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Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

theguardian.com

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Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#41

Post by salawat »

ryandrake wrote: post #32
sojournerc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you organize protest with the government controlling communication? You have far more trust in the good will of those in power than I do.

Protests happened before the Internet. Before telephones, even. Neither are a requirement for people to communicate and organize.

You're being disingenuous. Think about this. The authorities wouldn't blanket shut down the Internet, they'd do it for the protesting populace, but leave their own access untouched. Protests largely suceeded in prior times because the capabilities of the populace vs. the government were largely symmetrical.

That would not be the case in this instance. You (the protestors) would be back to runners, unencrypted radio/code. They'd still have the modern comm suite.

It doesn't make things impossible for protestors, but it greatly shifts things in the government's favor for containment and ability to sustain itself against a now unconsenting populace. Always remember asymmetry will be employed as early and often as possible.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#42

Post by cheschire »

I think they mean WWW shutdowns? Or are governments killing VOIP, newsgroups, email, etc?

Somehow I doubt that governments are successful in completely shutting down a network of networks that is designed specifically to resist shutdown attacks from internal or external. Maybe I'm naive.

edit: Maybe they're referring to the ability to order ISPs to kill access at the router level. So yeah maybe the concept of centralizing access to the internet via service providers is the problem worth discussing.

We don't have dialup anymore, we can't just simply point our comcast / verizon / whatever router to a new provider and have our access again. Not only do we not have dialup anymore, we don't even have landlines anymore in quite a lot of households. If the routers died, many houses would in fact be cut off.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#43

Post by ryandrake »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #27
svnpenn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Check out the article on HN yesterday to see what your fellow users like and believe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32678501 I did check that link. It doesn't seem to support your argument. Can you be more specific? It is some HN comments? If so link them. Is it the article itself? If so quote at least one part.

If I call out particular comments and users, I think I would come close to violating HN rules. I think I can talk about a few comments, not linked, without causing dang issues. I hope. - Second highest root comment talking about how people being removed from twitter isn't a big deal, its not 'my freedoms' and the real threat is the government putting people in prison and this other stuff just doesn't matter. - ctrl-f…

There is a giant chasm between “Twitter gets to decide what it wants to host on its own web site” and “government censorship of speech”. It’s not in the same ballpark. It’s not even the same sport. Nobody has the obligation to publish, broadcast, or amplify someone else’s speech. If you don’t like one particular social media’s content policy, choose from one of the dozens of others or one of the thousands of web forums, or post in your own blog, or use one of hundreds of chat apps, the telephone, newsletters, or the (real) public square.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#44

Post by bediger4000 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #39

I run infrastructure for a company that provides medical records services to medical organizations located exclusively in the US and have to deal with the usual scans/exploit attempts that come with running services on the public internet. Somedays I think it's just bonkers that anyone in China or Russia or wherever is allowed to contact my servers. I know that the internet is a "network of networks" to use an older…

Not just China and Russia, though. Lots of weirdness from Turkey, Viet Nam and even Netherlands.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#45

Post by acuozzo »

ryandrake wrote: post #32
sojournerc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you organize protest with the government controlling communication? You have far more trust in the good will of those in power than I do.

Protests happened before the Internet. Before telephones, even. Neither are a requirement for people to communicate and organize.

> Protests happened before the Internet. Before telephones, even.

US Population, 1870: 38,558,371

US Population, 2020: 331,449,281

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#46

Post by robryk »

hotpotamus wrote: post #39

I run infrastructure for a company that provides medical records services to medical organizations located exclusively in the US and have to deal with the usual scans/exploit attempts that come with running services on the public internet. Somedays I think it's just bonkers that anyone in China or Russia or wherever is allowed to contact my servers. I know that the internet is a "network of networks" to use an older…

If all your endpoints are at least somewhat under your control (i.e. the thing doesn't need to be accessible via a web browser on a vanilla computer) you can reduce "exploits" to "exploits of my implementation of TLS/my VPN of choice" plus the bootstrap issue.

If the endpoints are not under your control to that extent, then I'd argue that "all the residential ISPs in US" is just as bad as "all of China/Russia" due to botnets.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#47

Post by dale_glass »

zmgsabst wrote: post #20
dale_glass wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pretty much nobody stands by their principles. Because ultimately principles are a means to an end, and if the end is not achieved, they're discarded. And this really makes perfect sense to me when you think of it. We're not logical robots. If whatever principles we hold backfire badly enough, we'll discard them or add exceptions because the reason for those principles is that we believe they make a better wo…

Except that, in this case, discarding them led to a worse world: - bitter divisions in the nation because they subverted the consensus mechanism - poor policy decisions because we didn’t have a robust debate about options - poor medical outcomes because we didn’t exercise due caution The reason we had those principles in the first place was to avoid repeats of past bad outcomes from not having them — and they were di…

Actually I'm not sure what you're talking about. Give specific examples of those things?

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#48

Post by jliptzin »

yourusername wrote: post #34
jliptzin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media != the government

Social media censors partly because of pressure from governments that make it clear that regulation will be coming if they don't do it "voluntarily".

Examples of such pressure from the government? Do you mean when Trump threatened to remove section 230 protection from social media companies because he didn't like "the way he was treated" on their sites?

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/916096008/justice-department-...

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#49

Post by bediger4000 »

Claude_Shannon wrote: post #26
zmgsabst wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments which claim to support values like freedom of speech, but in fact do not. Eg, the US — who is outspoken on that issue, but during an emergency used social media companies to censor doctors, politicians, etc who did not agree with them.

You have freedom to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre. Just as you have freedom to pay for the consequences of that.

Exactly! Good example!

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#50

Post by robryk »

mminer237 wrote: post #18
generalizations wrote: post #3

Time to start building long distance (100+ mile) mesh nets. Alternately, I wonder if there's any way to lay down fiber long distance that doesn't require govt authorization...and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

I doubt it. You have to get the consent of every owner of property for a connecting 100+ miles. You pretty much have to either have an uninhabited wasteland or eminent domain to do that. Plus, you have to hire people to do hard manual labor for 100+ miles. You can try to just lay it on preexisting poles without permission some places, but who knows how long that will stay up. And ultimately, fiber is something anyone…

I agree with the latter part, but for the former note that Earth's surface is 2d: you can go around holdouts; unlike roads you don't care about the fiber being straight.
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