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

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?

[tsa]

No government can be trusted with control over the internet. There should be a separate body for that, 'manned' only by robots. Or something else completely separated from anything that even remotely has to do with real world politics.

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]

You want to give the control of the internet to Skynet?

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[DeathToBill]

This comment proves what I've been saying all along - Skynet already controls the internet. Now it starts an astroturf campaign to turn that control from de facto to de jure.

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?

[fustakrakich]

Robots? Programmed by humans?

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

No, the US just abuses control of ICANN to arbitrarily seize domains of foreign businesses that have not committed any crime instead in their country of residence and are using international TLDs.

Why filter when you can just perform outright global censorship like the US does instead?

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[tsa]

Yes that is a weak spot in my argument. But I don't know a better solution.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[fustakrakich]

There probably is no better solution. But just to be sure, make certain there is an easily accessible 'off' switch.

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.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[tsa]

That's what we had in the early days, until the internet became really popular. Trust etc like you describe it only works in communities where everyone knows each other, but the internet community is too large for that now.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[NicBenjamin]

You don't seem to understand why everyone is worried about UN Control.

It's not that we're worried the formal documents would allow bad shit to happen. The thing that makes a dictatorship a dictatorship is that the formal documents are ignored. What we're worried about is that increased UN Control means Russia gets a lot more information on things like who owns a domain name. They could easily get their guy in a position to acquire all information a domain registrar or domain host has on a specific domain name. Which means that an extra-legal death squad could easily get the address of any Russian Opposition Activist. More likely the Russian Tax Police would simply BS up some charges.

I'm not saying the US is a wonderful, saintly, completely benign influence. I'm just saying that it's a lot less evil then the alternatives. To paraphrase a cantankerous old bastard:
"US Control is the worst option except for all the others."

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[aristotle-dude]

magic maverick is an NSA/CIA mole. He is knowing a well known tactic of sounding like he is critical of the the current establishment, then dismissing any viable alternatives as being "just as bad" as if he had a crystal ball to see all possible futures and then ending off with a completely untenable suggesting of saying "fuck authority" and to go it alone. Obviously, nobody is going to go for "no authority" and after that post, the readers are fooled into the "devil you do versus the devil you don't mentality". That was the intent of that post.

Now, I am probably going to come home to find a bunch of men in in black ski masks shipping me off to Gitmo after the post but at least I won't have to work for the beast anymore.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[tnk1]

Seriously, you think that the NSA or CIA wastes time astroturfing Slashdot?

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[F.Ultra]

Single employees might

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[CanHasDIY]

You mean, the same NSA/CIA that wastes time logging the communications of every single human on the planet?

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[Hentes]

Unlike a representative, a robot can be trusted to fulfill its program.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[NicBenjamin]

I didn't say that. I did say that when faced with the choice of an Anglophile government in Rwanda or a genocidal government, the French chose the murderers.

To this day most French press coverage of the incidents focuses on alleged false accusations against specific Rwandans, not that Chirac sent in French troops to protect a Rwandan government that clearly murdered hundreds of thousands. They then spent a decade insisting the woman who probably planned it was innocent, and when finally they arrested her French Courts cleared her. According to the French justice system hundreds of thousands of people hacked themselves to death because Lady Genocide never wrote anything down.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[NicBenjamin]

If you have a strong secular tradition, you don't freak out when some chick shows up wearing a headscarf. Hell, you don't ban yamakas either. You don't respond to the legalization of gay marriage with massive demonstrations and record low approval ratings for the president.

What you guys actually have is a "we're at school, we'll pretend we're not all Catholic," tradition.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[magic maverick]

Damn, you outed me. Actually, a) I'm not an Americunt. b) I'm an anarchist.

The alternatives are clear and obvious (alt-roots to start, a proper decentralized DNS system to finish). The end.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's already got its own /. account. So, yes, probably inevitable.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[horza]

Interesting points apart from the fact they are *all* wrong. Nobody freaked out about a headscarf, have you ever seen a niqab? And yes you do ban the yamaka if banning all overt religious symbols from school. Large catholic crosses are also banned. Finally, the low rating of the President has nothing to do with gay marriage. Around half the country is against gay marriage, a large number of them not practicing Catholic. It has zero effect on the President though, it's not the USA, the fact is he has reneged on all his promises and dropped the economy into the crapper. The guy is the most disasterous President in a century.

Your previous post about the French in Africa are correct though, and guilt in North Africa has led to their present massive immigration problems. Most cities are now majority muslim, Catholics a minority. The US hardly believes in not torturing people though. Look at what they did to Manning, and what they plan to do to Assange and Snowdon. I'd rather live in France than the USA.

Phillip.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[Areyoukiddingme]

No. They have contractors for that.

Re:How about alt roots instead?

[bfandreas]

Well, the latest Marianne stamp/"lick Femen's ass" brouhaha and the violent anti-gay-marriage protests and Christine Boutin do not paint a picture of a very secular society. France is very divided society with near impenetrable boundaries. But that rings true for about every western European country.
You perceive France as a highly secular society because you are atheist. So it is very likely that most of your friends are also secular. It is a case of "Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein." Meaning that your existence determines your conciousness and the way you live will determine how you will perceive your environment. The "white catholic frenchman" brigade is as strong as the WASPs in their respective countries.
I also thought that Germany was a very secular society. But we still have some damn odd remnants from our religious past. We still have our officials swear their oaths to god(with the option to swear to something else; I would rather swear on a stack of Hellblazer comics). We still have federal agencies collect collect church tax. We still tell neighbours to suck it up if they complain about the racket those Christian muezzins do with their aweful church bells.
Secularisation is a process that is not yet completed. Le bon dieu n'est pas mort. He is pining for the fjords.
As for Algerian immigrants...they do not have the same experience as a white Frenchman will have. This is not a matter of who is at fault for failed integration of immigrants. Nobody got that right. Ever. But you just ask somebody of ethnicity how they are treated by cops and you will find that their existence will paint a totally different picture.

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.

Re:mmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

it would allow them more freedoms to do as they please.

/me scratches head.

Is this an argument for or against? I thought this is the definition of FREEDOM.

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...

[Sockatume]

Let's face it, when the argument for leaving the US in charge was "they have stood up for internet freedom and neutrality", a failure like this was ultimately inevitable. I just don't think anyone expected it to be practically immediate. The choice now is whether to let nations establish their own internet authorities with their own goals, yielding the idea of the internet as a universal commons; or to create an ostensibly neutral overseer, something the UN is hideously inefficient at.

Re:Well, he called it...

[Sockatume]

(The third option is to get the US to respect the privacy of foreigners' internet traffic as it respects the traffic of its own citizens, but that's never going to happen.)

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)

Re:Well, he called it...

[Holi]

The do respect the privacy of foreign traffic as much as the do the domestic, that is to say they don't respect privacy at all.

Re:Well, he called it...

[Fnord666]

(The third option is to get the US to respect the privacy of foreigners' internet traffic as it respects the traffic of its own citizens, but that's never going to happen.)

Thanks. I just snorted diet coke out of my nose!

Re:Well, he called it...

