Slashdot Mirror
Citing Snowden Leaks, Russia Again Demands UN Takeover of Internet
Lauren Weinstein writes "In a clear demonstration that actions do have consequences, often unintended ones, 'The New York Times' reports that Russia is again demanding a UN Internet takeover of exactly the sort repressive governments around the world have long been lusting after, and using Edward Snowden's continued presence in Russia as a foundation for this new thrust. Acting as a catalyst for a crackdown against freedom of speech on the Net was certainly not Snowden's intention — quite the opposite, it's reasonable to assume." Not to worry.
The world's biggest bastion of internet crooks* advocates raising the barrier to entry for internet crookery. Nothing to see here.
*By which I mean botnets, spam, and internet-conducted dodgy transactions of all sorts.
...This is an obvious consequence.
Oh wait, no it's Weinstein. Who the fuck is Lauren Weinstein and why does an article pointing to her own blog make it to Slashdot's front page?
On the basis that there was no reason to change the status quo. Now that the US has proven to be not worthy of trust, the UN should take control over the DNS root.
I can't see how the UN could fuck the domain system up much more than the USA already has. But still, how about fuck the statists? Let's get a proper decentralised DNS system in place, and use that instead. Meanwhile, we can use alt-roots.
Seriously, the USA has proven that they can't be trusted with control of the Internet. Demonstrated it totally. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be insane, or suffering from selective blindness.
Oh, yeah, we're going to take your domain of you because you link to sites that host torrent files (which themselves aren't copyrighted material, but merely link to copyrighted material). For example.
So yeah, fuck the USA, fuck ICANN, and maybe let's see if the UN (who manage the international postal telephone systems) can't do a better job. Or even better, let's say "fuck authority", and go it alone.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
Russia does NOT have the credibility to demand anything when it comes to the Internet. Some of the best cracks and software pirates come from the Soviet Union. I would venture that the only reason Russia would love to the the UN as the world Internet Caretaker is that it would allow them more freedoms to do as they please.
Bruce Schneier saw this coming. And he's got a point...on one hand, we argue against the policies of countries like Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, China when it comes to free, uncensored and unmonitored use of the Internet (or lack thereof in the aforementioned countries). And then, oh...look what we're doing with all those network links that pass through our own country. You can argue that the motives are different, the means are more surgical (but only to a point since 1, they are classified programs and 2, intelligence agencies lie their assess off, by necessity, to foreign powers) but the argument still won't carry much weight.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
So let me get this straight - it's better to have all of your actions monitored and recorded online by one of the most warmongering and paranoid countries on the planet, than to have the Internet controlled by an international organization which "might" abuse the privilege? Makes sense...
The USA is the mightiest, richest and most powerful nation on Earth, we control the Internet, and nobody can do anything about it
Lets see you try to take it and see what happens.
I wish the UN good luck in trying to take over the internet. They don't have a standing army of sysadmins ready to enforce oppression, and I imagine assembling such a thing would be near impossible. Ask the NSA.
KC
Somehow I doubt Russia would really want the UN controlling the internet, considering the US already contributes over 1/5 of the budget, the largest individual contributor by far.
Why do americans get so paranoid that letting the world itself control the worlds telecommunications network, instead of the spooky us government is a somehow a threat to freedom.
I'm sorry but as a non american, reading about PRISM doesn't fill me with confidence that letting a foreign power control my communications is "freedom".
It SHOULD be controlled by a democracy of the world, not Obama and the NSA.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
So a "repressive" government (like Russia) is asking for a U.N. takeover of the Internet, to the great consternation of "freedom-loving" governments (like the U.S.).
Given recent revelations, it doesn't seem like the U.S. government is very freedom-loving any more.
So it's really between governments that don't pretend to love freedom, and governments that pretend to. No real difference except for the pretense.
What a sad state of affairs.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
I don't see how that will help. It's not like the US approves intercept/wiretaps for the UK, Africa, etc.
In the not-so-distant future, and it will be controlled by the US, deal with it. Russia is a dying a slow death, as they continue to depopulate. After Putin, no one will really much care what Russia does or says.
"Acting as a catalyst for a crackdown against freedom of speech on the Net was certainly not Snowden's intention — quite the opposite, it's reasonable to assume."
How is putting internet control in the UN hands a crackdown against freedom of speech on the net? It's actually quite the opposite! The UN is there as a middle ground between nations for cooperation and human rights, etc.. Putting whatever you call internet control to the UN is a direction in openness and freedom. What is this non-sense about the UN cracking down on freedom of speech?!
For one thing, Russia/Putin is asking for nationalization of private IT enterprises, which is not the same as putting the UN in charge of overseeing the ethical and equitable internet functioning.
It seems that blog is really mixing things up to try and make Snowden's actions look like they are helping the bad guys.
