Court: Homeland Security Must Disclose 'Internet Kill Switch' 228
An anonymous reader writes "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must disclose its plans for a so-called Internet 'kill switch,' a federal court ruled on Tuesday. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the agency's arguments that its protocols surrounding an Internet kill switch were exempt from public disclosure and ordered the agency to release the records in 30 days. However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling."
First po (Score:4, Funny)
First po
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it was almost clever but the title should have been complete
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Go back to your arithmetic tables, you thinking machine.
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Why always a back door (Score:3)
"However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling.""
I never understand this thinking. I am under the impression that when a judgement goes against you, you can appeal the decision. The court is set up already for that thinking so what or how does this court do something different. When I read that I get the feeling that the "Court" felt ugly for their ruling and really really hopes that aggrieved party will appeal.
I do hope they don't or if they do, they fail for I would love to know about a switch that can "kill" the internet. A system designed to route around such devices.
Re:Why always a back door (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends whether you just kill DNS and wait for most users to give up, or want to kill everything at once and have to reach into the many central nodes that would bring the internet to its knees if they were off.
You don't need to take down that many major nodes for everybody else to become suddenly over-congested and fundamentally useless.
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I never understand this thinking.
In the US, it seems to usually work like this:
politician: "I just got a shit ton of cash from KKK and Bros. to push for a new law so they can add raw sewage to their energy drink as a filler"
Judge:"Wtf? The FDA would never approve that!"
(Enter Bob. Head of FDA. Previous Monsanto lobbyist)
politician:"Hey bob, I'll vote for that new GMO corn thing to ride on the coattails of HSF.32 if you approve this thing for KKK Bros."
Bob:"It's a deal!"
Judge:"I'll never allow this. It's inhumane!"
Politician:"Fine, we'll
Re:Why always a back door (Score:5, Insightful)
You've made a total hash of how the U.S. political and legal system work, and your scenario makes no sense at all. How in the world did this get modded insightful?
Just to clarify;
Politician writes bill.
Politician may look for co-sponsors to strengthen the bill's chances.
Politician proposes bill, or attaches it as an amendment to some other bill.
Legislature debates bill and passes it or not.
Bill becomes law.
FDA, private citizens, or other interested parties may choose to sue to overturn the law.
THEN the judiciary gets involved.
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why? because that's how the system really works and the politicians haven't bothered changing the laws fully to comply with policies in a long time, since you would need more people to agree, or possibly break the commitments of the nation(and get even more people to agree) - why bother when you can find a judge who will agree that metadata isn't data or that since you're renting a piece of land from cuba the usual rules don't apply or that you can force your citizens to not computer gamble abroad or that a
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So he was oversimplifying it a bit. Big freakin' deal; that's still the spirit of the process.
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My exceedingly limited understanding (IANAL) is it leaves them open to appeal based on specific points of law not initially addressed in the ruling.
So if someone said "we object to X", and they rule on that, that's what the ruling is about. I think this leaves them room to come back and say "but we can do X because of Y and you're wrong", and then the court can rule if the argumen
Court granted 30 days to appeal before releasing (Score:3)
DHS was granted 30 days before they have to release the document, to allow time for an appeal.
You can always appeal, but it sometimes an appeal would be pointless because it would be too late.
In this case, plaintiff wants a document released. Normally, that would mean the document would be released immediately.
How do you appeal a decision to release a document AFTER it's been released, though? Plaintiff is going to publish the information.
If DHS wins the appeal, would plaintiff be ordered to unpublish it?
In
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The court is set up already for that thinking so what or how does this court do something different.
What they mean is that the court stayed their decision (postponed the time at which it would come into force) to give the DHS time to appeal.
When I read that I get the feeling that the "Court" felt ugly for their ruling and really really hopes that aggrieved party will appeal.
