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US Internet Control To Be Topic #1 In Rio
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Nov 10, 2007 11:31 PM
from the because-it's-my-ball-that's-why dept.
from the because-it's-my-ball-that's-why dept.
Crazy Taco writes "It looks as though the next meeting of the UN's Internet Governance Forum is about to descend into another heated debate about US control of key Internet systems. Although the initial purpose of this year's summit was to cover such issues as spam, free speech and cheaper access, it appears that nations such as China, Iran, and Russia, among others, would rather discuss US control of the Internet. In meetings leading to up to the second annual meeting of the IGF in Rio de Janiero on Monday, these nations won the right to hold an opening-day panel devoted to 'critical Internet resources.' While a number of countries wanting to internationalize Internet control simply want to have more say over policies such as creating domain names in languages other than English, we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it."
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Just wondering? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Russia, Iran and places like that could help a lot in that regard.
Re:Just wondering? (Score:4, Informative)
The US "control" of the internet is administrative control (address space allocation, DNS stuff, etc); it's not the hub for worldwide internet traffic.
Parent
Re:Just wondering? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is very little in the way of west to east Internet infrastructure east of the turkey and ukraine.
Check your BGP routing table and you will see I am right.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just wondering? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Just wondering? (Score:5, Insightful)
You miss the point. It isn't about who's "responsible" for anything. We recently passed something called the "Protect America Act" [wired.com]- in full view of everyone, ironically with limited public debate- that allows the American government to engage in warrantless surveillance of any Internet traffic routed through the United States [washingtonmonthly.com] if either or (commonly) both endpoints of that traffic lie in a foreign country.
And it turns out, surprise surprise, that most people in the world would rather not have their packets routed through a police state.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to know "what country I would prefer over the US" most of all, I would have to say it would be the United States that I grew up in as a kid. I'm sorry that people keep calling you stupid a
Re:Just wondering? (Score:5, Insightful)
north korea, china and most of the middle east actively filters what its citizens are allowed to read. china has imprisoned journalists for publishing information it does not want posted, and have frequently deemed things 'state secrets' to cover up goings on inside their borders.
meanwhile the US is not perfect, however a group of senators recently had a very rough conversation with the yahoo execs regarding china and what happened with a journalist there. its better than nothing.
youll understand why im somewhat hesitant about allowing iran and china a say in how this whole thing is being run.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
.xxx TLD considered stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except as part of some totally unfeasible net-censorship scheme, it would serve no purpose. No good can come of it.
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It is in the very begining part of the charter that provides free speech as long as the government thinks it is important at the time.
section 2 gives the free s
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Anyways, in the US or anywhere, you have a right to say it. Not a right to the platform your going to say it on. There is nothing wrong with saying your piece somewhere that doesn't disrupt the rights of others. And quite frankly, if you think that denying others rights in order to take
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It just depends on if those two other countries have built the infrastructure necessary to not use US lines. If there isn't a line between Iran and Europe, then it will have to go though some other country first. If there is a line and it is packed full of traffic, then the routers would rout around that line anyways.
What the US controls as far as the Inte
Re:Just wondering? (Score:4, Interesting)
Traces to:
Japan - through USA
India - IPs with no rDNS (Teleglobe, so it could be either. Only 2 hops, so it's probably direct/via SA?)
Saudi Arabia - direct
Iran - direct
China - across Europe (NL, DK,
Hong Kong - USA, Japan, HK
Australia - via USA
New Zealand - via South Africa
Of course, you're probably correct that the vast
Parent
Re:Just wondering? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you ralise how expensive that would be to the NSA? They'd have to tap into a lot more undersea cables that way.
Parent
Censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
While a number of countries wanting to internationalize Internet control simply want to have more say over policies such as creating domain names in languages other than English, we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it.
Not to be confused, presumably, with a nation whose government has a demonstrated history of violating the privacy rights of its own citizens and stating on the record that it doesn't accord any such rights at all to anyone who isn't one of its own citizens, including the vast numbers of Internet users from other nations whose traffic is all but certain to pass through systems under its jurisdiction, and within which it has repeatedly been shown that major communication providers are more than willing to provide the government with access to traffic they carry without proper authorisation anyway.
Nope, I can't imagine how any other nation in the world could see a problem with that. There is no danger whatsoever of industrial espionage, interception and decoding of confidential government transmissions, or investigations of private citizens of high influence, and none of them could be used to further the interests of a nation with such access at the expense of others anyway.
