic, preferably in search engine queries adn answers as there it will be difficult to detect. And if I know the serial number of the device and the company which purchased it, I have a nice means of industrial espionage. So in any net which is connected to the Internet I will have my information provider. If I am a government or a company which has competitors in the US, UK or NZ I would not buy a router - I would use a Linux based one with the software compiled by myself!
Because the US had the most developed infrastructure countries and corporation obtained their connections from there, the biggest web hosts were there so traffic had to go through the US, now internet traffic outside the US has grown to an extent that justifies creating exchanges and dedicated lines between European and Asian isp's. There is no need to route traffic through the US as there was 10 years ago.
...are NOT belongs to U.S.!?!?!
Give me a break!!! I would subscribe to your arugment if every other country in the world wasn't interested in stealing US research and gaining access to the US market for their firms while denying access by US firms to their markets. The last thing the rest of the world wants is a level playing field so why should we provide one for them to take advantage of at our expense?
Let's use our market power to demand free and FAIR markets! No more government subsidies (CHINA, INDIA, MALAYSIA, ETC.) and no more protectionism (BRITAIN, FRANCE, GERMANY, ETC.). Our trade policies should exactly reflect those of the trade partner (and individual countries, not unions like the EU). Won't let US companies repatriate their profits Britain, France, China, etc.? Fine, don't plan on taking your profits home. Won't let US companies own your companies Britain, France, China, India, etc? Turn over 51% ownership in all the US companies you've purchased. Want to keep out our cars China, India, Japan, etc.? Yours aren't welcome here either and neither is anything else you manufacture until both sides can sell whatever they want.
Unfortunately we care way too much about what other countries think. And those countries are taking it straight to the bank as they fan the flames so they can continue to take advantage of our markets at our expense.
Great idea!
we have started a free geolocation service just in time! :-) sure it isn't for global giants, but the small firms and projects can use it just as well.
WIPmania - free IP database under Creative Commons
got a bad case of the supposed to's.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Pakistan isn't. Iran isn't. Iran WAS when the US was supporting the Shah but the people revolted.
Really, you sound very scared, confused, and uninformed. But don't worry, everything will be ok. Come here, let me give you a hug.
Nobody's mentioned "FOIP" yet. The "Freedom of Information and Privacy" Act in Canada is both an FOI act when it comes to forcing the government (and some private companies) to reveal all non-classified information upon request, and a privacy-enforcement act that requires government and private business alike to safeguard any personal information for which they are custodian.
I work for a municipal government in Canada, and I have explicitly heard, from IT management in meetings, that we cannot give any contracts for data entry, data storage, data reduction and analysis, etc, to American firms, since the Patriot Act. This only applies to data classified a "private" under the FOIP rules, but here's the rub: the really simple way to handle some large data sets is to just duplicate the whole thing, all the tables. Going over them all to determine the FOIP status of every column and carefully remove, say, any column for "phone number" of your own staff or your customers, is a pain.
What's not a pain is going to a Canadian firm, having them sign a boilerplate FOIP-compliant privacy protection agreement. Various other countries with privacy legislation can be dealt with as well. Americans, alas, must hand over any and all data that the justice system asks for under the Patriot Act, so we can't give them the work.
I haven't heard of us going so far as to avoid transmission of FOIP-covered data through any network that will go through the USA, but after the FISA bill, I would say it's merely a matter of time.
Traffic analysis without cracking crypto is a huge and valuable source of intelligence. Knowing who's talking to whom is something spies really want to know, and it's something the people talking would often hate to have revealed. For a small-scale, down to earth example, look at the HP pretexting scandal.
Why is it important if data or even information or learning or research or much of anything is 'in' the US? Life sciences for example are flocking to other countries because of fundamentalist objections to it. Why not tech? America is country that for the most part believes the earth is 6000 years old and Jesus and Adam and Eve rode to church on dinosaurs.
It was - for people who attended the Olympics.
It does not do that on its own and history has shown more than once that routing around damage takes a while.
Let the PC get its zen on, for chrissake!
I woder why:
No company wants to have to deal with:
1) The Patriot Act
2) Ass-rape happy ISPs
3) ADA laws
4) Liability
5) And those slimy bastard who think they should have every right to snoop through our private business and keep the rest of us out of theirs
Jesus Christ! Does it really take a genius to realize that brainless legislators and greedy proviser have cost us in the U.S. *ANOTHER* #1 spot?!?!?!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
well best not register cubaorangebikinforfree. domain on an American business say godaddy et all.
Being serious for a second i can recommend 'bad men' it is a book about the people with the free holidays.
