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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

#91

Post by refurb »

bediger4000 wrote: post #44
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.

I spent some time in Vietnam and it’s amazing how often website just block you outright (i believe US BLS is unreachable) or you’re flagged immediately as high risk (understandably since VN rarely prosecuted computer crime that originates there).

Visit the same website from 100km away in Singapore and it’s like your in the US.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#92

Post by smm11 »

The biz I'm at is on VOIP. We've still got a hot landline for the security system, and I've got a wicked Pentium II machine, Hayes modem, and dial-up account at the ready.

NOT that I can push the ERP system to everyone, if, but my hope is that this one machine would be our lifeline to data.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#93

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

robryk wrote: post #50
mminer237 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually you do. Longer fibers need more repeaters, and the ideal fiber on land is strung down pipes (this allows later capacity upgrades). Both of these are cheaper if existing roads are paralleled.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#94

Post by jliptzin »

fein wrote: post #83
jliptzin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

You're saying Trump's DOJ and FBI threatened FB with _______ unless they blocked the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story?

FB didn't even ban the story though? Even if FB is suppressing information at the request of the FBI, there are hundreds of other news sources out there that people can use. I don't use Facebook, especially not for news consumption.

Here's a more concrete example:

Trump's DOJ threatened FB with removal of section 230 protection, or complete shutdown in Twitter's case, unless they stop censoring news stories that these companies believe to be false or misleading.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/05/28/trump-sign...

Private companies should be free to allow or disallow whatever they want at their discretion on their private platforms, left or right. If I owned a social media platform, I would also probably block stories that I think are false, because I don't think that being known as a platform for the spread of misinformation would be good for my brand. I don't complain about Facebook or Twitter's censorship, and I don't complain about Truth Social or Parler, all are private companies that can do what they want as far as I'm concerned. I don't get my news from any of those sources, no one should.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#95

Post by robryk »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #93
robryk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually you do. Longer fibers need more repeaters, and the ideal fiber on land is strung down pipes (this allows later capacity upgrades). Both of these are cheaper if existing roads are paralleled.

Sure, you want to optimize for total length. However, you don't have any meaningful restrictions on turn radius, which do exist when you want to build a road and which make building a road around holdouts oftentimes impossible.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#96

Post by nradov »

robryk wrote: post #50
mminer237 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simple, cheap mesh networks based on consumer WiFi hardware are very short range. To get any reasonable distance between nodes you need towers and directional antennas.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#98

Post by ftyhbhyjnjk »

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.

Go back to 70s era radios. Long wave and medium wave antennas. Few kbps bandwidth... unstoppable.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#99

Post by 1659447091 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #30
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…

If there truly is a need to turn the valve the government should have no problem getting sufficient voluntary compliance by asking politely and publicly and articulating why such action is justified.

"Think of the children"

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#100

Post by RegnisGnaw »

jliptzin wrote: post #22
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.

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

Those Starlink dishes are pretty obvious. It would be very easy to photo an area using an Drone/UAV to see who has them. Those who have them will experience some fun time in the local re-education camp.
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