Slashdot Mirror
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."
No.
You cant "go" there.
The Internet is a communications network. I happens to be a "the world's" communications network, more or less.
Just like in the real world, you are (mostly) anonymous as long as you chose. Just like in the world you can choose what information you want to send, and what information you want to request (Notwithstanding the tendency of certain mainstream operating systems to make some of those choices for you)
Just like in the world, there are certain networks which are connected to the Internet in a restricted way (compare to 'gated communities'). To communicate with them, you may need some form of credential (password, public key, etc).
The Internet as it exists today is an entirely different network than it was even just 10 years ago. Its continuously being 'rebuilt'.
Also, there are many 'private' networks that are built on top of the Internet as it currently stands.
Basically, this is never going to happen, and yet is already is happening, it's just hard to see for the average clueless moron.
It was called AOL, and it didn't work. It became, in fact, what Congressional investigators called "a magnet for pedophiles."
This isn't about safety. It's about control. Control of piracy, control of political agitation, and control of the truth. For all its faults, the net has created a populace that at least has the opportunity to be far better informed about the real world than our parents' generation.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
This is simply a horrendous idea that certainly has no place. It is basically seems to be a ploy of those who long for a tolitarian police state to get their way. This is a very tpical pattern that we see with shutting down an open society and create a police state, create fear and some horrendous problem, creating a reaction and then you can get people to demand a solution, offer them your solution which is taking away their freedom. You can basically get people to beg you to enslave them. The reason they want to do this is to gain greater control and mastery over the people and keep them from exercising control over their lives and government. They want to be able to monitor what everyone says and does, so they can then punish those who are saying things which run contrary to their agenda or who are advocating for democratic change. To stay in power indefinitely a tolitarian state needs to supress all dissent. Getting rid of privacy is the first step on the road to totalitarianism since to supress dissent they need to know who has what opinions and views so they can attack and punish them. They want to supress views and opinions as well, and want to manipulate and control information to psychologically manipulate the population by with-holding information and providing propoganda which manipulates people to support whatever objective they wish or behave in the way they please. Yo can bet that the desire to prohibit for instance pornography as a psychological and social engineering purpose, for instance.
The internet is just fine the way it is. No censorship should be allowed and anonymity should be a basic right. Only with such rights can free speech exist. There can be no free speech without anonymity since they can suppress and attack those who hold opinions they do not like.
Sure with how things are now there are spam messages in my mail box but I would rather have that and choose to opt in for a filter in my own software, than to have some mass surviellance scheme. I also think that government and the big brother nanny state poses far greater risk to our children coming from the tolitarian terror state that emerges from this than anything they will see on the internet. Those who give up their liberty for so called safety will be creating out of the government a much worse menace than anything it was supposed to protect them against.
The main thing that needs to be addressed with the internet has nothing to do with increasing surviellance or reducing privacy. There needs to be more use of SSL and there needs to be secure encrypted BGP and DNS to make sure that routing tables cannot be hacked.
It makes me quite angry that after we have fought so hard as a country to secure our liberties from a tolitarian oppressive government prying into our lives and deciding what we should look at, that we have people who are actively trying to undo these hard won liberties and turn the country into a totalitarian nightmare where people live in fear of an oppressive and tyrannical government, like china.
"Those who give up essential liberty for safety will deserve and shall get neither" -Benjamin Franklin
What permanent safety are you talking about? Do you really expect that this new 'gated community white-bread-people-only internets' would not be hacked in 5 minutes by some pimply-faced 14-year-old smartass with a chip on his shoulders and a few 1337 h4x0r t00lz?
Understand that network security theory holds that is no such thing as security that cannot be broken.
My blog
There have been several occassions here on Slashdot where I've made posts giving information that I didn't want other people to know I was giving.
For example, I might not want my employer to see that I'm on Slashdot saying, "Password security at my current employer sucks," or something like that. Unless you know who my current employer is, the information is useless, but I don't want to leave it up to them to make that connection.