[JWW]

I'm not worried that the UN would be hideously inefficient with overseeing the Internet, I'm worried that they would be hideously evil overseeing the internet.

Re:Well, he called it...

[Sockatume]

Hey, at least you have some legal recourse under your constitution. If I'm reading US politicians' reassurances correctly, the NSA can do whatever the hell it likes with my data, and your local press will consider that perfectly fair.

Re:Well, he called it...

[LordLimecat]

Fair enough on the monitoring aspect, but we demonstrably arent arresting people for political opnion blogs or tampering with web site queries for politically "hot" topics. Ie, you wont be arrested or detained or disconnected for googling "Google NSA PRISM". Try that sort of thing in China.

So theres a point to be made, but we're still a lot less "dangerous" as caretakers of the internet than folks like Russia or China.

Re:Well, he called it...

[tnk1]

The links are still uncensored. They just happen to be listening to what is being said over them. And as far as monitoring goes, the day they can use that information to actually arrest someone for something other than a bona-fide national security issue, let me know. Then I will start becoming actually worried.

The reason I am not concerned is that they are going to have a similar capability to listen no matter what you do. UN control won't change anything in that regard. It's not like they were using the DNS system to listen to people; they used plain old cooperation with private entities and the usual spying and hacking techniques. It's not that the law is some sort of stopgap before some technical solution is put in place to prevent snooping. There never will be a technical solution, or at least, none that the general public will have available to them.

It is ridiculous to assert that because the US does spying that they "can't be trusted". Everyone does spying. Everyone. If you thought otherwise, you were living in a dream world. The Internet has always and everywhere been 99.9% able to be compromised by whoever has the resources.

Point being, if you thought the US was the best caretaker of this system, then really, nothing has changed. The US was spying before, and it is spying now. Submitting control of the Internet or just the DNS system to the UN is just wishful thinking that somehow gridlock will make things better. All it will end up doing is making it take longer to get functional changes pushed through.

Re:Well, he called it...

[tlhIngan]

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.

There IS a difference though.

The US, despite PRISM, still has a free and uncensored internet. The NSA isn't keeping you from posting your CP pics on your picasa page or whatever, and you're still free to criticize Obama however you want online. You can also freely access whatever the hell you want online until the authorities come and get you.

Many other countries (not just those on your list - many countries have "great firewalls" and speech restrictions) do not allow their citizens the ability to speak freely or access the full uncensored internet with potentially unpopular decisions or critical remarks about the government.

Now, you could argue that a free and uncensored internet is a good thing for PRISM because it gets people to "open up" and post stuff that can be indexed and stored and people classified, but that's a happy coincidence.

Censoring and freely snooping on data that's available (not necessarily openly though) are two completely different, not mutually exclusive things.

Re:Well, he called it...

[NicBenjamin]

Pretty much. Americans we're terrified that Big Brother was reading their email, but their attitude towards everyone else is FU Foreign bastard. And technically they're right. The Constitution gives rights to Americans.

If you think this is annoying try being non-white in NYC. Stop and frisk is almost certainly unconstitutional because white people don't get stopped or frisked, but because white people don;t get stopped or frisked nobody with power to fix it actually gives a rat's ass.

Re:Well, he called it...

[ardor]

The Internet under UN control will become a politically correct, culturally sanitized My Little Pony land.

Exactly. Add "heavily censored" to that list.

Re:Well, he called it...

[NicBenjamin]

I'm not worried that the UN would be hideously inefficient with overseeing the Internet, I'm worried that they would be hideously evil overseeing the internet.

The problem with the UN is that it is very nice to all it's member states.

For example, back in the mid-90s one of those states had a problem with rebels. The problem was the rebels were winning. So that state began hacking hundreds of thousands of people to death. By the time the UN declared a cease-fire all the potential victims were dead, and the cease-fire only served to protect their murderers because those murderers were losing every damn battle.

In a lot of ways I suspect Wikileaks actually wants this kind of governance to happen to the internet, because Wikileaks acts a lot more like knee-jerk anti-Americans then people who want everyone to be free.

Re:Well, he called it...

[ardor]

So you would stop the US government from stripping away rights by taking away control over the Internet from them, and giving it to Russia etc.?

That would help freedom of speech how exactly?

Re:Well, he called it...

[NicBenjamin]

How many days was it between the French freaking out about PRISM, and us finding out they ran their own version of it?

I'd trust a handful of countries to act more honorably then the US. Trouble is they're pretty much all white and European (the non-white ones are too new as Democracies for us to know whether they're trustworthy), and from a non-Western point-of-view an all-white-European internet governing body is not much of gain over a US internet governing body.

Re:Well, he called it...

[NicBenjamin]

That would have been a sensible argument before Obama took office.

Since he's taken office he's pulled back on a lot of Bush's excesses. He hasn't done as much as he said he would, but he's definitely stopped waterboarding, sending people to GitMo, he's ended warrantless wire-tapping, etc.

BTW, Warrentless Wire-Taps are actually legal in almost every country but the US, so FISA is more protection then you get in almost every country.

Re:Well, he called it...

[tnk1]

What is there to trust? The US is administering the DNS and IPs of a completely unsecured Internet. That's the way it started, and that's the way it has always been. What has changed? Nothing.

White or Brown, the Internet would never run any differently or more efficiently than it does now. The usefulness of democracy is in co-opting people to not revolt against your regime. It is not something that guarantees good behavior on the part of the majority.

And the major problem with the UN has always been it is a democratic body where many of the delegates are not elected at all democratically. They don't represent the people of those countries, they represent the regimes of those countries. You think that some country is full of nice people? They may well be all nice and tolerant. That doesn't means their government won't have it's own ideas about what it wants to do. There's lots of nice people in Russia and China, possibly even a large majority, but they aren't the people who would be sitting on the UN group in charge of the Internet.

Re:Well, he called it...

[Jason Levine]

Actually, being hideously inefficient is the best case scenario when it comes to UN control of the Internet.

Re:Well, he called it...

[NicBenjamin]

I believe the US has used it's power over the internet to seize a bunch of online gambling sites, some bittorrent sites, screwing with Antigua, etc. It's a lot less US Government action then I'd expect knowing the US Government, which implies somebody is trying to be very honorable, but it has happened.

The problem with turning this kind of thing over to a committee (aka: the UN) is that depending on the culture of the committee it could mean everybody gets everything they want, or nobody gets anything they want. If it's the latter it's good for internet freedom because Antigua can go back to gambling. If it's the former the Dalai Lahma can't have a website.

Re:Well, he called it...

[Sockatume]

When your job is to protect universal human rights, being evil is inefficient. Never give a poltician the satisfaction of thinking "I'm evil, but I'm getting the job done".

Re:Well, he called it...

[bfandreas]

Here's an experiment:
Call on Facebook for a Spy Safari. Tell potential attendees to bring booze and binoculars and invite them to some semi-secret spy installation for a spot of Spy Spotting. Chances are you will have coppers on your front porch in no time. If you are lucky you might also get the whole SWAT routine since if the ATF can use it for busting friendly poker games the rest of the alfabetti spaghetti agencies can do likewise.