I wish people would stop talking about a countries values and start talking about a countries leaders values.
Groups of people arent that different, the larger the group, the smaller the difference, its indivuals (leaders) that represent the biggest difference.
Or maybe it's just that more trunk lines and switching equipment are being installed throughout the rest of the world.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
It is theft. Their retrograde copyright measures to perpetually protect their stupid animated mouse and pop tarts have cost us all a great deal of intellectual property that would be lapsed from copyright. Some of it was already in the public domain and they've yanked it back with their default copyright coverage. There's a huge mass of cultural capital there. It was ours and they have stolen it.
They deserve to be treated like the criminals they are.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Freeze all accounts of any business that deal with China before they can move the money.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...and if India did this, US support for Pakistan would go up, with a declaration on all offshoring cities as fair game for nuclear testing.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I believe the strategy is called 'divide and conquer'. You make it sound accidental. I'm lucky enough to come from a country that en_GB made for themselves.
Ideally, traffic on the Internet shouldn't pass through any disinterested parties. ISPs should have direct connections to each other so packets can take a short path from one person to another. If those links fail, they can be routed around, of course, but there shouldn't be a single centre point, it makes no sense.
Well, that's what's happening. As more infrastructure is getting built out all over the world, there is more of the mesh connecting going on. Thus there's less traffic being routed where it doesn't need to be. This is exactly how it should be.
The reason the US was the hub of the Internet is by virtue of the technology being developed there and most widely deployed there first. So an ISP in nation X would want to get on the Internet. They'd have to buy a connection from a US firm that had fibre over to them. Same with another ISP over in nation Y. Nation X and Y are now connected to each other via the Internet... However not directly. The packets have to shuffle out to the US and back.
Well, now nation X and Y have much larger internet infrastructures. They have their own meet me rooms and such things. So those ISPs manage to get more direct connections. Thus, their packets don't have to pass through he US anymore. This equals lower costs, lower latency, higher bandwidth and on and on and on.
A miniature of this process already happened in the US. Time was, there were very few locations where US ISPs connected. Big places like MAE West. This lead to all kinds of problems. You could be talking to someone literally down the street, but on a different ISP, and your packet would have to go halfway across the continent and back to get to them. Likewise if one of those big locations had problems, well large portions of the Internet could simply be down.
However, US ISPs now have much better peering. They are more directly connected in different locations. This means that latencies are much better, and there aren't so many large critical links to get easily over saturated and to screw up a large part of traffic if they fail. Also means that if a link does actually fail, there are more and more in geographically diverse locations to route around to.
So that this is happening on a global scale is a great thing and has nothing to do with US politics and everything to do with nations becoming more connected. They have enough people on the Internet, enough infrastructure, enough money in it, that it becomes more worth it to do the same thing the US ISPs did. It isn't paranoia about traffic being spied on. Hell, you should assume that any unencrypted traffic can be looked at. It is simply trying to build a faster, more robust network.
As you say, the Internet wasn't supposed to have a hub. That is in fact the precise reason the whole thing was designed. The US government said "Hey, currently all networks have a centre point that if taken out hoses the network. That sort of thing is a prime target in a nuclear war. So, could maybe we make a network that doesn't, that can route around problems?" From that came ARPANet which is where the Internet started.
We're not talking about "operating in" the U.S., we're talking about data being sent through the U.S. And while other nations might be more openly corrupt, that does not help your data security one bit. There is no amount of bribe you can pay to a Chinese official that will keep them from inspecting your data if they are technically capable of doing so. Same goes for Nigeria, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, etc.
The GP is exactly correct: every nation in the world inspects data passing through it to the greatest extent of its ability. Until recently the U.S. held the distinction of having some of the greatest limits on its ability by virtue of legal frameworks, which was one reason it had the most data flowing through it. Those have been dismantled and now we see data flows spreading out in response--there is no longer an advantage to routing through the U.S. But if people think there is a greater likelihood of data security in other nations they are kidding themselves.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"New York Times story" Okay, done reading. Thanks.
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
Offshore hosting looks like a chance for the banana republics to build their online economies. It will happen there as well as here, not instead, so everybody benefits.
It's already happening. Unfortunately, most of it has been child porn hosting, gambling, scams, and spam spewing, all things which are illegal here. "offshoring" has always been the purvey of criminals and corporate greed. The motivations for moving internet operations offshore is the same old motivation.
I don't buy into the premise of the article anyway. Any company, US or not, that has important data traveling across US electronic networks should already be encrypting it. Thus, why move it "offshore" at this point?
