Cyber Commander Says It's 'Not Realistic' To Shut Down Internet (washingtonexaminer.com)

An anonymous reader links to a report on Washington Examiner: It simply would not be possible to shut down areas of the Internet that terrorists use to conduct malicious activity, the head of U.S. Cyber Command told a Senate panel on Tuesday. "In a very simplistic way, people ask why can't we shut down that part of the Internet. ... Why are we not able to infiltrate that more?" Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., asked Cyber Command leader Adm. Mike Rogers during a hearing on the agency's budget for fiscal 2017. Manchin maintained it was a common question from his constituents. "I've had people ask me, can't you just stop it from that area of the world where all the problems are coming, be it Syria or in parts of Iraq or Iran," he said. "I'm not just trying to find an answer, because that question is asked like shut her down, like you do your telephone, but it doesn't work that way," Manchin concluded.

Comments

Re:Resilient by design

[guruevi]

No we don't. The Internet considers censoring as damage and routes around it. Each country has telephone lines and satellite communications. If you shut down the "Internet" from routing through it's common carriers (fiber etc) someone can hang a few thousand 56k modems on their phone systems and call in to their neighbors or even through the censoring country and connect all their traffic that way. Same goes for satellite, just bounce it around a few times and it can come from anywhere.

That's how Syrians and Iranians were still able to connect after their countries shut down their internets.