This is what happened in Germany. A guy called for a Spy Safari. US MP called the local authorities. A couple of cops turned up on the guys front door. BTW, the cops were quite awesome since they also thought this was ridiculous. They told the guy to simply register it as a demonstration and he'd be fine to go ahead. They also told him they preferred not to read about this embarrassing episode on teh intarwebs. It hit national news a couple of hours later, naturally.

Do not deceive yourself. You are free to post whatever you want on the internet. But you may be manhandled, spend 3 months in jail awaiting trial or may face a prison sentence where community service would be more appropriate. These are not isolated events. This is what you have to expect.

Come again?

[rogueippacket]

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...

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.

Re:Come again?

[Xest]

"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."

Huh? That's not the UN's job, or are you suggesting the UN should exist to impose US was of life on the whole world against their will?

I'm not even sure what you say makes any sense, "the UN doesn't seem to have any desire" - why would it? It's composed of the very nations you're saying it should go after, whatever "go after" means, war? economic sanctions for not adhering to the US way? What action do you think the UN should take exactly if it even could?

It almost sounds as if you don't want nations to be heard at the UN unless they adhere to your whims... that sounds an awful lot like censorship to me. One of the downsides of the US' freedom of speech laws you cite as being an example of "good" is that yes, sometimes it means you have to listen to the Phelps too as distasteful as most people find that but that's the price you pay for that freedom. The UN is no different, stop trying to suggest your will should be imposed on everyone else like a little fascist.

Re:Come again?

[stiggle]

Also, any nation can choose to route its internal comms through an external 3rd party country who does all the snooping and then returns the snooped info to the nation state.

eg. France routes all its internal comms via Belgium who snoops it and then passes the info back to France. Belgium routes all their internal comms through France who pass the snooped info to Belgium. Both countries aren't snooping on their own citizens and is only obtaining legally snooped info from a foreign state.

Most transatlantic cables are terminated in the UK.

Re:Come again?

[Talderas]

Read the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

PREAMBLE

  Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

  Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

The UN claims that Freedom of Speech is a core freedom for all people and yet member states completely ignore that declaration, which they agree to.

Re:Come again?

[NicBenjamin]

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...

God you're clueless about how the UN works.

Security Council states get whatever they want at the UN. Period. France, for example, got the UN to approve a mission to protect it's tiny little ally Rwanda. The Rwandans were having the slight problem that their policy of hacking 10%-20% of the country to death on international TV provoked a rebellion against the government. Since they couldn't win a battle, the UN-mandated cease-fire was basically a cover for mass-murder. See the rebels mostly spoke English, which is apparently a worse crime in France then hacking 20% of your country death with a cheap Chinese machete.

They did pull out, after the rebels shot at them, and the PR got really bad. But the PR must not have been too bad, because the Prime Minister Chirac got promoted to President a few years later.

Which means the US loses no actual power over the internet when UN Control happens. We're on the Security Council, therefore fuck you. What does change is that the French get the same power the US currently has, as do those great enemies of censorship the Chinese and Russians. And they get to use that power to protect their pro-freedom allies in Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea.

Not to mention the Brits. But badmouthing the Brits isn't in style, even tho they probably deserve it a as much as the US, so I won't bother.

Re:Come again?

[tnk1]

You do realize that the "warmongering and paranoid country" has a lot of clout in said organization. The only advantage you'd be seeing is that some other paranoid and warmongering countries would get to join them.

I think you're a little confused, because while there *might* be better governments out there in the UN, they aren't in any way in control of the UN. That would be the paranoid warmongers still. And I don't know about you, but the US is the best of that bunch by leaps and bounds.

Re:Come again?

[NicBenjamin]

Actually, by joining the UN you generally agree to follow a lot of US-Style rules.

The UN is actually a continuation of the Western Allies who won WW2. At the time Stalin swore up and down the Soviet way was pro-freedom-of-speech, pro-freedom-of-religion, etc. So numerous UN documents strongly imply that members are required to enforce Western standards of freedom.

That doesn't really have any legal standing in most countries, who frequently issue strong "buts" exempting themselves from various bits when they sign on, but that doesn't mean they refused to sign on the dotted line.

Regardless you're taking the argument a bit further then the OP was. He's saying that all these countries claim they want to take ICANN from the US to protect freedom of speech/right to privacy/etc., but that in fact they are unlikely to do so through the UN.

Re:Come again?

[Xest]

What is the "UN" declaration of human rights? I'm assuming you're referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

If that's what you're referring to then it's non-binding and is primarily just a framework. Implementations include things like the European Convention on Human Rights which EU member nations implement and the European Court of Human Rights enforces. Also, said members haven't all agreed to it anyway, there are around 203 countries, and only 48 voted for the UDHR with 8 abstaining.

It seems a bit rich though for you to bring that up and suggest that America is the guiding example of enforcing it and others should be punished for not doing so. I'd ask that you actually read the articles contained within it, specifically have a look at articles 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and ask yourself if given the context of Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and waterboarding you still believe the US is somehow doing better on this document than many other member nations? If you look at all the articles it doesn't take a second's thought to recognise that the US has succeded in maintaining even half of them and has violated most in the last 10 years alone.

I think you're on weak ground here because you have a rather ethnocentric view but seem oblivious to the fact that the very nation you cite as the shining example other nations should be held to account for not reaching has been one of the biggest violators of the document you cite.

The reason the US has gotten away with it is precisely because it is non-binding and although it has breached it's own laws that implement sections of it no one internally is holding the nation, government, or military to account over violations. If the US can't even hold itself to account when breaking it's own binding laws then how can it expect to hold anyone else to account over a non-binding agreement?

Re:Come again?

[Xest]

"Actually, by joining the UN you generally agree to follow a lot of US-Style rules."

That's not how the UN works, the UN has a number of areas and you join them separately. For example, you join the IMO to engage in defining and implementing international standards on maritime issues.

There are declarations that define how the majority of the UN would like things to be but again, they're non-binding.

The USSR under Stalin abstained from voting on the UDHR FWIW.

Re:Come again?

[Talderas]

It's a non-binding statement and given that a majority of nations have not agreed to it indicates that the UN is certainly not the proper place in which to vest control of the biggest tool that enables free speech. That's the problem. Most of the 48 signing nations have either demonstrated that they have a much lesser respect for freedom of expression than the US or they have questionable clout.

Further you seem to be comparing a violation of X and Y humans rights as a sign that Z will be violated. It is a strange position for you to take as the rights and violations you are noted have typically been against non-citizens and certainly haven't been done in ways that are visibile to the American public at large. There are plenty of groups in the US which are very vocal regarding protection the free expression rights of Americans and given the nature of the Internet most things that would restrict that free expression would likely be very vocally protested and fought in ways that simply cannot occur when you're dealing with a group that represents nations rather than people. In essence, the free expression of all people on the Internet is also protected and defended by the groups which protect and defend it for Americans.

You're also confusing my dislike of having the UN run it with ethnocentricity. The US has certainly taken actions which I consider a risk to free expression. However the only solution that I've seen that I feel is a better step rather than a worse one is the suggestion for decentralizing control but that will never happen.

Re:Come again?

[gl4ss]

that same declaration that USA effectively signed out of? note that it's not declaration of rights of preferred persons..

