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Say No To a Government Internet "Kill Switch"
GMGruman writes "In the name of national security, the feds are considering a law that would let the government turn off the Internet — or at least order broadband providers and ISPs to disable access. InfoWorld blogger Bill Snyder explains why this is a bad idea. Does the US really want to be like China or Iran?"
Yes.
"It's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state."
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Does the U.S. really want to be like China or Iran
"Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too," Lieberman
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
...how is this any different than radio and TV? Do we not already have the emergency broadcast system that can barge in and essentially "turn off" radio and TV services?
Living With a Nerd
Its a protocol people, find a different way or medium to transmit your information.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
With common human mentality, the US government is just keepin' up with the Joneses.
Just keep your people chanting "freedom" and "democracy" as you lead them off the cliff like lemmings to the sea.
Maybe we need a switch to turn off the government?
Yes.
qft
What good is a skype phone call Mr. Anderson ... if you are unable to speak.
In Soviet Russia the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes US.
Seriously I remember when I was a small child and I would remember my mother telling me, "Every day the USSR is becoming more like the United States, and every day we're becoming more like the USSR." An internet "kill switch" would shut off access to some of our citizenry's most honest and trusted news sources while allowing big media to continue to broadcast the drivel that passes for news that is solely optimized to protect their bottom lines.
g=
Because something like this would neeeeeeever have the potential to be abused...
We all know what the real reason for this is: to destroy the people's main channel of communication in order to extinguish a situation that government deems threatening to its power and revenue. We're not talking about a threat from outside, but rather something from the inside which potentially compromises the elite and their positions.
This has made the news a bit overseas too. There were some doubts voiced that the US could effectively completely 'kill' the Internet. Sure most of the DNS root servers are located in the US, and they could SEVERELY disrupt it. But perhaps not kill it entirely.
The summary here makes a bit more sense though - it's talking about shutting down ACCESS to the internet (at an ISP level) rather than necessarily the network itself. Either way though it would have a huge effect. Given that a large proportion of all servers/hosts are in the US, a nationwide shut down would affect many, many sites used by other countries as well.
I can see two sides to the argument. One is that the US, as a single country, shouldn't have the right to shut down what is now a truly global network. The other is that the US military (well, DARPA) did invent the damn thing in the first place, funded by American taxpayers' money, so perhaps they have an inherent right to do this, in an emergency, if it's in the US' national interest.
Thing is, I can't really think of a national security scenario that would be 'helped' by a total shut down of the Internet (as opposed to a targeted shut down of particular peoples' access or particular networks/providers/areas etc).
"What is it, General?"
"Mister President, it's the Internet. We fear it's gone rogue. We lost contact with it yesterday, and our attempts to reestablish contact have failed."
"You know what to do."
Because we all know the same government that would be horrible to give a "kill switch" do would do a wonderful job with the thousands of pages of picayune regulations necessary to define and implement "net neutrality".
Because our government is SOOOO competent.
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. [Robert Heinlein]
Wherever you go... There you are. B.B.
Or at least I do whenever I trip over the power cord of my router...BAM, Internet kill switch.
"We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realizes the importance of protecting our cyber resources." -Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)
It seems that members of the senate get access to some crazy-good weed... how high do you have to be to say "cyber 9/11"? WTF does "cyber 9/11" mean?? Are terrorists going to fly a plane into internet tubes and clog them?!
Hey, why not instead encourage people who decided to connect systems that control critical infrastructure to the public Internet to practice stronger security? Or, perhaps to not connect a critical system to a public computer network?
Palm trees and 8
"But a proposed law that would give the government a so-killed kill switch to essentially turn off the public Internet is very, very worrisome, and it raises the specter of some future administration using that power to crack down on its opponents"
no it doesn't unless you are a paranoid schizophrenic
if we have some sort of warhol worm, everyone ranting against the kill switch will be begging for the president to cut off the internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhol_worm
the need to cut off the internet makes perfect sense IN THE RIGHT CONTEXT. which is what the law will be tailored to. but if you take the idea of shutting down the internet, and put it in the context of your deepest fear: say, censorship based on political ideology, of course the idea is frightening. AS IF THIS CONTEXT MAKES ANY SENSE. there is no slippery slope, folks, unless you remove from the law and its invocation the existence of thinking human beings. all jokes about big government to the contrary, that's absurd
people: fight the encroachment of government onto our rights and liberties. but do it intelligently. taking a commonsense provision and imaging its usage in the most ridiculously hysterical fear-based context is NOT intelligence, and it reduces the noble instinct to defend liberty and our rights to a laughingstock
our liberties and our rights and freedoms are utterly doomed if those who defend those notions are hysterical twits who cry the sky is falling about everything. be prudent and intelligent or don't bother: you only hurt the good cause
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US government liberal and conservative alike continue to create institutions and policies in the name of freedom that limit the actions of individuals to act on there own behalf. Someday soon someone who want power above all will use those institutions and policies against the masses. Then the new American police state will be born. But, I will bet that we will still advertise the country as free.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
How do you have an internet kill switch?
A data packet will route whichever way it can. If the US decided to be unattainable to the rest of the world, although lots of congestion on the alternate routes, the packets would find a new route to the destinations UNLESS it's destination is within the US. However, doing such a thing to your own country would kill your commerce stone dead. Look how much money small / local outages costs some economies.
Could someone please explain to the ignorant politicians in stupid terms even they can understand, the concept of packet switching.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
. . . martial law, and all that, and really did need to "turn off" the Internet . . . wouldn't they just do it anyway . . . ?
The US Army 137th Backhoe Battalion digs up and severs some strategic fiber lines . . . ?
If the shit hits the fan, nobody is going to ask, "Hey, are we allowed to do that?" They'll just do whatever they think that they need to do anyway.
Turn off Internet first, ask questions later.
I mean, like, what was all that hanky panky with those undersea cables in the Middle East . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Communication is important in any crisis. The only reason to sabotage it is to disrupt and disable organization of the enemy. Why would our own government want to "switch off" our ability to coordinate?
I don't listen to much radio, but this was the topic of a local morning call-in show on... Tuesday? I was happy that 4 of 5 thought it is an inane idea for one reason or another (or none given..), yet #5 still said she didn't care what the government does to protect us.
Or is the point here that Snyder put together a rebuttal of whatever quality?
8-PP
This is not news. The government already has the power to shutdown telecommunications in times of a national emergency. The argument is, does that include the Internet - and most believed it did - especially the main links. The proposal being talked about now, based on initial assessment actually curtails the existing law more than it expands it. But overall a good discussion to have. If someone managed to exploit a long standing bug that allowed for country wide damage - would a shutdown be warranted? Not an easy answer
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
A bunch of old guys want to be able to turn off the internet?? Because of war?
Um... do they know something we don't?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
"Does the U.S. really want to be like China or Iran?"
Maybe the US as a citizenry doesn't want it... but this administration certainly does.
It's hard to control the message when it's free-flowing and instant via the Internet. This administration wants control, especially in any "emergency".
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
This only serves to confirm my opinion of Joe Lieberman as a sentient piece of shit.
