[governance] Could the U.S. shut down the internet?

Fri Feb 4 16:13:26 EST 2011

Dear Jean,

The text you provide is true. My question remains, within the current
state of affairs and what has happened to the Wikileaks website and
the numerous other being taken down under ACTA, where do things stand?
What is the point of action now? Things will not just cool down on
their own, its a process under implementation..........what now?

-- Foo

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:37 PM, JFC Morfin <jefsey at jefsey.com> wrote:
> 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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