Live data from Hacker News

Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

arstechnica.com

161–170 of 456 posts

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#161
post #40
post #15

While I don't particularly trust Google all that much anymore, the fact that ISPs even have an opinion on this is a smoking gun that they're doing sketchy things with DNS data. There is no actual technical reason why they should care if you use their DNS servers or something else, even a private, encrypted DNS service.

They definitely are. I know for a fact that they are running massive Hadoop clusters storing information on DNS records involved in their customer traffic. If I recall correctly they mirror a lot of the traffic to analytics environments.

I assume that all US TLAs have (or could have) access to all data that my ISP logs (or could log). That's just how it is. Given government ~monopoly on force.

And that's why I use VPN services. But the same is true for VPN services, regarding US and/or other TLAs. So I use nested VPN chains, to make it harder to get complete data.

And when it really matters, I add Tor to the mix. Even if it's heavily infiltrated by US TLAs, there's at least the chance that it's also heavily infiltrated by TLAs of US adversaries. So, Dog willing, maybe they cancel each other out, at least somewhat.

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#163
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that ISPs should not need to view your browsing data without your consent. But there are many technical reasons for an ISP to want to run DNS outside the resolver privacy conversation: For one some ISPs run content filtering services. Some users prefer to concede extreme privacy for what they view as a safer browsing experience. It might not be your jam, but it exists. DNS is designed to be provider independ…

> Its distributed nature means there are technical performance advantages to doing the above: reduced request latency, localized traffic routing and reduced bandwidth, etc. You don’t need a giant any cast network to serve DNS. You just need to use the servers closest to you. My issue with this is that I've never been with an ISP that had a faster response time than Cloudflare/Google - and one would think they should,…

> In addition, my ISP does not provide DoH/DNSCrypt/DNSSec. None. Just 'vanilla' DNS. Furthermore, they also don't provide an unaltered DNS service: they block some websites from resolving, the list isn't made available, and is decided via extrajudicial means. You cannot opt-out, and all ISPs in the country adhere to this. They're not forced by law to do so. I'm also not in a normally thought of as a repressive country: it's a member state of the European Union, after all.

Would Cloudflare/Google?

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#164
post #105
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason for ISP customers to use ISP DNS, given the available alternatives, and this will become even clearer as more people boot up DoH resolvers as alternatives to Cloud Flare.

Again this is absolutely false. Your ISP, and nobody else, can deliver the lowest latency and quickest path DNS resolution short of other providers paying ISPs for last mile fog boxes (as some DNS providers do). Why can’t my ISP support DoT? But that also highlights a huge misconception about DoT/DoH: it only provides privacy to the resolver . It does not make your requests private in the eyes of the server or spanni…

> Your ISP, and nobody else, can deliver the lowest latency and quickest path DNS resolution

Ha! Tell that to Verizon, 'cause I'm pretty sure they're not aware of it.

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a Comcast subsidiary in 2010-2011 timeframe. The company owned the network end to end. They had about 250k subscribers at the time across 4 states and at the time was the first DOCIS 3.0 network in the US. They were collecting DNS log data back then. I've been told that hasn't stopped and has progressed. Don't trust your ISP to not be passively monitoring. This particular ISP had closets full of old Sand…

We'll know how much this will affect those TLAs when the government suddenly gets involved for some altruistic reason to block DNS over HTTPS. "Don't let google take over the internet!" "Time to break up big tech!"

I find it interesting that Google and CloudFlare are now the scapegoats. I mean, it's not like DoH isn't configurable and we don't have a choice.

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#166
post #147
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers are people who come in all ethical flavors. I used to know one whom I consider evil, in the actively, knowingly malicious sense. I've known a whole lot more who generally just don't think about these questions. Thinking knowledge, intelligence or capability correlates with ethics is a category error.

It's more an industry error, I suspect. The University I went to forced all the Software Engineers to do some of the traditional Engineering papers, including courses on ethics. The professional institute that accredits the University's ability to call their course an Engineering course required those courses. Courses like that don't fix unethical people, but they make the rest of us aware that ethical concerns exist…

I question the amount that such ethics courses actually help. Business majors have had ethics courses for as long as I can imagine, and yet you don't have to go far on HN (even in this very thread) before you see people saying business majors are unethical.

The bigger problem, IMO, is that many tech companies have started handing out kool-aid that data collection and analytics is ethical. They justify it by saying that it helps people avoid spam, or get better advertisements, or whatever, and then the engineers think they are being ethical and beneficial to society by building these systems.

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#167
post #8

I'm usually very skeptical of Google's plan for anything, but if it's pissing off big ISPs then sign me up.

Google's plans usually have carefully laid out technical justifications, and are mostly kinda boringly/obviously good, like QUIC/HTTP3. That you're usually skeptical of any plan coming from Google suggests that your skepticism is miscalibrated.

Here's a twitter thread worth reading, from the former VP of the Firefox group: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871238922776576

It's easy to make proposals that incrementally increase user security while simultaneously increasing one's own ability to consolidate and exploit user data. Technical appeal needs to be evaluated with a simultaneous critical eye to social impact (QUIC is a perfect example -- it outcompetes TCP on an equivalent link, and falls apart over variable-latency or highly unreliable connections, like those that exist in developing nations -- but of course, Google doesn't care about those audiences).

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#168
post #33
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, Google and CloudFlare, those well-known bastions of privacy.

I hate to respond to low-effort snark but will do so here to remind people that Google's plan doesn't default you to Google's servers, will honor your own nameservers, and will upgrade you to DoH if any of those servers support it. It's really hard to see what more you could ask for.

[deleted]

Re: Big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS

#170
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes the majority of its revenue by knowing things about their users and then allowing them to be targeted with ads. Google's plans being usually "obviously good" is a highly subjective opinion.

And yet, most of Google's plans do not warrant skepticism.

Everything warrants skepticism until proven otherwise. Especially things that are being given out for free. Google might be operating on the up and up, but Google is just a large collection of people and some of them will be ethically lacking. And Google's employees have a large incentive to not see any issues with collecting all the personal information that exists.
Post reply on HN