Besides stuff like that, I just don't want everybody I know to have full access to everything I do online. IRL, I may not want my coworkers to know how I spend my weekends. There's no IRL Google, so as long as I don't tell them, they can't really find out. If I don't want them to know how I spend my time online, the easiest way to do that is by using a psuedonym they don't know of.
I don't do anything illegal. I don't "pirate" music/video games/movies or anything like that. I don't troll. I'm just a very private person, and I don't want people to know anything about me unless I feel like telling them.
FTFY. The general populace doesn't give a damn, they'll just follow the rest of the sheep.
That's nice, but the sheep are stationary. The sheep like the status quo.
Nothing will change without a whole lot of work from ISPs replacing technologies with totally new ones.
There's very little financial incentive for ISPs to do that, and the major ISPs are controlled by greed more than anything.
The internet actually has an immediate need for IPv6 as well... what does the adoption there look like?
Changing the internet isn't something the public will themselves do, they simply don't have the knowledge or the skills to propose let-alone get the changes that need to be made in place.
When their browsers start breaking, as a result of ISPs trying to push a "new internet", the public WILL actively oppose (by cancelling their internet subscription, because of the fact they can't get to their favorite web sites).
Oh crap...here we go again with the Windows equals viruses BS. As someone who has been building and repairing and selling the things since the old days when folks had to install a third party Winsock just to get to Compuserve, please allow me to enlighten you. Are you ready?
The problem is NOT Windows,okay? It is NOT Windows fault at all. You know why it isn't Windows fault? It is because there are a lot of STUPID people on Windows and as much as you hate Bill Gates I'm afraid he didn't actually invent stupid people. Yes, Windows takes at least a bit of common sense to lock down. Yes, running as Admin is not the smartest of ideas but as my many customers and myself who have done so for years without a SINGLE bug can tell you that is not the problem. Let me explain what it is that causes Windows to be a haven for malware. I have watched a user, with both me AND the AV telling them not to, open a password locked zip file and run "happy screensaver.scr.exe" and infect their machine because "this was from (insert BFF) and she wouldn't send me something bad." I have laughed with my corporate admin buddy who actually had to have a meeting with the head office because the PHB in middle management was threatening to fire him "Because you won't let my emails from Melissa through and you have NO RIGHT to tell me who to talk to. I am your boss!"
So scream about the evil Windows ALL you want. Say that it sucks, avoid it like that clap, whatever makes you happy. But you better pray to whatever deities you believe or don't believe in that the Windows users don't come to Linux or Mac OSX in mass. Because if they do the malware writers will be cranking out "Happy screensaver.scr.sh" and malware like the OSX Codec Trojan at a rate that will make your head spin and then we will be talking about "what a cesspool" Linux and OSX are. Because the problem is NOT the OS, it is strictly a PEBKAC issue and all the security in the world short of making everyone give up their PC for a government controlled thin client will simply not work. They will happily elevate privileges, they will happily input passwords, they will even happily shut down their Av and copy/paste commands if it means they get the Dancing Bunnies. And sadly there is NOTHING that any OS can do if the user is willing to bypass the security to get to the bunny. Sorry, that's just the truth. That is why my business customers and I can run for nearly a decade as admins with no bugs. We keep the stupid people away from our computers. For those of you that can't, I'm sorry. Just take an aspirin and remember like Mr. Gump says "stupid is as stupid does."
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Actually, that would be MS's fault. Whenever you flatten the learning curve you make it more accessible with less effort. That sounds nice in premise, but the problem is that because people don't have to put in the effort to learn how to do things they lack the skills to keep up. Leaving a huge number of people that don't even know if they have anti-virus software installed and running. Moreover they don't appreciate the technical skills either.
You saw what happened in Jurassic park. Same deal except fewer scientists and more calls for ass and shaved pussy.
How many people do you run into that use a *NIX CLI and are that kind of incompetent? I'm guessing a number in the range of 0 to 1.
Splitting the internet might not be such a bad idea.
When you want anonymity, use Tor or I2P.
When you don't, get a trustworthy CA to issue you a personal certificate.
Also acceptable to me would be creating a new internet that requires passing a basic intelligence test to use.