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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
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?
What good is a skype phone call Mr. Anderson ... if you are unable to speak.
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.
The goal of the EBS isn't to completely shut down TV and Radio - it's to facilitate emergency communications.
The hypothetical effect of what this bill supposedly (I haven't read the bill myself) would completely trash our economy. We're in an age where a vast chunk of our transactions pass through the internet. Personally I think this "medicine" has worse side effects than the ailment. The only way I could see this being used to "benefit" America is in the same way Iran tried hushing their people during civil unrest and I'm sure that's the goal here.
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).
The Radio and TV that they can interrupt are receive-only. They don't block phones, which people use to communicate. They shouldn't block internet.
"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."
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.
"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
The difference is that the internet RELIES on the consumer being non-passive; EG, it RELIES on the fact that the consumer is also a producer.
What this means in a nutshell: The internet is much more than the boob-tube. It is more than newspapers. It is more than radio. All three of those are passively consumed; the reader/viewer/listener sits and absorbs content, but does not create content.
As a result, cutting off newspapers, Television, or radio in a "National Emergency" does not impair the public's ability to communicate, which is a protected freedom in the united states. Cutting off the internet DOES impair that ability.
That is why measures like this are unacceptable. It is also EXACTLY why the government wants to have that power; it forces all news to go through "approved" (controlled) channels, and allows complete censorship of ideas, essentially circumventing both freedoms of press, and of speech. (Two things that the US government has found difficult to cope with, given the uncontrollable, decentralized nature of internet journalism, and the rise of places like WikiLeaks.)
"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.
. . . 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!
"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
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.
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.
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.
Snake Plissken? I heard he was dead.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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)-
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.