No, it's pretty standard in cases where a) the court thinks the party who lost might appeal, b) there is at least an outside chance such an appeal might succeed and c) if they didn't stay their decision the appeal would become moot since in the mean time the losing party would have to (in this case) hand over the information and there would be no point in appealing. It
Re:Why always a back door (Score:5, Informative)
I think prejudice refers to whether or not you can make the claims again. If a claim is dismissed because it is without merit, it will usually be with prejudice, meaning any future claim on that point will be consisted pre-judged and dismissed. If a claim is dismissed due to some procedural issue, it may be without prejudice so you can try again later.
Whether or not you have leave to appeal is separate.
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Fact is, unless the decision is coming from the US Supreme Court, in a civil suit either party may appeal the ruling. (In a criminal case only the defendant may appeal).
Yes, and there is a good reason for that...
Lets say you are accused of killing someone, turns out the Judge in your one horse town is related to the person who is dead.
You are convicted and sentenced to die.
A reasonable appeals court would hear your argument of, "the Judge who oversaw my trial was related to the dead and I could not get a fair trial".
That is the sort of thing (abit extreme) that we have appeals courts for. To be able to go to a higher authority and say, "hey wait a minute, somethin
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Suppose a couple wanted to have a baby. They spent a year planing for a baby and trying to get pregnant. They get pregnant and they are decorating
the nursery, etc. Then, three months pregnant, she changes her mind and wants to kill the kid and go back to partying all night like she did in college.
Pretty quickly, it's going to be too late to appeal a decision either way.
What? There shouldn't be a case at all - while the father certainly has some steak[sic] in the game, he certainly has no ownership or power over the woman's body. If the laws and regulations in her area allow for her to have an abortion, it is her right to do so and no one else's decision. It's ridiculous that these kinds of cases have ever even occurred, but then again we live in a country where women are still treated by many of the old-thought people as property, possessions, and pawns to manipulate and
maybe, though facts matter, point: not appealable (Score:2)
Your opinion isn't necessarily unreasonable, but the point is that if the first judge disagreed, she couldn't very well appeal the decision, could she?
Estimating it takes on average four months to get a court date, she's 7 months along at the first hearing. When the appeal hearing occurred, the baby would be two months old. If she "wins" the appeal, does that mean she kills the 2 month old infant? Obviously not, so there would no effective appeal. That's the point of my post.
> The father certainly sho
Mesh Networks (Score:3)
Not ever really having considered this scenario before, I may be missing some pitfalls that are obvious to other people, but it seems like a consumer-level mesh network might be a good solution to a scenario where they are actually able to develop an internet kill switch, especially in cities, where the space between nodes would (hopefully) be small. I know, at least at the beginning, the OLPC project was using something. Would that be viable? What other technologies are worth pursuing in this vein, that are available right now?
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Note that I asked a question regarding a class of solutions, and did not propose a solution.
Mesh networks are peer-to-peer wireless networks that don't have ISPs, or any other centralized network. They are only good for communication within the network, and anywhere where there might be a gateway to, theoretically.
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They'll make one sweep to get both, then they'll loiter in suspicious areas with wardriving equipment and armored personnel carriers filled with swat teams. Fire up either your guns or your wifi, they'll be on you like stink on shite.
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I think that this 'kill-switch' is more likely to be used in individual cases of social unrest rather than for long-term disabling of the internet where a 'rounding up of equipment' scenario would be played out. I'm thinking more about large-scale, short-term social unrest rather than long-term censorship.
For the kill-switch scenario, I imagine that jamming, much like with any other wireless signal, would be the best way to kill a mesh network.
DHS Kill Switch? (Score:2)
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They could tell you, but they'd have to kill you.
I'm sure the official explanation would be that in the event of a widespread terrorist event (or some unspecified threat), they would need to shut down the internet to maintain public order.
Me, I'm sure it's mostly so they can maintain absolute control over everything just in case. It's all part of the plan to actually make 1984
Re:DHS Kill Switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Real reason: So they can shut down the internet in the vicinity of major protests, and thus keep people from tweeting and streaming video when the police start firing tear gas into the crowd and breaking a few bones.
