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.

Comments

I used to disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

How about alt roots instead?

[magic maverick]

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.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[serviscope_minor]

I can't see how the UN could fuck the domain system up much more than the USA already has.

Then you are seriously lacking in imagination.

I'm not suggesting the gTLD fiasco is anything but, but never underestimate the ability of bad people to make things worse.

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.

The trouble is, so has everyone else, and demonstrated it even more convinvingly.

At least the USA (unlike my own country, the UK) is one of the few not constant pushing for massive scale filtering.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sensationalism.

The FUD about "demanding a UN Internet takeover of exactly the sort repressive governments around the world have long been lusting after" is just that, FUD. It's been pointed out time and time again that the ITU works via consensus so nothing bad can happen under US control unless the US supports it, and if the US supports it (i.e. ICE domain seizures) it can already happen. The advantage of UN control is that if the US supports it (again, i.e. ICE domain seizures) and even one other single country doesn't, then it can't happen. That's why UN control is better.

But this discussion has been had here before, most people here have too poor an understanding of the UN, the ITU, to see through the "OMG RUSSIA CHINA INTERNET CONTROL CENROSHIP!!!!!1111111" screams that are quite clearly FUD propagated for the purpose of making the US retain control and allowing the US to hence continue to unilaterally impose it's will on the domain name system negatively despite the fact we could stop anyone imposing it negatively, but still easily get consensus on the positive uncontroversial stuff.

That's of course providing you can get through all the tosh spread by the new world order kooks proclaiming that there are some unnamed actors running the UN and just attempting to control the whole world via it.

This is a topic that barely anyone on Slashdot has the mental competence or background knowledge to have with any degree of rationality nowadays, so cue the nonsense in 3...2...1...

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble is, so has everyone else, and demonstrated it even more convinvingly.

No.

I could ask you to name an example but you would only bring out China.
In what way do you think Norway have demonstrated that they can't be trusted with control of the Internet?

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[NicBenjamin]

Ever heard of France? Nice place, official motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?" Actual motto "Liberty for white Catholic Frenchman, Equality for white Catholic Frenchmen, Fraternity is BS but it sounds nice?" Actual French behavior during the Rwandan genocide: veto all potential actions that stop the genocide, as soon as the murderers ran out of targets insist on sending hundreds of troops to protect the murderers from justice. The rebels spoke English, and potential Anglophiles are a greater threat to the French state then mass-murderers.

Most of the South American nations Wikileaks et al. love are run by guys who restrict freedom of speech because freedom of speech might allow people to say nice things about America. They then get on the same stage as psuedo-democratic Iran because it bitches about America. African states have a distressing tendency to create good-old-boy networks where nobody ever gets in trouble for being evil because punishing a former head of state for being evil would insult the sovereignty of that state.

I'm not saying these countries don't have rational reasons for their attitudes. I am saying that turning your freedom of speech over to a guy who loves Iran because loving Iran pisses off America is a really dumb way to protect freedom of speech. The US will read your damn email six days a week and twice on Sunday, but it has yet to torture anyone for agreeing with the 45% of the country that lost the last election.

mmmm

[houbou]

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.

Well, he called it...

[Shoten]

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.

Re:Well, he called it...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Politicians using a high profile incident to further their own agenda? Well well... color me thoroughly unsurprised. And that's all this is. The USA may have been caught snooping on our stuff, but clearly the solution is not to give control from one peeping Tom nation to other nations that will not only snoop but lock down and censor as well. And I firmly include the proposed UN body in that category; the danger is that every nation with a burr up its arse about something (IP infringement, religious sensitivities, cultural encroachment) will not only find a willing ear at the UN as they always do, but will also have the means to enforce their own petty rules in other countries. The Internet under UN control will become a politically correct, culturally sanitized My Little Pony land.

Re:Well, he called it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Russia, the country that's in the middle of anti-gay scapegoating/witchunts. The country that put a band in jail for insulting their leader. They're the bastion of internet freedom.

The fact that Russia is asking for the UN to takeover is reason enough to fight against it. I'll stick good 'ol American corruption and incompetence thank you very much. (At least it's predictable)

UN is not the governmemt, its the planet.

[sg_oneill]

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.

Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet.