If anything foreign companies should be moving data center ops TO the US due to the weak dollar and quality of the infrastructure.
the voters aren't the biggest problem, the candidates are. if they aren't owned by or part of the oligarchy, they are clueless (neither one is mutually exclusive). we need officials that are actually interested in people and their well-being, and intelligent enough to ask questions... that's what will never happen
Wrong kind of offshore hosting. A "host" is a PC or reasonable simulation thereof. If you lease an offshore host, you can remote to it through SSL using various tools, and use it for things you would ordinarily use the PC on your desk for. Except that since it's in a different jurisdiction, different rules apply. And there's no chance your significant other, kids, or the prying eyes of your local law enforcement will ever come across it without your explicit permission and consent. As long as you don't violate the local rules where the server is, auto-remember your access code or save stuff to your local machine, you're fine.
You have no control over what FEMA, BATF, RIAA or Homeland Security will make illegal retroactively. You can't control what extraneous websites might be preloaded by your browser, nor if you're using Windows, what content is served by your local rootkit. You don't know what they're monitoring, but the safe money is on "everything". 1984 is here. What you can do is avoid exposure to these risks by running a less "malware friendly OS" to connect to your host in a less tyrannical jurisdiction. It may be informative here to point out that members of the judiciary, Congress, and the executive branch of our government never use a computer directly for their own sake. It's too risky. They have digests of their important email read to them over the phone for denyability purposes, and even then the readers are carefully trained to avoid controversial issues and truly important information is passed person-to-person just like Al-Quaida. It's a wonder they can even grasp what the Internet is often enough to fund their share of it.
You can, but don't have to, also use it for serving blogs and data over the Internet but that's not pertinent to my point.
Apparently you know something I don't. AFAIK the incumbent providers have pretty much nixed the Moore's Law model of communications development with their political contributions. Fixing this is far more expensive than running a few fibers to Tijuana or Nogales where persuading the necessary government officials is more of a retail operation.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
sharing experiences like this is one of the reasons I still love slashdot.
Thanks golodh
Firefox &
Now let's talk about the US giving up the control over the DNS, the IP allocation...
Wouldn't you think any TBL would be embedded in the hardware?
China's internet firewall, is about as useful as its great wall
Having lived in China, most of common/normal people I met and talked were naively curious about the world outside of China very little about it. It is not that they simply don't care about politics or internet censorship, its that they don't know what they are missing, to start missing it in the first place?!
Propaganda is successful to the innocent, and poor. Also computers and the internet may be ubiquitous in our society now, but give China some time.
And banana republics are who precisely? those other than the world police?
most likely Firmware, nowadays in Flash. So it may disappear if its masters think it is better to clear the field. But it might also in a CPLD, FPGA or such. - - - - for me it seems that to many power hungry polit-hyenas ruin the field for the secret services as they overdo and will provoke a counter-reaction. - - - - BTW I aired this idea of a router-based TBL 5 years ago and all I got was assurance that I am paranoid.
No matter how much the powers-that-be want it to be false, good encryption will probably be enough to stop even the biggest would-be snoops, so long as the implementation is reasonably secure (i.e. not riddled with bugs), and you don't do stupid shit like putting your private key on a public server someplace.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is WAY TOO MUCH data flowing around the 'net for any entity, no matter how big, to try to archive and search through all of it. Even if an attacker were "on the inside" and could keep up with the data flow, actually indexing/searching that data is probably not a trivial task for such a massive data set. Start encrypting a significant part of that traffic, with trustworthy software at both ends, and even big bad Uncle Sam will be stymied.
What was it I read somewhere? A supercomputer (or a large distributed project) would need 25+ years to brute-force just one plain-text message encoded with a modern encryption algorithm. Assuming that's the case, even if an attacker could dedicate enough CPU to the project, and they manage to start getting results, they'll be getting data that was only valid a couple of decades prior.
Sure, there's the dream of quantum computing, but if that fabled machine that can decrypt anything in an instant is ever built, then who's to say we won't eventually just invent a better scheme that can account for that?
Long comment short: just pick a good open source scheme and start using it. Tell your friends to use it. Keep your software up to date. If the authorities demand your decryption keys, tell them to go screw themselves (if you can legally and safely do so). If you're paranoid, encrypt your data twice with two completely unrelated algorithms. Speak using some kind of code. Hell, salt your messages with gibberish.
Protect your right to privacy.
(Yeah, I use my real name as my user ID. Big deal. An attacker could gather more info from my car's license plate and VIN.)
maybe you missed the point - there is at least one router in every institutions LAN and companies network - dehind the firewall and the DMZ! There traffic is usually not encrypted. And it can listen specifically to the things it is being told to look for. No need for SuperComputers and Quantum-Decryption. Straight from the horses mouth! A real bug in the sense of secret listening device. Routers can be bugged with Trojans loaded by a Trojan Boot Loader which most likely is hidden in the firmware of each commercial router. At least thats what I would do as a secret service. The only cure you rightfully said: Have your software compiled by yourself - including the software for the router!!
