Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: smart on 14/09/2016 21:50:52
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What do you think? Could the Internet become a global technological bubble with this move? Does the US government and Obama could moderate the Internet?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/09/us_government_green_lights_transition_of_internet_to_private_sector/
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I don't think a transition to ICANN (or not, this year) will significantly affect the internet.
China and some other countries will continue to strictly control internet usage in their country.
- The USA and most other countries will continue to closely monitor the internet in their country (and other countries).
- Criminals will continue to hack into people's accounts and continue to crash sites
- Innovation on the internet will continue through the RFC (Request For Comment) process
The internet has made a name for itself as a progressive environment with rapid development of standards.
- It certainly is very different from the way international telecommunications standards were developed under the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) 20-50 ago, with everything done on a 4-year cycle.
- Standards-making bodies like the ITU, ISO, IEEE and ETSI are now working much more like the internet standards process.
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Imagine an internet run like many Middle Eastern countries that punish what they deem to be blasphemy. Or imagine an internet run like China or Russia that punish and incarcerate those who engage in political dissent..."
http://www.insidesources.com/cruz-threatens-obama-appointee-with-prison-over-internet-handover/
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Imagine an internet run like many Middle Eastern countries that punish what they deem to be blasphemy.
The cross-border nature of the internet already clashes with laws in various countries.
- In Europe, eBay was forced to take down Nazi memorabilia which was quite legal to trade in the USA
- Many internet companies are moving their income from the countries in which they earned it, into countries with zero or near-zero company tax rates. International law is just starting to take action on this.
- US security agencies have spied on their own citizens without a warrant
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This internet handover may be illegal, according to a specific rider in the federal budget of 2016:
“Sec. 539. (a) None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to relinquish the responsibility of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, during fiscal year 2016, with respect to Internet domain name system functions, including responsibility with respect to the authoritative root zone file and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/30/exclusive-breitbartgravis-poll-reveals-americans-strongly-oppose-obamas-internet-handover/
Also, this mean the end of the First Amendment protection of free speech over the web. :(
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Isn't strange that this Internet handover deal could happen one month before the critical US elections ?
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This internet handover may be illegal, according to a specific rider in the federal budget of 2016
That rider does not make it illegal, it just makes it more complicated. For example:
- NTIA is currently funded by Congress to continue running the internet administration. They can't spend Congress money on planning to hand over to ICANN - but they could just stop administering the internet. Messy but possible. (I am yet to see a government department that decides not to spend money which is already allocated!)
- Or ICANN could do all the planning, and NTIA could just agree to it.
- Or NTIA could use non-Congress sources to fund the planning; I am sure that Russia and China would be happy to put up some Roubles/Yuan to help!
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What could be done to stop this from happening ?
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What could be done to stop this from happening ?
Why don't you want it to happen?
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What could be done to stop this from happening ?
Why don't you want it to happen?
I'm very concerned about this handover because it could deter our freedom of speech and create repression by promoting a UN-like ideology over the web. Imagine the world wide web owned by Facebook and Google requiring you to sign in into your account to access the web... Or worse, imagine that Facebook moderate your comments on the naked scientist forum... There's many ways this could be a bad thing for the neutrality of the web.
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http://www.multichannel.com/news/congress/gop-sens-urge-dems-join-iana-hand-blocking-effort/407827
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UN-like ideology
What do you see as the UN ideology?
- World Peace?
- Freedom from Oppression and Disease?
- The ability to communicate between individuals, organisations and countries?
- The ability of people and goods to move between countries?
...and how would you contrast this with, say, a "Donald Trump ideology"?
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What do you see as the UN ideology?
- World Peace?
- Freedom from Oppression and Disease?
- The ability to communicate between individuals, organisations and countries?
- The ability of people and goods to move between countries?
...and how would you contrast this with, say, a "Donald Trump ideology"?
I regret sincerely but the UN is a failure. The UN is a globalist organization dedicated to human slavery and creating terrorism. The Internet and the US doesn't need the UN to prosper.
How would you see the Internet from Syria if this Internet handover is accepted by the US congress? Do you think the current Syrian regime could communicate over the Internet freely if the Domain Name System is controlled by the UN?
It is highly debatable that world peace could ever be achieved with the UN agenda for the new world order. Global repression and tyranny is in my opinion the ultimate objective of the UN. The First Amendment needs to apply to the Internet, in order to protect our rights from despotism and oppression.