It seems pretty arrogant to assume we're so much different from either of them, every civil liberty violation we point at in our adversaries we see through the goggles of an outsiders opinion. How does it look to an outsider that we held hundreds of people for the better part of a decade with no right to a trial, that the CEO of the only telephone company who told the NSA they needed a warrant is now in jail, that the government tried to suppress video footage of an Apache gunning down good samaritan, so on and so forth.
We like to envision the citizens of countries we don't care for as helpless prisoners or demonic dictators but the reality is probably about half the citizens think the governments wonderful and doing a great job, and half think they're evil tyrants, just like here.
I fully want this to happen. Let the Yanks destroy themselves :)
Stupids :)
The internet is a major threat to globalization.
*DrugCheese rants*
I don'tsee anywhere in the bill the provides for a kill switch, or fines.
I do see some good stuff:
Getting an expert for government officials to consult with:
Getting someone in charge of maintaining privacy:
Getting the heads of security agencies to develop better practices.
Cybersecurity RnD.
Professional development.
No kill switch. Like I said, I may have missed it. It's not the best laid out document.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If this whole kill switch policy keeps getting more and more popular, big businesses will take interest in keeping limited network communications with one another in order to keep their money making power houses running. This will lead to them building their own infrastructure and eventually will have a small internet of their own. Soon they realize, they can make a shit ton of money with all this and start leasing it out to the public for a fee and then they are the new ISPs. The moral of the story is this, you can't stop the internet because the technology is there and many people know how to use and implement it. All these kill switches will lead to a more centralized business world. Can you imagine a Mc Donalds being an ISP? "Hey can I take your order? Would you like some internet with that value meal sir?"
Would you hug a bear?
In case it becomes necessary to destroy teh intarnets to save it?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Lieberman's pushing it, he has a history of being a paid lacky of lost of industries:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8781
He shilled against the health care reform, despite previously supporting it, New York Times thought it most likely was the result of the $1 million he received:
"Senator Lieberman has accepted more than $1 million from large, Connectucut-based health insurance companies"
Same as the powers that be can turn of electricity, water, gas and the phones if they need to under certain situations. This is NOTHING abnormal. And if I am working as the gas station and the firebrigade tells me to shut of the gas to a certain area I will have to do so or they will do it for me.
This is very reasonable, the fire service obviously wants to be able to shut the gas of if there is a risk. Just as the police can close an area or force me to donate my goods to the common good. Only nutcases (americans) protest against this, a person is burning to death but this is MY water hoose and the state does not have the right to confiscate it damn it!
The problem with this is that these nutters have a point. The internet is more then just a product shipped to the end-user and the emergencies are far less clear. I can smell a gas leak, but how do I check that their is a internet security risk demanding immidiate action?
The police has the right to shutdown utility services in for instance hostage situations to apply pressure to a hostage taker. But what about shutting down utilities to rioters? To trouble some areas? To districts that voted for the opposition?
And what is an emergency on the net? An embarrising video? Of US soldiers slaughtering unarmed civilians perhaps?
The EBS is from a different era when we "trusted" our government to only use it in a real emergency. We don't trust our government that much anymore. How are we going to know in this era of black-ops everywhere whether the emergency was real?
Part of this proposal reads simply as a suggestion to give the same control over the internet as over other essential services so that its continued operation can be ensured when the shit hits the fan. But to the paranoid mind, there might be a hidden agenda. And these days some people really do seem out to get you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
But nevertheless, I agree.
How this douchebag got re-elected, I have no idea. The voters of CT must be insane. This man is a danger to everything we hold dear in this country.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
... Can only mean one thing: INVASION!
Ah, Mr. Lucas, your ability to write dialog never ceases to amaze me... And yet, fully cognizant of the irony, I continue to quote from your films. What a loser I am.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Inject Kurt Russel with some 24-hour timed explosive, give him some high tech gear and send him on a mission to the data-center?
People, what a bunch of bastards
OK, everybody, let's have a contest to see which political party can do the most to suppress liberty ... the Democrats or the Republicians?
Then Fox won't be accessible to the rest of the world, and we can start forming opinions which don't include the drivel spouted by News Corp, the RIAA / MPAA, and the rest of the megacorps who want to govern world politics.
Seriously, I'm all for a total communication blackout of America. I think it would do the English public some good to concentrate on our own issues.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Richard Clarke has suggested that the backbone endpoints, and even ISPs have super smart deep-packet-inspection filters that get their signature files from both folks like AV vendors *and* the government. In addition to signatures for malware, you could certainly create signatures for "dangerous ideas". Speaking of dangerous ideas... He also recognizes that serious oversight is needed to prevent abuse, but makes the assumption that such oversight is possible. When the people you are supposed to be overseeing can control what packets get sent to you, how do you do that?
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
The Internet was designed to NOT be turned off.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Maybe China asked the US Govt to install this as a final step before complete take over. They already own most of the US anyway.
no comment
if hysterical twits are the public face of the fight for liberties and freedoms then the fight for liberties and freedoms is discredited in the eyes of the public
if you are not intelligent in your advocacy for your cause, the ultimate sum total real world effect of your passion might be nothing more than to hurt your cause
"the more hysterical twits the better"
the more people who think that, the more our liberties and freedoms are doomed. really, that's the solid truth of the matter
please try to understand that when you write words like you have written above, you only aid those who wish to take away your liberties and freedoms. if you are not intelligent in your advocacy for your cause, you might as well be working for your ideological enemy, because the real world effect is the same
be smart, or shut up. because you hurt what i care about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's called Comcast.
This is just an attempt to codify something that may or may not already be possible. Laws like this are useless in the context of day to day life and would only come into play in some type of emergency situation. There is a subset of the population that have a hard time with freedom and need the boundaries that laws and rules give them. This caters to them. They feel more secure because the law/rule is in place despite the fact that it will (or could) never be used. Whenever they feel threatened by the Internet they can rest assured that their friends in Washington can shut it down with the big red switch.
Then again, it may turn out to be the RIAA/MPAA 's nuclear option.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Nice, we cannot seal our borders but we will seal the internet? I never thought I might be with the tea party, but son of gun their stand for personal freedom looks good right about now.
no comment
In a word, GTFO. They're already trying to do this with radio and the fairness doctrine, and now trying to regulate reporters and journalists. I guess the only way to control the masses is to silence the masses. Though it could happen, the US is home to 7 (3 of which are at military installations?) of the 13 root servers. Pretty easy to just shut those down. Anyone feel like china/north korea yet?
If you try shutting down the Internet, I am pretty sure you will loose lots of business. Also you will loose confidence. If the world sees a black hole of information in the US, the money will be moved away pretty fast. I am not sure people have though this through. And if an entire nation somehow gets bored because Internet is down, what will they do? Maybe go outside and join the crowds in the streets?
is a clear definition of the context in which the power will be used
there's nothing at all wrong with what you are asking for
but how that context is defined: as intelligently as possible, is not in any way served by the adrenal gland overclocking OMGWEAREBECOMINGAFASCISTAUTOCRACY-ALLOURRIGHTSAREBEINGRAPED-THEYSEEEVERYTHINGYOUDO crowd
the fight or flight response is a potent mammalian invention. adrenal glands are wonderful survival aides in times of sudden stress. but someone who is put under immense immediate stress to every vague slight distant warning is someone who is reacting to their own psychological shortcomings, not reality, and does not help the good fight at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Snake Plissken? I heard he was dead.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
The deciding factor was when we learned that china and iran were working along similar lines, and we were afraid of an internet killswitch gap.