Re:Come again?

[Xest]

You know you don't have to type multiple paragraphs going off topic to admit that you were wrong to claim it's the UN's job to punish countries for not adhering to US ideals. Just the first paragraph would've done it.

I don't know why people like you find it so hard to admit you were wrong because that's exactly what you've just done in a rather long winded way.

Good Luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Irony

[arcite]

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.

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.

[Alain Williams]

It SHOULD be controlled by a democracy of the world, not Obama and the NSA.

Agreed. However I don't think that the UN is the right body; it has shown itself spineless and prone to manipulation. What we want is an Internet that is not beholden the country/block intererests. This does not mean that it is not controlled (ie a wild west), but that the governanance is in the best interests of the vast majority of humanity. Something that is determinedly neutral.

Finding the bodies to do this will not be easy; I would readily vote for the likes of Jon Postel, but although his heart would be in the right place I don't know how he would cope with the inevitable political pressure. It is easier to say who not : Govt of USA, ICANN & UN are out.

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

[Somebody Is Using My]

As an American, I am not opposed to our country relinquishing control of the Internet to another party. As has been pointed out, we haven't done a very good job proctoring it recently.

However, I'm not really convinced that the United Nations is the best alternative. I'd like them to be; the idea that the citizens of the world - rather than the citizens of a single state - have dominion over the Internet suits my egalitarian fancies. Unfortunately, the track record of the UN doesn't seem much better than that of the United States...

On the gripping hand, the United States - were it to live up to its ideals (or even if it were just to stop actively pursuing goals in direct opposition of those ideals, as is its current course) would be an adequate monitor of the Internet. Hopefully, one day we citizens can get our government back on path. Until then, I'm open to alternatives.

Perhaps Iceland wants a shot at it?

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

[nitehawk214]

They're conditioned from pre-school and up with "We're #1! We're #1!" nonsense, and "god bless America" several times a day. People in power never give up power, they only try to increase it.

Every single country does this. It is called nationalism, and it is a fantastic way to make your public complicit, if not fully supportive, of whatever crimes their country are committing.

As a young kid (perhaps 4th or 5th grade US) I learned in a lesson that "excessive nationalism" helped lead to World War 1. Then right after that another teacher goes on with the "We're #1! We're #1!" bullshit. Looking back that is the point where I realized that blindly following anything can lead to disasters, and that most people were blind to it.

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

[thereitis]

Given that US politics is controlled by corporations to a large degree, I'd be asking what corporations have a vested interest in making sure they^Wthe USA retains control of the Internet.

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.

[fuzzybunny]

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.

It's not just Americans (I'm not), and it's not "the world itself" that we're worrying about controlling the Internet.

What we're worried about is undemocratic, opaque bodies that would do an ever worse job than the US. The US is a decidedly less worse controller of the Internet than the UN or any of its arms.

It SHOULD be controlled by a democracy of the world, not Obama and the NSA.

I absolutely disagree.

First, a democracy consisting to a large degree of undemocratic participants is not a democracy.

Second, no, a medium that relies on the free exchange of information should NOT be controlled by a democracy, which is as subject to the polemic whims of a tyranny of the masses as a totalitarian system is subject to the dogma of its ruling elite. It should, in fact, be structured in such a way that nobody controls the whole thing, period.

Fully distributed root servers would be a good start.

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

[Xest]

The infrastructure isn't even in discussion though, really the debate is only about ICANN and domain name assignment - i.e. should the US really have the final say on who can and can't have gtlds and who can and can't have international domain names?

The problem is that the argument has been blown out of all proportion and context. I suspect this is in part by vested interests who want to maintain the status quo. By framing it as an argument about freedom of speech, civil liberties, access to and spying on the internet they've successfully diverted away from the real issue, and that's that internet naming could probably be done in a more neutral manner if a less US-centric party was involved. Look how long internationalised domain names took to come about for example - it was 2009 when they finally arrived, this is because it just wasn't a priority for the English speaking ICANN with it's ethnocentric view of the world.

Similarly nations like Antigua have valid complaints that the US has abused it's control of international domain registry to seize DNS entries for perfectly legal international gambling sites. What the US should've done is had the debate about internet censorship internally if it wants to prevent it's citizens accessing legal overseas online gambling sites but those behind it knew they'd lose that argument so they instead abused their control of international TLDs to censor these legitimate business globally instead.

I'd be the last person to give control of the pipes and endpoints to China and Russia, but making domain name assignment and management fairer internationally and less-US centric? I'm quite okay with that because there's only so much harm the "bad guys" could do even if they did somehow manage to hijack the entire domain name system. It's really quite valid and innocent, but try telling that to the likes of Fox News when the word "China" is involved such that they instead started conflating it with general ITU disputes about charging for usage of international telecomms transit routes and so forth. I think the US has abused it's control of ICANN enough and the maximum amount of harm from making management of ICANN more international small enough to make it a fair proposal.

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.

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

[ardor]

It isn't just framed as as argument about freedom of speech etc. Just google for the WCIT-12 leaks. Here is one hit with the original PDFs linked: http://www.zdnet.com/wcit-12-leak-shows-russia-china-others-seek-to-define-government-controlled-internet-7000008509/

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

[Anubis IV]

Why do folks think that UN control is some sort of panacea? Giving the UN control would do nothing at all to help with abuses like PRISM, and that's true regardless of how one feels about the UN, simply on account of what the situation is.

When folks talk about various entities (usually the US) "controlling the Internet", they're referring to one of two types of control:
1) The control all countries possess by virtue of having sovereignty over the infrastructure located inside their borders.
2) The unique form of control granted to the US by acting as the host country for ICANN and having control of the top-level DNS servers.

You talk about freedom and giving the world control, but the world is exactly who freely gave the US that #1 sort of control when they chose to host their domains within its borders, route their packets across its borders, and interact with people inside its borders. Giving "control" to the UN would do nothing to change that. The UN would be just as incapable of curbing the sorts of abuses we've seen with PRISM as the US currently is of curbing the Great Firewall of China. Why people think otherwise is beyond me, so I don't know why you think that UN control would fix the problem with a "foreign power control[ling] my communications".

The only way that the UN even could take the #1 variety of control from the US would be by buying out the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and any other companies that control the backbone infrastructure, intermediate services, or endpoint devices, and then somehow liberating them from the sovereign control of the nations in which they operate. Perhaps they could somehow grant those companies global diplomatic immunity so that they don't have to respond to secret orders from governments. Good luck with that.

So, having covered all of that, exactly how do you think that UN control will help at all? The only way I can see that it can help is with SOPA sorts of abuses, since they affect DNS, but that's a matter of free speech, and I'd trust the US more than the UN to protect that right (free speech and DNS are hard to abuse secretly, and SOPA has shown that there will be a public outcry on this topic if abuses are attempted).

Maybe I'm just being defeatist. I'd love to hear a rebuttal if there is one, because I don't see a way around the situation.

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

[Anubis IV]

By the way, I kept getting "Filter error: Lameness filter encountered" when trying to preview that message, until I deleted a line that said something like "But abuses like PRISM would still be possible even if the UN had control of ICANN and DNS" at the end of the second to last paragraph. No clue why. Maybe the filter thought my point was a bad one?