The internet we have today is a product of the UN security council's agreements, the transfer would be meaningless given the right of veto.
So a "repressive" government (like Russia) is asking for a U.N. takeover of the Internet, to the great consternation of "freedom-loving" governments (like the U.S.).
Given recent revelations, it doesn't seem like the U.S. government is very freedom-loving any more.
So it's really between governments that don't pretend to love freedom, and governments that pretend to. No real difference except for the pretense.
What a sad state of affairs.
But if that happens, say goodbye to free speech on the internet. Try saying "sieg heil" in France sometime ... now imagine the internet like that.
... etc, etc, etc.
Or look at the homeotherapists attacking critics in Great Britain. Now imagine that controlling the internet.
Or look at the band Pussy Riot in Russia
The UN would be all about tradeoffs of suppressing free speech.
NSA praises Redmond for 'collaborative teamwork'
There are red faces in Redmond after Edward Snowden released a new batch of documents from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division covering Microsoft's involvement in allowing backdoor access to its software to the NSA and others.
Documents seen by The Guardian detail how the NSA became concerned when Microsoft started testing Outlook.com, and asked for access. In five months Microsoft and the FBI created a workaround that gives the NSA access to encrypted chats on Outlook.com. The system went live in December last year – two months before Outlook.com's commercial launch.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/snowden_leak_shows_microsoft_added_outlookencryption_backdoor_for_feds/ [theregister.co.uk]
internet takes over YOU !
Once you give people the power, it's damn nearly impossible to take it back from all of them.
Fact is, even if the UN did take over the Internet, or worse, we still have the knowledge, technology, and capability, to construct our own, new Internet, elsewhere. And simply move computers onto it. Apparently, having private networks in the home is BEYOND impossible for the average consumer.
RIP oppressive jackasses; worldwide communication is beyond your stranglehold.
I have to agree with Russia on this. Companies around the world have been badly damaged by US stealing technologies, companies secrets, lucrative contracts.
Spying on ordinary people sounds now less crime when you consider other criminal activity.
Thanks Snowden for exposing organized crime and their activities.
Transferring DNS & IP allocation to UN control is not a "crackdown against freedom of speech". That's simply false.
The USA has seized domains including Wikileaks, ones accused of copyright infringement, ones publishing stuff it doesn't like.
USA has seized Poker websites, despite blocking of online poker being an illegal trade barrier (on behalf of the Vegas casinos).
USA has seized torrent websites, defining a torrent as a copyright infringement.
Executive order "Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions," means the US President can seize control of the Internet, the whole DNS systems, IP routing tables, anything and everything in NSA terroritory:
This is clearly unacceptable in a democracy.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/06/executive-order-assignment-national-security-and-emergency-preparedness-
USA currently has journalists in prison on bogus charges, e.g. Barrett Brown, the journalist who wrote about anonymous hacks of HB Gary, the defence contractor who had a plan to smear Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald. Anonymous broke into their servers, leaked it to the press, Barrett Brown covered the leaks. They made up a bogus credit card fraud charge and arrested him on it, currently in jail without trial for nearly a year:
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/11/jailed_journalist_barrett_brown_faces_105
USA is blocking encryption measures on the fiber backbone, and that change to whois they're proposing would put all the whois data into NSA controlled servers which is clearly unacceptable.
*Everyone* except for the USA wants control of the base protocols out of NSA hands, really we're very sorry, we see you are screwed, we see you are barely a democracy at this point, the puppet you vote for has almost no power. Sorry an all, but the Internet is bigger than USA.
Other telecom standards are already handled by the UN, so they're not dictated by a single government, and this should be too.
...or a group of corrupt countries. WTF is the difference? They will all use it to their benefit. Put my cat in charge and we might have a chance of a "free" internet..
Fuck the UN, and why not have ICANN and suchlike be it's own independent NGO? Each country pays into it to keep it going.
It would only take a few nations to support it, and it can stay independent. I can see a few housekeeping items that would have to be addressed, but at least this way the UN can keep their grubby paws off it, yet no one can bitch about the US owning it anymore (in spite of the whole shebang originating as a US gov't project, etc...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The U.S will never give control of the root servers to any other country or organization.
Except I see nothing in the article or blog post that suggest they are using Snowden presence in Russia to advance their case. As far as I can see they are using just the revelations about the mass surveillance to push their ideas, and they could do that with Snowden rotting in US prison or being already dead.
In that light it's really interesting that NYTimes (and especially the blog) choose to inject the "Look! Look! Snowden is working for Putin" piece into all this. I guess it's all part of the smear campaign aimed at him and to derail the discussion about what US is doing with the Internet.