I know it's preposterous and the president would never approve of anything like this.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The Max head room guy has able to hack wgn and wttw where is he now?
There is no net neutrality control. There's only the continuation of the regulation the internet has had since its inception. Controls that have sunset and are being extended NOT introduced.
Any more things you'd like me to say? Maybe goodnight Gracie?
People wanted "net neutrality." Well, this is what you get when you hand control of the Internet over to the government. I've never understood what goes on in the head of a net neutrality supporter who wants the government to regulate net traffic, as if the government isn't more corrupt, inept, and power-hungry than corporations. Not only will the government want a kill switch, but they'll also be susceptible to lobby groups like the RIAA that make political donations to candidates who then go on to "regulate" P2P traffic for them.
How exactly are they going to turn off the internet? Wasn't it designed specifically to resist such attempts?
And even if they succeed, can the economy possibly survive such a move?
U.S. Treasury - Office of Foreign Assets Control
They already block websites using the OFAC list.
At least my isp block them...
If they are going to censor the web at least redirect me to a web
page with an explanation.
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Except that internet kill switches and regulating P2P traffic is precisely the opposite of what net neutrality is about. Way to troll though, brah.
Mirror's Edge will become real. Can anyone leap across buildings and climb up pipes and over fences?
How exactly are they going to turn off the internet? Wasn't it designed specifically to resist such attempts?
By having the ISPs cut off people's connections.
It is called a revolution. Usually the switch is relatively bloody as the one in power don't like to be switched.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If by most you mean US treasury securities and if by most you mean I believe about 11% then yes.
Am I the only one who is seeing the irony here?
The US government, original owners of the Internet, is now considering creating a law to take control of the same Internet. Why did the sell it in the first place, if they were afraid of it becoming such a force in the hands of the public?
Can the telephone system be turned off like that?
If this passes, then RIAA/MPAA will just have all the politicians and judges they've bought cry out "we've got to shut down the internets to protect copyright."
Yeah, but if you 0wn the root servers, you can take down site resolution. Then only connections between sites known by isp number can communicate.
Also, when the internet went commercial it streamlined away a lot of the expensive duplication that was in the original design. This made the entire system a lot more fragile. You can no longer count on one site having multiple independent links to another site. Often there's only one trunk. Take that down, and there's NO communication.
So, yes, that was the original design. But things have been changed since then.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
and i feel fine - R.E.M.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I just hope the US govt. can pay my bills for me then, 'cause that's how I do it - online. Bet they didn't think of the havoc they'd cause by shutting down the Internet, including bill paying and banking, etc.
Thank you for your remarkably insightful commentary.
It's only preposterous if you believe that his goals and purposes are what he says they are. But remember, he voted for FISA while he was just a candidate.
So it's not preposterous, only quite sad.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I actually read the bill, rather than some blogger's take on some paranoid's interpretation of the bill. It makes no mention of a kill switch. Rather, it states that sensitive sites aught to have adequate protection against attack. That is so very, very different. Less news-ish, less sensational, but actually far more interesting.
Besides, the Government has had a position for an Internet Czar for about a decade now. Last one quit a while back, but the position exists. Why should it matter if they actually fill the position?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In World War II, amateur radio was shut down and replaced by a community-licensed War Emergency service.
Television took the same path.
Print, Radio, and Film was censored.
There would be no new cars, telephones, typewriters or radios, except for those on the highest-priority lists.
The proposed law makes explicit what the geek should already know: in times of national emergency, the power of the government has no definable limits.
Net Neutrality doesn't mean handing over the control of the Internet to the government - it already has that, running the root DNS servers for example. Net Neutrality means that an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination. This prevents corporations from blocking or sabotaging their competitors, or keep their customers in the dark about something; for example, your ISP can't block Slashdot to promote their own discussion forum with automatic upmodding for astroturfers, nor can Sony pay them to prevent access to less than favourable reviews of Sony televisions on some site.
Probably some actual knowledge of the issue, rather than right-wing propaganda. You know, actually knowing what Net Neutrality means, which you obviously don't.
Without Net Neutrality these various Mafias can simply pay/threaten the ISPs directly to filter traffick.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This is one of those "let's ask for something absolutely absurd, then when it gets thrown out we can offer a compromise that sounds more reasonable but in actual fact is all we ever wanted in the first place" things.
The reason I think this is twofold:
1. VoIP. Many organisations would be unable to make phone calls.
2. Globalisation of the economy.
There's no earthly way the business interests in the US would stand for this, and you'd have to be such a mouth-breathing moron to think they might that it's doubtful you'd remember to get up in the morning. Far more likely this is going to get bargained down to something like "no net neutrality".
I thought he was tall.
But that is irrelevent. In the event of a major internet-based attack by a hostile nation or non-state actor (i.e. terrorist), the government will not have to ask for permission to impose restrictions on internet traffic, we will beg them to do it.
FACT: In the event of war or attack (e.g. 9/11) the government can and has shut down interstate travel, air travel and the port system.
FACT: In the event of war or attack the government can and has controlled radio and television broadcasts (as previously noted here)
FACT: In every case there was no sense of suppression of freedom. We, the people, viewed such measures as necessary and appropriate.
PREDICTION: When such a "cyber 9/11" (or cyber Pearl Harbor(!)) happens history will rhyme, if not repeat itself.
.... I've never understood what goes on in the head of a net neutrality supporter who wants the government to regulate net traffic, as if the government isn't more corrupt, inept, and power-hungry than corporations.
And this is different from the cable monopolies today?
So what is the solution then? Certainly most people can't just start up their own Internet ISP from home to at least meet the needs of their community.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
By "we" I mean we nerds. We need to come up with a new network of wi-fi mesh that does away with ISPs and cell phone providers. On first thought it seems simple, until you start to consider the security aspects. Anyone?
Free Martian Whores!
...guerrilla.net (R.I.P.)
That's because you've never met one.
Net Neutrality doesn't mean handing over the control of the Internet to the government - it already has that, running the root DNS servers for example. Net Neutrality means that an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination.
Probably some actual knowledge of the issue, rather than right-wing propaganda. You know, actually knowing what Net Neutrality means, which you obviously don't.
Great reply; maybe they'll learn something.
I look forward to a scheme in which we give the power to regulate net neutrality without giving them the power to regulate the internet.
I love this idea and I would like to see them try. Unlike commercial TV, Radio, and even Cable TV, the internet is not broadcasted. The first minute that the internet goes down, every geek with a wifi connection will turn up their gain and connect to their neighbors network. Over a short period, with a lot of help from the neighborhood geek, entire communities will be able to link up through their own grass roots mesh networks.
