Government control of private Internet next?

examiner.com ^ | August 29, 2009 | Martha

[Swiss]

Wouldn’t this bill give the power to shut down targeted internet websites and networks?

For example, they succeed through the FCC in shutting down conservative over the airways talkshows but Rush and other use webcasts instead. Sounds to me that it could be stopped along with Free Republic, etc.

Also you are a businessman like Michael Dell who does a lot of their business through the internet. Obama asks the businessman to support him or his policies or else his access to the internet can be cut off in the name of cybersecurity.

[angkor]

>>>> It is the theory of kicking your a@@ into slavery. <<<<<

Which is a social and political theory, not a technical practice.

I am saying that in the first instance the Western industrialized Internet is designed to thwart “taking over the Internet,” and that secondly the mere idea of “taking over the Internet” is a social and political and economic incursion that would NEVER be acceptable to non-DC America or even to the rest of the world.

There is no conceivable “cyberattack” that could be even one percent as damaging as “taking over the Internet”, which as I’ve stated is not possible in any case.

[angkor]

>>>> Don’t look at their actions. Look at their motives. Try to determine what they envision as the “end game”. <<<<

I don’t believe in “they.”

I do believe that Zer0 and his minions are total incompetents who are greatly over-impressed with their own abilities, and that Zer0 himself is a shallow thinker (aka “smart but stupid”) who believes that he’s gonna’ “break all the logjams” with whatever stupid and impractical maneuver crosses his brain cells (or those of his sycophants).

Zer0 will keep pushing these idiotic ideas because (a) he doesn’t care too much what you or I or anyone else really thinks, because (b) he believes his ideas are just really cool and he can “get things done”, and (c) he doesn’t mind lying and dissembling as long as he gets what he wants.

[angkor]

>>>> As a computer science graduate, I’m not as quick to say it’s not technically possible. <<<<

Then you understand that "shut down the Internet" means 100 percent. Not 80 percent, not 95 percent, not 99 percent. 100 percent.

You just barely get to an immediate 30 percent by "shutting down" about 80 core routers. And then you have at least 5,000 more peering routers to go for that for remaining 70 percent. Minimum. And that's not the end of it.

The following study was the cover story of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July 2007.

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=476&index=27&domain=Internet

The core: At the center of the Internet are about 80 core nodes through which most traffic flows. Remove the core, and 70 percent of the other nodes are still able to function through peer-to-peer connections.

The periphery: At the very edge of the Internet are 5,000 or so isolated nodes that are the most dependent upon the core and become cut off if the core is removed or shut down. Yet those nodes within this periphery are able to stay connected because of their peer-to-peer connections.

And from MIT Technology Review regarding the same study:

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18944

Take away the core, and an interesting thing happens: about 30 percent of the nodes from the outer shell become completely cut off. But the remaining 70 percent can continue communicating because the middle region has enough peer-connected nodes to bypass the core.

With the core connected, any node is able to communicate with any other node within about four links. "If the core is removed, it takes about seven or eight links," says Carmi. It's a slower trip, but the data still gets there. Carmi believes we should take advantage of these alternate pathways to try to stop the core of the Internet from clogging up. "It can improve the efficiency of the Internet because the core would be less congested," he says.

[SpeedRacer]

I don’t believe in “they.”

THEY = US House, US Senate, & the 1/2 White-1/2 Black House, including the array of czars, community organizers, and leftist radicals. You better believe "they" are out to fundamentally change America.

[angkor]

Who exactly is “they”?

If “they” “shut down the Internet”, “they” will be impeached, convicted, and ejected into the gutter in short order.

In addition to all the spam, blogs, news, YouTube, and other inconsequential stuff transiting the global Internet are important things like:

Bank clearing transactions, securities trades, hospital and medical data, logistics and supply chain systems, etc etc etc.

“Shutting down the Internet” - if it was possible WHICH IT IS NOT - would effectively kill the global economy and all regional and global commercial and many social operations.

Ya’ think Zer0 (or anyone) would be allowed to remain office for even 24 hours after “shutting down the Internet?”

[angkor]

>>> THEY = US House, US Senate, & the <<< [White House]

Thanks.

Actually I think that “they” (per above) are irredeemable sociopaths who are invariably out for their own interests and will happily lie, cheat, and steal to enjoy the fruits of their tenure and status in DC.

[reformedliberal]

I take great comfort from your information and I have heard it before from other technically competent people. I am only a simple end user.

Can you explain how China, Iran and other totalitarian governments cut their own people off from the Internet? I know there supposedly are ways even around these government firewalls and I am aware of anonymizer services, but I wondered how the Twitter postings were getting out of Iran during their recent demonstrations.

Since this legislation is predicated on an *emergency*, what technically stops the government from simply taking over the large domestic communications systems and forcing them to limit connectivity or forcing them to shut down certain sites?