Re:DHS Kill Switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Real reason: So they can shut down the internet in the vicinity of major protests, and thus keep people from tweeting and streaming video when the police start firing chemical weapons into the crowd and breaking a few bones.
FTFY.
Getting tired of society trying to wrap a nice, pretty bow on that particularly ugly duck.
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Fortunately CS gas, among other chemical weapons, was banned from use in war. There's plenty left for civilian pacification!
http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/articles/article-ii-definitions-and-criteria/ [opcw.org]
It's great! Spray this stuff on an enemy army and you end up in the Hague. Lob it at your citizens and everything is just fine.
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Except, the US is explicitly NOT a signatory to anything which would make them subject to the International Criminal Court [wikipedia.org].
In other words, short of military action against the US to bring someone to justice ... nothing can happen. The US has specifically set themselves up to not be under the jurisdiction of anything like this.
So, if they decide to actually do gas their people, ster
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Heh, true. The UN could pass a non binding resolution of "steady on there, lads!"
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"He has gassed his own people." —Bush II, on Saddam Hussein
"He has gassed his own people." —Myself, on Obama, Bush II, Clinton, and others, for which I cannot remember specific incidences.
I've been considering this hypocrisy ever since al-Qaeda spilled — and/or Syrian government forces dispersed — sarin in Damascus.
Thank you, CanHasDIY — it's reassuring to know that others recognize that US government forces routinely "[gas their] own people," too, when it disagrees with an e
Paranoid and non insightful (Score:2)
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Egypt tried this, and it only made things worse for the government because people left their computers and actually went outside to join the protest instead of watching it on the Net.
Re:DHS Kill Switch? (Score:5, Interesting)
Media blackout. A populace ignorant of goings on is easier to control.
"And how DHS is the appropriate department for its implementation?"
Fact is there should be zero reason for an internet kill switch in the first place. There should be zero critical systems internet facing, which makes the argument to protect against terrorist attack to our infrastructure and critical systems moot. Which leads me to believe the only reason for one is to control the population, or rather control the data the population has access to, read media black out.
DHS nor any department should have need for it's implementation, nor should any department control it should one actually exist.
This right here is the best reason I can come up with to remove US control over any portion of the net, this includes hosting and services located in the US.
And yes I am an ashamed American, ashamed of what my country has become.
DHS SUCK IT BITCHES!
Re:DHS Kill Switch? (Score:4, Insightful)
Media blackout. A populace ignorant of goings on is easier to control.
Alternate media black-out. I can guarantee you CNN will be on the air saying what they're told[paid] to say.
And yes I am an ashamed American, ashamed of what my country has become.
You should be a proud American, but realize that the US Government has become an enemy of the idea the is America. There's a reason why the Founders spoke of "Enemies Foreign and Domestic".
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Media blackout. A populace ignorant of goings on is easier to control.
Alternate media black-out. I can guarantee you CNN will be on the air saying what they're told[paid] to say.
And yes I am an ashamed American, ashamed of what my country has become.
You should be a proud American, but realize that the US Government has become an enemy of the idea the is America. There's a reason why the Founders spoke of "Enemies Foreign and Domestic".
Funny thing: '...and domestic' is the same emphasis the DHS boosters use, too. Bit of a philosophical quandary there.
Creating a police state involves building up walls of privilege, and its these privileged enemies we have to pay close attention to.
Now, owing to the fact that terrorists may be using electricity for their misdeeds, I fully expect someone on-high will call for a centrally-controlled electrical grid kill switch.
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The agency argues that SOP 303's disclosure could reasonably be expected to endanger the physical safety of individuals near unexploded bombs. Mot. at 13. DHS's thinking goes like this: 1) SOP 303 "describes a procedure for shutting down wireless networks to prevent bombings": 2) releasing information regarding this protocol would enable "bad actors" to blunt its usefulness": and 3) this "could reasonably be expected to endanger the physical safety of those near a bomb by increasing the chances that the pro
Narrow mindedness (Score:2)
It's narrow mindedness in a government institutions, a common malady.