This has already been attempted on smaller scales where residences of a community were not happy with high priced ISPs. Economics has kept the idea from going global, but a kill-switch would definitely serve as a powerful trigger to truly free up the technology that drives the internet. Of course you will probably have to pay some mobster to make high speed connections outside your local area, but unless they cut off land-based telephone service as well, you can at least find a long-distance number to dial for 56k speed.
And if they shut down the land lines, well there's always the retired HAM operator next door.
Probably some actual knowledge of the issue, rather than right-wing propaganda. You know, actually knowing what Net Neutrality means, which you obviously don't.
But no actual knowledge of the way government works. The reason that many people oppose government enforced Net Neutrality is because we know that the government won't limit itself to saying that "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination". There have been several Net Nuetrality bills proposed, have any of them been less than 10 pages? If all they were going to do is what you propose, then there would be no need for them to be more than one page. The problem is that every attempt to introduce "Net Neutrality" has contained more than just the limited regulation that you say you want.
If a bill was proposed that said only what you proposed, I would be fine with that, but such a bill will never be proposed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I used to feel differently about what I'm about to say. However I support the idea and this is why. How do we as citizens know the corporate media hasn't been feeding us less than accurate information for perhaps the sake of say, staying in business? It's already known that an individual wishing to place an ad stating something which opposes the network's best business interests cannot do so and is stonewalled. This is not a new problem: http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0409/040906.htm. I think we all agree the health of our economy is a rather important concern. Who knows what kind of DARPA-esque technology exists internationally? Just maybe there's more we're not being told. Just maybe there's good reason the FCC chairs are appointed rather than elected. What happens when god forbid the U.S. gets jammed up & some other country has us by the balls? If it guarantees my grandkids will never know what it feels like to look out the window & know without a doubt that some rogue superpower's army really is here & really is 50 million strong rather than the 1 million they've been telling us for decades, I'm all for it. There are martial law provisions for a reason. This wouldn't be much different. We had to nuke Japan to make them stop- we can't really go doing that again... It's bad enough we set a nuclear prescident. I feel an internet kill switch is a much safer ultimatum, and a vast improvement since 45.
as if the government isn't more corrupt, inept, and power-hungry than corporations.
They are usually more inept than corporations, which to some degree mitigates the impacts of the other two.
American government is the passing of random ideas through a plural-voting filter. But the plural-voting filter isn't democratic, instead it's made up of components meant to represent members of the democracy aggregated by geographic location (the boundaries of which are generally contiguous but are not likely to be convex). But the representation is only notionally "of the people," since the representative is an independent actor, and adjudges a vote according to factors other than the good of his constituents. And then generally the idea is passed on to a single filter which represents the aggregation of all of the other aggregations.
In other words, every idea, stupid or otherwise, will come before the legislature, and there's no chance that you or anyone else will ever be able to guess right every time on whether a given idea will pass them or not, and then the governor or president gets his crack at it.
So unless the Joneses are crazy and stressed from a thousand directions, the US government is way ahead of them.
See what happens when one is lax in reading Slashdot. Some one else comes up, independently with the same idea. Too bad I couldn't have rushed to the patent office. Actually, I prolly still can.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
It's pretty obvious ( and scary ) that the people running America and the people that bought them ( bankers, organized crime, foreign governments, illuminati, fascists, whoever ) are expecting a popular revolt and are planning to disrupt it. If people can't communicate, they can't organize, and if you do communicate, remember who's listening in on all your communications, legal or not
When the net was regulated by people with no corporate aspirations, it was efficient and good.
Now that the net was regulated by an international committee of gadflies and dopes, it was less efficient and still okay.
But since they don't seem to have the power to force major ISPs to give open access to their customers, they are no longer useful.
It takes a government to enforce something like that. But then a government, like a corporation or a committee, has its own agenda.
The only choice then is either to let the government do it, but PERFORM YOUR ROLE AS PART OF THE GOVERMENT instead of sitting on your ass whining about its existence, or turn the net back over to the people who invented it (modulo Jon Postel) and give them the legal authority to slap multi-billion dollar fines on router owners who don't route agnostically, not matter in which nation the offender may reside.
thanks for ruining it for me, dink.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
China is restricting content, while this proposal is total disconnect in an emergency. while i dont like either, its not the same thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Having experienced the internet for the last two decades, I can confidently say that nothing of value will be lost.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The US is already worse than China. At least the Chinese government is working to improve the living standards of its own people.
Neither the United States, nor China are democracies. At least China and Iran don't have the fascist/imperialist foreign policy of the United States.
Here's the way regulation works. Private business tries something, people hate it. Customers can't get the companies to change their ways because all of the companies are doing it - there's no competitor to jump to. So now the government has to put a stop to it. In this case we have some isolated evidence and are trying to get out in front of this whole thing before it harms people.
For the actual text of the bill, the only way to get a bill that works and makes sense is the same way industry does it. Write the bill and send it to your Congress critter. They will thank you for doing the heavy lifting and consider whether to sponsor it. If everyone sent their c.c. the same bill, they would take the hint and at least think before dismissing it. If you let them do it there will be piles of unrelated stuff in it, making it more than 10 pages long.
Since anyone who's been paying attention realizes, Goldman Sachs OWNS the US Department of Treasury (as in, everyone at the managerial level is, or has been, connected to Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and some Swiss banks own the Federal Reserve (no surprise there, this has been the case forever).
Gee, so all those Goldman Sachs, private equity types, Morgan Stanley types, Wall Street lobbyists, pharmaceutical and Monsanto lobbyists appointed by Obama are fundamentally no different than the Cheney/Bush appointees? Go figure.....
Well... it's actually a lightly retuned quote from Dr. Strangelove.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They already have that power - it is called declaring Martial Law.
If the situation isn't important enough to take that step it is probably ass covering and the internet is a perfect medium for showing ... um ... porn and other states of undress.
Kill switch is a terrible name, but here is the scenario it is designed to address.
A real war breaks out, honest to goodness shooting war. Our enemy starts: taking active control of previously compromised network devices, flooding our network with traffic from their networks and bots, stealing anything they can find, crashing every system they can. The purpose of this is primarily to disrupt communication/information during the conflict.
Where this traffic is coming from, ultimately will be from their home country of course. Even in the case of botnets they will be guided by hackers in their home country, not stationed around the world. (you know, where their hackers are safe from arrest and where their families are). Also Bots in the US will require some kind of direction from somewhere to start transmitting.
So what does the government do if it can't block any of this traffic from the U.S. network? Topology matter guys. Should the government build its own isolated network with an air gap for all systems it considers critical? Should it assume the ISP's will take care of it and keep their communications going during an event like this? Does communication of private entities matter during this time? How will their networks be secured? Maybe we should just find out the hard way.
So really, what is your plan?
Just because the gov could shut off their connections for security issues doesn't mean they need to shut everyone else off.,
They seem to have this idea that they are the united states. not the people.
Maybe the geeks of the US should start collecting Pringles cans and start a wireless mesh network around their cities. So when the future Chavez shuts it down we can still communicate and coordinate.
posting to undo bad mod
Maybe you should have actually read their post? They did define what net neutrality is:
Net Neutrality means that an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination.
