The Clean Network – United States Department of State • Hacker News Board

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#131

Post by enraged_camel » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #96

TehCorwiz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I know that with less than 90 days before one of the largest absentee voting elections in the history of the nation that I would fire 23 USPS administrators on a Friday evening several days after admitting to congress to slowing down mail delivery. That seems reasonable. Right? https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielcassady/2020/08/06/postma... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/07/postal-se...

Do administrators speed mail delivery?

Please don't argue in bad faith, and actually read the links provided.

The issue here is that the current Postmaster General fired the administrators who were pushing back against the "optimizations" he is making and wants to make to USPS policies. The final goal is to privatize USPS, which has been a Republican dream since the Reagan era.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#132

Post by apazzolini » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #110

This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China, when there are in addition so many other actors and countries trying to take advantage of poor security. The JPEGed giant logo at the top doesn't help... Other observations: -- "Remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores": so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies? -- Cle…

> The JPEGed giant logo

It's almost like they ran it through jpegify.me on purpose as a joke, but really it's just another sign of the US's government technical incompetence.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#133

Post by zolosa » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

consultutah wrote: post #3

It looks like we are breaking the internet up along the lines of political boundaries. The US will have one internet, the EU another, China yet another... Hopefully the pendulum will swing back in the other direction soon...

Hopefully that would end the monopoly of US tech Giants.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#134

Post by asdff » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

jamiek88 wrote: post #4

Oh jeez. No good can come from this Balkanization of the net. This is how Russia started its control. Same playbook.

Isn't it already pretty balkanized? Different countries have different censors and copyright laws. I post a video here in the U.S., it might be legal here but illegal in the EU, or vis versa. And people in Europe enjoy tighter consumer privacy protections than me. And being in CA, I enjoy better protections than other Americans in other states, on the same 'national' internet. The internet has been balkanized for probably 30-40 years, whenever the lawyers first entered the chat. The countries that do highly censor content, like china or russia, censor all forms of media, not just the internet.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#135

Post by luckylion » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

bassman9000 wrote: post #38

kayson wrote: post #16

Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC surveillance state"? I've seen a lot of claims and a lot of out-of-court-settled lawsuits, but nothing really showing that they're using their devices or software infrastructure for surveillance.

https://www.politico.eu/article/huawei-germany-court-case-pr... Of specific concern is a 2017 intelligence law that obliges companies to "support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence services in accordance with the law, and maintain secret all knowledge on the national intelligence services." Another is China's cybersecurity law, which contains similar requirements. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

RE the Bloomberg article, be aware that Vodafone rejected Bloomberg's reporting [1]: "The 'backdoor' that Bloomberg refers to is Telnet, which is a protocol that is commonly used by many vendors in the industry for performing diagnostic functions. It would not have been accessible from the internet.

"Bloomberg is incorrect in saying that this 'could have given Huawei unauthorised access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy'.

"In addition, we have no evidence of any unauthorised access. This was nothing more than a failure to remove a diagnostic function after development.

"The issues were identified by independent security testing, initiated by Vodafone as part of our routine security measures, and fixed at the time by Huawei."

That's a nice way of saying that Bloomberg made up most of the article.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#136

Post by evan_ » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #129

evan_ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in fact the best thing to do to fight the Great Firewall of China is to make it easier for the Chinese people to access the internet-at-large including sites hosted in the US. This program will do the opposite.

This is 100% the answer, and one thing I've never understood about many, many aspects of American life. If you want people to act a certain way, you incentivize that thing, not punish the opposite of the thing. You want people to stop doing drugs? Make programs designed to support them during the withdrawal process, provide counseling and other necessary supports, and make it free. You want people off of welfare? Pro…

Punishment does let them imprison people, disproportionately black men, who they can then use for slave labor.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#137

Post by mindslight » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #29

The question I think this is an answer to is how you can have a reasonable expectation of freedom and privacy while sharing an internet with a CCP who has militarized their technology sector as a means to facilitate colonial expansion. I'm no fan of anyone involved, but we should accept that the Internet as we may have known it has been compromised by exogenous governance structures and their gatekeepers in service o…

Computer security does not operate around large sweeping claims of some party doing something bad, and so doing something bad in retaliation. And it's impossible for the "Internet" to be compromised - by definition it's an open network that gets packets from A to B while letting most anyone listen in. So then, what are the specific problems?

If the problem is that China is copying designs, then the solution is to stop moving sensitive production there.

If it is that Chinese manufacturers are putting remote backdoors in products, then the solution is to make trustable designs with open firmware, and domestic production of sensitive parts to avoid hardware backdoors.

If the problem is apps with built in surveillance, then the solution is to secure mobile OSs to prevent data leakage.

If the problem is that Chinese groups are shitposting to manufacture political consent, the solution is better social media filters, reputation systems, and fixing our domestic institutions (eg the press) thus hindering the ability for anyone to manufacture consent.

None of these things are solved by top-down imposition of some blunt firewall, or whatever other misguided heavy handed ideas the politicians have in mind. From the perspective of network security, it's really no big deal if Internet addresses become 64 bits with the addition of a proxy.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#138

Post by golem14 » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

cmckn wrote: post #5

consultutah wrote: post #3

It looks like we are breaking the internet up along the lines of political boundaries. The US will have one internet, the EU another, China yet another... Hopefully the pendulum will swing back in the other direction soon...

Hopefully, none of this will be implemented and we can all forget Mike Pompeo exists in 6 months.

Hope is not a strategy. AFAICT, both parties basically support stronger state control and more surveillance.

It will be interesting to see how EU/China/Russia/USA spheres of influence will develop. With the pandemic, a lot of "unthinkable" things have happened (travel prohibition from US to EU etc), so I think the various factions are emboldened to double down on

- keeping their data in their sphere - improve surveillance of own citizenry

* China of course has been pretty much on this track for years.

* EU is using privacy as the good cause to sell this

* US is now doing the same with national security as excuse.

I don't see the big picture changing just because the president and administration change (if they do).

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#139

Post by 24gttghh » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

apazzolini wrote: post #132

supernova87a wrote: post #110

This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China, when there are in addition so many other actors and countries trying to take advantage of poor security. The JPEGed giant logo at the top doesn't help... Other observations: -- "Remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores": so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies? -- Cle…

> The JPEGed giant logo It's almost like they ran it through jpegify.me on purpose as a joke, but really it's just another sign of the US's government technical incompetence.

"CleanNetwork_NewCleans-300x169.jpg"

300x169, blown up to at least double that size.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#140

Post by 24gttghh » Mon, Aug 10, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

zrail wrote: post #33

TehCorwiz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many municipalities have no-justification-needed absentee voting (vote-by-mail by any other name) which can be dropped off often weeks before in-person voting occurs. Likewise many places have early in-person voting. 1. Check your voter registration. 2. Register to vote if you need to and it's still open for registration in your state. 3. VOTE as soon as you can. If you're voting absentee then drop off your ballot ea…

The key this year is to _personally drop off your ballot_ at an official drop point rather than mailing it in. USPS can and will deprioritize mail in ballots for the fall elections.

I do this anyways. Why would I pay postage to have something brought to a distribution center 20 miles away, wait a few days, then brought back to my town to get delivered to town hall when I can literally walk there and drop it off for free?