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

[KapUSMC]

"UN is not the governmemt, its the planet"

The UN is not as democratic as you might think it is. The UN General Assembly is, but it is pretty much subservient to the UN Security Council in which a few permanent members (amongst which the US) have veto right.

The first thing I thought of... Conveniently though, Russia is also one of the other 5. So this isn't exactly an altruistic move on anything. It just give them a piece of the action.

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

[Jason Levine]

Note, that I did say "ideally." However what is "ideal" and what is "realistic" are two very different things. So while ideally I'd love to have nobody control the Internet and have everyone behaving themselves purely because they are good human beings, I know that Reality dictates that this would never happen. Instead, corporations and governments would grab pieces of the Internet and rewrite the rules to benefit themselves and to keep smaller folks (especially idealists) out. (Or, at least, keep them "in their place.")

So we do need some group in charge, setting and enforcing rules, but the group needs to have checks and balances against its power and needs to have limits set on what it can and can't do. This way we don't get some UN group in charge that decides that saying something online that some religion somewhere considers blasphemous is grounds for being kicked offline for good (or extradited to some other country for prosecution). The US shouldn't be forced to send me to Morroco to stand trial for insulting their king and Morroco shouldn't be forced to send one of their citizens to the US for breaking a US law. (Now if the countries have an extradition agreement that covers this, that's another story, but that's between the governments and law enforcement agencies of those countries, not up to some "Internet governance" group.)

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

[drinkypoo]

You have got it precisely. Indeed, there is in fact no need whatsoever for centralized control of anything save perhaps IP address allocation. Each nation ought to be solely responsible for the details of implementation within their borders, and each nation can decide whether it wants to accept traffic directly from each other nation, or whether their citizens will have to do some tunneling (and perhaps break some laws) in order to access those addresses. It's nobody else's business.

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

[tnk1]

We're "paranoid" about it because it works just fine the way it is, and I don't want some other body messing it up. That's why.

You don't fix what isn't broken. The Internet works just fine, you just have to tolerate some government looking at your drunk ass on Facebook. The UN isn't going to change that.

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

[Xest]

Have a read of what it actually says. Just about all those clauses talk about governments having the right to monitor/snoop on their own national sections of the internet (i.e. what Prism does).

Unfortunately that news article masks that fact because it's written by an over-reactive emo-hipster who doesn't understand what she's reading.

The first part of the document simply tries to clarify terms because getting agreement on terms itself is a nightmare. Section 31a just largely defines what already happens albeit with more focus on international agreement, 31b already happens in terms of numbering, and naming is what I referred to in terms of bringing ICANN under international control, 31c is about being able to regulate the internet nationally, and 31d and 31e already happen.

If that's as damning as it gets then it's not very damning really is it?

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

[NicBenjamin]

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.

Look, I trust the US Government more then I trust most governments. It's better then France by an order of magnitude because it doesn't turn hypocrisy into an art form. It's much better then pretty much any Latin American government, because Latin American governments have a tendency to get together, decide things among themselves, and then conclude it's a global conspiracy (generally led by the US) when the entire rest of the world don't immediately amend their Constitutions to go along with Latin America.

African and Asian governments are a very mixed bag. Many of them have only been free countries for 15-20 years, so it's hard to know whether they're France. Most of the rest have extremely anti-freedom laws, generally banning divisive speech, because the country itself is so young and fragile it would descend into bloody Civil War if Ethno-Religious Group A actually had to listen to what Ethno-Religious Group B thought about it. This is not necessarily bad policy for them, but it does mean that I strongly suspect an internet run by (for example) India would ban a lot of domains simply because their use would piss off some semi-literate minority with AK-47s and nothing to do.

In short I don't trust the US much, but the number of countries I trust more then the US is miniscule, and I can't think of any way to keep everyone else off the internet-running committee. Particularly if it's run through the UN, where Security Council Members France, Chine, and Russia have dibs on any Committee seat that's available.

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.

There are 1.3 Billion Chinese people, and their idea of a free internet is much different then America's idea of a free internet.

Don't get me wrong, I sincerely doubt a free election in China wouldn't result in a lot of easing up by the Communist party, but if you think most Chinese want Tibetan Nationalists from Poughkeepsie to communicate with anyone in Tibet itself you're fucking insane.

Add a billion Indians who know think that insulting religion should be illegal (because if it isn't everyone will be killed in a brutal and pointless Civil War), Pakistanis who banned blasphemy, etc.

A Democracy of the world running the internet would be terrifying.

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

[NicBenjamin]

The discussion you want to have is can the US use international domain names to bully small countries.

The discussion the Indians want to have is what the .org people are gonna do about jihadwatch.org, which riled up Islamic Indians to the point where they rioted and 15 people died, because some Indian Islamic pol realized that a) India could do something about Jihadwatch now, and b) the Indian Islamic pol who forced them to do so would probably have enough clout to get a lucrative cabinet job.

The discussion the Chinese want to have is why the well-known terrorist the Dalai Lahma has a website.

The discussion the Russians want to have is how can Spamhaus be stopped from slandering good Russian businessman.

Look, I agree the US is a bully. Where I disagree is the assertion that there is literally any other system the world could adopt that would result in less bullying.

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

[NicBenjamin]

That's kind of the problem with figuring out who should run the internet. Clearly France/Russia/China should be kept away, because all three are even better at hypocrisy then us.

The newish democracies of Latin America/Africa/Asia don't have long track records, so we can't really judge whether they're France or Iceland in ethical terms. Eastern and Southern Europe are in same boat.

Which basically leaves us with Northern Europe.

And I'm not sure turning the internet over to the whitest, most Protestant, countries in the world, with a total population of roughly 100 million, is more democratic then just leaving it with the brownish, multi-religious, 300+ million US.

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

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'd vote for Jon Postel too. Even though he's dead.

We'll just hold seances to get new RFCs.

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

[spyke252]

As an American, I can verify that we do.

And it's still pretty creepy, at least for the first few years...

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

[shutdown -p now]

We have had international collaboration for telegraph and telephone networks dating back decades, and it's organized by ITU, which is a UN agency. Like everything UN does they tend to be bureaucratized and slow, but I haven't heard of any complaints about censorship (countries do censor within their borders, of course, but ITU does not enforce any censorship regime on all participating countries).

Why can't Internet be handled in the same exact way?

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

[Zontar The Mindless]

The discussion the Indians want to have is what the .org people are gonna do about jihadwatch.org, which riled up Islamic Indians...

.Which means that site is operating exactly as intended.

(Check out the connections with the David Horowitz mob.)

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

[Zontar The Mindless]

Which basically leaves us with Northern Europe.

And I'm not sure turning the internet over to the whitest, most Protestant, countries in the world...

I am fairly sure that you have never actually been to Scandinavia.

Fun fact: Approximately 10% of the population of Sweden consists of first- or second-generation immigrants (including your humble correspondent Zontar, wow). It's much the same in Norway and Denmark.

Here in Stockholm, I am almost as likely to hear Russian, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, or even English in my neighbourhood as I am to hear Swedish. Go to Copenhagen, Malmö, Helsinki, or any other major city in the region---you'll find it's not much different in any of them.