Probably some actual knowledge of the issue, rather than right-wing propaganda. You know, actually knowing what Net Neutrality means, which you obviously don't.
But no actual knowledge of the way government works. The reason that many people oppose government enforced Net Neutrality is because we know that the government won't limit itself to saying that "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination".
Here's some actual knowledge of the way government works: the government won't limit itself to that even if we don't support net neutrality. That is, whether or not we get net neutrality, the government will try to claim as much control over the net as it feels it needs, and probably succeed. Why not get net neutrality out of the deal?
It's a sausage factory, but throwing up our hands and going home isn't going to make it less so; that's just a form of surrender. We can at least work on making the factory make a better sausage, if only very slightly so. And net neutrality is like a tasty bratwurst, compared to the liquid-based flavorless hot dog that will result from not advocating net neutrality.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
For the government to want to do this, there is only one reason. The simple fact is that the internet is a new tool that can be used for illigitimate reasons. Including warfare and terrorism.
People complain about what happened in the gulf and the lack of proactivism and the same people then complain about proactivism.
It's not like the internet is going to be shut down daily. But in the case where things go haywire, perhaps some important data centers will not be attacked.
Except your representative won't read the bill, a staffer will show it to a lobbyist who will help him rewrite it. You won't recognize it when its done. And it will have a special exemption which allows government traffic to take precedence "to send important messages on behalf of the candidate" ..er "to protect children" ..er "to fight terrorists", yeah that's it.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
They already shut down cellular services during some political demonstrations. They also insist there is something called a "free speech zone", which is usually a steel wire cage miles from where the political action being protested against is going down.
And they also infiltrate "undercover officers" into organizations so they can instigate violence then that "proves" a heavy handed police response is justified.
Sort of like forcing telecom companies to share their land lines with competitors directly led to Echelon and Carnivore. Right. Correlation, causation, etc. Don't forget it was the corporations who started the mess by blocking and degrading legitimate traffic and who have monopolies in many large service areas.
On your other points, I basically agree except I'd go so far as to say that government and big business are exactly as evil as each other, since they're practically the same thing at this point. The only redeeming quality left in government is a few good judges that can smack down foolish laws, and they are a disappearing breed.
Why is length a disqualification?
I mean, your one sentence phrase doesn't work... ISPs cap (a type of filtering) packets based on the subscribers plan. What about ISPs that prioritize/filter by protocol or port. Where are the rules against ISP based MITM attacks (see the proposed Zip+4 header). What about the Emergency Broadcast Service getting complete priority over everything else? Can two offices pay more to have a guaranteed throughput between the east and west coast office? What are the penalties? Who enforces it?
It takes a sentence to rough out a reasonable rule, and 10+ pages to actually address the variety of issues.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Then they should have referenced it, I'm not going to read every post on Slashdot.
Tens of thousands of online farmers will lose crops costing millions .... and who will pay for these poor farmers, cafe workers, hotel owners, mafia guys who all lose money because big brother cuts off the internet!
The words "net neutrality" sound good. The reality behind the political movement attached to them is anything but good. Wake up, quickly.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
Snake Plissken and nerdy sidekick played by the skinny, awkward guy from Knocked Up.
Snake: "This is it? This is the connection? Time to cut the cord." *takes out combat knife*
Nerd: "There are 50 million bits running through that line! You cut it and we're both dead!"
Then they should have referenced it,
Uh, you don't reference yourself, unless you are generally accepted as being an expert, or you have published work that you want to reference.
I'm not going to read every post on Slashdot.
It's in the same post. Maybe you meant to say, "I'm not going to read every paragraph in a response!"
The alternative is that companies get to do whatever they want with the packets going through their equipment, and at that point, you'll still have people deciding what happens to your packets. Except that these people are incentivized to fuck with your packets as much as technically possible. With the government, there is the chance that bureaucracy will prevent much from happening.
The social question of Net Neutrality regulation breaks down as follows: do you want a sociopath in control of your packets, or a bureaucrat?
I'm choosing the bureaucrat every time. He cannot be worse than the sociopath.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Y'see, there's these things called "laws" that dictate what can and cannot be done. If done right, things could play out something like this...
Government: "Hey ISP, stop discriminating against traffic you don't have a vested interest in."
ISP: "Fuck you, Government, I'll do what I want!"
Government: "Ok, you're going to jail for violating the law."
ISP: "Wait, what?"
But not like this...
Government: "Hey ISP, turn off all incoming and outgoing connections."
ISP: "Fuck you, Government, you may be able to tell me to treat all data equally, but there's nothing stating you have the power to tell me to do that!"
Government: "..."
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
The notion, that if you give the government the ability to control something they will do it to arbitrary degree, is a Slippery Slope fallacy. Successfully limited regulation takes place all the time, and furthermore, the government *already has* some control over the Internet.
The real problem here is that government isn't self-aware, so it doesn't run itself. It, like corporations, functions mechanistically under the control of those who participate in its operation. In the absence of oversight, it will drive towards an attractor point, usually involving consolidation of power, in much the same way corporations drive towards maximization of profit. Changing from one party's set of ideals to another might shift the attractor point from one undesirable location to another, but does nothing to keep the system in a desirable state.
If you want government to function properly, you have to get involved beyond simply voting. Don't like regulatory capture? Get off your butt and go pester your representatives until they listen. When enough people do this, things change.
Or, you could assume that you just need to come up with the perfect ideology (libertarianism, socialism, communism, whatever) which is sophisticated enough that it can not only allow the system to run itself unchecked, but also outwit the determined efforts of smart greedy bastards. Good luck with that.
You are correct(on the latter point), I have about a 2 second attention span.
Net Neutrality doesn't mean handing over the control of the Internet to the government - it already has that, running the root DNS servers for example.
Actually, it does. Oh, and currently, the government doesn't have control of the internet.
Probably some actual knowledge of the issue, rather than right-wing propaganda. You know, actually knowing what Net Neutrality means, which you obviously don't.
Obviously, since you have no idea what's going on, and no clear grasp of the facts, what you ignorantly dont't understand is just brushed off as "right-wing propaganda."
Sorry, try again.
If you can't be bothered reading the context, then don't bother posting.
Yes, *if* you own root servers.
But U.S. government does not. Go and take a look at http://www.root-servers.org/.
And if "often there's only one trunk" why BGP is so popular routing protocol? It's de facto standard nowadays.
One can't turn off Internet.
The idea of a kill-switch has nothing to do with net neutrality. It's simply a way for the US to wave a big stick at other nations.
Pulling the plug on the root DNSs would be a pretty severe step to take, but it would hurt the US more than it would anyone else, so you would essentially be committing an act of terrorism against yourself.
Oh, so Net Nuetrality isn't just "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination"? That is where the problem comes in. As soon as Net Nuetrality is more than "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination", things become complicated and not everyone agrees that it is a good thing anymore.
The poster I replied to claimed that Net Nuetrality was "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination" and nothing more, now you say that is more than that.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You have made the classic mistake of confusing Marxism with Marxist-Leninism and its derivatives.
