All of the above are based on the ITU's rules that govern another international communications technology: radio (especially shortwave). It is not a stretch to think that the ITU would impose similar rules on the Internet, given the ITU's general approach to communications systems, which is based on an assumption that communication services are run by either commercial entities or by national governments. The ITU's view is that individuals who run communications services are doing so for hobbyist purposes, and the rules set out by the ITU help to cement that.
Do you have some reason to think that the ITU would not approach the Internet the same way it approaches radio?
How about the fact that the ITU did all of the above with radio? You know, like how because of ITU rules, mobile Internet service can only be provided by commercial entities, except on the most extremely local scales (i.e. within range of a WiFi hotspot)?
The ITU's rules are based on assumptions about the nature and role of communications services. It is not a stretch to think that ITU regulations would cement the role of commercial entities in providing online services, and the use of home Internet connections strictly for accessing those services.
Only recently have things gotten to the point where traveling to a different country no longer requires renting a local mobile phone for the duration of your trip
Was there ever a point where connecting to the Internet required renting a computer during your trip? No, and we did not need the ITU for that.
Without the ITU, we'd still be in those old days
Yet as a result of the ITU, we have to pay cell phone companies for mobile Internet access, even if we have an amateur radio license. Why? Because the ITU's rules make it impossible to use packet radio to connect to the majority of websites and other online services in the world. So yeah, way to go ITU, keeping us in the those bad, "old" days where bureaucratic monopolies are the gatekeepers of our communications systems. Do you want to see the same sort of thing happen to the Internet -- you know, turning the Internet into a system where only commercial enterprises can run online services, because of ITU regulations?
That is not FUD; that is what the ITU does to communication systems. The ITU views non-commercial users as hobbyists, and sets up systems of regulation that (a) protect commercial interests and (b) prevent hobbyists from ever doing anything more than being hobbyists. Meanwhile, communications systems that the ITU did not touch allow (a) non-commcercial entities to run services and even become key players and (b) standards to be developed by the users, not just the bureaucracy and the commercial entities it supports.
No member state (i.e. country) will allow any wording to be agreed that requires it to do anything that it does not want to do, or otherwise jeopardizes its sovereignty.
Nice rule of thumb; now, here is an ITU rule that is law in the United States:
Section 97.111 of the Commission's Rules, 47 C.F.R. Â97.111, authorizes an amateur station licensed by the FCC to exchange messages with amateur stations located in other countries, except with those in any country whose administration has given notice that it objects to such radio communications.
Yeah, way to go on that one ITU. I see no reason why the ITU would not try to impose such a rule on the Internet, if they were given the opportunity to do so. Again, this is not FUD, this is what the ITU has already done elsewhere.
that the same people who always spread FUD saying the UN is out to steal American sovereignty (can't happen, for the reasons I just described above) at the same time want control of the Internet to stay in American hands
Hi, I'm betterunixthanunix, and I want to see control of the Internet placed in the hands of it's users, not just some country, because the Internet is just a way for people to communicate and communication between people has nothing to do with sovereignty. If there is going to be a country that controls the Internet, I would rather it be a country that (a) has not even been able to establish a national firewall (b) has a legislature that has not been able to pass any key disclosure law and (c) is stuck in the "chipping away at free speech rights" stage (i.e. a country that has free speech rights in the first place). Letting questions of "sovereignty" come into this discussion legitimizes the censorship systems of countries like China, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia -- so to hell with their national interests, I will say what I want on the Internet and I am not going to spend a full nanosecond worrying about whether or not the governments of those countries might be offended.
If anything, upcoming discussions at the ITU might lead to more countries exercising their national sovereignty when it comes to the Internet
That's nice, but while you are busy working on helping countries exercise their sovereignty online (i.e. human rights abuses), I'll be busy helping people criticize their governmen
I don't know what sort of things you do with amateur radio, but I am a ham and the regulations annoy the heck out of me. I could have an Internet connection on the 2m or 70cm band, except that I could not do anything with it -- advertisements on websites would make browsing the web illegal, I could not use TLS, etc. Amateur radio used to be something that allowed people to do cool, innovative things; these days, cell phones are more innovative than amateur radio.
In what way are rules forbidding communication with people in countries whose governments object to said communication beneficial to us? How are rules that prevent us from setting up amateur trunked systems beneficial to us? The rules are completely out of date, they hold us back, and they basically guarantee that big businesses that can pay for commercial licenses will dominate wireless communications.
It would be trivial to partition amateur bands into "classic" bands where the old rules apply, and "modern" bands that allow greater freedom. The rules do not have to prohibit all commercial transmissions, they can simply prohibit commercial "services" i.e. radio systems that are run for profit, so that we could set up packet radio systems that are useful and interesting.
"Now, can you give the reasons why similar regulations couldn't be imposed on the Internet?"
Because you'd need international agreement?