The DHS sees a need to stop some activity or other, and this makes perfect sense in context. One only has to look at the Syria and Egypt for examples of how this is used in practice - if the US ever descends into armed revolt, the switch will disrupt revolutionary communications and make it easier for the government to regain control. The military has its own, separate channels of communication.
Like all government institutions, it's narrow
Kill switch? (Score:2, Funny)
There is no kill switch! It's a !@#$ NO CARRIER
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Odd ruling (Score:2)
Seems like a strange ruling to me. How is something intended to prevent bombs going off not to do with saving lives? I'm all for interpreting things like this narrowly, but the fact that you don't know in advance which lives you are saving doesn't seem like a sensible argument to me...
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Seems like a strange ruling to me. How is something intended to prevent bombs going off not to do with saving lives? I'm all for interpreting things like this narrowly, but the fact that you don't know in advance which lives you are saving doesn't seem like a sensible argument to me...
I haven't read the ruling yet, but just based on what you've got there, things like that could go either way. There's a very non-zero chance that if you take down the whole Internet, something will fail that's never been test
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Since the details of the switch haven't been published, I have no view on its merits. It sounds more like a wi-fi jammer than something that will actually kill the internet.
This court case is not about the merits of the system but about whether the details should be published. The exceptions for things related to security where lives could be at risk by publishing seem to clearly apply.
Kill switch needed (Score:2)
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Agreed. I just hope no one counters with the suggestion that the rigged-as-a-three-masted-schooner electoral system qualifies.
Capitalistic Internet Kill Switch (Score:2)
It forces you to sign up with Comcast and waits for their lawyers to attack you!
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No. Obamacare is crony capitalism.
This is Socialism. [businessinsider.com]
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Obamacare is fascism, because that, cronyism, crony capitalism, oligarchism, and corporatism are more or less synonymous with the practice of mutual support between state policy makers and executives of preferred corporations. Considering that the individual mandate is a huge boon to health insurance corporations, Obamacare certainly qualifies.
But when the army nationalizes an industry, as in Phreakiture's example, that's not economic fascism, that's socialism. It's probably confusing because the right wi
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That's not capitalism. You're thinking about Obamacare. It's called socialism.
No, socialist healthcare would be doctors, nurses, technicians, and custodians owning the hospitals; biologists, chemists, and chemical engineers owning the pharmaceutical companies; pharmacists owning the pharmacies; and so on. Socialism is workers' ownership of the means of production.
You might be thinking of "government owns and operates the healthcare system;" which is nationalized or national/public healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are the closest things we have to national or public healthcare system
What's the fuss? (Score:3)
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At last check, you can kill 50% of the internet by turning off Youtube and Netflix.
Your fancy kill switch is just a phone with two CEO numbers.
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I thought it was in an unlit basement without stairs, in a disused lavatory, in a locked filing cabinet that says "Beware of Leopard."
No, wait... That's where the Constitution is. Never mind.
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The Internet Kill switch is located on the twentieth sub-floor of the White House, in a small room right beside the cot Dick Cheney hid under in 2001 for three weeks. The switch is enclosed in a nondescript beige controller box with a large round red button that blinks with the pulse of the internet. A sign above reads, only switch off in case of emergency, or alien invasion.
Then where is the button they use to shut down the internet for the monthly maintenance?
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I'm pretty sure Dick Cheny's cot is under an old volcano - the one where he keeps that white cat he likes to pet.
The bigger issue is the DHS itself (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that this is being discussed shows that the real problem is that an agency as secretive and powerful as the DHS even exists. Remember: J. Stalin was a minor figure in the Russian revolution, but once he gained control of the consolidated bureaucracy of the early USSR, he used that bureaucracy to exile, murder, imprison or otherwise neutralize his political opposition and made himself dictator for life. It is almost impossible for a single individual to defend himself from a large bureaucracy.
