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G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
31–40 of 108 posts
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy is highly overrated. What we need is a strong constitution that guarantees individual freedom. 51% of the population imposing their beliefs on the other 49% can lead to highly undesirable outcomes. Censorship, racism, systematic discrimination based on sexual orientation or religion come to mind. Democracy is fine as long as the role of the elected government is essentially limited to the protection of indi…
> 51% of the population 32% vote for candidate/party A, 33% vote for B, 35% vote for C. 65% are not represented. First past the post needs to go. :(
Perhaps I was understating my case ;)
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#33Cyberterrorism is a bullshit argument. If you don't want your machines to be attacked from the Internet, don't connect them to the Internet. In fact, governments and big companies already do this! At work, we have an IP network called BARONET. It's like the Internet except it's not. There is a bridge on one machine that proxies HTTP requests from this network to the Internet. There are no routes to the Internet. This…
Many years ago I worked on a secure system that comprised a Sun running the webserver, connected over a 9-pin RS232 serial cable to another box running Windows 95, on which the secure part of the system ran, which was in turn connected via an ISDN line to some mainframe somewhere. I've never heard of a case of Windows being compromised via the serial port!
> I've never heard of Windows being compromised via the serial port!
As a point of order: serial port exploits exist for other OSes (Linux, Juniper, Cisco, APC...) and also for windows virtual com ports so whilst probably not trivial it's not entirely infeasible either.
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#34The corporations, rich and powerful want (at least the illusion) of full control over the communication channels so they can prevent honest people from organizing en masse and rising up. What is happening here in Madrid is a first for this country: http://www.tvspain.tv/blog/?p=3026
I don't know what you're smoking if you think "the corporations" have even 0.1% of the power of your own democratically elected government. Who has all the guns in your country? I bet it's not the phone company...
The line between who is and is not government gets a little bit blurry when the politicians end up owing so many favors in getting elected and there are whole industries who hire lobbyists to influence them.
Certainly, the government has all the power, but the people who help get them elected have a lot of the influence.
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#35Cyberterrorism is a bullshit argument. If you don't want your machines to be attacked from the Internet, don't connect them to the Internet. In fact, governments and big companies already do this! At work, we have an IP network called BARONET. It's like the Internet except it's not. There is a bridge on one machine that proxies HTTP requests from this network to the Internet. There are no routes to the Internet. This…
Many years ago I worked on a secure system that comprised a Sun running the webserver, connected over a 9-pin RS232 serial cable to another box running Windows 95, on which the secure part of the system ran, which was in turn connected via an ISDN line to some mainframe somewhere. I've never heard of a case of Windows being compromised via the serial port!
I implemented a secure logging system once, where we really wanted to be sure we have the logs and that they cannot be erased via an online attack.
What we did was use a serial port, but with no protocol (just plain ascii) and with the return wire physically cut. There was hardware flow control (RTS and CTS were there), but you could only send data one way. The logging machine at the other end wasn't connected to any other network.
You want security, you have to deal with physical security.
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#36"The printing press allowed the people to read. The Internet will allow them to write." Benjamin Bayart, acting president of French Data Network (non-profit French ISP).
There was a time where a reading populace was the bane of the powerful. Now we are beginning to have a writing populace. This means the doom of current power structures, should they let it happen. The fact they try hard not to doesn't surprise me at all. (Though I am ashamed of my government right now.)
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many years ago I worked on a secure system that comprised a Sun running the webserver, connected over a 9-pin RS232 serial cable to another box running Windows 95, on which the secure part of the system ran, which was in turn connected via an ISDN line to some mainframe somewhere. I've never heard of a case of Windows being compromised via the serial port!
> I've never heard of Windows being compromised via the serial port! As a point of order: serial port exploits exist for other OSes (Linux, Juniper, Cisco, APC...) and also for windows virtual com ports so whilst probably not trivial it's not entirely infeasible either.
Oh, nothing's infeasible, but the decision was made (not by me, tho' I agreed with it) to use an OS that didn't even offer a shell on COM1 at all. We could have used MacOS 7.5 equally well. The serial handling was raw; the worst thing that could happen (we believed) was that the process could be crashed by an attacker, at which point the port would just go dead and need a human to restart it, but there was no way to get sufficient control to do anything with the ISDN line (and even if there were, there was more security on the other side).
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#38Keep your cowardly, sniveling, risk-averse, myopic, GREEDY fucking agenda OFF OF MY INTERNET! You've already done quite enough, thanks. I was going to come up with a more level-headed and well reasoned response here, but I guess the first bit really sums it up. There are days where I wonder if Academia didn't have the right idea with Internet 2.0. Whatever happened with that anyway?
Agreed. The truth is that us nerds won't like governments taking over the 'Net, but they're far more representative of its user base than we are.
We're pretty dependent on the results of this 'civilizing' process in most every other aspect of life, why's it so surprising when it's applied here?
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#39Stop listening to Bob Marley.
Listen to Eben Molgen.
Youtube: "Eben Moglen - Freedom in The Cloud":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOEMv0S8AcA
Stop going to Starbucks. Send money to The Freedom Box Foundation. http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
Otherwise they may prove Richard Stallman correct.
Re: G8 agenda calls for "civilized Internet": monitored, governed, controlled, taxed
#40Pisses me off no end to think that they are doing this for the greater good of their citizen.