Internet Is Easy Prey For Governments

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Douglas Rushkoff writes on CNN that the revolution in Egypt starkly reveals the limits of our internet tools and the ease with which those holding power can take them away. 'Old media, such as terrestrial radio and television, were as distributed as the thousands of stations and antennae from which broadcast signals emanated, but all internet traffic must pass through government and corporate-owned choke points,' says Rushkoff adding that when push came to shove over WikiLeaks in the US the very same government authority was used to cut off "enemies of the state" from access and funding. Rushkoff suggests that we use the lessons of the internet to build a communications infrastructure that cannot be controlled from the top. Back before the internet, many early computer hobbyists networked on Fidonet, a simple peer-to-peer network and now digital activists propose reviving such ideas with mesh networking over Wi-Fi networks that could connect inhabitants of an entire city without anyone having an internet service provider. 'Until we choose to develop such alternative networks, our insistence on seeing the likes of Facebook and Twitter as the path toward freedom for all people will only serve to increase our dependence on corporations and government for the right to assemble and communicate.'"

Comments

No ideal solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as people complain about some government/company having the ability to do 'something', completely decentralized systems are also subject to wide spread abuse that is nearly impossible to stop. Think about the proposed "mesh" networking - you traffic goes through who knows whom's device, your IP address comes from where? Your DNS queries come from who knows where? If I can feed you your IP address and DNS results and your data passes through my network - then I own you. Witness what has happened with even fairly simply systems such as SMTP. The world is inundated with SPAM because the system in inherently decentralized and it is impossible to verify where email is coming from. Put all your network traffic through a decentralized system and no one is going to be happy with the results. You think SPAM is bad? You've not seen anything compared to what would happen if you could not say where your IP/DNS/Traffic is from.

It doesn't have to be that way ...

[BitZtream]

The Internet was actually designed to be distributed ... true story.

It only happens to have a few large choke points because its economically effective to do so.

Believe it or not it is entirely possible for the Internet to be used over terrestrial radio ... in fact ... it can be done by 'amateurs'! In fact ... it already is!

Right now the Internet has these choke points because theres no reason other than FUD not to have it that way. Should the actual need for a more diverse infrastructure arise due to the government going psycho than we'll shift gears and make it go that direction. Yes, it'll suck for a period of time to start with until new links are added, and we'll probably have to lose things that consume massive bandwidth for pleasure like youtube ... but rest assured, porn will make sure we recover promptly.

Its just silly to spend a bunch of money for a bunch of links that aren't needed and all the installation costs that go with it.

The Internet works pretty much exactly like fido net when you use UUCP. The difference is simply how you dial the phone line ... the data is actually STILL traveling over the same fiber and copper as it did when you sent your fidonet mail up to your mail hub and distributed back to other nodes.

As for seeing Facebook and Twitter as a path for 'freedom of the people' ... well that just makes you sound like a freaking idiot. Neither of these sites provide anything that wasn't already done before them on the Internet as well in more traditional methods. Old idea, new theme, new fad ... not a world changer. The only difference is now we're paying attention to someone hundreds of miles away from us that has no bearing on our lives what so ever, instead of the people in our own neighborhoods. Its just a different popularity contest.

Re:It doesn't have to be that way ...

[Eil]

The Internet was actually designed to be distributed ... true story. ...
Right now the Internet has these choke points because theres no reason other than FUD not to have it that way.

No, it's actually quite a bit more complicated than that. The Internet as we know it has a minimum of three "choke-points" that prevent the Internet from ever being a fully distributed network:

1. Backbones, which are so incredibly expensive to deploy and maintain that only governments and large telecommunications companies can afford to have them. Mesh networks are by definition much slower and and more inefficient than a star-topology network and cannot scale globally given current state of the art in technology. And if they could, there's a whole world of reliability and security questions to be answered.

2. DNS. In theory, DNS can be decentralized when zone authorities don't overlap. In practice, almost everybody "subscribes" only to the root zone, which is controlled by ICANN.

3. IP address space. IPs are assigned by central authorities, to ISPs, and then to users. All of this is tracked and logged somewhere, so your IP is effectively your signature around the net, even if the IP changes frequently. When my web server logs a page view from a given IP address at a given time, there's a very good chance that I could root out the specific human behind that mouse click given enough motivation and/or money and/or influence. Point is, if you can be tracked, you can be censored or otherwise denied access to the network.

Believe it or not it is entirely possible for the Internet to be used over terrestrial radio ... in fact ... it can be done by 'amateurs'! In fact ... it already is!

Radio will never be an acceptable way to route around physical Internet connections permanently because the bandwidth is inherently much lower. And even if it wasn't, the ability to communicate with any decent distance requires a license which happens to be granted by the government. The license comes with content restrictions as well (only non-commercial traffic is allowed, no obscene language, etc).

Replacing the Internet as it currently stands is not feasible. The only logical way to keep the Internet open and free in the long term is to demand from our governments laws which guarantee online privacy, freedom of speech, and bona-fide net neutrality at the same time that we invest in tools and technologies that empowers users to protect themselves.

Re:Juxtaposition

[iserlohn]

What worries me most is that political discourse in the US is diluted down to a series of maxims, which are largely not only incorrect, but actively damaging to the nation. Cutting taxes is not always good, nor is regulation always bad. It's time people should think about the issues in a more nuanced manner and start to appreciate (and understand) the amount of complexity and difficulty in these issues.

Re:Juxtaposition

[SuperKendall]

The other article is about government regulation to reduce restrictions on internet access, not to impose them.

And if you are fool enough to believe with the mechanism in place it will not be used for other things... well then I have a whole shelf of history books to sell you that might make you think twice about power granted never being used or expanded upon.

Doubly so with the very same government snuffing out domain names, the next step of course would be to mandate ISP's not allow routing to those addresses either...

Is that so impossible to see coming down the very path you are helping lay the flagstones for?

The funny thing that I am complaining about a hypothetical yet realistic threat; while Net Neutrality seeks to impose regulation to solve a problem we not only have not had but have no signs of having soon.