I think that should be taken as a given, considering how many countries have national firewalls, how many countries block Tor, how many countries want to impose their own censorship on the Internet, and so forth. Again, how many countries objected to or refused to agree to the ITU's rules governing radio?
"What reason does the ITU have in supporting the Internet as it is today?"
The fact it's been a major factor in global economic growth and increasing globalisation?
The Internet philosophy of "any computer can be a service provider" is not a prerequisite of that. The ITU has every reason to require commercial operations on the Internet to have special registrations, and every reason to declare that "client" systems cannot act as service providers. The Internet would not look terribly different in such a case (people could simply rent hosting for small operations from registered service providers, etc.), and it would be a whole lot easier to regulate. It would also help rid the world of things like Tor, which the ITU has basically no reason to support and which plenty of countries have every interest in attacking.
"Please, keep regulatory bodies out of the Internet."
It's a bit late for that.
So you think we should add yet another regulatory body into the picture? At least now, the different nations have to try to impose their regulations without disconnecting themselves from the Internet, which is why censorship on the Internet is so difficult to enforce (not impossible, as China has shown, just difficult -- China expends quite a bit of effort on it, as do other countries with Internet censorship; it is not as easy as blocking particular websites and proxy servers). The ITU would be a global regulatory body, and would almost certainly try to require countries to respect each other's regulations -- which would mean that the free world would have to respect the censorship of countries like China, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia.
If we are going to have regulations on the Internet, I would prefer a system where the regulations are divergent and difficult to enforce.
"We should be working to return control of the Internet to its users, not to increase regulations on the Internet."
How does keeping it under US control assist in that goal when the US is going in the opposite direction?
It does not; moving control to the ITU would just make it more difficult to put control in the hands of the users.
"I do not want the Chinese government deciding how the Internet is governed, or having any say in the rules of the Internet."
Sure, and other people say the same about the US. Difference is that there is far more of them.
Only because the US does have so much control right now, and has already pissed people off. The US being in control of the Internet is not nearly as bad as the ITU would be, given that the US does not really care if China or Iran whine about how terrible it is to see political opinions online. The US has not even been able to establish a rudimentary national firewall because of the uproar; does that really seem worse than the Chinese government to you? Does that really seem worse than the ITU's regulations on other global communication systems?
The US could certainly do a better job, but it is light years ahead of the what the ITU would do, at least if you look at what the ITU does with radio. At least the US has not tried to force people to respect the national firewalls of countries like China.
Well in theory, when the Internet had only a handful of computers on it i.e. just after NSFNet and ARPANet merged, the operators of those computers controlled the Internet.
I'm a bit confused. Can the ITU in some technical manner remotely change how the Internet works inside the USA and Europe without our cooperation?
No, following ITU rules is voluntary, but why would the US or Europe refuse to do so? We follow ITU rules for radio all the time.
The real question is, how bizarre would things be if we refused to follow their rules, but other countries did not? I.e. what would the Internet be like if we had to use gateways between the Internet-of-the-free-world and the Internet-as-regulated-by-the-ITU? I suspect that eventually, the US and Europe would cave in and transition to the ITU's internet, if for no reason other than that such gateways would be a giant annoyance for powerful companies trying to do business internationally. Either that, or the gateways would give big businesses privileged access.
Yes, US censorship of the Internet is bad -- shocking, really, considering the rights that US citizens are supposed to have -- but nowhere near as bad as the censorship that happens in other countries, or the censorship that has happened historically. Additionally, US control of the Internet has been pretty good for the fundamental philosophy of the Internet itself, which is that any Internet connected computer can act as a service provider. Tor would not be possible if there were computers on the Internet that could only be clients, or if servers all had to have some sort of special registration.
When I think of the ITU, I think of the regulations on another global communication system that can be used with equipment available to consumers: shortwave radio and amateur satellites. Consider the regulations ITU imposes on hams:
All transmissions must include a periodic identification; anonymous transmissions are something only privileged operations run by governments can perform. Identifications must be unique and assigned by governments according to ITU rules.
Encryption is limited to certain specific purposes such as controlling satellites; obscuring the meaning of a transmission is forbidden (thus even a non-encryption technique like chaffing and winnowing would be illegal).
If a country objects to communications, other countries' citizens must respect those objections. An amateur station is expected to not communicate with someone in a country whose government objects to such communication.
Commercial transmissions or business activities must not be conducted; a special, separate class of licenses and regulations apply to commercial operations.
Now, can you give the reasons why similar regulations couldn't be imposed on the Internet? What reason does the ITU have in supporting the Internet as it is today? The ITU would almost certainly partition computers on the Internet into different classes (say, "clients" and "servers," where "servers" require special registration and must have some special identification), and would almost certainly create rules that force countries to respect the censorship systems of other countries. Hushmail-style backdoors are practically a given if the ITU has its way (which is not the say that the US would never impose such a thing within its borders; the difference is that the ITU would attempt to impose it globally).