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Congratulations Evan, ICANN will now moderate the Internet.
I guess this is sad day for freedom of speech.
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I guess this is sad day for freedom of speech.
Just be glad that a previous US government proposal failed: they wanted to mandate an encryption chip in every computer which would have a "back door" known only to the US government.
Well, you still have the freedom of speech (at least for one more day).
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
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IMHO the biggest downside is the ability to link to a website other than IP address is controlled by a privately owned company
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the ability to link to a website other than IP address is controlled by a privately owned company
I first made accessed the internet from home when the only way to reach a site was using its IP address. You really don't want to return to those days... (especially with IPv6!)*
Today, you can also reach sites by their URL, which is (slightly) friendlier - but good luck remembering that this thread is topic 68352!
Most people today find websites by entering search terms in a search engine, plus modern web browsers have a cache of recently visited sites which it tries to match.
Yes, the search engines are controlled by private companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and they do show ads. But there are a raft of them competing for your attention - plus other discipline-specific sources like medical indexes and generalists like Wikipedia. Plus the "Personal Assistants" like Siri and Courtana...
Would you rather have a privately-owned Google search, or a search engine which only listed content authorized by the government of China or the USA?
*Our UNIX-based computers at work had better tools for accessing the internet, but they were mostly text-based.
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the ability to link to a website other than IP address
There have been some half-serious attempts to define a new internet architecture where you describe what you want (the Content), rather than the current model in IPv4/IPv6 where you describe whose server it resides on (the Network).
This is part of a general migration towards Content Delivery Networks, currently dominated by Akamai (most people have never heard of Akamai, even though most people have used them), but also with more well-known operators like Google and Amazon.
IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, enough for almost 4 billion addresses, but not enough for the current population of the world.
IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, and I'm not going to try and express 1038 in trillions.
Proposals for CDNs assume something like 256 or 512 bits for addresses, leading to jokes like "I've got so many addresses that I don't have any room for data...".
But there is a fundamental difficulty with trying to define a representation of every kind of content that someone may want to create, someday.
So I think we are stuck with search engines for now.
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We may need to go back to our roots, and revert to the Wood-Wide Web (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-secrets-of-the-wood-wide-web).
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How do you define "cybersecurity" now that the Internet DNS has been transfered to the private sector ?
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now that the Internet DNS has been transferred to the private sector
This is not a recent change. Unless you actually work for the government or the military, the odds are that you have been using a privately-operated DNS for as long as you have been using the internet.
There have been top-level servers on each continent for many years; for political reasons these could not possibly be operated by the US government.
A recent survey showed 51,482 name servers from 204 countries, most in private hands; see: http://public-dns.info/
How do you define "cybersecurity"?
Resiliency in the face of equipment malfunctions, software malfunctions, accidental changes in software configuration, criminal intrusions, spying by governments and private organisations, and government-sponsored cyber-attacks.
The motivation may be financial gain, military advantage, commercial, political, religious or ideological gain, titillation, vandalism, respect from a peer group or the pure intellectual challenge of it.
Certainly the DNS server network is one way that attacks can be made, for example by directing people to a web site that looks like the genuine thing (but isn't), or by cutting people off from websites in another country (something that governments sometimes do, with varying degrees of due process).
The spy agencies in various countries are on the lookout for such weaknesses and attacks (as well as finding weaknesses and conducting attacks on other countries). The outcome would not be that different if the top-level DNS server was operated by the US government, a private organisation, or another country.
In many ways, cybersecurity is like the immune system - there are resources that could be attacked, plenty of potential attackers, and a series of mechanisms that try to defend against attacks.
- You can crush your computer the first time you receive a suspicious email - but that is definitely too severe
- You can defend against attacks by never connecting to the internet, WiFi or USB sticks - but then your computer is not very productive.
- Or you can keep your virus scanner up to date, and avoid opening suspicious-looking emails. Make regular backup copies, and recognise that sometimes something will get in and cause damage.
...this comment is triggered by a discussion at: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=68555.0
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What are the implications of a Internet handover to the private sector?
I think the biggest impact on the USA will be purely psychological.
It will occur when the US is brought into line with the rest of the world, and US domain names are forced to end with ".us". I think that the driver will not be the private sector, but the government sector.
By the way, this is a naming convention that was defined by the US government, but never applied to itself.
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I think the biggest impact on the USA will be purely psychological.
