Can There Be a Non-US Internet? 406
Daniel_Stuckey writes "After discovering that the US government has been invading the privacy of not just Americans, but also Brazilians, Brazil is showing its teeth. The country responded to the spying revelations by declaring it'll just have to create its own internet. In reality, although Brazil President Dilma Rousseff is none too happy with the NSA's sketchy surveillance practices, Brazil and other up-and-coming economies have been pushing to shift the power dynamics of the World Wide Web away from a US-centric model for years."
Technically yes; practically unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oblig. (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing unique about the United States is the resources. That is what is so sad about this: the entire idea of "American Exceptionalism" is the notion that the United States stands alone as a country; Unique in it's respect for freedom and human rights. The NSA's violation of every honor code existing in TCP/IP has demonstrated the United States to be equally mediocre as any other country, where virtue and abuse of power are concerned.
Once you lose your credibility you can never get it back. Its actions have left the entire internet community in search for new social & technological methods for enforcing these basic tenets of privacy that were previously easy to support via a fragile honor system: the United States promised to not be a dick and molest other people's cake as it got passed to the left.
Yes, but it won't make any difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundamentally the reason that the internet is US centric is partially the fact that ICANN is located in the US, but mostly because the most used services are based in the US. To create a truly non US-centric model you would have to relocate ICANN and come up with significant competitors to people like Google etc who have no US presence(once they have a US presence they're subject to all the same laws that allow the NSA to spy on you in the first place).
You could technically achieve this, but the countries which could be candidates for replacing the US in this position are not Brazil and would also spy on traffic. So unless this is yet another pissing match where idiots go in with the slogan "Anyone but the US", making the internet non US centric is a gigantic waste of everyone's time and money. I mean does anyone seriously believe that if Chinese companies displaced the US ones that China wouldn't spy on everyone, or that the Europeans wouldn't either also spy or allow the NSA to spy?
Why do we keep discussing this... (Score:5, Insightful)
...as if the United States was the first, last, and only country to hold a government that spies on its own citizens in some way?
Are we really THAT naive to think that A) the United States invented this concept, and B) no other government thought to do it too?
It's mentalities like this that shock me more than anything Snowden could reveal. I find mass ignorance far more alarming, as it tends to hint as to what governments are yet capable of doing to you. To all of us. While the deaf and blind vote for it.
We were ignorant enough to pay for and allow a program like PRISM to come to fruition. Sitting back assuming that no other country has a similar or same capability is like assuming no one masturbates because people don't talk about it.
Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
ICANN? Give me a break, that's nothing. Do you even know what ICANN does? Not route traffic, of course.
Fundamentally the reason that the Internet is US-centric is that the US has paid for much of the infrastructure. It's not necessarily about the services either, it's about the routing. If Latin/South America wants to avoid traversing US infrastructure to route their packets to the rest of the world, they will have to build their own backbones and lay their own transoceanic cable. Until they do that it's pretty obvious their data is going to be inspected...
It Does Not Need To Be Done (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference. (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems to be a common strawman argument used when discussing the NSA and spying. No one has suggested that the only government spying in the world is the US. However, the US seems to be granted special privilages by the most of the world in that it is the only nation:
1. That does extraordinary rendition without having to be held accountable by any international body
2. Attacks and kills people in other countries via drones that they are not at ear with
3. Mandates cyberwarfare against not just "intelligence" targets
4. Operates prisons that were specifically created to circumvent human rights treaties and allow torture
Other countries may do some or all of these things but they are belittled, sanctioned, or bombed (usually in that order). The US does this "to protect its interests" and the rest of the Western world says "ok".
All of the items mentioned above happened after someone received "intelligence" and then acted on it. The US is not infalliable and they have made many mistakes that have resulted in innocents getting killed or imprisioned for years. If any other country did this (China, Iran, Iraq,etc) ....well the US and allies would have bombed them by now for being a threat to the rest of the world.
Re:Why do we keep discussing this... (Score:5, Insightful)
...as if the United States was the first, last, and only country to hold a government that spies on its own citizens in some way?
Nobody thinks that. But the United States was supposed to be different to the hundreds of abusive governments that had preceded it. This does demonstrate that the US is worse than any other government - it shows that it is exactly the same. And that's damning enough.
Re:Technically yes; practically unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
It's quite amazing how many commercial entities get by just fine by never having any dealings with the US at all.
Re:Yes, but it won't make any difference. (Score:5, Insightful)
For the purposes of this argument any service which has any physical presence in the US whatsoever is a service based in the US. All such companies are required to comply with US law, which would include FISA warrants. That's the tricky bit you see.
Different Governments have Different Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
The most common reasons governments want to have non-US "internet governance" these days are that they want to restrict free speech and free reading by their citizens, or restrict some kinds of commerce by their citizens (US restricts gambling, drugs, etc.) There are other issues; most governments used to have telecom monopolies, either state-run or quasi-nationalized, though the 90s liberalized much of that away. Some governments would like more money to stay in their countries, or keep people from buying goods online that are heavily taxed locally.
It really irks me when international groups get together to talk about internet policy, and advertise their shindig as being about "ending the digital divide" or "providing connectivity to Africa" or other noble-sounding goals, but actually devote most of their agenda to governments wanting censorship. These days, of course, the NSA is giving them a good excuse to want internet governance so they can do their own wiretapping in case the NSA isn't sharing.
Re:WTF is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not what exceptionalism means. Exceptionalism is when you say "other rules ought to apply to us, because obviously we're special". When the US supports trials of war criminals, but demands that their own forces can never be subject to war crimes inquiries, that's exceptionalism.
Some countries are relatively open about doing whatever they can get away with. Other countries justify it with an ideology of exceptionalism. US is one of the worst offenders in the latter category.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Technically yes; practically unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
You are assuming that people in other countries actually find USA content interesting. Most people don't. That is why there are different countries.
It really depends on what you use the internet for.
Personally (I live outside the US), local US politics, news and so on are of little to no interest to me. However most of the television and movies that I enjoy (downloaded) are from the US, with at most 25% produced elsewhere. Right now, we're using Slashdot - not only hosted in the US, but also with a very large number (majority?) of commenters from the US. Even if there were a 'slashdot for non-US' that covered the entire world excluding the US, I would miss out on a lot of interesting discussions and insights.
The US, whether we like it or not, is a major influence in the world and will likely continue to be for quite some time.
You say "That is why there are different countries", but to me at least, the world is becoming less 'country oriented' and more 'groups of people, potentially separated by space' oriented. I don't know you or where you live, but it's probably nowhere near me. Regardless, I'm communicating with you right now. Remove one country the size of the US and the pool of people just got noticeably smaller.
Re:Different Governments have Different Issues (Score:4, Insightful)
The most common reasons governments want to have non-US "internet governance" these days are that they want to restrict free speech and free reading by their citizens, or restrict some kinds of commerce by their citizens (US restricts gambling, drugs, etc.)
There already was good reason for countries who wanted less freedom to want independence from the US, but now there's also a very clear reason for countries who want more freedom to want independence.
Anyway, get some big backbones from Brazil to Europe to Canada to China to Australia and back to Brazil again, and I don't see why any non-US traffic would have to pass through the US anymore.
Re:US = questionable value proposition netwise (Score:4, Insightful)