Please, keep regulatory bodies out of the Internet. We should be working to return control of the Internet to its users, not to increase regulations on the Internet. I do not want the Chinese government deciding how the Internet is governed, or having any say in the rules of the Internet.
I am pretty sure that the rest of the world would find it easy to deal with such a situation. It is not unreasonable to establish a US-to-Everyone-Else gateway, which allows privileged traffic (i.e. business or government related) to pass through but demands fees for or simply blocks personal communications. If the ITU really wanted to stand up to the US and try to pry control of the Internet away from us, they could.
Really, the problem here is that the Internet is no longer controlled by its users; governments and corporations get to decide how things work online.
I doubt that the regulations will apply to privileged people in the government. The regulations will be applied to "commoners," people who are deemed to not "need" security or whose security is deemed less important than national or law enforcement interests. Government do all sorts of things with shortwave radio that are illegal for amateur radio stations -- encrypted, unidentified transmissions, broadcasts, etc. It would probably be the same on the Internet -- people in privileged positions would get to use things like encryption without backdoors, anonymous browsing, etc., but people like you and me would not.
How is not allowing hams to communicate with people whose countries "object" to such communication in the interests of the US? I think what you meant to say is, "If it directly opposes US interests...," which is quite another story. There is not guarantee that ITU regulations would directly oppose US interests.
The US government is not the one that decided on the rules that govern amateur radio in the US; those rules were set out by the ITU, and we just went along with it. What makes you think that the Internet would be any different?
My guess is that if the ITU is given power over the Internet, at least some of the following things will ultimately happen:
Partitioning of Internet-connected computers into "clients" and "servers," with special registration required for "servers." Note that right now, any computer connected to the Internet can act as either a client or a server, regardless of how it is typically used; I suspect that the ITU would ultimately change that.
Requirements that computers have unique identification, or at least that computers acting as servers be uniquely identified. Anonymous servers (e.g. Tor hidden services) would be rendered illegal. Procedures for shared hosts that allow multiple services to be run on a single system would likely be developed, with each service having a unique identification that is related to the identification of the host.
A requirement that computers acting as servers refuse to communicate with computers in countries whose governments object to such communication. This is already a requirement of amateur radio i.e. a ham cannot communicate with someone in a country whose government objects to such communication, as per ITU rules.
Key disclosure requirements for communications sent over the Internet i.e. international law enforcement agencies would be able to demand that anyone reveal secret keys. Hushmail-style backdoors would likely be mandatory in services that provide end-to-end encryption for users.
To protect our rights from police abuses. We require police to get a warrant from the courts to ensure that there is no single branch of government that can unilaterally violate your privacy or freedom. We do not want the police running around making their own decisions; the judge that signs a warrant is supposed to be a check against an out-of-control police force.
So, if these kind of non-content requests don't require a warrant, and have longstanding analogues in the non-digital realm upheld by the Supreme Court, what is wrong with making these requests in the digital realm?
The fact that the analogues are not quite identical. Sure, without a warrant the government can look at an envelope while a letter is in transit; the problem here is that the emails are not being inspected while they are in transit, but rather when they are stored on a server. Postal mail is not copied and saved by each courier that delivers it; email is. You can be reasonably certain that once a postal letter is delivered, nobody will get the chance to inspect or make a copy of the envelope; yet even after receiving an email, the message may be stored on one or more servers for indefinite periods of time, during which the server operator may have a chance to comply with such requests.
These systems are also automated and integrated to a degree that far exceeds previous systems. I could visit a website that appears to have nothing to do with Google, but without my knowledge Google could have recorded that visit. It would be as if each store you shopped at had dozens of security cameras, which were operated by dozens of different entities -- and the police could potentially ask any one of those entities to play back the footage. One website's operators may not be willing to comply with a police request and might demand a court order; the police could simply go to some other entity and receive the same records. It is reasonable to expect Slashdot's readership to be cognizant of this sort of thing; it is unreasonable to expect the majority of Americans, who have little understanding of computers, to be equally informed.
It would be ridiculous to assert that any contact with business by government in a free society be accompanied by force of law
Sure, but we are not talking about any old contact, we are talking about contact that is specifically related to law enforcement activities. We need to be careful when it comes to law enforcement power; too little power would be detrimental to public safety, but too much invites various abuses and tyranny. I have noticed a pattern, and I do not think I am the only one, where increases in police power are followed up with increases in the number of laws and the number of ways people can become criminals. Put another way, the trend is for the police to be pushed to their maximum capacity to enforce the law, regardless of what that capacity is.
Currently the balance is a result of the fact that there are numerous and longstanding (i.e., not "post 9/11) exemptions to the requirement for a warrant for written (mail), voice (telephone), and digital (internet) communications.