It sports only a link to L. Weinstein's blog, not even to the website of the NYT, although that newspaper is - misleadingly so ! - being named in TFA. Moreover, TFA has only one source. Below par, and so is Slashdot, I am sorry to say, for publishing this piece of emotional garbage and self-promotion for Mrs. Weinstein. Away with it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
The interenets is based on open source so just download, make, make install. Problem solved. It's not like your trying to build a soyuz capsule or somethin, sheesh *rolls eyes*.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
As I've pointed out every time this idea gets floated, why on earth would the US agree to this? Diplomatic efforts are only effective if there is a carrot or stick behind them. Neither is in evidence.
A quick wakeup call:
You have a debt of $16 trillion, an annual deficit of $900 billion, you collect $2 trillion in taxes and spend $2.9 trillion. To cover this shortfall, the Fed is printing $80 billion a month in new money and buying debt, most of it government debt bought at negative rates (80*12 = 960 billion more than the deficit). Negative rates means the repayments from the government will be worth less than the money originally printed. Fed isn't allowed to do that, but hey, you have no choice.
It has nothing to do with inflation vs deflation BTW, the government would have to borrow that money no matter what, the *borrowing* creates the inflation not the Fed. The only difference is the interest rate would be high, as US govt would have to pay interest to borrow. Something in the 6-10% range is modest.
You also run a huge trade deficit. The recent NSA problems will make that substantially worse as USA kit is no longer usable by a lot of businesses abroad.
There is a big problem here, if Fed throttles back, then the economy will shrink and taxes fall. If they throttle back interest rates will rise, suppose they rise to 7%, and taxes shrink to 1.12 trillion. Then the tax doesn't even cover the interest = USSR style meltdown. Yet if he doesn't throttle back the dollar becomes toilet paper, it won't suffer hyper inflation, but raging inflation of 12%+ is quite possible if value is driven from the dollar.
So its unlikely the future will see a US dominated world.
in soviet russia, the internet takes control of the U.N...
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
The only people who could fuck up the internet more than ICANN is the UN.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Once the internet is completely controlled, it will die. This is what the powers that be want.
Last time this came up I was against it.
This time I'm unsure.
It seems like one solution would be to get rid of non .country parent domains and have each country manage the domains within their .country.
Of course that leads to censorship but it seems the most fair and the least likely mechanism to allow unfettered and unlimited spying across countries.
You have a former Colonel from the KGB running the country. You know damn well he likes having Snowden in his country so he can drive any Russian agenda by pointing back at the US and saying "Because the US 'owns' the Internet they can spy on all of us! Now excuse me while I chase Geese in my ultralight."
The agenda of the UN and specifically the ITU controlling the Internet is going to represent an end to free communications as we know it. Don't like something said in a blog? they'll be able to track you down at a whim. Using Encryption to protect your privacy? You'll be branded as a spy and arrested. It'll happen and the US has egg on its face right now over this whole Snowden episode. You'll also see it hurt US Companies in Telecommunications and Internet Services. Facebook, Microsoft and Google will become unwelcome in countries that view them as puppets of the FBI and the NSA, turning over information whenever the whims of the US government dictate.
I
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Because for every dictatorial country you cited, there is at least a western democratic country. It is not as if those various country could roughshod loss of freedom over the "no" from western democracy, or worst come to worst, the perfectly anti democratic security counsel. What youa re saying is actual non sense US propaganda "if we give internet to the UN, china will take us our freedom!".
Seriously. Thanks to Obama's administration we have this problem. He has single handedly wrecked trust in US operating systems, web hosts, hardware, online services... everything.
I know someone's gonna say this started under Bush, but Obama could have stopped it. In fact, Obama ran on the promise that he would stop it.I know someone is going to split hairs: "He's NOT wiretapping!!11!!ONE He's only collecting teh metadatas." Obama's running mate, Joe Biden would like to have a word with you.
Fuck you Obama/Biden. You've broken the trust of everyone who elected you.
The problem with the US system of democracy is there's no way to FIRE dirtbag politicians who run on specific campaign promises and then turn around and do the exact opposite. That mother fucker promised to end this shit and instead made it worse, intentionally. He should be fired without a pension or golden parachute. Where are the calls for impeachment over this direct breach of the Constitution that he swore to protect?
Summary cites New York Times but links to a person's blog not affiliated with the NYT. Bait and switch. Enjoy your hits. Also, your blog sucks. As for the actual article, which I found linked in the blog, gosh the Russians want to nationalize large companies... where have I heard this before? Clearly they are just going to capitalize on Snowden any way they can.
This is gonna be quite the paradox for the Slashdot community. To the Slashdot hive mind, there is no nation on the earth as oppressive as the USA. You could be describing some oppressive police state hellhole, with zero human rights, no press freedom and no rule of law and the universal Slashdot response is "Yeah, but the USA is WAY worse."
