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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.
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.
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.
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!
I heard the ocean stays quite cool.
Well, truth be told, those people in Washington are elected. Perhaps people should look in the mirror and if they've voted for President Bush or anyone, and I mean ANYONE, that has voted for the UN-Patriot Acts I & II, the DMCA, et al., seriously consider educating themselves before voting this time. Of course that won't happen.
People say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why? Is there any shortage of bad ones?
The U.S. has about 5% of the worlds population and is separate by large amounts of water from more than 80% of the global population.
Thus, in the long term, it simply doesn't make any sense that the U.S. would be the world's internet hub, so this isn't really evidence of decay or any other silliness, it is just as easily interpreted as global progress.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Welcome to America, the Land of the Free! Err.. scratch that.. Welcome to America.
You just got troll'd!
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.
The problem is not that the US is not a 'hub' but rather that the US is lately seen as a place that is not a safe place to keep your data (for US citizens as well, actually). It's bad business.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Thank God!
... 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.
I piss off bigots.
Of course there are Internet "hubs". I've got several of them right there in my office LAN. But that's different from something being "the" hub.
The Internet is so diverse and capable of so much decentralization that it even includes lots of hubs. But that's different from the majority of the world's traffic going through a single country that isn't at an endpoint. The US being "the world's Internet hub" was a temporary historical artifact, at odds with actual Internet architecture once the Internet was truly global, and not just "the USA's extranet".
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make install -not war
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.
I don't disagree with that, but the fact remains that companies are generally going to store their data where they choose to do business (because doing so only exposes them one set of regulations, and because that set of regulations is increasingly likely to include rules about exporting data), so it shouldn't surprise anyone when the rest of the world, which is a lot larger than the U.S., generates, transmits and stores more data than the U.S. does.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
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
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
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
I wouldn't trust a country with the "emperor of heaven" as it's head of state either
As opposed to president appointed under God? The difference being, of course, that the president has actual power, while the emperor does not. </blatant flame>
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Uh, by that logic everyone lives at 0m from 'the surface', give or take the height of their apartment building.
Sea level is the only reasonable baseline we have, so nitpicking people for using it is just being a pedant.