I would say that as early as the 1970s, the police were given too much power at the expense of our civil rights and liberties. People generally point to 9/11 as a turning point; they ignore other turning points, like CALEA (which mandates that wiretapping capabilities be built into our phone system, among other things), the Comprehensive Crime Control Act (which allows the police to recycle seized assets into their own budgets), and the Controlled Substances Act (which gives the Attorney General's office the power to declare drugs illegal without any democratic process). Each of these laws has been detrimental to our civil rights, and in each case the power of the police was increased, then followed up with an increase in the number of reasons the police can have to arrest people (the most obvious case of the this is the CSA, which has resulted in the list of illegal drugs growing and never shrinking -- and drug cases are one of the cited reasons for the requests being made to Google).
Security and liberty are not at two ends of a zero-sum sliding scale
I do not think it is zero-sum. As an extreme example, the citizens of
It's neither illegal nor unconstitutional for the US government to make a request of business.*
When nearly all of our personal communication is controlled by a handful of businesses, these sorts of legal loopholes need to be closed. Times have changed, and the logic behind the loopholes that you are defending is no longer valid.
It's clever, because it means you don't have to confront the truth, which is that there is nothing wrong with a government in a free society asking a business for help, and nothing wrong with a business deciding to provide that help. It's not illegal, and doesn't run afoul of the Constitution.
You are ignoring the very real expectation that people have that their email will enjoy the same privacy as their postal mail and their phone conversations. Google does not make its policy of complying with US government requests clear to its users (it is an ambiguous statement buried in the privacy policy), and the US government has not been forthcoming about its cozy relationship with Internet companies. People have every reason to think that a court order would be required before the government can receive their information from Google, because that is how things work with their telephone conversations.
This is a legal loophole that should be closed, not defended. The Stored Communications Privacy Act was written before the Internet became a widely used medium of communication. At the time, most computer users understood how emailed worked and understood that their email was being sent in the clear through another person's computer system, and they did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That is not true today; the majority of computer users today have no idea how email works, they think of it as a fancy version of postal mail, and they have no understanding of the privacy implications of sending plaintext email (or that there is even an alternative). The logic behind the SCPA is twenty years out of date.
Yes, there is a problem with the government asking businesses for "help," when the purpose in doing so is to avoid legal and constitutional requirements. If Google did not comply with these sorts of requests, the government would have to either violate the law or turn to the court system to get wiretap orders and so forth. That is how the system is supposed to work: your communications are supposed to be private except when a warrant is issued, and warrants are not supposed to be issued unless probable cause can be shown. This friendly, "Hey Google, you think you could give us all the information you have about Joe Schmoe," system is not the sort of system we are supposed to have in this country.
Really, the idea that Google was pressured by the government is not that far-fetched, given the government's behavior in the past, and it is optimistic for Google -- the company that claims it will "do no evil." Sure, evidence is lacking, which is a result of the secrecy that surrounds police operations. We really do not know how these requests are being made. Is Google being pressured? Did Google propose the idea of this sort of relationship to the government? Does Google use its cooperation as a bargaining chip when it wants to build a new data center or lay some new fiber?
This is a matter of preserving the principles upon which the US was founded. The government is not supposed to be all-powerful, and the panopticon is not supposed to exist here. Our privacy is supposed to be violated only after a careful legal procedure, only after a judge is convinced of a legitimate investigative need.
A MacBook air with a unibodied aluminum case, LED backlight and all solid state storage should last a lifetime.
That is one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen someone promote. I can keep repairing my old Dell laptop for the rest of my life too (and I do not even have to go through Dell to replace things that break!), but I would hardly say that the laptop will "last a lifetime." I doubt that the keyboard, trackpad, or screen will last more than 10 years without problems (bad pixels, bad keys, etc.). LED lights do not last indefinitely either, and mechanical components like hinges are also destined to fail.
That is assuming that the computer is not dropped, that nothing is spilled on it, etc.
I also have a six year old laptop, a Dell Latitude, and it is in working order. I dropped it, spilled things on it, etc., just like you, and the case has taken some damage. I also did things to my laptop that you cannot do with a MacBook Air, like increasing the amount of RAM. I would never claim that this laptop will "last a lifetime," even if I could guarantee that every component could be replaced for the next millennium (and don't think for a moment that Apple will never stop producing replacement parts for your MacBook); eventually this computer will need to be replaced.
As for the submitter's question, I agree, it is silly to carry around a projector and a lightweight desktop. A small laptop or netbook is a better idea, but unless he wants to spend hundreds of dollars more than he needs to, I do not really see why Apple's products win here.
But if it's made up of a bunch of ex-navy seals, can you really trust that it's going to be secure against american intelligence access?
I was going to reply with a list of the algorithms and constructions used here, and then point out that they are all standard and widely studied. Then I noticed that the website does not actually have that information, so unless someone would like to post a link (I could have just missed something obvious), no, I do not think you can really assume anything. Phil Zimmerman did good work with PGP, but that does not mean that he will do similarly good work here.
