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The Clean Network – United States Department of State

state.gov

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Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#121

Post by 52-6F-62 »

pathseeker wrote: post #107
52-6F-62 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just protocols, though. At least to me it sounds like an announcement that they plan to "cut the lines" to countries that don't adhere to the standards of the current American administration. A new protocol won't allow you to communicate with people in the United States if you're on a "blacklisted" comms company's network.

Well that's not how the Internet works. Perhaps they can blacklist prefixes from being accepted by American ISPs, but as long as ISPs peer with any ISPs from outside of the country, those advertisements will be coming in.

It sounds to me that this document is outlining their plan to change how the (read: "how their") internet works. No "path" that connects to any hardware that the US can arbitrarily deem as being in bed with the CCP.

It sounds like "clean" American ISP's won't be allowed to peer with arbitrarily "unclean" service providers of any kind or else risk losing their "cleanliness" designation.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#123

Post by gpm »

luckylion wrote: post #118
gpm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't move around the many millions of dollars in advertising without the government being aware of it. Good old fashioned investigative work and arrest of anyone knowingly contributing to wirefraud is sufficient to stop clandestine apps from growing to the size of tiktok. Sort of like how the CFO of Huawei is currently in jail. Creating orwellian straw man arguments is not a productive method of conversation. Pl…

> You can't move around the many millions of dollars in advertising without the government being aware of it. Why would you need to? I don't understand the point you're making. It's not about the money, it's about data, right? Presumably the Chinese aren't using Tik Tok to fund their government, they're happy to spend money on data collection. From the outside, you can't tell whether a company is collecting user data…

> Why would you need to? I don't understand the point you're making. It's not about the money, it's about data, right?

It's inevitably about both. You don't make an app with the reach of tiktok without a huge amount of money changing hands. You need to advertise it, you need to motivate content creation, you need to buy servers, you need to pay for that (probably by selling advertising - but funding from the government works as well), and so on.

If someone made a popular app without a source of revenue, that would be just as much of a red flag that I would expect the government to look into (for tax reasons even).

You can't stop small things no one uses, big things have but noticeable footprints. Big things are also the things you care about stopping if your goal is to do things like "not let China collect a complete social graph".

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#124

Post by taldo »

pathseeker wrote: post #105
ISL wrote: post #80

I have the same feeling about this as I did the announcement of the "Department of Homeland Security". The name sounded Soviet in origin, with only the exchange of "Homeland" in place of "Motherland". It reminded me of things my family had taught me didn't happen in the United States. "We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean Network." is a sentence straight out of an authoritarian playbo…

> It is my impression that modern companies that care about security assume that all networks are compromised and act accordingly. See https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp as an example. No, you assume the network can be compromised like any other device in the system. You still defend the network and add in layers of access control. Employees of Google still use VPNs to connect into sensitive networks. With the preva…

> Employees of Google still use VPNs to connect into sensitive networks.

Not really. Maybe the people that keep BeyondCorp-related systems running, if at all. There are VPNs, obviously, but not directly accessed by 99.9% of employees.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#125

Post by gpm »

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…

> so, this would call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and monopolies?

I think it does the opposite. It says "if you're going to vouch for software, really vouch for it". Not "only let users install software you can vouch for". It means that non-app store distribution becomes more of a thing, not less.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#126

Post by intotheabyss »

clevergadget wrote: post #24
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...

it swings back when we invent new protocols - which is to say it never swings back. From traditional publishing to radio to tv to the internet to gentrification once the bastards get control you gotta make the next thing.

There are new protocols being invented; namely the decentralized web protocols (IPFS, web3, dat (Breaker), etc. ). Whether you think cryptocurrencies are useful or not, there is a push to build a new open decentralized internet using these protocols and IPFS + ENS domains and the web3 protocol stack on Ethereum.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#127

Post by breck »

> our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research

1. If we have some valuable Covid-19 research, shouldn't we like, um, not keep that a secret?

2. Also, if we're going to take this farcical notion of "IP" seriously, it's only right that we give up all our guns, since gunpowder was invented in China, and we are infringing on their "intellectual property".

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#128

Post by novok »

waihtis wrote: post #90
ISL wrote: post #80

I have the same feeling about this as I did the announcement of the "Department of Homeland Security". The name sounded Soviet in origin, with only the exchange of "Homeland" in place of "Motherland". It reminded me of things my family had taught me didn't happen in the United States. "We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean Network." is a sentence straight out of an authoritarian playbo…

> Furthermore, State is a decade or more behind the game. It is my impression that modern companies that care about security assume that all networks are compromised and act accordingly. Unfortunately far from true. There's a small percentage who have the resource to run this kind of ops. Don't look at FAANG on how security is in companies, they're outliers by far.

FANMAG is also the infrastructure that most of these companies are running on, so in a way, they are delivering it bit by bit to most companies. Especially as companies move from doing things like 'running their own exchange server' to 'buying a microsoft 365 subscription'.

Chromebook + google apps is what most companies need, and really good security for the most part.

Re: The Clean Network – United States Department of State

#129

Post by Loughla »

evan_ wrote: post #74
typon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is for the US to be a leader, not a follower. If China wants their own internet, let them suffer.

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? Provide career training and education, and assistance in the job search process, and make it free.

Punishment doesn't give you what you want, it gives you the appearance of getting what you want, while the people you punish spend their time trying to figure out how to lie their way around you.

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