Can There Be a Non-US Internet?

Daniel_Stuckey writes "After discovering that the US government has been invading the privacy of not just Americans, but also Brazilians, Brazil is showing its teeth. The country responded to the spying revelations by declaring it'll just have to create its own internet. In reality, although Brazil President Dilma Rousseff is none too happy with the NSA's sketchy surveillance practices, Brazil and other up-and-coming economies have been pushing to shift the power dynamics of the World Wide Web away from a US-centric model for years."

Comments

Oblig.

[JamesRing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5tZMDBXTRQ

Re:Oblig.

[TheRon6]

I thought we already had an internet filled with blackjack and hookers.

Technically yes; practically unlikely

[YttriumOxide]

While it should be relatively simple for any country to set up its own DNS servers, interesting services and so on; the sheer amount of 'information' that is hosted in the US would make any 'internet' experience without it severely lacking.

Re:Technically yes; practically unlikely

[khasim]

Initially, yes.

But after a couple of years I don't think there would be that much of a difference.

As long as all the on-line commercial entities in that country were okay with never having any US business. Otherwise the NSA (and others) can demand access to their data in exchange for access to our markets.

And that isn't even considering the old spy standby of either getting one of your spies hired by them or offering one of their employees money to get you access.

The problems are not technological. They are human nature.

Re:Technically yes; practically unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite amazing how many commercial entities get by just fine by never having any dealings with the US at all.

Re:Technically yes; practically unlikely

[YttriumOxide]

You are assuming that people in other countries actually find USA content interesting. Most people don't. That is why there are different countries.

It really depends on what you use the internet for.

Personally (I live outside the US), local US politics, news and so on are of little to no interest to me. However most of the television and movies that I enjoy (downloaded) are from the US, with at most 25% produced elsewhere. Right now, we're using Slashdot - not only hosted in the US, but also with a very large number (majority?) of commenters from the US. Even if there were a 'slashdot for non-US' that covered the entire world excluding the US, I would miss out on a lot of interesting discussions and insights.

The US, whether we like it or not, is a major influence in the world and will likely continue to be for quite some time.

You say "That is why there are different countries", but to me at least, the world is becoming less 'country oriented' and more 'groups of people, potentially separated by space' oriented. I don't know you or where you live, but it's probably nowhere near me. Regardless, I'm communicating with you right now. Remove one country the size of the US and the pool of people just got noticeably smaller.

WTF is the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing unique about the United States is the resources. That is what is so sad about this: the entire idea of "American Exceptionalism" is the notion that the United States stands alone as a country; Unique in it's respect for freedom and human rights. The NSA's violation of every honor code existing in TCP/IP has demonstrated the United States to be equally mediocre as any other country, where virtue and abuse of power are concerned.

Once you lose your credibility you can never get it back. Its actions have left the entire internet community in search for new social & technological methods for enforcing these basic tenets of privacy that were previously easy to support via a fragile honor system: the United States promised to not be a dick and molest other people's cake as it got passed to the left.

Re:WTF is the point?

[Vintermann]

Any country claims to be excellent in some way.

That's not what exceptionalism means. Exceptionalism is when you say "other rules ought to apply to us, because obviously we're special". When the US supports trials of war criminals, but demands that their own forces can never be subject to war crimes inquiries, that's exceptionalism.
Some countries are relatively open about doing whatever they can get away with. Other countries justify it with an ideology of exceptionalism. US is one of the worst offenders in the latter category.

Re:WTF is the point?

[VortexCortex]

Once you lose your credibility you can never get it back.

Well, apparently you've proven this not to be the case, since you're crediting the US government with credibility, even though they started eugenics before the Nazis, built and stocked concentration camps for US citizens, re-invented the witch hunt with McCarthyism, and still continue to use McCarthyist accusations and false threat narratives against their own people to manufacture consent for war atrocities, and frequently wage other forms of socio-economic terrorism on everyone, including their own people, and have installed pervasive domestic spying apparatuses, multiple times, and even been caught red-handed doing so.