We should not be afraid to speak in public. Speech is not something people should have to hide.
Yeah yeah yeah, fire in a crowded theater (the excuse given to uphold the conviction of someone who dared to pass around anti-draft pamphlets), but the reality of these technologies is that they will make people think twice about what they say before they say it. You know, like how someone who remarks to a friend that the security seems lax, that the giant line seems like a target for terrorists, that security theater is a waste of tax dollars, that the conservative prime minister is an idiot, etc., how any of the above might result in that person being taken out of line and escorted to some windowless room for questioning.
This is the equivalent of having police officers following every person around and recording their conversations.
Where is the information about Ruby or Ceylon? There are Clojure code snippets designed to illustrate the Clojure philosophy of "simplicity," yet no equivalent Ruby or Ceylon code. Overall, this article seems to be devoid of content...
Slashdot Mirror
All of the above are based on the ITU's rules that govern another international communications technology: radio (especially shortwave). It is not a stretch to think that the ITU would impose similar rules on the Internet, given the ITU's general approach to communications systems, which is based on an assumption that communication services are run by either commercial entities or by national governments. The ITU's view is that individuals who run communications services are doing so for hobbyist purposes, and the rules set out by the ITU help to cement that.
Do you have some reason to think that the ITU would not approach the Internet the same way it approaches radio?
How about the fact that the ITU did all of the above with radio? You know, like how because of ITU rules, mobile Internet service can only be provided by commercial entities, except on the most extremely local scales (i.e. within range of a WiFi hotspot)?
The ITU's rules are based on assumptions about the nature and role of communications services. It is not a stretch to think that ITU regulations would cement the role of commercial entities in providing online services, and the use of home Internet connections strictly for accessing those services.
Only recently have things gotten to the point where traveling to a different country no longer requires renting a local mobile phone for the duration of your trip
Was there ever a point where connecting to the Internet required renting a computer during your trip? No, and we did not need the ITU for that.
Without the ITU, we'd still be in those old days
Yet as a result of the ITU, we have to pay cell phone companies for mobile Internet access, even if we have an amateur radio license. Why? Because the ITU's rules make it impossible to use packet radio to connect to the majority of websites and other online services in the world. So yeah, way to go ITU, keeping us in the those bad, "old" days where bureaucratic monopolies are the gatekeepers of our communications systems. Do you want to see the same sort of thing happen to the Internet -- you know, turning the Internet into a system where only commercial enterprises can run online services, because of ITU regulations?
That is not FUD; that is what the ITU does to communication systems. The ITU views non-commercial users as hobbyists, and sets up systems of regulation that (a) protect commercial interests and (b) prevent hobbyists from ever doing anything more than being hobbyists. Meanwhile, communications systems that the ITU did not touch allow (a) non-commcercial entities to run services and even become key players and (b) standards to be developed by the users, not just the bureaucracy and the commercial entities it supports.
No member state (i.e. country) will allow any wording to be agreed that requires it to do anything that it does not want to do, or otherwise jeopardizes its sovereignty.
Nice rule of thumb; now, here is an ITU rule that is law in the United States:
Section 97.111 of the Commission's Rules, 47 C.F.R. Â97.111, authorizes an amateur station licensed by the FCC to exchange messages with amateur stations located in other countries, except with those in any country whose administration has given notice that it objects to such radio communications.
Yeah, way to go on that one ITU. I see no reason why the ITU would not try to impose such a rule on the Internet, if they were given the opportunity to do so. Again, this is not FUD, this is what the ITU has already done elsewhere.
that the same people who always spread FUD saying the UN is out to steal American sovereignty (can't happen, for the reasons I just described above) at the same time want control of the Internet to stay in American hands
Hi, I'm betterunixthanunix, and I want to see control of the Internet placed in the hands of it's users, not just some country, because the Internet is just a way for people to communicate and communication between people has nothing to do with sovereignty. If there is going to be a country that controls the Internet, I would rather it be a country that (a) has not even been able to establish a national firewall (b) has a legislature that has not been able to pass any key disclosure law and (c) is stuck in the "chipping away at free speech rights" stage (i.e. a country that has free speech rights in the first place). Letting questions of "sovereignty" come into this discussion legitimizes the censorship systems of countries like China, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia -- so to hell with their national interests, I will say what I want on the Internet and I am not going to spend a full nanosecond worrying about whether or not the governments of those countries might be offended.
If anything, upcoming discussions at the ITU might lead to more countries exercising their national sovereignty when it comes to the Internet
That's nice, but while you are busy working on helping countries exercise their sovereignty online (i.e. human rights abuses), I'll be busy helping people criticize their governmen
I don't know what sort of things you do with amateur radio, but I am a ham and the regulations annoy the heck out of me. I could have an Internet connection on the 2m or 70cm band, except that I could not do anything with it -- advertisements on websites would make browsing the web illegal, I could not use TLS, etc. Amateur radio used to be something that allowed people to do cool, innovative things; these days, cell phones are more innovative than amateur radio.