Until recently, the best defense that a US citizen had against attack from govt bureaucracy was the competitive turf guarding behavior of the different agencies which limited the power of any single agency. The consolidation of bureaucratic power under the single authority of the DHS has eroded that defense. An additional danger is the, thanks to Snowden, now widely publicized adoption of big database and analytics techniques by the US govt. Mark my words, if the DHS is not disbanded, then eventually the head of the DHS will become the most powerful person in the country, able to determine who gets elected to every office or even cancel elections and with a virtually unlimited ability to coerce any US citizen to do anything.
Freedoms vanish...one switch ON/OFF (Score:3)
At that instant, US citizen's protected rights are constitutionally violated by a deliberate government action.
Turning off the Internet kills your microphone, news print and mail in one swift blow. That silences voice.
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FTFY.
Anyone notice the irony ?? (Score:2)
The lawsuit is to try and release "Standard Operating Procedure 303".
Which would make the entire 'net 404. . . .
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economics (Score:2)
Makes it seem as if we should cut the price of government since we don't need it.
But what actually happens when the govt shuts down? Business loses money.
If business is running the government, or rich people are running the government, then it will cost them money if they shut down the internet.
Economics is a pain in the butt. You actually _can_ dominate everyone else in your area
Comment removed (Score:3)
Thanks Obama! (Score:2)
What a ploy... (Score:3)
Periodic kill switch test and maintenance (Score:2)
The switch ought to be tested periodically to make sure it is in full working order modeled after monthly testing of the emergency broadcast system here in the states.
Given cataclysmic apocalypse sure to ensue if kill switch were needed then failed to work properly we should demand it be well tested.
Hmmm, "kill switch" (Score:2)
No, no, I think people are getting this all wrong. The DHS internet "kill switch" doesn't kill the internet, it kills the users! Either selectively, or in one big all-inclusive purge! And that's why they don't want anyone finding out about the details. I mean it's obvious, when you think about it... But don't worry, they're so incompetent they'll probably just blow themselves up if they ever try to actually use the technology. Come to think of it, that should be the new DHS motto: "Safety Through Incompeten
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If you were the US Government, how would you go about completely (or functionally completely) shutting off the Internet? Could it be done?
Considering that the US government has nigh exclusive control over the core DNS servers (not to mention countless backdoors in every ISP's terminal room), yea, it could totally be done.
Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her (Score:4, Interesting)
There's plenty of DNS servers (both root servers, gTLD servers, and ccTLD servers) located outside of US jurisdiction.
While an unexpected shutdown could certainly cause some disruption both inside and outside the US, I'm not sure how effective a global DNS shutdown would be -- there's been significant fractions of the root DNS infrastructure that's been taken offline due to attacks in the past and the system continued to work without interruption. Even if there was a disruption, it's likely that non-US operators of root/gTLD/ccTLD servers would setup workarounds fairly quickly and the rest of the world would go about its business.
Anyway, it's something the government could ever do *once*. The instant they do it, the world changes and would highly unlikely to depend on a system managed by a single country.
Shutting down something like Google, for example, would likely be far more disruptive.
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If you were the US Government, how would you go about completely (or functionally completely) shutting off the Internet? Could it be done?
Considering that the US government has nigh exclusive control over the core DNS servers (not to mention countless backdoors in every ISP's terminal room), yea, it could totally be done.
I was under the impression the internet by its very design would route around 'problems.' Can the US Government really shut down every pipe? DNS is irrelevant, in my opinion. It's important, no doubt, but shutting DNS does not shut the internet. Just makes it substantially harder to use.
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There's only a handful of major pipes, the so-called "internet backbone" interconnecting major ISPs. Shut those down and you've brought the 'net to its knees.
Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were the US Government, I wouldn't bother about shutting off the Internet, I'd bother about getting people to stop attaching critical infrastructure to it. The internet is not and was never designed to be a secure network. It's a lot more like a common sewer.
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You obviously have an Intelligence Quotient higher than your shoe size. To bad the top echelons of "management" in this country can't say the same. Our cyber security looks like an episode of Keystone Cops, updated with technological gadgets.
