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.

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: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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.