In what way are rules forbidding communication with people in countries whose governments object to said communication beneficial to us? How are rules that prevent us from setting up amateur trunked systems beneficial to us? The rules are completely out of date, they hold us back, and they basically guarantee that big businesses that can pay for commercial licenses will dominate wireless communications.
It would be trivial to partition amateur bands into "classic" bands where the old rules apply, and "modern" bands that allow greater freedom. The rules do not have to prohibit all commercial transmissions, they can simply prohibit commercial "services" i.e. radio systems that are run for profit, so that we could set up packet radio systems that are useful and interesting.
"Now, can you give the reasons why similar regulations couldn't be imposed on the Internet?"
Because you'd need international agreement?
I think that should be taken as a given, considering how many countries have national firewalls, how many countries block Tor, how many countries want to impose their own censorship on the Internet, and so forth. Again, how many countries objected to or refused to agree to the ITU's rules governing radio?
"What reason does the ITU have in supporting the Internet as it is today?"
The fact it's been a major factor in global economic growth and increasing globalisation?
The Internet philosophy of "any computer can be a service provider" is not a prerequisite of that. The ITU has every reason to require commercial operations on the Internet to have special registrations, and every reason to declare that "client" systems cannot act as service providers. The Internet would not look terribly different in such a case (people could simply rent hosting for small operations from registered service providers, etc.), and it would be a whole lot easier to regulate. It would also help rid the world of things like Tor, which the ITU has basically no reason to support and which plenty of countries have every interest in attacking.
"Please, keep regulatory bodies out of the Internet."
It's a bit late for that.
So you think we should add yet another regulatory body into the picture? At least now, the different nations have to try to impose their regulations without disconnecting themselves from the Internet, which is why censorship on the Internet is so difficult to enforce (not impossible, as China has shown, just difficult -- China expends quite a bit of effort on it, as do other countries with Internet censorship; it is not as easy as blocking particular websites and proxy servers). The ITU would be a global regulatory body, and would almost certainly try to require countries to respect each other's regulations -- which would mean that the free world would have to respect the censorship of countries like China, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia.
If we are going to have regulations on the Internet, I would prefer a system where the regulations are divergent and difficult to enforce.
"We should be working to return control of the Internet to its users, not to increase regulations on the Internet."
How does keeping it under US control assist in that goal when the US is going in the opposite direction?
It does not; moving control to the ITU would just make it more difficult to put control in the hands of the users.
"I do not want the Chinese government deciding how the Internet is governed, or having any say in the rules of the Internet."
Sure, and other people say the same about the US. Difference is that there is far more of them.
Only because the US does have so much control right now, and has already pissed people off. The US being in control of the Internet is not nearly as bad as the ITU would be, given that the US does not really care if China or Iran whine about how terrible it is to see political opinions online. The US has not even been able to establish a rudimentary national firewall because of the uproar; does that really seem worse than the Chinese government to you? Does that really seem worse than the ITU's regulations on other global communication systems?
The US could certainly do a better job, but it is light years ahead of the what the ITU would do, at least if you look at what the ITU does with radio. At least the US has not tried to force people to respect the national firewalls of countries like China.
Well in theory, when the Internet had only a handful of computers on it i.e. just after NSFNet and ARPANet merged, the operators of those computers controlled the Internet.
I'm a bit confused. Can the ITU in some technical manner remotely change how the Internet works inside the USA and Europe without our cooperation?
No, following ITU rules is voluntary, but why would the US or Europe refuse to do so? We follow ITU rules for radio all the time.
The real question is, how bizarre would things be if we refused to follow their rules, but other countries did not? I.e. what would the Internet be like if we had to use gateways between the Internet-of-the-free-world and the Internet-as-regulated-by-the-ITU? I suspect that eventually, the US and Europe would cave in and transition to the ITU's internet, if for no reason other than that such gateways would be a giant annoyance for powerful companies trying to do business internationally. Either that, or the gateways would give big businesses privileged access.
When I think of the ITU, I think of the regulations on another global communication system that can be used with equipment available to consumers: shortwave radio and amateur satellites. Consider the regulations ITU imposes on hams:
Now, can you give the reasons why similar regulations couldn't be imposed on the Internet? What reason does the ITU have in supporting the Internet as it is today? The ITU would almost certainly partition computers on the Internet into different classes (say, "clients" and "servers," where "servers" require special registration and must have some special identification), and would almost certainly create rules that force countries to respect the censorship systems of other countries. Hushmail-style backdoors are practically a given if the ITU has its way (which is not the say that the US would never impose such a thing within its borders; the difference is that the ITU would attempt to impose it globally).