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

[NicBenjamin]

I've been to Scandinavia. I visited cousins in Gothenburg in the late 90s.

I will agree the Scandinavian states are far lily-white, are a lot less white then they used to be, and are much more welcoming of diversity and new immigrants then damn near anybody else. However, that does not mean they are not currently incredibly white compared to most of the world. They're much more diverse (and better at dealing with diversity) then much of Europe, but they ain't blacker then Nigeria or Browner then the Saudis.

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

[lesincompetent]

Indeed the irony is killing me.

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:Sad reflection of modern times

[intermodal]

When you think about it, domains are only as valid as people's willingness to use the commonly accepted DNS system and servers. It would be no more difficult on a technical level to replace the standard DNS servers with alternates of your own choosing.

Re:Sad reflection of modern times

[mu51c10rd]

True...those countries block "offending" content, the US simply monitors it. Wait...how is that much better?

Re:Sad reflection of modern times

[ardor]

The simple fact that we all can express our opinions about PRISM shows how much better this is.

Do you think Russia, China, Syria would never ever consider building something like PRISM? What do you think would have happened to all the PRISM discussions if these countries were controlling the Internet?

Just look at what happens to bloggers in China who dare to write about things like the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Re:Sad reflection of modern times

[sirlark]

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

This is the crux of the fallacious argument to keep the internet under U.S. control. Yes the U.S. is less oppressive by some standards than countries like Russia, China, Syria. America is still a freedom (as in speech) loving nation, they're just not a privacy loving nation. According to U.S. law those are separate legal notions, and one does rely on the other. Privacy isn't even a "right" in the legal sense. The right to free speech is still guaranteed, but the right for anonymous speech doesn't exist. And it's all perfectly legal! Keep that in mind.

I'm a South African, old enough to remember the last decade of apartheid. I was too young to really understand a lot of what was going on, but I do remember talking about it with my mother in the late 90's. She always said, as a lawyer herself, that the apartheid government never, or more likely very rarely, broke the law. They just changed the law to make what they wanted to do legal. The kind of legal reasoning can only be thought out by minds so twisted they could hide behind a corkscrew. And looking at the U.S. I see exactly the same sort of legal manoeuvring.

So yes, the U.S. is not perfect. In fact it is just as bad as one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, or at the very lest fast heading that way.

It is NOT the "least worst option". Iceland would be a far better option. Or Sweden, or Norway, or Finland, or even Germany; All assuming they could "run the internet" without U.S. interference, which the U.S. has already proved it won't allow, not by acting in defence of freedom, but by imposing it's own laws in other countries (think Mega Upload and the Pirate Bay)

Re:Oh no, it's Roland!

[Fx.Dr]

Because if he didn't make the front page he'd beat up the editors and take their lunch money.

Re:Come And Get It If You Can

[Alain Williams]

It is exactly that sort of attitude that makes the USA the wrong ''controller'' of the Internet.

Snowden leak: Microsoft added Outlook.com backdoo

[Anonymous Coward]

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]

Re:I used to disagree

[erroneus]

I think not only DNS but they should oversee the major internet carriers as they participate on the public internet as well.

Compromise by government is still compromise.

Re:A one world government is inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

US of Ahahahahaha.... No, seriously. Thanks for the laugh.

one corrupt country...

[catsRus]

...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..

Re:one corrupt country...

[NicBenjamin]

The difference is that with one corrupt country we ALWAYS have to do what that one country says, but with a group of countries (corrupt or not) stuff only gets through if enough countries vote for it.

Have you ever heard the term "horse-trading?"

The Islamic countries hate Jihadwatch. So does India, because people who rile up Muslims threaten the stability of India. China has this list of websites that it wants banned. They add Jihadwatch.

India + Islamic countries + China = majority = no freedom of speech for Chinese dissidents or assholes racist against Muslims.

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:

[NatasRevol]

Nobody's stopping the Russians from setting up their own 'internet' with their own servers for their own purposes.

Yeah, because that won't have negative consequences of it's own.
Hey look 14,000 root DNS servers. Half of which are MITM attacks. Which ones do you use, or your ISP, or the next DNS hop?

Re:Better Idea:

[AlphaWolf_HK]

While you can decentralize DNS, you cannot decentralize IP address assignments.

DNS is just kind of a starting point for stupid US politicians because they don't realize that what ultimately matters is being able to access the IP, so they frequently target DNS for filters in their stupid proposed laws (e.g. sopa.) However after their attempts at DNS based filters fail, they'll eventually get the clue that they've been barking up the wrong tree, and then you'll be back where you started, only this time a return to the late 90's where all kinds of people would snap up whatever domain name they could with the intention of doing nothing other than parking on it with the intent of selling it for millions. That, and snatching up domain names when somebody doesn't catch their expiration, and then holding them for ransom. No, the current system where DNS has accountability against that kind of thing is preferred, in my opinion.

Chinese, Iranian, Russian, and Pakistani politicians have already realized that blocking DNS is ultimately fucking useless and do their blocking by either BGP route poisoning or massive IP blacklists. Russia wants control of ICANN so that this becomes easier for that consortium; namely they get to say who gets what IP addresses, which makes their filters much easier to establish and maintain.

It is rather sad just how technologically illiterate our politicians are compared to theirs, but on the upside it currently works in our favor, and indeed the world's favor, because their technological ineptitude leaves them unable to figure out how to censor proper, and for that reason alone I think it is probably better that the US Department of Commerce holds the keys as they do, unless something changes.

As for NSA spying, this can and will happen regardless of who holds the keys to ICANN, and regardless of whether the internet is censored. Snowden is NOT at any fault here - not by a long shot.

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.

Re: Better Idea:

[Mabhatter]

There is no point to that. All ICANN does is provide a "phone book" service. And it gives the individual countries governments their own TLD first to assign as they please.

The only "policing" ICANN does is over who gets to have names in the "phone book". Powerful as that is, you can connect to all the services perfectly fine with just a "phone number" (IP address).

Every country is free to tell their telco to throw up whatever extra rules they want... Many block ALL sites not in their TLD and the big companies have to buy a name from them and operate in their country... But there are always "holes" because the Internet is international.. There are no "Internet laws" and no body to police them even if there were.

Re:Better Idea:

[NicBenjamin]

He who funds it controls it. Which nations do you trust to control it?

France is obviously out, because nobody who pays any attention to them at all was surprised that their reaction to the NSA Story was extreme outrage, and that two goddamn days later it was all over the internet that they were just as bad. The German government may be trustworthy, but nobody actually trusts them. Same with the Japanese. I trust southern democracies (like Brazil) to an extent, but they've all got major bones to pick with various former colonial, countries, which a) tends to blind them to the fact that Iran is fucking evil, and b) Makes them very reluctant to tell another country "you can't censor that". More importantly it's very difficult to know which South American or African nations are Machiavellian lying sons-of-bitches (ie: France), and which ones are actually ethical democracies, because their track record is only a few decades long.

I'd trust a handful of Nordic nations. They're the only ones with long histories of running their foreign policy almost entirely on moral principles. The trouble is if you set up an internet-funding body run entirely by white European countries the non-white, non-European countries are not gonna be any happier then if the US ran the damn thing.