Bad News... (Score:3, Insightful)
Create their own network then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Though I doubt anyone has the balls. Personally ICANN/IANA does a pretty good job at what it does, and the FCC seems to only step in extremely rarely (if at all). And I promise you that a large majority of nations, if not every nation, intercept/store/decode internet information. Changing who 'owns' the internet would not change that at all. It would just potentially change who gets what IP blocks (alot of businesses would be pretty upset if this changed), what TLDs are official and valid (and nothing stops a nation from having their own ISP's DNS servers adding TLDs), and I guess some protocol stuff.
The US may do some terrible things but with regards to the internet it's policy is typically 'do not regulate if possibly'. Unless that changes this is all just a bunch of moaning to stur up anti-american sentiments.
Parent
Re:Create their own network then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I want a world where encrypting internet traffic is as routine as locking the house when you go out.
I want a world where encrypted internet traffic (especially email, IM, chat, voice chat, video chat and other private communications) is the rule and not the exception. And the encryption should be done in ways that prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and snooping. No computer outside of yours and the one at the other end should ever see the plain text or encryption keys.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you live in some sort of reality distortion field. Well here's the deal: communications used to use microwave communications. These were easily intercepted and routinely. This sort of stuff is called 'Signals Intelligence'. A nice British chap,a former assistant directory of MI-5, was at the forefront of this this, and he wrote a book about his experiences called spycatcher [wikipedia.org].
These technologies have been updated for fiber-optics. Yes, a lot of interception takes place directly in the United States, but in fact it is going on all over the world. Its done by all of the major powers, not just the United States--and guess what, they are all spying on eachother
You're mistaken in thinking that privacy is better part of liberty. No, liberty is only liberty when it doesn't matter who knows or doesn't know what you are doing. Its our liberty that makes the US different from the autocratic regimes which rule many countries in the world. Every government is listening; only some let you do what you choose regardless.
Parent
Wrong issue lemming (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop right there, privacy is a different issue than censorship.
"Brave Guy" indeed, what a lemming. Just spouting off the same message about privacy issues even when it has nothing to do with the topic under discussion!
And as a last thought, are you seriously going to sit there and say a U.S. citizen has more to worry about from their government than a citizen of *Putin's Russia*? Than any Chinese citizen?
Come on.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe not from a technical point of view, but from a legal point of view, you can certainly get into a lot of trouble intentionally intercepting private communications over the internet.
Well I'd hope (Score:5, Insightful)
However I have a feeling that it is going to be like most of these meetings where people just whine that the US companies should have to give up control of their resources to some international oversight body. In addition to being rather greedy, this is also stupid. Having a bunch of systems in the US that control everything but are theoreticly under international control changes nothing. The US government could change their minds at any time, and if the companies and servers are in the US they'll do as the government says because they won't have a choice. You haven't really solved anything, just added more bureaucracy and more people who can control what's going on normally but the buck still ultimately stops with the US government.
The real answer is many systems, all around the world, that are controlled by many groups. In that way there really isn't a single group that "runs" the Internet. Of course that isn't what most nations are at all interested in. They are interested in just having the US keep control, so long as the US will do what they are told.
Precisely! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they're willing to actually, y'know, INVEST in supporting the infrastructure (their own root servers, etc), they need to step off.
It's like some of these nations that get sent food demanding steak instead of the grain.
Parent
Really, (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The real answer is many systems, all around the world, that are controlled by many groups.
Good idea. The group in Russia is actively attempting to hack all the other systems, the Chinese group is hacking other systems while censoring everything coming/going out of it, and the US group is setting a standard and then not following it so that you get locked into a proprietary system. Whether you like it or not, the best government is a benevolent monarchy; when there's actual wrong doing, then something will be done. Until then, too few people will care to build momentum for a change.
In Soviet Russia, (Score:3, Funny)
Uh, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all about censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
Muslim countries block access to web sites deemed too sexual or which differ in religious outlook from their repressive theology. China? Well, we know that story all too well. The quest of these regimes toward control of the the Internet is not rooted in a desire for "freedom" or "diversity". Quite the contrary. It is a desire to control and repress.
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thought crimes (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:It's all about censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Russia is not the entirety of Europe, nor does it make up a majority of the countries in Europe. How did your bullshit manage to get modded +4 Insightful?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Like you seem to understand, the far right is very much like the far left (look at Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich). Absolute liberty and extreme isolationism, for some reason lead to similar conclusions from the opposite point of view. Socialism in practice sometimes works through fascism.
Anyway, a neocon is similarly blended, but in an attempt to be moderate. It's not really all about
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The americans have contribute
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Allow me to acquaint you with a tactic of the IRA. Kidnap some poor sod's family and tell him to drive a car filled with explosives into an army checkpoint or else his wife and kids will all get murdered. Technically you are correct, driving the car into the checkpoint to murder soldiers makes the guy a criminal....but I think we would all agree who the real criminals are in this, unfortunat
Why not make it international? (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, the UN is a model of efficiency and transparency. It should be easy to share control of the Internet!
