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CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

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Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#11

Post by jay-anderson »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

Writing laws feels a bit like a monkey's paw. No matter how well written a law is they often have unintended consequences or are implemented manners that weren't imagined.

I don't think the bill's author/sponsor is fully to blame (they aren't guiltless either). Centurylink certain did not have to implement this requirement in the way it was done. The most depressing aspect to this is the lack competition. The author is unable to move to a competitor which did not behave this way.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#12

Post by liveoneggs »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

Senior network engineer for an mid sized ISP here: These people should be ashamed of themselves. I honestly don't care even the tiniest bit about whatever sort of excuses or justification they put up. It should not be necessary for a consumer end user (whether residential or business) of an ISP in the US or Canada to treat their ISP as hostile, and develop workarounds like VPN tunneling their traffic, such as I would…

I attempted to organize resistance within the dns/network group when my former job had us implement this but did not get any support. Oh well.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#13

Post by fpgaminer »

Hmmm, so if I were on CenturyLink and in the "SOL" category the following could have happened.

Attempting to email my state senators to express a political opinion? Freedom of speech: Blocked.

Buying from a company online, located in another state? Interstate commerce: Blocked.

Trying to run an online business? Blocked.

Trying to contact my kids? Blocked.

My elderly grandmother is dying and family was trying to Skype me in since I couldn't make it? Blocked.

The number of constitutional laws, federal laws, and moral laws broken here is mindbogglingly astronomical.

Good luck, CenturyLink.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#15

Post by jedberg »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

It is generally bad practice to write laws with specific technologies listed as solutions, because then the law is easy to skirt by using another technology, or the law becomes stale as technology changes.

That being said, this law already had a specific expiration date, and there was little fear that email would be an old technology by the end of this month.

They should have written a better law.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#16

Post by patrickyeon »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

That's still misleading, at best, for CenturyLink to claim that the law "requires them" to do it this way. There are easier methods to provide the notice (email or with a bill), and there's nothing that could even be contsrued as encouraging them to do this DNS hijacking in the text you provided.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#17

Post by kodablah »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

Kinda changing topic, what does the law require wrt filtering? So all ISPs are required to provide harmful-to-minor filtering software? Is it pure DNS, HTTP, or based on initial TLS handshake using the domain? So it won't catch stuff on Reddit, right? And must they have their own filter lists or is there one shared across the state? Who are the arbiters determining what is harmful to minors?

I would really love any links to the implementation side of this bill. The text of the bill itself is vague with words like "good faith" and "generally accepted".

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#18

Post by WorldMaker »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

Senior network engineer for an mid sized ISP here: These people should be ashamed of themselves. I honestly don't care even the tiniest bit about whatever sort of excuses or justification they put up. It should not be necessary for a consumer end user (whether residential or business) of an ISP in the US or Canada to treat their ISP as hostile, and develop workarounds like VPN tunneling their traffic, such as I would…

My ISP (Time Warner/Charter/Spectrum) DNS hijacked bing.com [0] and non-existent domains for their own "search page" [1]. Since then I've been sure to always configure my own DNS in my router. (Used Google's 8s for a while, now on Cloudflare's 1s.)

It's unfortunate that I have to treat my ISP as hostile, but they are the only high speed provider to my address. I sadly can't even assume that there is anyone in management there that feels ashamed at their hostile practices. It's just "good business" to squeeze free ad dollars from your users as you take advantage of your monopoly position to keep prices as high as the market will bear while doing so.

[0] Even if I didn't prefer Bing, hijacking any of the major search engines just because it might be an "accidental default" and "no one would notice" is just wrong on so many levels.

[1] Scare quotes because it was 90% terrible ads and 10% barely legible search results from who knows what API.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#19

Post by gnode »

api wrote: post #3
walrus01 wrote: post #2

Senior network engineer for an mid sized ISP here: These people should be ashamed of themselves. I honestly don't care even the tiniest bit about whatever sort of excuses or justification they put up. It should not be necessary for a consumer end user (whether residential or business) of an ISP in the US or Canada to treat their ISP as hostile, and develop workarounds like VPN tunneling their traffic, such as I would…

Unfortunately enough ISPs have abused their position that treating them as hostile is where we're going. VPNs are a stopgap. The future is end-to-end encrypted protocols like QUIC that obscure even connection state information and prevent anything from being modified in transit at all, DNS over HTTPS, etc. Everything has to be encrypted and authenticated end-to-end.

> Everything has to be encrypted and authenticated end-to-end.

This isn't really enough. Even with QUIC / TLS your ISP can still know what endpoint you're connecting to, which may in itself be too bad. This is the problem VPNs are solving (or at least moving the trust). There's also the touted alternative of conglomerate everything onto Cloudflare and have encrypted SNI.

Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

pwg wrote: post #4

And here we see the disconnect between what politicians say, and what they write into law. The bill's sponsor's response to the blog authors query: SB134 did not require that ...They were only required to notify customers of options via email or with an invoice. And here is the text of the statute that was written: (ii) A service provider may provide the notice described in Subsection (2)(b)(i): (A) by electronic com…

> So, the fault here lies with the politician.

I disagree: the claim by CenturyLink that this particularly intrusive, access blocking method is mandated is simply false. It's true that it is permitted by the state law (just as it would be permitted without any specific law on the topic at all), and even arguable that it is one means of complying with the law. (Though since the notification is not presented to some users, it's arguably not even fully compliant.)

But, even if it were fully compliant with the law, it's not any lawmaker’s fault that CenturyLink chose to implement pretty much the most user-hostile method imaginable (short of, say, posting sings on its customers lawns, facing the windows of their home, illuminated with burning crosses—which would likewise be “another conspicuous manner”) to fulfill the notification requirement.

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