[Jason Levine]

Ideally, neither the US nor the UN should "control the Internet." The US might be bad, but don't think the UN is some sort of "democracy of the world." When you look at who's demanding UN control of the Internet (countries like Russia, China, and various dictatorships around the world) and what proposals they keep floating (things like prosecution for offending their religious sensibilities - yes, if they had their way, posting "Religion X stinks!" would be a crime), you realize that UN control of the Internet would result in LESS online freedoms, not more. About the best thing that might happen if the UN took control of the Internet would be if it bungled its control in such a way as to render it unable to enforce provisions. More likely, though, anti-freedom provisions would be rammed through and the Internet would fracture into "countries who refuse to enforce the provisions" and "countries who enforce them." (Or, even more likely, a shade of grey where most countries enforce some but not all of the provisions. Resulting in the near-impossibility of moving to a place where the provisions aren't enforced at all.)

Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, we don't have one of those.

The UN(as its name might suggest) is representative(approximately, the details can be pretty ideosyncratic, and the Security Council is serious business) of Nations, not people. Given the revelations either connected to, or spurred by, about the spying programs various other countries(even the 'good guys', the fact that any 'bad guys' who can afford to do it are doing it has been known for ages), and other countries collaboration with the US spying program, do you feel lucky?

Heck, Mr. Secretary General himself, asserts that Snowden's 'digital misuse' has created problems.

I certainly wouldn't trust the Americans to operate internet infrastructure without spying on it; but the list of people I would so trust is Not Very Long(and none of them are in power).

Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet.

[wisnoskij]

"Ideally, neither the US nor the UN should "control the Internet.""

Idealistic crap. The first person to find the Titanic thought, this should stay here no one should own it. SO he did not file for salvage rights.
So someone else did.

Someone with power has to be in control of the Internet, because otherwise anyone with power will just take control. And i would rather have a reluctant defender, than a tyrannical oppressor.

Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet.

[ardor]

Every single country does this.

At least in the Western world this is primarily a US phenomenon. You'll have a hard time finding even a fraction of this patriotism amongst European citizens. France might be the closest there is, and even there, I do not see this happening with the same level of intensity.

Honestly, as an Austrian, I find the thought of reciting the pledge of allegiance every day in school intensely creepy.

Sad reflection of modern times

[ulatekh]

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.

Re:Sad reflection of modern times

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. might not be perfect, but they are a lot less oppressive than nations like Russia, China, Syria.

Re:Come again?

[Talderas]

Any nation on the planet can implement PRISM and just like the US they can only really adequately collect data that is within their borders. Any data not within the borders requires the complicity of other nations. Who has "control" of the Internet (by virtue of top level DNS servers) really has no impact on whether the programs can occur. In fact, maintaining freedom of speech is actually in the interest of a program like PRISM as people would feel freer to speak more and with others more permitting a bet data collection.

That aside, the US still does have one of the best freedom of speech while the UN doesn't seem to have any desire to enforce or even go after member nations that are hostile to freedom of speech.

Better Idea:

[Penguinisto]

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...)

Re:Better Idea:

[fustakrakich]

It can stay independent? Of what? It would be presumptuous to say big NGOs are any less corrupt than anything else. The only workable solution is to abandon DNS and any other protocol that is vulnerable to such abuses. Nobody's stopping the Russians from setting up their own 'internet' with their own servers for their own purposes.

Re:Better Idea:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

People who wanted influence would work their own people in there. They are much more determined than a bunch of people who just imagine it will remain independent. Something, by the way, history sbould give them absolutely no confidence in.

Re:Better Idea:

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Another thing to add that the "lameness filter" wouldn't let me post in that post:

Prism appears to operate at the provider level, which means that so long as you actually have a functioning network, even if it is a censored one, you aren't going to harm prism in any way. So long as e.g. google, microsoft, and facebook provide access to the NSA, prism can do its magic. I think Russia knows this, but they're hoping to be able to catch the attention of politicians equally as ignorant as US politicians.

AC post below this one suggests that Snowden was paid to do this for example - it's nonsense, and I really hope this doesn't detract from the work he is doing in the eye of the otherwise uneducated public.

Re:Better Idea:

[TheRaven64]

Given their recent track record, I'd trust ICANN under its current leadership significantly less than the UN, the Russian Mafia, or a random homeless guy.

USA's filtering

[gl4ss]

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.