Per Marx, the capitalist mode of production should eventually develop to the point in which the necessary conditions to continue become increasingly impossible. In effect, capitalism will have exhausted itself, the productive capacity of the economy will have grown so far beyond necessity as to negate market forces. And so, from each according to ability, and to each according to need.
History has not proven Marx wrong, if anything it is proving him right. What history has proven is that authoritarians seek to exploit every ideology for their own ends.
One way or another, capitalism will end. It is not a sustainable system.
This proposal exists because of who it would benefit. In a catastrophic event (WWIII, nuclear terrorism, etc), shutting down the Internet would not diminish the US military (we've got our own Interwebs) but would totally shut down criminals/terrorists/foreign entities.
The rest of this tin-foil hat discussion is entertaining though.
You should read some of the replies to my reply to you, they mostly seem to be Net Nuetrality supporters, yet they seem to think that Net Nuetrality is more than "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination." Which is the problem. You think that that is all Net Nuetrality is, yet a lot of other people want it to be more than that. I think those other people are using "Net Nuetrality" to pass things that you might not agree with and that I certainly do not agree with.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Probably wouldn't do any good. Skynet would have figured out other methods to disseminate command and control operations by the time the ISPs got notified.
I see no one who is pro-net neutrality that is pushing for internet kill switches or anything of the sort. Go bash your strawmen elsewhere.
Or we could oppose all attempts by the government to regulate what can be said on the Internet. And I'm sorry, what we will get from a "Net Nuetrality" law will be like haggis made with rotten oats.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
First off, Internet Killswitch != Net Neutrality. Furthermore, Liberman is against Net Neutrality, and he's the one that proposed this nonsense. Get your facts straight.
Most of us access the internet through the relatively small number of cable and telephone companies that actually own the wire that runs to our home (or the wireless tower that gives us a signal). If you can successfully lean on them to shut down, the Internet may technically still be running, but YOU won't be using it.
Yes. What people need to realize is that individual liberty is the exception throughout history, and that totalitarianism is the rule. This is why I firmly believe in the notion of American Exceptionalism AS AMERICA WAS ORIGINALLY FOUNDED! The notions of limited government and self-determination were exceptional, especially for the time.
> If all they were going to do is what you propose, then there would be no need for them to be more than one page.
From the bills I have read the text of, I submit that a statement "of principle" would probably take two pages. A bill that might actually include penalties for breaking the principle would probably run at least 5. But I have not myself had a part in authoring a bill yet.
> If a bill was proposed that said only what you proposed, I would be fine with that, but such a bill will never be proposed.
Then write it.
Find guidelines for writing bill proposals. Look at the drafts for those other bills. Find what language is necessary to implement the bill we want. Write it. Send it to your state senators, each of your congressmen.
Ask the staffers who receive it to send you comments on it. Re-draft it based on those comments and resubmit it.
How do YOU think legislation gets made? Magically comes out of the typewriters of Law Gnomes?
MAD = Mutually Assured Disconnection.
also plays a vital role in accessing Slashdot. I predict a riot.
Have you ever seen a 1 page bill before? Head on over to the Library of Congress and find me one... 10 pages is pretty short for a bill actually.
/me checks http://turnofftheinternet.com
Yep, still there.
Or we could oppose all attempts by the government to regulate what can be said on the Internet. And I'm sorry, what we will get from a "Net Nuetrality" law will be like haggis made with rotten oats.
Nobody is proposing that the government regulate what is said on the Internet. The proposal is to regulate what can be *suppressed* or limited by corporations.
Currently hooked on AMP
The idea of a kill-switch has nothing to do with net neutrality.
Exactly. The kill-switch will happen if they want it to no matter what happens with net neutrality.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Bill of rights?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The Telecommunications Act of 1934 does not give the executive branch sweeping powers to shut off any and all telecommunications for indefinite lengths of time.
It applies specifically to wire communications. Most backbone internet traffic goes along optical links. Most cell traffic goes along a combination of optical and radio links.
Here - read your own quote, properly highlighted:
No right to interfere with either optical or radio communications in that text ...
Just the fact the US govt. is thinking about this means I'll be moving my dedicated and colocated servers to Europe. I predict a lot of other people will do the same thing. Where do they keep finding these idiot monkeys?
There is no sig...
The net neutrality legislation would be more effective in the presence of a working solution. If the backbone (the physical cables) has redundant parts owned by sufficiently different interests, then the competition should take care of the neutrality issue. IMHO, the government should build, own, and manage its own significant portion of the backbone (all governments do it with roads, and many governments are already doing it with the Internet). The law should at least require that part of the Internet to be perfectly neutral to commercial interests, as well as friendly to the political speech and the scientific research. That way the private ISPs will have to be pretty neutral if they are to be competitive at all.
If they turned off the internet the interwebs would be OK though, right?
Nope
Why should the "enemy hackers" be physically located in "enemy territory"?
Give them their battle orders and scatter them to the winds. They could be anywhere on earth, as long as they are able to receive the signal.
Topology does not matter. There are no maps for these territories.
Do you know how much arguing goes on about *exactly* what "bear arms" and "speech" mean? The reason bills are long now is that we relize that me must be precise, or leave it up to interpretation.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Oddly, thinking about it, aren't most of the amendments shorter than the average bill?
The bureaucrat is a sociopath.
Or we could oppose all attempts by the government to regulate what can be said on the Internet. And I'm sorry, what we will get from a "Net Nuetrality" law will be like haggis made with rotten oats.
Ok. Net neutrality isn't a regulation of what can be said. It's a regulation of what service providers can deny. No problems.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Which required the Supreme Court to arbitrate the results for over 200 years. While I might agree with it, it is clearly not the most efficiently written piece of law (e.g. 2nd Amendment)
Anyone remember the old Folgers Crystals instant coffee commercials?
We are here in the US, where we've secretly replaced real representation with the mainstream party substitutes. Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!
Meh.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I'm English so I'm not so up with the Net Neutrality debate, but its always struck me that it rules out some benefits that people might want. If it is just that "an ISP may not prioritize or filter Internet traffic based on source or destination" then am I (were I a US resident) not allowed to purchase some kind of premium service that prioritises comms between my home and my office, or between two of my offices?
I watched a fascinating simulation on CNN a while back, with a panel of folks from all over the political spectrum, and from different areas of govt. They simulated an attack on the power grid. They all decided that the first priority was to stop the attack. They looked around the room and said "Can we do that? Does anyone have the authority to to shut it down?" and the answer was "no." for good or ill, we have a mechanism for stopping enemy planes from overflying our borders, we do need a mechanism online as well. As always, the devil is in the details, but the concept is not an awful one. And using the term "kill switch" is a stupid and inflammatory term, and doesn't do anything towards facilitating a real discussion.
Here's the way regulation works. Private business tries something, people hate it. Customers can't get the companies to change their ways because all of the companies are doing it - there's no competitor to jump to. So now the government has to put a stop to it.
Write the bill and send it to your Congress critter.
