[governance] How to Prevent Cyber War

Tue Feb 2 14:36:29 EST 2010

Hello Imran Ahmed Shah

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Imran Ahmed Shah <ias_pk at yahoo.com> wrote:

I said that country should keep monitoring mass traffic source.
>
>
>
> I am afraid of the possible cyber war).
>

You are afraid of the 'possible' cyber war, many others from Government or
business are afraid of various types of Cyber attacks, the common man is
worried about his safety and his children's safely online. There is some
basis for all these concerns, but we are constantly subjected to propaganda
that exaggerates these threats to make us far more afraid of these threats
than we need to be.

But your idea of "monitoring mass traffic source" and policing the Internet
would bring in untold harm.

Experts discussed some of the dangers of disproportionate controls at a
panel discussion at the IGF in Egypt:

"*The anti terrorist legislations which we have seen over the last few years
are under the presumption that you have to give away freedom in order to
preserve security. We have given away quite a good part of our freedom but I
am not sure of its effect on security. The hypothesis is that there is
problem of proportionality between between the measures of restriction and
the gains on security due to the measures*." -Prof Dr.Wolfgang Benedek,
Director of the Institute of International Law and International Relations
of the University of Graz, Austria and of the European Training and Research
Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Graz (ETC)

"*Security has become such a means to an end, security has become such an
industry that it is almost self fulfilling*" - Prof. Simon Davies, Founder
and Director, Privacy International and visiting Senior Fellow, London
School of Economics

" *We have entered an era where national security is the pass to do
anything, in a way that it was when there was a war on drugs was ten years
ago that you can use that phrase to justify anything...By giving away our
privacy in some misguided attempts to make us secure against terrorism, we
are actually reducing our security against governments, against multi
national corporations, against those who are in powe*r". -Bruce Schneier,
"Security Guru" and Internationally renowned security technologist and
Writer.

"*In china measures ostensibly to protect children are used to control
political content. Measures to fight terrorism are used to oppress
minorities ... The danger of unintended consequences is that certain regimes
use what is happening in the West as an enabling excuse to solidify their
powers. So it is very difficult to have one size fits all type of
legislation*. " - Rebecca Mackinnon, Cofounder, Global Networks Initiative

> signing a treaty or memorandum of article will assure to the other
> countries that political or geographical governments will not involved in a
> mass cyber attack trough internet. This is in the benefit of the health of
> the internet.
>

It would not help. It would only be of use to the ITU in furthering its
Security propaganda.

 ------------------------------
*From:* McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com>

*To:* governance at lists.cpsr.org
*Sent:* Tue, 2 February, 2010 15:02:54
*Subject:* Re: [governance] How to Prevent Cyber War

Imran,

I agree with Olivier and Siva.  This is an idea that is in driect
opposition to our notions of a Free and Open Internet.

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:16 AM, Imran Ahmed Shah <ias_pk at yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>

> Today anyone can obtain any kind of domain name and can host it anywhere
> that may be accessible from any other corner of the world.

And that is how it should remain.

Similarly
> Internet is accessible to every one.

Well, it should be, but many billions do not have access.  In some
countries, you can be denied access to the Internet as well.

China has decline the google claim that
> they are not involved in such kind of attack on Google. Well, but China
has
> to take care about the domain registrations with .cn ccTLD and all Data
> Centers of the country.

You don't need to own a domain name to launch a cyber attack.

>
> China and Google is the first case but I would like to recommend to
> Government Authorities, ICT Policy makers/implementers, and Stakeholders
of
> each country to STOP issuance of new domain names (registrations) with
their
> ccTLD name space and hosting-services from their data-centers to
> non-citizens immediately.

I am an US citizen, living in Kenya. Why would you restrict my ability
(right) to launch a business or hobby website in the .ke namespace.

In Kenya, hosting is relatively expensive, so people host in the USA.
Why make Africans spend more money than they need to to host a domain?

Second step is to re-evaluate the existing domain
> names & hosting and formulate a methodology to constantly monitoring and
> record the internet traffic to and from existing ccTLD domain names
(hosted
> inland). These actions will prevent misuse of ccTLD name space and protect
> the nations pulling into the cyber war.

No, they won't.  See above.  Neither a web host nor a domain name is
needed to launch a cyber attack.

If they found any misuse or moderate
> traffic from a domain, immediately the information has to be passed to the
> UN communications and technology agency.

I'm all in favor of listing hosts who spew malware, but what could the
ITU do about it?  They have no powers of enforcement, nor should they.

<snip>

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
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