Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Society is Unhappy with U.S. Govt's Internet Spying Tactics
On September 9, The Internet Society issued a position paper in which it said the group "...is alarmed by continuing reports alleging systematic United States government efforts to circumvent Internet security mechanisms," and went on to say, "The Internet Society President and CEO, Lynn St. Amour, said, 'If true, these reports describe government programmes that undermine the technical foundations of the Internet and are a fundamental threat to the Internet’s economic, innovative, and social potential. Any systematic, state-level attack on Internet security and privacy is a rejection of the global, collaborative fabric that has enabled the Internet's growth to extend beyond the interests of any one country.'" Those are tough words from an international organization that usually spends its time bringing the Internet to people in out-of-the-way villages and sponsoring the Internet Engineering Task Force. You can join the Internet Society for as little as $0 per year, and possibly help beat back some of the U.S. government eavesdropping and encryption circumvention efforts. And if you can make it to San Francisco on October 2, you can attend a (free) Internet Society discussion. Meanwhile, today's Slashdot interviewee is Paul Brigner, the Internet Society Regional Bureau Director for North America, who talks about the Internet Society in general, as well as the group's reaction to the U.S. government's online surveillance.
But no shit, Sherlock.
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What if Verizon succeeds in killing the Internet?
I've posted countless essays over the years on the importance of Net neutrality and how big ISPs are trying to turn the Internet into a pay-per-view system, rather than the open-access system it was always intended to be. I've written open letters to federal legislators; remarked on the various games being played by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the like; and cheered Google Fiber for demonstrating that the big ISPs are full of nonsense when they claim their backs are against the wall in terms of broadband speeds and reach.
And now, Verizon is claiming it has free speech rights to limit and block content flowing from the Internet to its customers....
The move away from robust peer-to-peer to centralisation - esp. more points of failure at which all traffic passes/arrives - is absolutely undermining technical foundations.
The Internet could easily have become about all computers acting as peers, caching data for one massive net of networked data storage ("the network is the computer" taken quite literally). Instead, thanks to the desire of capitalists and governments (but I repeat myself) to control, it's very firmly split itself between producers and consumers - just the way the boys at the top like it.
Internet Society + EFF + ACLU + FSF + Wikipedia + Reddit + Slashdot + every place else that gives a shit = Internet Party candidates on the ballot in 2014-2020 in every single local, state and national election.
Republicans? Democrats? A pox on both their houses.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the socialist "Internet Society" party?
You think McCarthy era internment camps were bad? Imagine the horrific witch hunt + the victims also having data-overload withdrawals, being cut off from texting & social media updates.
The web will fracture. The cracks have already formed. National Networks are coming with every approved packet signed via digital user IDs.
I can hear it now: You want the Internet back?! Why? So you can connect to your Chinese and Russian Spys? Or even Terrorist websites?!
Reject national digital ID systems w/ PKI authentication. That is the key they need to enforce the fracture.
Long live the Sneakernet, the last bastion of information freedom. It's what took down the other oppressive regimes in years past, and I fear we'll soon need it again when the Internet society has failed.
Never under estimate the bandwidth of a condom full of micro SDs.
And still, people use gmail, hotmail, Facebook, mobile me ....
Even worse: no one uses crypto. PGP is there. TOR is there (OK, with some problems with the latter),. a 4096bit key is a tough cookie to crack. There are 2-3 click installers for almost every OS (linux, win, osx, ios and android).
There is also OTR chat for chatting.
Still, I cannot convince one single person to use it, even for business matters that shouldn't go through mail servers and chat servers in clear text form.
I am talking about programmers, technical managers and system administrators, who find these tools either unnecessary, or too bothersome to use..... So how will average Joe convince grandma, grandpa, and uncle Joe to install these tools and go through the incredibly long (5 minute tops) learning curve and start using the F@#$@#$ tools?
Let's use diaspora, go back to vote-in BBS systems with made up names and use crypto ... but no... people are upset about their privacy while posting borderline illegal videos with under their own name with location services stamping info into the media.
ARE WE STUPID or what ?