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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?"
Because it's easier not to. Physical separation of networks makes the work a lot harder.
I work at a company that builds digital speed cameras. And I can connect to any them, even the ones that are live, sending out tickets. I just need to go trough 2 routers, which have firewalls but easy admin passwords. Of course our office has VPN access, and Internet. So basically I could tap into the cameras from anywhere. Removing tickets if I wished, or even implanting fake ones. Of, if you love your privacy a bit better, I could just get ALL photos, not just of speeders.
I've expressed my concern about this, but nobody seems to care. It's easier to maintain like this.
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.
Actually, one quarter (49/200) of the root DNS servers are in the US. I checked last Friday, after this discussion came up elsewhere. The remainder would be congested, but probably able to stay upright.
Regardless. shutting down "access at the ISP level" is pretty much a meaningless statement. Specifically, it says, "private companies -- such as "broadband providers, search engines, and software firms -- immediately comply with any emergency measure or action"
Search engines. That means that google and yahoo will shut down--worldwide.
Broadband providers. ISPs. Companies that aren't ISPs buy their access _from_ ISPs. This isn't just Joe down the street and Susie's Bead Shoppe, it's major oil companies and banks.
What about international shipping companies that coordinate through the internet? Trains? Airlines? Stock markets? All of it will grind to a screeching halt, with massive economic damage over the next weeks or months or years. The rest of the world _will_ survive a 'loss of the US' on the internet, although not without collateral damage.
As for DARPA's invention giving them the authority to do this, it's no different that Canada saying that because of Bell inventing the telephone, they have the right to shut down the worldwide POTS network. It's silly - the genie left the bottle decades ago, and the US is now a player, not the owner. Besides, any organization that has that degree of power or authority also has a responsibility to others it would harm.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
What is your opinion on the government being able to turn off the phone system in case of emergency?
The phones can be shut off under martial law. It's been done many times. The National Guard shutoff phones in Portage and Summit counties Ohio in less then 10 minutes after they shot the students at Kent State (May 4, 1970). They also closed all East/West highways between the counties. I heard the shots as I was going out the driveway. I pulled into a Lugans and tried to call dispatch from the phone booth. The phone had a recorded messge to the effect "by order of the government the phone service has been suspended". or somthing like that. I went into the restaraunt and asked to use their phone. Same message.
For the record I was Sr. Field Engineer tech specialist assisting on a machine in Taylor Hall when I and the FE that I was assisting were forced to leave the building at gun point by a NG officer. I drove to the hospital, in Ravenna, since I was sure the pathologist, who I knew, would allow me to use his phone. Arriving in Ravenna I was faced by cops with Thompson pointed at me. At the hospital the pathologist told me I could use the phone but first he wanted me to go in the morgue and make sure one of the 4 dead students wasn't his daughter. She wasn't one of them. That done I was able to make phone calls since the emergency phones were not affected.
This all traspired in less then 30 minutes. It got worse as the day wore on, but that's another story.
Freedom can be taken away faster then seems possible.