Not so fast... Globalist think tanks (CFR) are now seeking real-time surveillance of all individuals on the Internet through a "Digital Object Architecture": http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/10/26/authoritarians-seek-real-time-surveillance-of-all-individuals-on-the-internet-in-global-conference/
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hello world
evan, do you think the Internet handover will repress freedom of speech?
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Globalist think tanks (CFR) are now seeking real-time surveillance of all individuals on the Internet through a "Digital Object Architecture"
The NSA & FBI already try to do real-time surveillance of everyone in the world. Why is this any different?
do you think the Internet handover will repress freedom of speech?
Freedom of speech applies to US citizens and is enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. It is not necessarily protected for non-citizens visiting the USA, or for US citizens travelling abroad. You need to respect the laws of the country in which you are located at the time.
Freedom of speech is already limited in various ways - some good, some not so good.
- China bans any criticism of the government
- Thailand is more selective, and just bans criticism of the King
- Germany bans anti-Semitism
- France bans pro-Nazi speech
- A number of Middle Eastern countries ban immoral Western websites
- My country bans child pornography and pirate video sites
- Many countries (including the USA) are sensitive about their treatment of minorities, past and present.
- Most countries ban their citizens from conducting terrorist attacks, inciting others to terrorism, or providing information & resources for terrorist attacks within their own country.
- Policies are much more variable when it comes to promoting attacks on other countries...
Our legal systems were developed as a very local thing, and struggle with the fact that the internet ignores many of these historical boundaries.
Every 4 years, US citizens have the right to freedom of speech in the election of the President.
- But one candidate this year has stated that he will ignore this most public voice of the people (if it goes against him). This sounds like a rather severe repression of the US right to Freedom of Speech...
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Globalist think tanks (CFR) are now seeking real-time surveillance of all individuals on the Internet through a "Digital Object Architecture"
The NSA & FBI already try to do real-time surveillance of everyone in the world. Why is this any different?
Under US laws, a court warrant is required to do real-time surveillance of a citizen. Now, globalist organizations are free to monitor anyone without needing a court order. This could be a big privacy issue, if companies like Google and Facebook start sharing individual data with governments.
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Under US laws
Court warrants are only needed for surveillance of US citizens while they are US territory.
The NSA is not bound by most US laws, and don't need any court orders to conduct surveillance on anyone in the world. Although they are reportedly now following the US law that says the FBI is responsible for any surveillance that happens on US territory.
In practice, that probably means some staff, equipment and techniques have now transferred from NSA to FBI.
Similar organizations in other countries have never been governed by US law (although they are hopefully governed by laws of their own land).
if companies like Google and Facebook start sharing individual data with governments
These private organizations already share information with the government.
They are governed by the laws in whatever country they operate.
- If a particular country requires a court order, they will turn over all your data when presented with a court order.
- If a particular country does not require a court order, they will turn over all your data when presented with a request by an authorized government representative.
That is why the country of hosting is a big issue. I vaguely recall a case that made the news where the one government of one country requested handover of data belonging to a citizen of another country - and the data was hosted in a third country.
- In practise this means that surveillance agencies need to cooperate with each other, if they agree that the suspect being pursued has committed a crime in their country.
- Failing that, they must try to capture the data they want by more subtle means.
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Under US laws, a court warrant is required to do real-time surveillance of a citizen. Now, globalist organizations are free to monitor anyone without needing a court order.
I assume that the Naked Scientists website is hosted in the UK(?).
So with a UK court order, the police could find out everything the NS server knows about you.
But because the server is in the UK, and you are in USA (I assume), the traffic has to pass the "no man's land" of the Atlantic Ocean, where there are no courts and no national jurisdictions.
This is a free-for-all, where your traffic can be monitored by any country in real time without showing any cause.
You can be sure that if it is technically possible (and it is), then it is sure to be happening - by the US, the UK, and probably any other country that the cable passes through (perhaps one or more of Canada, Iceland, Spain, France, or Eire?). The fact that you are a US citizen gives you no protection.
So what is new about the aspirations of "globalist organisations"?
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God I hope not ;(
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God I hope not ;(
Organizations like NSA (in the US), their counterpart GCHQ (in UK) and other spy agencies around the world would like a God-like view of everything going on in the internet.
It seems that even the Chinese are getting copies of what you do on your smartphone...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/15/android_phoning_home_to_china/