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Do We Need a New Internet?
Richard.Tao and a number of other readers sent in a NYTimes piece by John Markoff asking whether the Internet is so broken it needs to be replaced. "...[T]here is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over. What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there." A less alarmist reaction to the question was blogged by David Akin: "If you build a new Internet and you want me to get a license to drive on it, sorry. I'm hanging out here in v.1."
What neither of you seem to understand is that the physical infrastructure is irrelevant, and always has been, by design. Internet2 is a part of the Internet. The Internet runs on fibre, serial, cable, wireless, whatever, just fine. TFA talks about (actually, only sort of scrapes the surface of) architectural changes to the Internet. IPv6 (which is only tangentially related to the security issue), DNSSEC, BGPSEC, encryption by default, and so on-- these are the things that need to happen to make the Internet a safer place. But even those aren't "a new Internet". They're the same old Internet with some improvements.
The people working on core Internet protocols have known that these things have problems for a long time. This article doesn't contribute anything to the conversation. Microsoft themselves could contribute a lot to the problem of an "insecure Internet" if they just fixed their f'ing OS.
The option to be anonymous is liberty.
Closed ballots and open democracy go hand in hand.
Azural - instrumentals
Whenever I read this kind of stuff I really don't think any of these people get what an "internet" is... Once more with feeling the internet is not a network; it is a network of networks.
Last time your home windows computer went down with a virus, my computer worked fine. Even with the incompetents we have in outsourced IT support, last time your corporate network collapsed under attack, mine didn't. The internet is the cess pool^W^W happy village square where we all meet together. Your own network is not the "internet" and you can run it any way you want; it won't influence the rest of the world. If you cut off the internet it by declaring "a gated community" as the article (you did read the article didn't you?) suggests, you are no longer part of the internet.
Anyone trying to build a "new" internet should be encouraged at the same time as given a gentle education in basic network theory. If it's any good, then enough people will join it that when other particular bits of the internet collapse, they can still continue with their own useful lives. We need this kind of thing. If someone could build a network for their own country which could be relied on for emergency calls and at the same time let me read slashdot that would make a real difference (no BT's "all IP" network doesn't count). Definitely it would have to have some priority mechanism so that my slashdot couldn't get in the way of your emergency stuff; however, there's no way that such a new network can be successful if it can't cope with being connected to the current internet. That would just be security through obscurity and uselessness. Like claiming a computer is secure because it's had concrete poured into it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
It's hilarious that you mention that. One of my clients lives in a gated community where the average home price is 3 million dollars, even by today's standards. HOA fees are about as much as rents for some cheap apartments. Gates, armed guards, 24 hour security, and constant surveillance on the streets.
Last night around 2am a group of people entered the community, broke into over a dozen cars on the streets, stole everything of value from them, AND stole three cars outright.
Where was the security? At the gates eating pizza and watching TV. Where was the surveillance footage of the cars entering? Those systems have not worked in over a year and it was just a "visual" deterrent. Where was the license plate numbers and inspection of the drivers licenses required by policy? Not performed on entry, as the guards barely looked at them before letting them in. Can't even recall who came in around 2am or what they may have looked like.
The illusion of safety here is not an opinion. It is a fact. All the hassle of having the guards and the costs of the HOA are apparently wasted in this community.
Yes, I think this a PERFECT example of what would happen in Secure Internet 2.0 :)
To quote my main man on the C-Note: "They would trade essential liberty in return for a little temporary safety deserve neither." The B-man was talking about firearms, but it goes for the Intartubes as well.
The correct quote is "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." The quote is in the context of Massachusetts resisting the amendment of its laws by Parliament, and doesn't seem to have anything to do with gun control.
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