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You're presuming that the point would be to protect critical infrastructure. It's not impossible that that is the actual intent and the congressional technology advisors are simply incompetent or ignored, but that seems a foolish way to bet. Look at what's been going on on the 'net in the last few years - the Occupy movement, damning information released by wikileaks and others, the Arab Spring. My bet is that there is at least a faction within the US government that wants some insurance against onlin
There is at least one more reason for them to fear (Score:2)
...an independent Internet:
Someone else(TM) e.g. a non-client state government might commandeer all that great surveillance tech [slashdot.org] the US has been inventing and turning loose on its population. [slashdot.org] And then our current 'The Privileged That Be' would be reduced to being just another set of the watched and herded sheep.
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Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her (Score:4, Funny)
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Dude, the US Government was able to get malware planted in Iranian centrifuge controllers that were supposed to be air-gapped. I wouldn't be surprised in Windows 8 is pre-programmed to cut itself off the internet when the spooks say so.
The Blue Screen of Dominance.
My windows is able to shut itself off from the internet at random.
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+1 Sadly Plausible
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If there was a serious anti-DHS or anti-government movement forming over the internet, could DHS shut it down long enough to block the instigators and remove the offending information? Some people in the DHS would like control over everything that could threaten DHS.
Re:I doubt it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure how they'd do it physically. If we look at the internet for what it actually is by definition - a network is a bunch of computers connected to other computes, the internet is a bunch of networks connected to other networks - the internet is actually privately owned, even at the peering level of tier 1 ISP's.
I suppose you could bring it down by having the national guard (or whoever) commandeer a major NOC (network operations center) of a tier 1 ISP and then fudge the BGP tables of all of their major peering points worldwide (or nationwide if you prefer,) but the links wouldn't be physically broken. Other ISP's could compensate by just ignoring those peers. The customers of that ISP and its client ISPs would be down for sure, but not everybody.
I'm still trying to figure out why we even have a need for a kill switch. A terror attack on SCADA systems? Just require SCADA systems have a communications kill switch, then you don't need an internet kill switch.
Re:I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still trying to figure out why we even have a need for a kill switch.
The answer to that seems fairly apparent: To prevent or stifle a popular uprising against those in charge. Our government no longer works for us. In many ways, it works against us.
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If you detonate enough nukes in the stratosphere, that would create a big enough EMP to accomplish those ends.
Re:I'm not sure how they'd do it physically (Score:2)
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but...
I personally might resist if they threaten me, after all, if they shoot me,
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who cares, its only alabama
Re:I doubt it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
" a governemt has the authority to make it so."
Perhaps you are confusing power with authority. My government has the power to prevent me having any contact with the outside world. My government has no such authority.
Wrong! (Score:3)
Only Captain Picard has that ability!
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Yup, it's always been there.
Plenty of people know where all the international fiber endpoints are. I can think of a dozen buildings that if they were isolated, it would cripple Internet service in the US. They don't even have to shut down entire datacenters, only the power in the meet-me rooms. I think DHS can find 2 dozen agents in the US who would go to those buildings, shut down the rooms, and the Internet is gone.
As we've seen before, a problem with just one tier 1 provider can make Internet service
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
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Exactly what I was thinking... Some snickering NSA nerds handing over the "kill switch" to the judge... "Here you go... Careful!"
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In today's America, the words "telecom" and "internet" aren't quite synonymous, but if you pretended that they were, you wouldn't be far wrong. All of my internet activity is carried by a telecom. The alternatives include cable, satellite, and radio - all of which are dependent on telecoms. Your satellite transceiver can talk to the satellite, but where is the signal going to go from there? AT&T is shut down. Depending on protocols aboard the satellite, you may be connected to a European, or Asian,
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And pretty much everywhere in the world other than the US.... Almost everywhere in the world with a democratic system has a multi-party system, and a minority government tends to be the most beneficial for the people (assuming you don't end up with a lame duck situation like the US has right now, though we have non-confidence votes to force an election at that point).