I wonder if there would be immediate political repercussions
in the event of a real emergency, such as an attack on America. Personally, I think it would have to wind through the courts and would take months to resolve, politically and legally.

Are there technical means for resistors to reconnect or restore the nodes that have been taken down? What does it take to make a replacement node?

[angkor]

>>>>> Can you explain how China, Iran and other totalitarian governments cut their own people off from the Internet? <<<<<

I posted this in another thread (there seem to be a dozen of these absurd threads today):

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall

March 2008 Atlantic

China’s Great Firewall is crude, slapdash, and surprisingly easy to breach. Here’s why it’s so effective anyway.

by James Fallows
“The Connection Has Been Reset”

[snip]

In America, the Internet was originally designed to be free of choke points, so that each packet of information could be routed quickly around any temporary obstruction. In China, the Internet came with choke points built in. Even now, virtually all Internet contact between China and the rest of the world is routed through a very small number of fiber-optic cables that enter the country at one of three points: the Beijing-Qingdao-Tianjin area in the north, where cables come in from Japan; Shanghai on the central coast, where they also come from Japan; and Guangzhou in the south, where they come from Hong Kong. (A few places in China have Internet service via satellite, but that is both expensive and slow. Other lines run across Central Asia to Russia but carry little traffic.) In late 2006, Internet users in China were reminded just how important these choke points are when a seabed earthquake near Taiwan cut some major cables serving the country. It took months before international transmissions to and from most of China regained even their pre-quake speed, such as it was.

Thus Chinese authorities can easily do something that would be harder in most developed countries: physically monitor all traffic into or out of the country. They do so by installing at each of these few “international gateways” a device called a “tapper” or “network sniffer,” which can mirror every packet of data going in or out. This involves mirroring in both a figurative and a literal sense. “Mirroring” is the term for normal copying or backup operations, and in this case real though extremely small mirrors are employed. Information travels along fiber-optic cables as little pulses of light, and as these travel through the Chinese gateway routers, numerous tiny mirrors bounce reflections of them to a separate set of “Golden Shield” computers.Here the term’s creepiness is appropriate. As the other routers and servers (short for file servers, which are essentially very large-capacity computers) that make up the Internet do their best to get the packet where it’s supposed to go, China’s own surveillance computers are looking over the same information to see whether it should be stopped.

[angkor]

>>> Since this legislation is predicated on an *emergency*, what technically stops the government from simply taking over... or forcing them to shut down certain sites? <<<<

A) “They” (the government) does not “run” the Internet. Nor does it have the technical personnel or expertise or even basic knowledge to do so, under any conceivable circumstances. So how it would “take over” seems to be a mystery.

B) “They” (the government) can no more “shut down certain sites” due to “an *emergency*” than it can shut down certain newspapers or magazines or TV stations or grocery stores or telephone switching stations or power grids or anything else for that matter.

[RockyMtnMan]

While routing may still be possible the traffic load would make the links nearly unusable. Also factor in the effect of the remaining routers having to recalculate routes causing a “core meltdown”. Routers become very inefficient when their CPUs are focused on route calculation rather than forwarding packets.

Take a firehose and restrict its flow to a garden hose and you get the idea of what can happen. Data is fluid just like water except when it can’t flow it gets dropped which causes acknowledgment storms, the equivalent of a DDOS attack. Now multiply the effect over millions of nodes.

[angkor]

That’s all technically true and interesting, but it doesn’t make the technical case for “the government’s” ability to “shut down the Internet,” which is impossible.

And of course - if it could be done WHICH IT CANNOT - there are the certain global social and economic ramifications which at the very least would demand the instant impeachment of anyone who even considered making such a futile and impotent but suicidal gesture.

[RockyMtnMan]

They don’t have to shut it down, they just need to make it so unusable that people give up.

[angkor]

>>>>> They don’t have to shut it down, they just need to make it so unusable that people give up. <<<<<

That’s a completely different issue than the many assertions that have been made about “shutting it down” over the last couple days.

What you assert above is in the domain of “the government” deliberately interfering with America’s critical infrastructure (no matter how it’s done, through it would be extremely difficult) and deliberately causing social, economic, and political turmoil on both a domestic and global scale.

Just for starters, domestic and international banking transactions could not be easily clears. Securities transactions would not easily take place. Et cetera.

I would give “the government” 24 hours or less to remain in office before impeachment proceedings were enacted.

[ROTB]

DU hates it too. It’s a loser.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x475618#475643

[Future Snake Eater]

They don’t seem to hate it, it looks like they just feel that a Republican president would use it in the wrong way.

Obviously Obama would use it properly, I guess.

[ROTB]

There’s a few that express the sentiment that Obama would use it right.

Of the 31 posts, 13 are overtly opposed, and others like you said are opposed for what a Republican/Bush would do.

We can fight this.