Please, keep regulatory bodies out of the Internet. We should be working to return control of the Internet to its users, not to increase regulations on the Internet. I do not want the Chinese government deciding how the Internet is governed, or having any say in the rules of the Internet.
I am pretty sure that the rest of the world would find it easy to deal with such a situation. It is not unreasonable to establish a US-to-Everyone-Else gateway, which allows privileged traffic (i.e. business or government related) to pass through but demands fees for or simply blocks personal communications. If the ITU really wanted to stand up to the US and try to pry control of the Internet away from us, they could.
Really, the problem here is that the Internet is no longer controlled by its users; governments and corporations get to decide how things work online.
I doubt that the regulations will apply to privileged people in the government. The regulations will be applied to "commoners," people who are deemed to not "need" security or whose security is deemed less important than national or law enforcement interests. Government do all sorts of things with shortwave radio that are illegal for amateur radio stations -- encrypted, unidentified transmissions, broadcasts, etc. It would probably be the same on the Internet -- people in privileged positions would get to use things like encryption without backdoors, anonymous browsing, etc., but people like you and me would not.
How is not allowing hams to communicate with people whose countries "object" to such communication in the interests of the US? I think what you meant to say is, "If it directly opposes US interests...," which is quite another story. There is not guarantee that ITU regulations would directly oppose US interests.
The US government is not the one that decided on the rules that govern amateur radio in the US; those rules were set out by the ITU, and we just went along with it. What makes you think that the Internet would be any different?
...to not keep information on people who view them.
To protect our rights from police abuses. We require police to get a warrant from the courts to ensure that there is no single branch of government that can unilaterally violate your privacy or freedom. We do not want the police running around making their own decisions; the judge that signs a warrant is supposed to be a check against an out-of-control police force.
So, if these kind of non-content requests don't require a warrant, and have longstanding analogues in the non-digital realm upheld by the Supreme Court, what is wrong with making these requests in the digital realm?
The fact that the analogues are not quite identical. Sure, without a warrant the government can look at an envelope while a letter is in transit; the problem here is that the emails are not being inspected while they are in transit, but rather when they are stored on a server. Postal mail is not copied and saved by each courier that delivers it; email is. You can be reasonably certain that once a postal letter is delivered, nobody will get the chance to inspect or make a copy of the envelope; yet even after receiving an email, the message may be stored on one or more servers for indefinite periods of time, during which the server operator may have a chance to comply with such requests.
These systems are also automated and integrated to a degree that far exceeds previous systems. I could visit a website that appears to have nothing to do with Google, but without my knowledge Google could have recorded that visit. It would be as if each store you shopped at had dozens of security cameras, which were operated by dozens of different entities -- and the police could potentially ask any one of those entities to play back the footage. One website's operators may not be willing to comply with a police request and might demand a court order; the police could simply go to some other entity and receive the same records. It is reasonable to expect Slashdot's readership to be cognizant of this sort of thing; it is unreasonable to expect the majority of Americans, who have little understanding of computers, to be equally informed.
It would be ridiculous to assert that any contact with business by government in a free society be accompanied by force of law
Sure, but we are not talking about any old contact, we are talking about contact that is specifically related to law enforcement activities. We need to be careful when it comes to law enforcement power; too little power would be detrimental to public safety, but too much invites various abuses and tyranny. I have noticed a pattern, and I do not think I am the only one, where increases in police power are followed up with increases in the number of laws and the number of ways people can become criminals. Put another way, the trend is for the police to be pushed to their maximum capacity to enforce the law, regardless of what that capacity is.
Currently the balance is a result of the fact that there are numerous and longstanding (i.e., not "post 9/11) exemptions to the requirement for a warrant for written (mail), voice (telephone), and digital (internet) communications.
I would say that as early as the 1970s, the police were given too much power at the expense of our civil rights and liberties. People generally point to 9/11 as a turning point; they ignore other turning points, like CALEA (which mandates that wiretapping capabilities be built into our phone system, among other things), the Comprehensive Crime Control Act (which allows the police to recycle seized assets into their own budgets), and the Controlled Substances Act (which gives the Attorney General's office the power to declare drugs illegal without any democratic process). Each of these laws has been detrimental to our civil rights, and in each case the power of the police was increased, then followed up with an increase in the number of reasons the police can have to arrest people (the most obvious case of the this is the CSA, which has resulted in the list of illegal drugs growing and never shrinking -- and drug cases are one of the cited reasons for the requests being made to Google).
Security and liberty are not at two ends of a zero-sum sliding scale
I do not think it is zero-sum. As an extreme example, the citizens of
It's neither illegal nor unconstitutional for the US government to make a request of business.*
When nearly all of our personal communication is controlled by a handful of businesses, these sorts of legal loopholes need to be closed. Times have changed, and the logic behind the loopholes that you are defending is no longer valid.