"spy on the communications in and out of their countries?"
Will the Canadians read the contents of my email? Maybe. Will the Canadians extraordinarily render me if they don't like its contents? Probably not.
The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized.
[...]
The US invented the Internet. We should be exporting equipment and expertise, so the rest of the world can do business with us (and with each other our way), and get paid right to do it.
Ummm...but manufacturing in the U.S. does not yield the profits that manufacturing in China, India, Vietnam et do - so we will continue manufacturing elsewhere, thus continuing to finance the conversion of the U.S. into an industrial, technological, and - now - information backwater.
It has been an interesting journey, watching "trickle down" economics and "free trade" transform the U.S. of A. from a "hub" to a "home run" in three short decades.
And amusing, in a gallows humor fashion. Who knew that America, "the capitalists to the world", would be foolish enough to cut their own throats with the knife of "profit"?
Even I have gone through these decades thinking "Surely this is the year we will wake up?"
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I work for a Canadian company which recently canceled a major contract to a financial data provider. The reason being? The server through which all our data usage would be routed was stored in the states, and therefore open to those silly laws down there.
Is the article just a plea for more money and less neutrality, or is it documenting the result of over-regulation?
I18N == Intergalacticization
Please don't mod twitter sockpuppets up, especially not those that are used to troll normal Slashdot users (click on his homepage and look at his sig).
Some people seem to think that the US and EU are on the same level of deceit as Russia/China. To think that would seriously just show the thinking world your ignorance.
Sure... no country is perfect and every single one of them gets up to mischief, but when you compare what Russia and China get up to compared to the EU and US... there is very little comparison.
You would have to be a liar to try compare them. I have not noticed even the very retarded Bush administration killing of journalists like China.. and I have not noticed the EU censoring its citizens like China.
When a real comparison is done of the important stuff.. like political freedom, access to basic human rights, access to education, access to health services and important basic freedoms.. the EU and US beat anything in Asia hands down.
Also, Russia and China are not democracies on any level. Again, you would be lying if you thought so. Russia and China are playing on the bull media and anti Americanism to fool the retards of our world into believing "theyre the same". Well. theyre not.. and not on any level, and if you cant see this then you are part of the problem.
This message is written by a South African who couldnt care if both sides blew themselves up. I do however, call a duck a duck.
A "strengthening" dollar is _exactly_ what will eventually place the collective nads of the USians in the hands of foreign powers. That's because most of the US foreign and domestic debt is expressed in US dollars.
Paying debts incurred when the dollar was "strong" with "weak" dollars is a game the US has been playing for quite a while - essentially using the rest of the world as a buffer-zone for moderating the boom-bust economic cycle they have going over there.
Up until now it's been business as usual - war, leading to internal economic crisis leading to inflation leading to lower (nominal) debt leading to economic "recovery" at the expense of creditors.
However, it seems the powers that be (or the invisible hand, or some other factor or combination of factors) have made it so that the US of A will not be allowed to weasel their way out of crisis via inflation this time.
Imho, it's the price you pay for being the reserve currency of a truly globalized economy - your currency is not under your control anymore, even if the money-printing press is.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Yes, indeed - please join in.
Apparently US citizens aren't to blame for their current government's actions, but British citizens are to blame for things that happened before they were born...
Bugger, eh, being held responsible for atrocities that happened ages before you were ever born? Now imagine you're German- you basically grow up with this. Your country is a pathetic, lifeless US construct and vassal (a.k.a. "Nation Building") and whereever you appear, you're the face of WW II and the holocaust.
Nice link for you about spying potential
...But of course you're just idly speculating on a clever way of working around all those pesky firewalls and system passwords. Of course you don't actually think that the NSA might have teamed up with Cisco or Linksys, or better yet, just bought a house for one or two of their top devs on the sly. Why tell management at all? After all, they are just one more mouth to feed, one more mouth that can speak secrets, and how many managers actually look at the code, much less give it more than the most cursory of reviews?
Of course, while we're just idly speculating, why not also send that same Realtor to see the guys who program the microcode of the various chip sets that go into said routers. Think of all the interesting things you could do, not to mention the redundancy that would come from various combinations of that sort.
As a red-blooded American programmer, I kind of like the idea. I'd sure like a house... if they ever need a web site with backdoors, I'm their man =)
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
thanks for realizing the potential