More widespread use of DNS-over-TLS/HTTPS/QUIC can't come soon enough
CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
41–50 of 294 posts
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#42And 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…
Further, and this is purely conjecture, it is possible their lawyers considered the alternative of email but decided it was too risky for reasons of uncertainty of message delivery/receipt.
I can imagine being an engineer in a room of lawyers and having them ask me how can I ensure that all customers see the message. I would say that's not possible, but there are ways to maximize the likelihood it will be seen.
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#43Senior 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…
"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"
It should not be, I agree, but the sad fact is that if the ISP is one of the heavy-hitters, then you absolutely have to treat them as a hostile force to be defended against and worked around. Because they are.
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#44And 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." No. The fault lies with CenturyLink. They're the ones who decided to implement this in the most repulsive way allowed by law. The law only required notification using normal communications methods, not disruption of services. CenturyLink is the one who chose disruption of services.
Why in the world was this the decision they came up with?
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Unfortunately even QUIC and DNS over HTTPS can't save us from the ISPs (and Enterprise ITs) that think TLS/SSL proxies are a good idea, and especially sadly things like QUIC and DNS over HTTPS may push more ISPs towards that line of thinking.
That would still require a custom cert installed on the end user device, which may not be feasible in the case of some iot devices and generally a pain for most users in general, especially as more websites pin their certificates.
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Laws should be written specifically. It should be expected that they will go obsolete and it should be routine to expunge/replace laws as tech changes. If they meant email they should have put email.
Have you ever engaged with politicians much? I think not. What you wrote is very naive. Yes, laws should be specific, but they never will be.
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#47And 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 us…
> claim by CenturyLink that this particularly intrusive, access blocking method is mandated is simply false
Agreed - also not the point I was making.
> it's not any lawmaker’s fault that CenturyLink chose to implement pretty much the most user-hostile method imaginable
Oh but it is the lawmaker's fault. It is the lawmaker's fault by writing a law that was so broadly worded as to allow Century Link to be able to perform this "user-hostile method" under cover of being within the wording of the law.
If the law maker had written a more narrow law, and written what he actually intended, then CL using this method would have been in clear violation of the law, rather than being able to hide behind "we are permitted this method by the law".
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So, the fault here lies with the politician." No. The fault lies with CenturyLink. They're the ones who decided to implement this in the most repulsive way allowed by law. The law only required notification using normal communications methods, not disruption of services. CenturyLink is the one who chose disruption of services.
Why in the world was this the decision they came up with?
I don't know, specifically, but I do know that I once lived in an area (not Utah) where I had to have CenturyLink as my ISP and they were terrible in just about every respect. This action seems within their normal range of behavior.
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So, the fault here lies with the politician." No. The fault lies with CenturyLink. They're the ones who decided to implement this in the most repulsive way allowed by law. The law only required notification using normal communications methods, not disruption of services. CenturyLink is the one who chose disruption of services.
Why in the world was this the decision they came up with?
I really want to know who came up with the idea and which manager signed off on it.
Re: CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Laws should be written specifically. It should be expected that they will go obsolete and it should be routine to expunge/replace laws as tech changes. If they meant email they should have put email.
"If they meant email they should have put email." If they put email, then that would have required the use of email. That's certainly more narrow than they intended, as it would exclude other acceptable methods such as sending a physical letter, including a notice with the invoice, etc. This is 100% on CenturyLink.
clause (B) of the statute specifically authorized "notice with the invoice" - which if the invoice were physical postal mailed, would have then included "sending a physical letter".