[governance] Could the U.S. shut down the internet?
JFC Morfin
jefsey at jefsey.com
Fri Feb 4 10:37:01 EST 2011
Dear Fouad,
The Internet offers resilience and reliability but not surety or security.
- resilience means that the system can survive even if some parts of it do not.
- reliability means that one can trust the architecture and
protocols, even more than expected in introducing subsidiarity as in IDNA2008.
- surety depends on bandwidth availability.
- security depends on external interferences.
This means that it was not designed to be used by people who are not
supported and not sharing the intent of its dominance (now the
majority of them). To understand the risks and what to do, we need to
understand the target, what we want, and how to get there. To
understand this, we have to forget the Internet for a time and
realize that we want the world digital ecosystem (WDE) that we live
in to provide us network facilities that are simple, resilient,
reliable, sure, secure, ubiquitous, neutral, available (it works
24/366), independent, etc. plus a back-up. Then, we are to compare
our target with the existent Internet and its possible extended offerings.
This means that we need an independent back-up to the Internet. Like
Google offering a voice based back-up to twitter.
When considering this, we immediately see that there are three
uncoupled interoperable technical areas :
- the internet
- the newtechnet
- the user system to best interface both of them, so that we can
really use the internet/newtechnet in mutual backup, even if some
services become degraded.
Then, today we should list our requirements for an international
network newtechnet technology. Features that we can think of are:
- grassroots deployment, independent from infrastructure that
governments, catastrophes, economy, terrorism, etc. can meddle with.
I would propose a syllostructure concept, as an intrication of
people's connection capacities (resilience, surety).
- people centric, and hence neutrality and privacy protected by
general encryption.
- intelligent - supporting passive yet also ambient and active
content (extended services) and intercomprehension facilitation.
- semiotically (enhanced information feeding) and semantically
(meanings) protected.
- architectural security, which may result more easily from the
uncoupling of the user environment and of the network environment by
middleware.
- reasonable economy and architecturally enforced best practices to
manage overload, kill spam, and protect usage privacy (that no one
may know what we do on the network).
- respect of the three network fundamental architectural principles,
to stay fully compatible with the Internet which has shown that it
can support them and is actually built along them(constant change,
simplicity, subsidiarity)
- neutrality on a per class of service basis (to be able to restrict
availability to available resources).
- full support of functional diversities, including linguistic
diversity and multilingualism (all languages and cultures treated equal).
- fair protection and support of relational spaces (i.e. group
privacy and capacities).
- etc. etc.
We understand that such requirements do not interest the
communications industry, because it is low financial investment (but
a high thinking one), it is free to set-up and use, and it is a
viable alternative to a part of their business. It means allowing to
freely (freedom and at no cost) relate over the world without having
to use their "commercial TV" like internet, hence leading the
Internet to become cheaper and more efficient. IAB has explained that
problem (RFC 3869) saying:
"The principal thesis of this document is that if commercial funding
is the main source of funding for future Internet research, the
future of the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble. In
addition to issues about which projects are funded, the funding
source can also affect the content of the research, for example,
towards or against the development of open standards, or taking
varying degrees of care about the effect of the developed protocols
on the other traffic on the Internet."
This was in August 2004. In February 2011, we have no more IPv4
addresses and the Internet infrastructure is in trouble.
IAB explained: "[This] brings out a key issue in funding for Internet
research, which is that because no single organization (e.g., no
single government, software company, equipment vendor, or network
operator) has a sense of ownership of the global Internet
infrastructure, research on the general issues of the Internet
infrastructure are often not adequately funded. In our current
challenging economic climate, it is not surprising that commercial
funding sources are more likely to fund that research that leads to a
direct competitive [and strategic] advantage."
This is true. This is because the people failed (and this is the role
of the CS to let them grasp it and move) to understand that the
Internet's owner is them, the people. And that we must collectively
fund the "syllostructure" and research. We have been told, some
understood it as the warning that it was, and a few of us have worked
on it. They need help; our collective help. We have to wake up now
and work. We are the Internet owners and there is no other digital
ecosystem, just as there is no other earth ecosystem. There is a real
global warming; there is a definitive digital global warning.
The decision is ours.
jfc
At 09:05 04/02/2011, Fouad Bajwa wrote:
>The question remains, in case of any country or website not complying
>to what the US approves, will face a shutdown?
>
>What happens in the event that:
>
>1. A torrent domain is shutdown by the US under ACTA but other
>countries have no issue with it? Where and how does this consultation
>between these countries occur? ICANN? IGF? another international body
>for internet governance? enhanced cooperation? How?
>
>2. Wikileaks remains a prime example..........did all other countries
>also authorize shut down of that domain?
>
>3. Country level enforcements are possible and thats what happened in
>the case of Egypt but the article is a good discussion to what may
>happen the other way around and as the case with the followers of the
>Wikileaks Twitter that are being subpoenaed by the US investigators
>http://mashable.com/2011/01/08/twitter-subpoenaed-by-u-s-government-for-wikileaks-accounts/.
>
>The question is who and what is needed to kill the Internet and what
>do we actually mean by killing the Internet, as a whole or in parts?
>
>--- Foo
>
>On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 12:06 PM, JFC Morfin <jefsey at jefsey.com> wrote:
> > At 23:51 03/02/2011, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> >>
> >> The real issue is not singularity of a DNS root but, rather, consistency
> >> of DNS query results.
> >
> > Actually, it is the singularity of the DNS log that represents a key
> > intelligence and power source.
> > jfc
> >
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