It's quaint and charming when my friends tell me how writing a thoughtful letter to their elected representatives will accomplish something. Even intelligent people believe that.
Lobbyists know the system better than you or I ever will, they have contacts, but most of all they have money. They can contribute tens of millions of dollars to the Dem and Republican parties, and to individual candidates. That money can make the difference in paying for enough attack TV ads to bring a candidate over the top in a close race.
You, on the other hand, can send no more than a few letters, and if you're really charismatic you may be able to organize a dozen or a hundred of your friends to do the same. Meanwhile, you can't pay the millions of dollars for campaign costs which your elected official really needs.
There was a book that one a political science prize called "The Congressman," written by a former congressman turned political science professor, who said that the first priority for an elected official has to do is get re-elected. Otherwise they won't be an elected official any longer.
No matter how well-meaning, your congressman will either do whatever it takes to get re-elected, or he won't be a congressman. And it takes tens of millions of dollars.
Getting between a congressman and his millionaire contributors is like getting between a grizzly bear and her cub.
The example I understand best is health care reform.
According to the polls, the American public supported a single payer system (like other countries with better health care systems have) by over 50%, in multiple polls. They like Medicare and (by majorities) they wanted Medicare extended to people under 65.
During the Democratic primary, I saw a rundown of campaign contributions from the health care industry. Recalling from memory, it was:
Hillary Clinton $8.8 million
Barak Obama $8.4 million
Dennis Kucinich $40,000 (from the California Nurses Association).
Kucinich supported single payer.
As soon as Obama got into office, he broke his promise to support a single payer system. He came up with a compromise (public option), then a compromise of that compromise, and finally threw government-funded health care under the bus. The current plan is the same private insurance system, with subsidies for the private insurance industry to prevent it from collapsing immediately.
All of the touching letters to Obama didn't make any difference. He followed the interests of his financial contributors rather than the interests of the people who elected him. Now we're paying twice as much for health care as the next most expensive country, for care that isn't even always as good. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthCare/wireStory?id=10987822 http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Fund-Reports/2010/Jun/Mirror-Mirror-Update.aspx
The best explanation I've seen for this was at Bill Moyer's Journal. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/watch.html Moyers said that Obama never *wanted* a meaningful reform. He never *wanted* single payer. He *wanted* to cut a deal with the insurance industry.
Well, except for the alternate root servers and anyone who happens to have cached a great deal of the root servers, etc.
Of course, the ISPs really don't want the kill switch if they know what's good for them since as soon as it becomes reality, people would work to have emergency backup channels. Then they'll realize that the ISPs are less reliable than the backups and the whole thing flip-flops.
Aren't The US already?
Unfortunetly, nothing excludes the Bureaucrat from being a Sociopath as well.
Some might even claim it's a prerequisite.
Well, they have to make their biggest shareholders happy. ;)
Go capitalism!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
0 0 1 * * root /usr/bin/new-post.pl --subject="Oh Noes, Government Internet Killswitch!" --content=/dev/urandom --tags="privacy,yro,censorship,ohnoes,gov,evil,papersplease"
The internet was born out of the concept of a communications system that couldn't be easily "turned off".
I don't want ANYONE in control of them.
The difference is that I get to choose which people decide what happens to my packets when that decision is made by the ISP. If it is done by a bureaucrat, I have no choice in who decides what happens to my packets, that decision is made by the majority (ideally) or by the politically connected (in which case how different is it from when the company does it?).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I am perfectly happy to have no bill at all, but I would find a simple short bill acceptable. A five page bill could probably be acceptable...a bill that is over 100 pages on this subject is in all cases unacceptable.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That's the basic idea.
Then there's capping based on level of service subscribed to (which fits in with net neturality). That is, you (the customer) has to pay for 22 mbps to get 22 mbps. This works because its based on your relationship with your ISP. Net Neutrality requires that Google not have to pay to send you files at your full speed (except to their ISP)... unless of course you opt to split your full speed by doing something else at the same time. Basically, you lease a pipe of size X. the way you stated it cannot be enacted into law without making the difference clearer.
Any law has to allow the government to snap priority for military/civilian emergencies. That just seems obvious. I mean, they can already do that to all other telecom.
Enforcement and penalties of course need to be spelled out in the law.
Is your problem that in forums people don't draft legal language that explicitly spells out caveats that human beings can easily deduce but must be made explicit in the law? I mean, most contracts include clauses rendering them moot in the case of divine intervention or natural disaster. Somehow, I doubt most people get confused when you say "the contract requires them to deliver 200 reams of paper to X by July 10th" to have clauses that guarantee that its conditional on payment, X not being destroyed by an earthquake, the Rapture not occuring, etc. etc. etc.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
You are just talking about American corporatism; there cannot be a true monopoly without basis in government (provocative but true if you hunt the source of action; some kinds of monopoly are considered good -- patents, copyright etc). Otherwise, there would be the possibility of an alternative (assuming property rights are actually treated as valid and a municipality can't just claim eminent domain when it gets interventionist).
You are right about the Second Amendment. If it was shorter, it would be better.
Actually, I consider the Bill of Rights to be one of the most efficiently written pieces of law. The Founding Fathers knew that they could not foresee all of the possible situations that would occur, so they didn't try. They laid out basic principles and counted on the good sense of their successors.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really? Have you read the bills that have been proposed in Congress? Have you listened to what various members of government have said about regulating the Internet?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Nobody? Actually -- the current administration's Cass Sunstein does want to manage what is said. For example, there has been a push for "fairness" to make it so that every opinion article has to have a link to opposing views. What if you don't want to? Well, it's "voluntary" but they will make mandates if you don't comply. (video: http://trippstake.squarespace.com/journal/2010/5/17/is-this-america.html )
Anyway, this kill switch is also controlling what can be said. Silence is a total ban; why would you permit anyone to cut off all communication, large amounts of business, and god knows what else requires the internet?
Oh how cute, you think that the name of laws actually reflects what is in them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That is ultimately the problem with "Net Neutrality" legislation. It either answers your question "yes" and thus becomes something that stifles innovation, or it becomes complicated and easily subverted into something that allows the government to regulate the content of the Internet (and probably stifles innovation).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This idea is flawed from the start. As soon as we knew they were thinking this, someone started added redundancy layers to maintain service (let's just include white hat, companies not wanting downtime risks and not even consider the hackers), unless they're talking full on kill where they get every telco in North America to power down their data centers simultaneously, black out every satellite in the sky and shut down the phone systems.
Oh wait... they better block radio communications as well since people have been able to to do IP over HAM radio as well.
Oh... let's kill the pigeons, since people have proven they can use birds like sneaker net...
And speaking of sneakernet, they better come and get our shoes as well.
Yeah, that's going to go over real nice.
These people are idiots.
No, my problem is that I don't trust the lawmakers to not put a bunch of things into the law that would make it a very bad thing, especially if it is several hundred (or the way this Congress likes to write laws, several thousand) pages long. When Congressmen start saying, "It's unreasonable to expect us to read bills before we vote on them and we wouldn't understand them anyway", I start saying, "Then don't pass anything."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
: do you want a sociopath in control of your packets, or a bureaucrat?