Re: Better Idea:

[geminidomino]

There is no point to that. All ICANN does is provide a "phone book" service. And it gives the individual countries governments their own TLD first to assign as they please.

That's been wrong for almost fifteen years. They're also in charge of global IP allocation. Good luck doing much on the internet without one of those.

Re:Better Idea:

[cayenne8]

Well, I dunno.

To paraphrase an old saying..."the US sucks, but it still sucks WAY less than everywhere else in the world".

I disagree vehemently with the NSA and other govt snooping actions of the US, but I fear it would be much worse and a huge clusterfuck if given over to the UN.

Besides, it isn't like anyone really believes the UN has true authority over anything or could manage anything like this correctly. I fear it would get worse than it is in so many ways.

Re:Better Idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys don't seem to get it. it's not the companies like google, facebook, or MS that are implementing prism. It's the Tel-Co combine that controls the pipes (all the copper, fiber, wireless cells and microwave relays) that carry all the communications (data and voice) in the world. Prism is simply the Tel-Cos allowing the government (governments) access to the data they have always collected.

Re:Better Idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, it isn't like anyone outside of the USA really believes the UN has true authority over anything or could manage anything like this correctly. I fear it would get worse than it is in so many ways.

There, fixed it for you.

Re:Better Idea:

[Rakarra]

Let me guess, you're a Jew.

It's so funny, your hatred of the European people.

Amazing that you came to that conclusion when the GP's conclusion was that he really only trusted the white Scandinavian countries.
But I suppose you don't really need to make much sense when your intent is just to post your off-topic propaganda videos.

Re:Better Idea:

[AlphaWolf_HK]

This sounds like a giant solution looking for a problem.

Really, what exactly is it that ICANN is doing wrong that warrants changing ownership? As far as I'm aware, everybody who needs assigned names and numbers is receiving them fairly. ICANN is doing its job fine. We change things so that it somehow does it better?

What's better than what we currently have? Something that leaves an easier potential for police states to have a greater say in who gets what names and numbers?

Re: Better Idea:

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I think that's what he means: IP addresses are part of that phone book you speak of. For example, my IP address is the phone number to the WAN interface of my layer 3 switch.

Re:Better Idea:

[AlphaWolf_HK]

By telco's you're probably referring to ISP's, and their roles would be inherently limited compared to the services themselves. Remember that much of today's web traffic (and other traffic in general) tends to be encrypted these days. There's very little information that they could glean from the ISP in such cases. Yes, they can assist in various ways (e.g. what websites they talk to, and plaintext data) but in either case that still sits at the provider level.

Some people think its all about wire tapping, but tapping e.g. an OC3072 link would yield such poor signal to noise (as in most of the data is completely uninteresting - and further you have very limited options as far as storing and processing in real-time) that it's just not worth doing. Again, that's assuming that nothing is even encrypted. The ISP, or telco as you put it, doesn't have access to the encrypted data - all they do is deliver it from point a to point b.

But I don't really need to explain that - just look at the leaked prism slides, they explain it just as I stated it.

Re: Better Idea:

[geminidomino]

DNS is the "phone book", yes.

They're also in charge of allocating the "phone numbers" in the first place. What good is a phone number, if you cannot get a phone, Mr Anderson?

Using Snowden's presence?

[Anonymous Coward]

and using Edward Snowden's continued presence in Russia as a foundation for this new thrust

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.

TFA is below par

[vikingpower]

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.

Re:TFA is below par

[Sockatume]

"Below par"? What the hell version of Slashdot are you reading, and can I have some?

Re:TFA is below par

[vikingpower]

The same as you are. There are not so many places like Slashdot on the internet, believe it or not. I may be naive or overly optimistic, but I do try, sometimes, to remind the /. editors that there are such things as "standards of journalism". Not always in vain, thank fuck for that.

Re:TFA is below par

[Sockatume]

Oh, believe me, I appreciate Slashdot, I just like making that joke more.

Just fork it

[sl4shd0rk]

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*.

Re:Just fork it

[mbone]

The Internet is mostly based on RAND, which may appear to be open source, but isn't. (In some ways I would argue that RAND is better than strict open source; that, to put it mildly, is a matter for debate.)

And why would the US do this?

[sirwired]

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.

Re:And why would the US do this?

[SLi]

What makes you believe the US needs to agree to this for other countries to take the control? As far as I know, there is nothing that would prevent other countries from just ignoring US protests and taking the control.

Re:And why would the US do this?

[NicBenjamin]

That they haven't done so already?

I suspect the problem is that everyone uses the US DNS standard, and the US doesn't abuse the standard much, so to switch over to something else you'd have to teach grandma a whole new internet, and you'd only avoid a small amount of abuse.

Sure. That will work.

[Dishevel]

The only people who could fuck up the internet more than ICANN is the UN.

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Virtucon]

Can you explain your point? ICANN just is responsible for TLDs and Address Ranges, not Internet Policy.

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Dishevel]

Can you explain your point? ICANN just is responsible for TLDs and Address Ranges, not Internet Policy.

Sure. ICANN is currently fucking up everything they control. The UN is currently fucking up everything they control. Adding the UN to the internet equation has no fucking chance in hell of being anything less than a horrible mistake. There are two types of people who want this. Those that will get jobs at the UN controlling everyone's lives and stupid people with no ability to learn and lots of education.

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Virtucon]

Okay I'm not sure still how ICANN is fucking things up but the UN certainly is more about bureaucracy and fucking things up. So I can agree there. I was just looking for more clarity on why you thought ICANN was fucking things up in terms of specifics. IS the TLD naming system broken? Not really unless you want a TLD that's questionable or racist perhaps?

 

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Dishevel]

The naming convention is about to be made completely worthless by the money grab ICANN did with the new generic TLDs. We will now end up with hundreds of TLDs. Which will make, in the end, TLDs worthless.

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Virtucon]

Not really, I mean a TLD is just for categorizing a domain right? So we've overused .com till it's useless and now we have .co because people didn't want to type in an extra m. Then you have the government TLDs.. ala .co.uk that everbody was supposed to really use but only a few ISPs in few countries now use. Tuvalu hoped that selling .TV DNS entries would generate revenue but that looks like that hasn't transpired.

A TLD really doesn't mean much unless you're blocking .sex or .porn or .xxx from your country, company, school, house what have you.

With more and more mobile devices, I think you'll see more QCRs and auto bookmarking facilities that will lock folks into one or more subset of domains that they use. Hell if you look at browsers, even Firefox, Chrome and IE will assume your entry based on past entries.. I just have to type go and www.google.com shows up now www.go.com...

I'm still pissed at ICANN for turning my .masterofspacetimeanddimension TLD because I couldn't prove it.
Stupid ICANN, don't they know I don't need to prove it?

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Dishevel]

.com is not useless. You can teach people to do smart things like look at what comes just before the .com to ID the site. BofA.randomdomain.com looks much different than BofA.com Once everyone has a .com and a .whatever things will get more difficult for the idiots on the internet. Since they will not take my advice and refuse internet access to all idiots that means they will get infected and send spam. They also will cry and have many new laws to protect them. Which will take away my freedoms so that they can continue on their ignorant paths of oblivion. Fuck ICANN. Fuck the UN.