Hm...so we have probable cause...and that's why we do not bother getting a court order. Interesting approach to the constitution...
You are ignoring the very real expectation that people have that their email will enjoy the same privacy as their postal mail and their phone conversations. Google does not make its policy of complying with US government requests clear to its users (it is an ambiguous statement buried in the privacy policy), and the US government has not been forthcoming about its cozy relationship with Internet companies. People have every reason to think that a court order would be required before the government can receive their information from Google, because that is how things work with their telephone conversations.
This is a legal loophole that should be closed, not defended. The Stored Communications Privacy Act was written before the Internet became a widely used medium of communication. At the time, most computer users understood how emailed worked and understood that their email was being sent in the clear through another person's computer system, and they did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That is not true today; the majority of computer users today have no idea how email works, they think of it as a fancy version of postal mail, and they have no understanding of the privacy implications of sending plaintext email (or that there is even an alternative). The logic behind the SCPA is twenty years out of date.
Yes, there is a problem with the government asking businesses for "help," when the purpose in doing so is to avoid legal and constitutional requirements. If Google did not comply with these sorts of requests, the government would have to either violate the law or turn to the court system to get wiretap orders and so forth. That is how the system is supposed to work: your communications are supposed to be private except when a warrant is issued, and warrants are not supposed to be issued unless probable cause can be shown. This friendly, "Hey Google, you think you could give us all the information you have about Joe Schmoe," system is not the sort of system we are supposed to have in this country.
Really, the idea that Google was pressured by the government is not that far-fetched, given the government's behavior in the past, and it is optimistic for Google -- the company that claims it will "do no evil." Sure, evidence is lacking, which is a result of the secrecy that surrounds police operations. We really do not know how these requests are being made. Is Google being pressured? Did Google propose the idea of this sort of relationship to the government? Does Google use its cooperation as a bargaining chip when it wants to build a new data center or lay some new fiber?
This is a matter of preserving the principles upon which the US was founded. The government is not supposed to be all-powerful, and the panopticon is not supposed to exist here. Our privacy is supposed to be violated only after a careful legal procedure, only after a judge is convinced of a legitimate investigative need.
That's why it's called a "request". Words mean things.
"You want to lay that fiber, right? Just hand over the information we want..."
A MacBook air with a unibodied aluminum case, LED backlight and all solid state storage should last a lifetime.
That is one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen someone promote. I can keep repairing my old Dell laptop for the rest of my life too (and I do not even have to go through Dell to replace things that break!), but I would hardly say that the laptop will "last a lifetime." I doubt that the keyboard, trackpad, or screen will last more than 10 years without problems (bad pixels, bad keys, etc.). LED lights do not last indefinitely either, and mechanical components like hinges are also destined to fail.
That is assuming that the computer is not dropped, that nothing is spilled on it, etc.
I also have a six year old laptop, a Dell Latitude, and it is in working order. I dropped it, spilled things on it, etc., just like you, and the case has taken some damage. I also did things to my laptop that you cannot do with a MacBook Air, like increasing the amount of RAM. I would never claim that this laptop will "last a lifetime," even if I could guarantee that every component could be replaced for the next millennium (and don't think for a moment that Apple will never stop producing replacement parts for your MacBook); eventually this computer will need to be replaced.
As for the submitter's question, I agree, it is silly to carry around a projector and a lightweight desktop. A small laptop or netbook is a better idea, but unless he wants to spend hundreds of dollars more than he needs to, I do not really see why Apple's products win here.
you won't be able to fix it
Just get a MacBook air
How can you make these two statements in a single post?
But if it's made up of a bunch of ex-navy seals, can you really trust that it's going to be secure against american intelligence access?
I was going to reply with a list of the algorithms and constructions used here, and then point out that they are all standard and widely studied. Then I noticed that the website does not actually have that information, so unless someone would like to post a link (I could have just missed something obvious), no, I do not think you can really assume anything. Phil Zimmerman did good work with PGP, but that does not mean that he will do similarly good work here.
We should not be afraid to speak in public. Speech is not something people should have to hide.
Yeah yeah yeah, fire in a crowded theater (the excuse given to uphold the conviction of someone who dared to pass around anti-draft pamphlets), but the reality of these technologies is that they will make people think twice about what they say before they say it. You know, like how someone who remarks to a friend that the security seems lax, that the giant line seems like a target for terrorists, that security theater is a waste of tax dollars, that the conservative prime minister is an idiot, etc., how any of the above might result in that person being taken out of line and escorted to some windowless room for questioning.
This is the equivalent of having police officers following every person around and recording their conversations.
Where is the information about Ruby or Ceylon? There are Clojure code snippets designed to illustrate the Clojure philosophy of "simplicity," yet no equivalent Ruby or Ceylon code. Overall, this article seems to be devoid of content...