But you repeat yourself.
Oh how cute, you think that the name of laws actually reflects what is in them.
Net neutrality isn't the name of a law. It's a general principle. Nice try.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
People wanted "net neutrality." Well, this is what you get when you hand control of the Internet over to the government.
Net Neutrality and Kill Switches are in no way connected. That's like saying the logical result of a law barring employment discrimination against blacks would be a law allowing the government to kill white people. We've had the relevant Civil Rights Act for 46 years now, and still no sign of the anti-white genocide.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Yes, but you want it made into a law. I would be willing to accept that if any of the bills which claim to make it a law were short and stuck to the principle that Ultranova claims is what Ultranova stands for (but most of the other people who replied to my comments seem to believe is less than what Net Neutrality is).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Bring packet in from across the border:
"One notable detail is that 2.4 GHz WLAN band is partially overlapping amateur radio band, and thus WLAN hardware can readily be used by amateur radio licensed operators with higher power radio gear than what the general population "license free" usage allows." [Wikipedia -- packet]
Of course, amateur radio operators are supposed to have their location on file, regularly identify themselves and aren't supposed to "broadcast", but, then, governments aren't supposed to go nutty either so all bets are off during a totalitarian clampdown.
The difference is that I get to choose which people decide what happens to my packets when that decision is made by the ISP.
Only if you aren't subjected to a monopoly. And the current ISPs are natural monopolies, where the first mover has tremendous advantages. As an example: I can get a crappy ATT line, or a Comcast line. Great choice. Especially when it comes to Net Neutrality.
If it is done by a bureaucrat, I have no choice in who decides what happens to my packets, that decision is made by the majority (ideally) or by the politically connected (in which case how different is it from when the company does it?).
The company is designed to fuck me over, the bureaucrat merely has the ability to fuck me over.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
How do packets moving everyday via peering telcos, Bells, isps and other network backhaul providers without artificial degradation have anything have anything to do with a federal desire for crisis management over a nations telecommunications system?
Dont blame 'the internet' for the lack understanding and investment in secure, hardened basic utility infrastructure.
The cold war showed the US could do it well with the hardware, over engineering and software.
Now you have 1 person walking around making sure the hardware is ok on site and some regional person with the passwords, a open public network and a laptop.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I turned it off after Hulu.com and netflix became the cheaper way to go. It's not likely to come back. And... I think I have a radio in my 8 track.... somewhere. LOL, yeah, I don't have an 8 track. I've never even seen one.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
You say that you need government regulation to protect you because there is close to a monopoly for High Speed Internet service providers. Of course, that near monopoly exists because of government regulations in the first place. When the government uses its power to create problems, people seem to think that the best solution is to give the government more power. I think that the best solution to the problems created by the government is to take power away from the government.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This isn't completely off topic, but this weekend is Field Day, Ham Radio's event for showing off what we can do to the general public. We go completely off grid for 24 hours, operating radio stations in parks and other public places and encourage normal people to get on the air (supervised, of course) Although we will be doing mostly voice, it works better for PR, hams have the technology to duplicate the internet, and interconnect with the internet all wirelessly and off the grid. There IS that database, but you are only required to keep your mailing address updated, you can operate from anywhere without notifying anyone (except for that ID when you transmit). And, best of all, every ham knows that in a true emergency, by law most of the rules go away
that's cynicism, the lazy asshole's replacement for intelligence
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The whole point of ARPANET was to design a communications system that would withstand a nuclear attack by routing around problems. The only way to have a "Kill Switch" is to knock down all the routers. If you don't knock down all of them, what's to prevent a set of concerned citizens from just putting routers in place to route around the problem.
Of course the real solution is that we should just build those standby routers today and prevent a kill switch from ever becoming effective.
>How exactly are they going to turn off the internet?
They're going to have a audio kill-switch triggered by vuvuzela.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Of course, that near monopoly exists because of government regulations in the first place.
Please educate yourself on natural monopolies before you betray your ignorance on the topic.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yes, in the beginning, the DARPA did fund the initial development of the ARPA network, and it's goals did include self-healing in case of link disruption. But at some point, the DARPA powers that be let loose the RFCs. A lot of foreign investment occurred, in infrastructure, and in the development of standards compliant devices used at all levels. Now the global parts of the "Internet" is no longer owned by the US, and although there is quite a lot of knowledge about it resides here, it is a global phenomenon now. The "cat"inet is out of the bag now. We can hope to steer the course through discussion, but I think many governments would take it unkindly should the US try to hurt the global Internet.
yes, it's starting to look like that and sadly enough Europe as well, I have this picture of Orwell standing on a bookshelf, it keeps looking at me and says : "See? I was right..."
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
...not to mention the lobbying of the Ursus arctos horribilis communities, what with all the homo sapiens hunting them for their forelimbs and such...
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
How exactly are they going to turn off the internet? Wasn't it designed specifically to resist such attempts?
Nobody can turn off the entire internet, but the US government is probably able the force the US-based parts of the Net to shut down. That will cause enormous disruption, but it won't stop traffic in Europe, for example.
And even if they succeed, can the economy possibly survive such a move?
It'll probably recover eventually.
I am not convinced that natural monopolies exist. And even if they do, you should study the history of telephony and cable. Both the cable and telephone monopolies exist because of government regulation, not because of some "natural" monopoly.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I didn't say own, I said 0wn. There's a distinct difference in meaning, and in this context it's quite significant.
I've heard of several cases where a backhoe cut Internet connections between sites. To me this sounds like there's some place in the connection where there's only one trunk line.
You do seem more knowledgeable about this than I am. (I'd never heard of BGP routing.) But you might want to think about the difference between logical layers and physical layers a bit. I was talking about physical layers.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you've cached the TCP addresses of the alternate root servers, then taking down name resolution won't keep you from them. But most haven't.
Do you really think a significant number of people would work on emergency backup channels? That doesn't seem to be the way people usually act. And companies generally seem to cut even standard emergency procedures to the legal limit. That costs money. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions, not the ordinary case.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
At a time of crisis, the US will cut themselves off from the rest of the world (who will continue to use the internet whether the US likes it or not) and this makes sense??? It sounds more like a case of not wanting the people of the US to know what the rest of the world thinks. Just like when GB told everyone that Al Jazeera are terrorists because they want to know what the other side are thinking. What he really meant was he only wants us to know what he wants us to know. Just as, when the US closes down the internet the rest of the world will continue to use the internet freely (although they will be unable to visit disney.com) but you will not be able to read the news that the US government is not in control of.
This is what Russia and China used to be like toward their people...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I for one welcome our new communist overlords.
But who watches the watchers?
"Cyberwar" by Richard Clarke is where I read his suggestion. As Securityemo's reply indicates below, the amount of processing necessary to do signature matching for either a virus or a video someone doesn't want seen, would be prohibitive at this time for that kind of bandwidth.
I don't think Mr. Clarke was overstating the threats, but I do think he underestimates the problems that come along with his proposed solutions, both technical and otherwise.
Relying on the continued technical inability to install such filters is a bad idea though.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
The US sucks again..!