Re:Sure. That will work.

[Virtucon]

Wait, given my prior experiences with BofA, fuck BofA! .com is useless why not call it BofA.sucks?

Re:Come And Get It If You Can

[spacepimp]

I am fairly certain the anonymous coward, was making a self (as in country) deprecating joke.

Putin's exploits may be funny but he's no fool

[Virtucon]

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

Re:Putin's exploits may be funny but he's no fool

[Existential Wombat]

I'm pretty sure Russia also has their own PRISM.

I expect Snowden knows that and probably has a PPT slide on it.

There's no way he (or Wikileaks) would make that information public - because of his asylum request. Plus if he did Russia would put him on a plane to the US.

Two-faced traitor. Started of with an ethical stance, degraded into the last stand of a desperate man.

Re:Putin's exploits may be funny but he's no fool

[Virtucon]

Oh no doubt they have their own PRISM system but in this case like during the Cold War, propaganda bargaining chips are valuable especially about little countries who don't really care about the issue of spying and more about feeding their inhabitants or preventing civil war. Those countries who have UN votes will align to whatever benefactor delivers the aid and in return asks for a favor in a UN vote. If anything this whole PRISM fiasco will push countries away from American Telecomm providers and to decentralize their dependency on on Network Paths that traverse the US. This will give Chinese, Russian and Indian Telecomm providers a bigger piece of the global comm pie. It just so happens that they're all part of the BRIC push and are the main force for "Internet Regulation."

Thanks Obama!

[MacDork]

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?

Re:Thanks Obama!

[anagama]

Total agreement. Although I think I'd start with criminal prosecution of Clapper for perjury. It's such a slam-dunk case that if we can't even do that, nothing is possible.

As long as we're wishing, I'd like to see three constitutional amendments:

1) clarifies that "papers" as used in the 4th amendment includes digital content of any type, including metadata relating to that content.

2) eliminates the business records exception and recognizes that in the modern world of digital communications, people's private "papers" remain the property of the person who generated them no matter where they are stored or temporarily exist (they're yours whether on someone else's HD, on the wire, in the air), and that the government may acquire such information only on a showing of probable cause.

3) establishes an independent prosecutorial body whose sole focus is to root out and prosecute federal employees and elected officials who commit crimes, and in particular, crimes against the constitution. Maybe a 5 member board, 1 appointed by pres, 1 elected by congress, 1 elected by all Fed. judges (not just picked by Supreme Court), 2 elected by citizens.

Re:Thanks Obama!

[anagama]

As to #3, if it is made a crime, punishable by a min. 10yrs in PMITA Federal prison plus forfeiture of pension etc., to introduce or vote in favor of, an unconstitutional law, I think we'd get some more well thought out laws.

Re:Thanks Obama!

[The End Of Days]

All the fools who offered mortgages on houses no one needed to people who couldn't afford them wrecked the economy. That was started long before Bush. It came on top of the recession caused by the collapse of the dotcom bubble, which people hasten to forget was an artifact of St Bill "do-no-wrong" Clinton.

Bush did a horrible job, no doubt... but you're ignorant if you think he singlehandedly wrecked the economy.

Re:Thanks Obama!

[anagama]

Because if you don't expressly state it, they will consider it to be something different. That's exactly how we got here -- the third party doctrine from the 70s says you have no expectation of privacy in who you dial -- to overcome that, we have to expressly overcome that or nothing changes.

Re:Thanks Obama!

[bfandreas]

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?

Umm. Trust in US infrastructure wasn't that high under Clinton, either. We rediscovered the existence of Echelon in the late 90ies and the tinfoil-hat brigade predicted something like PRISM. They used the USS Cole incident to justify a lot of snooping. Then there was 9/11. Then there was 3/11. Then there was 7/7. And even though nothing noteworthy happened in terms of organized terrorism in the western emisphere ever since we still happily cling to all those moronic laws that are there to "prevent" terrorism and to "punish" terrorism.
Why do we even need special laws to punish terrorists? Terrorism isn't even a crime. Murder is. Manslaughter is. Maiming is. Damage of property is. Terrorism is a motivation and is nicely covered by mens rea.

Why are we even afraid of terrorism? There are higher risks in life than that in the western hemisphere. Are you more afraid that your kid will be blown to smithereens by some idiot with half-baked ideas that aren't even his own or run over by some idiot with a car? Our perception of risks is so distorted that we are easily preyed upon by sensationalist media and powerhungry politicians. Take for instance the Boston bombings. 24h breathless news coverage for a couple of days. 3 dead, 300 injured. That reads like a traffic casualty statistic. Yet if it were nobody would give a fuck. Because traffic casualties are expected and terrorist attacks aren't. Media and politicians will take an unexpected event, blow it way out of proportion and will try their damnedest to turn it into a perpetual fear to keep their stranglehold over the bleating masses.

Re:Oh no, it's Roland!

[93 Escort Wagon]

When we post links in the discussion thread, Slashdot helpfully tags them with the domain - so we don't have to worry about clicking a pointless or abusive link.

It's time for Slashdot to follow this same practice with submissions and summaries. Start showing us the domain EVERY link goes to so we can choose not to waste our time on these blog spammers. I am getting tired of "stories" being submitted in an attempt to push up ad revenue.

blog?

[Wormsign]

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.

Slashdot Paradox

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

The home of the NSA

[Serious Callers Only]

repressive governments around the world

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.

Re:Oh no, it's Roland!

[Java Pimp]

Um... Lauren is a dude and I'm pretty sure he knows what he's talking about.

Repressive governments

[gmuslera]

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.

we need the Neutral President now more than ever

[CaptainStumpy]

"I have no strong feelings one way or the other"
--Neutral President

ahem

[beefoot]

What could UN do if it takes over the "internet"? Mr Putin still wants to correspond with his mistress who has a gmail account.

We were founded to avoid that kind of thing

[istartedi]

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?

BS

[fazey]

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.

Re:Technology and Knowledge in Our Hands

[NicBenjamin]

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.

Yeah, that works great for white hipsters.

For everyone else, including most of India, all of China, etc. that ain't happening.

Re:Come And Get It If You Can

[tibman]

It's also likely a black-flag comment too : /

Summary comes to serisouly flawsed conclusion

[bulled]

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.

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.

The effect of reciting the pledge...

[GPS Pilot]

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?

Re:The effect of reciting the pledge...

[ardor]

Yes. Most people seem to mainly pay attention to the "Under God" part (and that part is very creepy). Plus, any kind of compulsory oath is at odds with liberty.

Re:The effect of reciting the pledge...

[GPS Pilot]

The under God part wasn't added until 1954.

If you're going to have a compulsory oath, an oath to "liberty and justice for all" is about as benign as they come, don't you think?

paranoid idiots

[Tom]

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.

Re:Um, no?

[Zontar The Mindless]

There's the potential for a Spanish Inquisition "our weapons are 3" parody here, but I've not yet had my coffee.

Then why are they "demanding"?

[sirwired]

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.