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.

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.

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.)

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.

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: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.