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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

#81

Post by xfer »

bombcar wrote: post #73
jliptzin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would starlink help or is that too expensive? Or would governments block import of starlink terminals anyway?

It depends on the government, many of the "bans" are not very technologically advanced and easily circumventable with a bit of knowledge (however, doing so is usually quite illegal). Australia and New Zealand have banned lots of content that can be easily found, at worst you need a VPN.

We are talking about internet shutdowns not "bans", so how are you going to "circumvent it with a bit of knowledge", unless you plan to break into isps buildings and you need a license to operate an ISP in India in case you didn't know.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#82

Post by duxup »

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…

It's not uncommon to block those nations (and others) if there's no reason to serve them. When I was last in the networking world it was very common for companies to do so.

It blocks more malicious traffic than you might expect. I would have assumed that bad actors in those nations wouldn't be scanning FROM them as much but that's not the case. I suppose anyone blocking them is just off their list of targets as they're not being low hanging fruit.

For some companies it is like flipping off a light switch, malicious traffic goes from 100 to near 0 immediately.

I don't like the idea of doing it, but as an admin seeing that effect and having limited resources, you do it.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#83

Post by fein »

jliptzin wrote: post #67
fein wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FBI (government) told Facebook (private company) to censor things that aren't illegal, and they did. In this case, social media === government for all intents and purposes.

“Basically, the background here is the FBI basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know you should be on high alert,’ ” said Zuckerberg. “ ‘We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that so just be vigilant.’ ” "Facebook did not completely ban sharing of the ar…

Which means FB has a working relationship with the FBI doing whatever the FBI says without asking questions.

FBI didn't tell them to censor the fake piss dossier on Trump, and that was 100% bullshit.

Along comes a Biden run for president, and real, legitimate, truthful damaging information about Biden's entire degenerate family gets suppressed.

BIG HMMMMMMM.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#84

Post by petermcneeley »

chiffre01 wrote: post #60

Remembering all those "The internet has no borders arguments from the 90s and early 2000s: https://futuristspeaker.com/business-trends/eight-false-prom...

"A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible." - Matrix Epilogue (1999)

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#85

Post by jwond »

jliptzin wrote: post #48
yourusername wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

The Biden administration have said they are “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#86

Post by xfer »

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…

It's not hard to do this if you collaborate with your upstream or run your network, you have to ban all datacenter/hosting companies networks as well. Then your users complain they can't access your service because their vpn is using these networks...

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#87

Post by packetlost »

ftth_finland wrote: post #80
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.

> 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. That’s a hard no. Just the materials for a 100+ mile fiber network is hundreds of thousands. Then there is the matter of right of way across all those miles. It would be nigh impossible to find a route that does not cross a road or land parcel that isn’t government ow…

Can confirm. Worked for an ISP. Do any of you even know how much it costs to rent a trencher for a couple of weeks? There's a reason the government has to subsidize internet infrastructure build-out (ie. via CAF, ACAM, etc.) is it's so prohibitively expensive that it wouldn't happen otherwise. As it stands, a new suburban neighborhood that's relatively dense won't see a ROI for at least 10 years (on avg).

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#88

Post by Schroedingersat »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #78
clarkmoody wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the last time the government has been held accountable to the people?

In full? 1776 In practice what happens is that some boondoggle results in a catastrophic too big to brush aside and the part of the executive branch in question decides that just not doing that thing going forward is better than the scrutiny from the legislative branch and change their policy. Nobody is ever meaningfully held accountable. Sometimes there's a token scapegoat. The above pattern holds both at the federa…

> In full? 1776

That wasn't the people. That was the oligarchs disagreeing as to who got to own the slaves and reap the spoils of genocide.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#89

Post by toast0 »

tetromino_ wrote: post #63
cheschire wrote: post #42

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 central…

It can mean government control over all IXPs in the country (including DPI hardware and a killswitch), and legal mandate for all ISPs in the country to use only government-controlled IXPs. So unless you have a satellite connection or a private microwave link to a friend's antenna on the other side of the border, you don't get internet.

International dial-up is an option too. Although providers are getting fewer. If you've got a landline, a modem and a technically oriented friend outside the shutdown, it doesn't take too much to setup an iffy dialup server.

Can't do a lot of surfing with those speeds today though.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#90

Post by greenhearth »

clarkmoody wrote: post #56
3pt14159 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, this is a good thing. It's akin to disconnecting gas mains during a bombing run or similar. War is war and we need real defensive measures for broad cyberattack. If it gets misused then we'll protest, etc. Edit: You can downvote if you like, but this comment of mine isn't made in bad faith. It's fair to worry about a global cyberwar and fair to point out that in-person protests are still a viable respo…

When is the last time the government has been held accountable to the people?

You can sue any government in the U.S., federal, state, or local. It is done all the time.
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