And, somehow, miraculously, in the mid 1990's they suddenly became credible enough to hold DNS roots? Somehow you imagine that only now they have lost credibility that can not be restored? I'm sorry, no. We've always needed a decentralized infrastructure that's not susceptible to censorship or centralization. That's why the Internet was built to be resilient from entire cities or countries disappearing off the map -- Packets routed around the holes in moments.

However, you foolish morons built "The Web" atop the Internet. You used a hierarchical naming tree instead of an associative hash based naming convention where the data itself could be requested regardless of name or endpoint address. You fill data silos with information, causing congestion at "servers" by funneling all those "client" connections into single places -- When in reality there is no such thing as a client or server at the traffic level: Just source and destination addresses. You espouse separating content from style and form, but can't get it through your thick heads you need to separate data from URIs in much the same way, for similar reasons.

Because there is a centralized name system corporations and governments can be gate keepers for any who would make data available online. Instead of connecting directly to the people's systems you want to stay up to date with you fill data silos with all your personal information and (private) correspondences, and trust the untrustworthy 3rd parties to hold your data for you -- despite the fact that your own home computer already had such information in it and could have served it to only those you trust directly.... It's not like public key cryptography doesn't exist, but you refuse to use it out of ignorance or apathy, then have the gall to complain only now... your demagoguery knows no bounds. Threaten to build a whole "non-us" Internet, when it is only the web that is US based... If only it weren't for the hierarchical naming system which ties data to IPs and host names, the people could be free from much censorship and spying -- Perhaps consider using a distributed hash table instead? Oh that's the "crazy" talk... Pffft, looks who's talking, fools.

The BBS era was an interesting experiment. Because the Internet was taking so long to get off the ground, common folks built their own Internet. We drew out maps of local calling areas and scheduled batches of data to transfer from node to node via store and forward. My first email was via Fidonet. Took 1 to 2 days to get a message from Texas to California if the route was timed just right. With an always online system like the Internet, instead of nightly BBS to BBS sync, suc

Yes, but it won't make any difference.

[Eskarel]

Fundamentally the reason that the internet is US centric is partially the fact that ICANN is located in the US, but mostly because the most used services are based in the US. To create a truly non US-centric model you would have to relocate ICANN and come up with significant competitors to people like Google etc who have no US presence(once they have a US presence they're subject to all the same laws that allow the NSA to spy on you in the first place).

You could technically achieve this, but the countries which could be candidates for replacing the US in this position are not Brazil and would also spy on traffic. So unless this is yet another pissing match where idiots go in with the slogan "Anyone but the US", making the internet non US centric is a gigantic waste of everyone's time and money. I mean does anyone seriously believe that if Chinese companies displaced the US ones that China wouldn't spy on everyone, or that the Europeans wouldn't either also spy or allow the NSA to spy?

Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference.

[Dahamma]

ICANN? Give me a break, that's nothing. Do you even know what ICANN does? Not route traffic, of course.

Fundamentally the reason that the Internet is US-centric is that the US has paid for much of the infrastructure. It's not necessarily about the services either, it's about the routing. If Latin/South America wants to avoid traversing US infrastructure to route their packets to the rest of the world, they will have to build their own backbones and lay their own transoceanic cable. Until they do that it's pretty obvious their data is going to be inspected...

Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to be a common strawman argument used when discussing the NSA and spying. No one has suggested that the only government spying in the world is the US. However, the US seems to be granted special privilages by the most of the world in that it is the only nation:

1. That does extraordinary rendition without having to be held accountable by any international body
2. Attacks and kills people in other countries via drones that they are not at ear with
3. Mandates cyberwarfare against not just "intelligence" targets
4. Operates prisons that were specifically created to circumvent human rights treaties and allow torture

Other countries may do some or all of these things but they are belittled, sanctioned, or bombed (usually in that order). The US does this "to protect its interests" and the rest of the Western world says "ok".

All of the items mentioned above happened after someone received "intelligence" and then acted on it. The US is not infalliable and they have made many mistakes that have resulted in innocents getting killed or imprisioned for years. If any other country did this (China, Iran, Iraq,etc) ....well the US and allies would have bombed them by now for being a threat to the rest of the world.

Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference.

[stenvar]

Other countries may do some or all of these things but they are belittled, sanctioned, or bombed (usually in that order). The US does this "to protect its interests" and the rest of the Western world says "ok".

Other countries have done lots of these things in the past themselves. They stopped doing it because they couldn't afford it anymore; some time in the 1950's and 1960's, countries like France and Britain increasingly just picked up the phone and asked the US to clean up their messes; it was cheaper, simpler, and less risky. And why did the US do it? Because it was pretty easy for it to do so, and because it gives it great power. So, the rest of the Western world doesn't just say "OK", it says "yes, please".

Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference.

[Eskarel]

For the purposes of this argument any service which has any physical presence in the US whatsoever is a service based in the US. All such companies are required to comply with US law, which would include FISA warrants. That's the tricky bit you see.

Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference.

[flyingfsck]

That is exactly what Barizil is going to do: Run a cable across the Atlantic to South Africa. That will allow them to bypass most of the US snooping.

Why do we keep discussing this...

[geekmux]

...as if the United States was the first, last, and only country to hold a government that spies on its own citizens in some way?

Are we really THAT naive to think that A) the United States invented this concept, and B) no other government thought to do it too?

It's mentalities like this that shock me more than anything Snowden could reveal. I find mass ignorance far more alarming, as it tends to hint as to what governments are yet capable of doing to you. To all of us. While the deaf and blind vote for it.

We were ignorant enough to pay for and allow a program like PRISM to come to fruition. Sitting back assuming that no other country has a similar or same capability is like assuming no one masturbates because people don't talk about it.

Re:Why do we keep discussing this...

[LordLucless]

...as if the United States was the first, last, and only country to hold a government that spies on its own citizens in some way?

Nobody thinks that. But the United States was supposed to be different to the hundreds of abusive governments that had preceded it. This does demonstrate that the US is worse than any other government - it shows that it is exactly the same. And that's damning enough.

That is not what they declared

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not what they declared, building local cloud, secure email services and infrastructure is different from "creating it's own internet" and I never heard this wording here, only in "international" press. The big difference is that when someone talk like that it gives the idea that it will be separated from the rest of the internet. That is not what the Brazilian government is proposing.
The national constitution (I'm Brazilian) states that the State has to provide the basic rights that are not met otherwise (if you can't buy water the State has to provide it, there is free medical care, the best universities are free, etc). Since private communications are a basic right (our constitutuion and the universal declaration of human rights), they are planning to offer alternatives for people who care.
Honestly, to force local clouds seems like a double win. On one hand you make companies accountable for our citizens rights, on the other hand - the one I think is the main point here - it creates investments, infrastructure, brings technology and high tech jobs. The cables to Europe are a need, our internet sucks. I hope they make some cables to China and Russia too, as online gaming is better over there.
But mainly, there is no censorship here, Brazilians will not be separated from the internet and nobody in the country thinks that even a possibility. Specially since this government is the one that fought against censorship in the past, you know, during the US created military dictatorship from 64 to 86/90.

Re:WWW

[drwho]

There Internet (Arpanet) existed before WWW. WWW is a subset of the Internet.

Re:WWW

[Dynedain]

Ever use email? Dropbox? Online games from your XBox or PC? FTP? VOIP? Bittorrent?

All these and thousands more are internet protocols that don't use WWW.

And, by the way, we do have multiple Internets (with a big I). Read up on Internet 2. And there's lots and lots of internets (with a little i) that you don't know about because they're not connected to the Internet (with a big i)

Different Governments have Different Issues

[billstewart]

The most common reasons governments want to have non-US "internet governance" these days are that they want to restrict free speech and free reading by their citizens, or restrict some kinds of commerce by their citizens (US restricts gambling, drugs, etc.) There are other issues; most governments used to have telecom monopolies, either state-run or quasi-nationalized, though the 90s liberalized much of that away. Some governments would like more money to stay in their countries, or keep people from buying goods online that are heavily taxed locally.

