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Say No To a Government Internet "Kill Switch"

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the terrible-ideas-make-me-sad dept.

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?"

10 of 433 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't it obvious by guruevi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

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    1. Re:Isn't it obvious by Pojut · · Score: 2, Informative

      last time I checked, there were still literally hundreds of thousands of private businesses out there, and there isn't a single industry in which government runs 100% the design, production, distribution, and funding.

      Claims of socialism in this country (at least, to the extent that people have been making since the 2008 elections) are knee jerk reactions at best and extensive fear mongering at worst. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Obama is all roses and wine...but he's hardly the harbinger of socialism so many people try to pin him with.

      Your sig applies aptly, might I add.

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      Living With a Nerd
  2. Packaged nonsense by Wowsers · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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    Take Nobody's Word For It.
  3. Re:Hmmm... by schnikies79 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm pretty sure he is referring to the former CEO of Quest, who is in jail for insider trading. He was the only CEO that denied the NSA's request.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

    All told, I think they guy is a slimy sack of shit, even if he did one good thing.

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    Gone!
  4. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 3, Informative

    If by most you mean US treasury securities and if by most you mean I believe about 11% then yes.

  5. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I by HiThere · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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  6. Re:Local law, global impact? by Eunuchswear · · Score: 2, Informative

    This has made the news a bit overseas too. There were some doubts voiced that the US could effectively completely 'kill' the Internet.

    Trivialy easy. DNS isn't the way you'd do it, BGP is.

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  7. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I by Golddess · · Score: 4, Informative

    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: "..."

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  8. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:Does the U.S. really want to be like China or I by ScrumHalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.