[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
> >
> > ____________________________________________________________
> > You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> >    governance at lists.cpsr.org
> > To be removed from the list, visit:
> >    http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
> >
> > For all other list information and functions, see:
> >    http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
> > To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
> >    http://www.igcaucus.org/
> >
> > Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
> >
> >
>____________________________________________________________
>You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>      governance at lists.cpsr.org
>To be removed from the list, visit:
>      http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>
>For all other list information and functions, see:
>      http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>      http://www.igcaucus.org/
>
>Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t



More information about the Governance mailing list