It really irks me when international groups get together to talk about internet policy, and advertise their shindig as being about "ending the digital divide" or "providing connectivity to Africa" or other noble-sounding goals, but actually devote most of their agenda to governments wanting censorship. These days, of course, the NSA is giving them a good excuse to want internet governance so they can do their own wiretapping in case the NSA isn't sharing.

Re:Different Governments have Different Issues

[petermgreen]

Right now most places access the internet by buying capacity on a fiber to the US or western europe (usually whichever is closer) and then buying transit from a teir 1 provider there. They will sometimes peer or buy transit locally if they think it's in their interests to do so but the US and western europe act as the "routes of last resort".

There are various things a country could do to reduce the ammount of thier traffic that goes via the USA.

1: order local providers to keep local traffic within the country (whether by peering or by buying transit from the country's main provider) even if they don't see it as being in their commercial interests to do so.
2: Install direct links to major trading partners and order providers in their country to use those links even if they don't see it as being in their commercial interests to do so.

Re:Different Governments have Different Issues

[mcvos]

The most common reasons governments want to have non-US "internet governance" these days are that they want to restrict free speech and free reading by their citizens, or restrict some kinds of commerce by their citizens (US restricts gambling, drugs, etc.)

There already was good reason for countries who wanted less freedom to want independence from the US, but now there's also a very clear reason for countries who want more freedom to want independence.

Anyway, get some big backbones from Brazil to Europe to Canada to China to Australia and back to Brazil again, and I don't see why any non-US traffic would have to pass through the US anymore.

Re:National DNS roots

[scsirob]

That's not going to make it a separate "Internet". It will only allow selective resolvent of names, but TCP/IP will still work around the globe. Which means hacking and probing by NSA or other 'security' organizations will still be just as happy. You'll just not be able to resolve names outside your DNS structure.

Re:US = questionable value proposition netwise

[Guy Harris]

Their own internet might simply mean "not connected or dependent upon" the current network

I have seen nothing to indicate that Brazil is thinking of not allowing packets to be routed to the rest of the Internet, or even just to US; they are thinking of allowing packets to much of the rest of the world to be routed there without passing through the US, but that's another matter (and that appears to have been an idea originated in South Africa, well prior to the Snowden revelations).

Re:US = questionable value proposition netwise

[tlambert]

And U.S. workers average ~40 work hours per week (42 for men, 38.5 for women), whereas German workers average 35 hours per week, so if you are measuring per hour, Germany wins, but if you are measuring per work week, the U.S. has a 14% advantage due to amount of time worked, and the U.S. wins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#European_Union

Re:US = questionable value proposition netwise

[devman]

It is not unjustified to inquire about a source no matter what you may feel about the subject. For all your accusations of people being rude all you had to reply with is "I don't have a source", instead you went on a defensive rant about it.

Non-US Internet

[wmac1]

Iran has already done it. It has built an Intranet like network which connects to outside world through few gateways. The transition of the network users to the new Intranet is being done at the time being and will complete in year.

The main purpose is the:

1- Avoid the internal Iranian traffic to travel over the internet (i.e. unknown countries).
2- To control in/out traffic (deep packet inspection, control access to outsider websites, attack and spying control, allow access to Iran-only websites just from inside Iran, emergency kill switch).
3- Force Iranian organizations to host their website in Iranian data centers.
4- Save traffic costs.
5- Flourish local hosting and cloud business and local peering between ISPs. ....

Re:Non-US Internet

[Grizzley9]

Iran has already done it. It has built an Intranet like network which connects to outside world through few gateways. The transition of the network users to the new Intranet is being done at the time being and will complete in year.

The main purpose is the:

1- Avoid the internal Iranian traffic to travel over the internet (i.e. unknown countries). 2- To control in/out traffic (deep packet inspection, control access to outsider websites, attack and spying control, allow access to Iran-only websites just from inside Iran, emergency kill switch). 3- Force Iranian organizations to host their website in Iranian data centers. 4- Save traffic costs. 5- Flourish local hosting and cloud business and local peering between ISPs. ....

6. Control the ideas/speech of all websites within Iran.