The internet is... (Score:3, Interesting)
...a network of networks. If every company I've ever worked for set up a private network, and decided to provide a restricted gateway, so can China. And, guess what? None of those companies created an international incident to do it. They just did it. And don't say that doesn't scale, either. It does.
Many topics are not on the agenda for Rio (Score:3, Interesting)
Both the US Gov't and ICANN have tried to put many issues off limits, not the least of which is ICANN itself.
It is slowly dawning on people that there is a mad grab by industrial interests, with a lot of assistance from certain parts of certain governments, to lock-down large parts of the net and keep "the mob" (you, me, and the other people who use the net) as nothing more than puppet consumers.
That exclusion, which amounts to a total inversion of the idea that governmental authority derives from the people, i.e. a rejection of democracy, is a foundation stone of most of internet governance - see my note "Stakeholderism - The Wrong Road for Internet Governance" at http://www.cavebear.com/archive/rw/igf-democracy-in-internet-governance.pdf [cavebear.com]
Better the "devil" you know? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm British and yes, I can hate Bush and [Blair|Brown]'s little crusade with the best of them but I fail to see why we should fix something that isn't broken. If you really are worried about US control, use ORSN roots as I do. So far, the only reason I have had to use them is IPv6 accessible root servers, but they also go into independent mode if anyone screws with the roots with malevolence. So far, touch wood, nobody has.
Would it also be so terrible to say "thanks, USA and ICANN" for the stability they've given the gTLDs over the years? I shudder to think what would happen if the UN ever got control of the roots. Can you say "bureaucracy" and not think inefficiency and inaccessibility?
It's de facto control (Score:3, Interesting)
This kind of discussion always comes up... (Score:4, Interesting)
My suggestion would be that the UN sets up an organization that maintains an alternative set of opt-in dns servers, maybe with a recommendation to use these in UN countries. The same organization should also be responsible for trying to remedy geographically uneven routing in the core internet infrastructure. Please, spare me of the criticism of the UN, which in this case might not be relevant or warranted (oil for food, poor peacekeeping track record, dictatorships in the UN, etc.). A lot of that dislike for the UN comes from the fact that US politicians actively try or tried to turn public opinion against the UN, because ignoring the UN served as a means for executing a unilateral foreign policy. Of course, there are legitimate criticisms, but the UN merely reflects on the state of the member countries. You can talk about China or North Korea, just as well as you can talk about Sweden or Denmark and their UN track record. But I'm diverging from my main point about the UN: it has a good track record running technical organizations like the ITU that runs the phone system of the world or like the WHO.
Yes, North Korea and China is in the UN. They would censor the whole world if they could. The problem with US foreign policy is that it sees itself as the sole beacon of light and hope in the world, while it is not. The US wants to protect us from censorship? Great news! You CAN oppose China or North Korea when they demand censorship in setting up a UN run system. Just band together with Sweden, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, UK, etc.. That would require bilateral negotiations and a little less sovinistic attitude, but if you're not doing that, don't hide behind cheap excuses.
Re:why not set up a `seperate internet?' (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point of the Internet was to interconnect systems.
On a more general note, are any other non-american slashdotters noticing a rather alarming number of questionable political posts on this site recently?
Us non-americans might need to go get ourselves our own slash site too.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially the little rider to the summary "we can only speculate what additional motives might be driving nations that heavily censor the Internet and lock down the flow of information across it." There was nothing in the Yahoo article linked about censorship. So who is "we"? And how about the motives of countries that know that the US is spying on every byte that passes thro
Re:Give it to the UN? FU! (Score:4, Informative)
The web was invented at CERN, so if you're Swiss you can be proud of that. It was an evolution of Gopher, however, which came from the University of Minnesota. Go gophers!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree -- there should be an internet UN that handles this. I'm just thinking of 9 years from now when the Republicans take control again... and this time there really will be the technology to control everyone if thats what people want. Why would a foreign business want to have to deal with the US if they didn't have to anyway? (sad but true)
Being something like 20% if the consumer market helps in getting business to want to 'deal' with the US.
As far as the UN 'handling' the internet, is this the same body that puts Cuba, Syria, and Libya on the human rights committee? The same guys that watched the Rwandan claim 10% of the population? Yeah. The UN is not exactly a model of speed and efficiency. By the time they realize they have a problem, it is a decade too late.
Of course, this is all an utterly moot point. The "control" the US has is j