As the UN is dominated by these oppressive nations, in theory Slashdot should welcome an internet takeover by the UN because, you know, they're still WAY better than the USA.
No, there are pretty much only three western democratic countries
This rhetoric doesn't sound very convincing any more now that we know what GCHQ and the NSA have been up to and what their ambitions are. The US government clearly can't be trusted with stewardship over the Internet, they're as untrustworthy and malign as Russia.
As in "against their own population", or "against other countries populations"? US is exporting its repression, control, and snooping all over the world, not just in the country itself. If in a democratic country the government misbehaves, the population could vote against it, rebel, or whatever. What if another country government the one that is misbehaving against you?
What Russia, and the other countries of the UN should do as retaliation is just give back some of what US is doing to the rest of the world. Just consider their citizens privacy as intellectual property, declare that the US, as nation policy, is violating their intellectual property and reject and stop honoring all intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc) of US based companies. And lets see how "safety" deals with "greed" inside US government.
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other"
--Neutral President
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
Screw politics, espionage, terrorism and other such human vanity non-sense. The Internet should be working even if the US would be suffering from a super volcano eruption, a land war, an asteroid impact or a mystery virus turning everyone to z-people.
What could UN do if it takes over the "internet"? Mr Putin still wants to correspond with his mistress who has a gmail account.
The UN is a bunch of people overseas telling us what to do. We were founded to avoid that kind of thing. Furthermore, if it were ever to become an effectively governing body, it would be a monopoly. Where would a guy like Snowden run if there were universal agreement? Mars?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
100% p2p, no more stupid wrappers for IP/TCP.
This makes no sense. What difference would it make if the UN controlled the internet? They would be just as oblivious to what the NSA Was doing as everyone else. The problem here was that corporations were pressured to add the little black box to their network. Example: The US has no control over the internet in other countries... the hosting country does... But yet... Their governments AND corporations played ball with the NSA. Sounds like you need to focus on your own government instead of making a bullshit scape goat story to try and push your political agenda Putin.
If the choice is between these two, I will gladly choose the former.
I am surprised that the summary goes anywhere near laying this at Snowden's feet. Even if it was his intention to give Russia the ammo it wants to help push for a Un takeover of the Internet, the _USA_ did the spying in the first place. Lay blame where it is due people.
but.. but... but i like my internetz controlled and snooped by usa and nsa. this way i know
never to use it for anything important/usefull...like remote controlling BOMB carrying drones.
uhm.. USA's filtering stance is just different. their filtering tactic is to remove the offending site from the servers end. that's much more worse.
instead of banning megaupload for example, they went ahead and arranged the servers to be shut down. instead of censoring the dns results for some omar this and thats magazine they drop a bomb on the guy running it.
filtering that happens just inside the country that decides to do it is much less severe than that.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In my school, we recited it every day. If you look at its words, what we were really pledging allegiance to was the concept of "liberty and justice for all." When a politician strays from that ideal, those of us who recited the pledge become fired up to vote him or her out of office.
Knowing that, do you still find it creepy?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Don't you guys notice anymore that this has turned into paranoid, nationalistic rambling?
Yeah, right. Anything run by the US is better than being run by anyone else. Suuuure.
You even miss that he does have a point: With the US controlling so much of the Internet, it is remarkably easy for entities like the NSA to abuse that control.
The UN certainly isn't perfect. But neither is the US. So please spare us this egomaniac nationalistic bullshit.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Acting as a catalyst for a crackdown against freedom of speech on the Net was certainly not Snowden's intention — quite the opposite, it's reasonable to assume."Says who? Why should I believe that's not all a ruse. Maybe Snowden was dispatched to do just that - undermine internet freedom.
And as for Hamadoun Toure and Ban Ki Moon's remarks that the internet will remain open, secure, affordable ..etc. prove it! - you know what to do. Start by creating open standards for social networks to interoperate with each other and push the infrastructural change needed for that without needing to be a member of one master network - one social network to rule them all.
I'm pretty sure the US would need to agree for the simple reason that if control could be taken without US consent, then it would be gone already. There'd be no need to "demand" anything.
If you don't like the way this one is run, build your own. You don't have to use this one.
oh cme one this was Score 5 Funny
If Russia is at all serious then they need to stop whining and do what China did. The UN will NEVER control the internet.
PREDICTION: The logical conclusion of all of this is that every country will have its own internet and communication between each country will be monitored and strictly regulated. You cannot stop law makers from passing regulations. Given enough time, government IT will have the tools that the need to actually implement what the law makers want. The only reason that it hasn't happened already is because, to date, it hasn't been technically or, at least, financially feasible. Sadly, it becomes a little easier and a little cheaper every year.