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US Gov't. Ending Its Hands-Off-the-Internet Stance
Taco Cowboy writes in with a report from The Register about a US policy shift away from keeping hands off the Internet. "According to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce, the US government's policy of leaving the Internet alone is over. Instead, an 'Internet Policy 3.0' approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance." Here is the presentation in which Strickling enunciated these changes.
This is all because of their recent failed security simulation where they couldn't repel a cyber attack. Now that they feel vulnerable they have what they think is adequate motivation to screw the rest of us. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out...
I think the "simulation" was just a part of a massive drama intended to justify this and future acts.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
These points (crucial to the argument) strike me as massive FUD:
"* If users do not trust that their credit card numbers and private information are safe on the Internet, they won’t use it.
* If content providers do not trust that their content will be protected, they will threaten to stop putting it online.
* If large enterprises don’t have confidence that their network will not be breached over the Internet, they will disconnect their network and limit access to business partners and customers.
* If foreign governments do not trust the Internet governance systems, they will threaten to balkanize the Domain Name System which will jeopardize the worldwide reach of the Internet."
- How many users are afraid to use Amazon, eBay, or any other service because of credit card fraud? I would suggest that only terminally ignorant users are afraid of this.
- Content providers are capable of handling their own protection just fine. See: Steam, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, etc. What he really means is "old and incompetent" providers.
- Large enterprises will NOT just disconnect their network for fear of being breached: they will develop better security. Fuck, this is an incredibly stupid argument.
- WHY would foreign governments ever trust Internet governance unless the internet is completely censored of all objectionable (read: valuable) speech?
Terrible, terrible, terrible arguments. This needs to be fought vigorously.
As far as I've noticed, the more the U.S. government gets involved with something, the lower the quality that something ends up being. This is pretty much the opposite of what the Internet needs to proliferate.
Then you either haven't been looking very hard or have no fucking clue of what life was like 100 years ago.
The government "gets involved" with the quality of your food (FDA), worker safety (OSHA), air travel (NTSB), highway safety (NHTSA), building codes (varies by State), law enforcement and an endless number of other sectors of society.
Guess what: the end result has been a net positive for society. Thanks to the government, we no longer have the food quality, building standards, security situation, or worker protections (just to list a few examples) of countries like Haiti and Somalia.
Whenever I hear "the government ruins everything" I know that I'm hearing ideology, not reality.
The people saying such things take so many of the regulations, which make this country run smoothly, for granted.
If you believe that the government not getting involved is going to lead to an optimal outcome for the public, I'd love to hear why.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Take the health care debate, for example. It would cost exactly $0 to pass laws that says "Insurance companies cannot deny you for a preexisting condition". But that doesn't give the government control over the industry, instead they want to spend $800 billion to be an insurance company. Regulation is fine. Involvement is not.
So, what you're saying is that it takes $0 to put insurance companies out of business and lead us directly to government-provided healthcare?
Passing that law basically says no one healthy has to buy insurance until they have a reason to use it. Then they can promptly drop it once they get healthy again. Why not? Why keep insurance when you can get it anytime you want?
While I hate the idea of denying coverage to people, there are only two ways to do the insurance market. Either have the current system of denying coverage, or require / force everyone to be part of the system.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.