Bill would give president emergency conntrol of entire internet...

[Mo_Zam_Beek]

OK - I get that part of it.

I also gather from the book that there is a relationship that exists far beyond what the public has knowledge of between the government and the incumbents now. So while I will grant you that based on public knowledge, absent legal authority - there is no master switch.

However, what this is setting up is that legal authority. So if the 'master switch' ultimately is in the hands of the provider all that is missing is the legal authority. Secondly, I am confused - part of what makes the net difficult to control is protocol aspect and this bill will streamline and uniform it. So what am I missing?

TIA

Good luck

[Preferred User]

There are relationships far beyond what the public understands in many industries. This is nothing new. It is how government abuses its power that is the concern.

Again legal authority is what is being abused or more correctly has the possibility of being abused by those without enough technical saavy to turn on a blender.

Trying to regulate protocol aspect (say everything that runs on IP) is just too broad an idea and nearly impossible to regulate. If the Internet was self contained in the US, utilized programs and protocols only written in the US by US companies and programmers, I would give a maybe. However that is not the case.

This is not Communist China (at least not yet) where telecommunications is controlled by the government and there is literally only one connection to the Internet that can be controlled and regulated.

Sometimes I think my job would be far easier if it was, but it is not and I am glad that there is a wild and wooly Internet.

[Honu]

I dont see it as one switch ? its not that of course but its if they get something in place to call the major tier 1 providers and have them shut or flip their own switches in a sense

now the major problem is the info that flows throughout the world runs through are tier 1 also so doing this would do major disruption to other countries from banking transactions to so many things its insane to think even

talk about the world then hating our guts big time !!!!!!
I cant see this ever happening or getting anywhere ? but crazy things do happen
so its possible in a sense but with so much devastation to the worlds connections though


since most tier 1 give bandwidth to tier 2
most ISP are tier 2
so they have tier 1 connections with a few providers ! by nature most tier 1 are not redundant like tier 2 they have a single peer or a few but not a lot !
so shut down the tier 1 so the tier 2 dont have info things go down hard and fast for many
it wont even come close to killing the internet but it will do major disruption to us in the US getting access to internet and other communications
the thing is the way its set up its not really setup to handle a gov telling the tier 1 providers to shut down !

so shut down access to the top tier 1 and you have a mess

again I cant see this happening ? but its like anything cut the few major supply lines and everything else gets hurt big time and really just creates a mess and gets the world pissed at us



here is my worst analogy
it would be hard to shut down every plane in the sky but if you shut down the airports and each of the major airlines domicile you would wreak such havoc on the airlines and travel industry
while you wont shut down every airplane in the sky shutting down the majors and the major airports would wreak such havoc
while some small planes might fly and some small airports will let traffic out its nothing in comparison of shutting down a few major airlines and airports

again bad analogy maybe but might work

[Preferred User]

If you shut down a Tier 1 it would not just be data/Internet access. Almost all voice traffic also flows across the Internet, all point to point flows across the Internet, etc. Flipping the switch would have an impact on more than just the "Internet" as most people think of it.

EDIT

Honu is quite right that it would be crippling, but on a much broader scale than just denying access to some web sites.

[Mo_Zam_Beek]

Clarification: when you all are talk about tier 1 and tier 2 you're talking about ILECs and CLECs - incumbent providers that own the regional / continental / trans global back bone (QWEST) and leased line providers (anyone else) - correct?

There are relationships far beyond what the public understands in many industries. This is nothing new. It is how government abuses its power that is the concern.

It may not be new but it is less understood and far more invasive than most any other industry. This particular incestuous relationship has and continues to erode personal privacy more than any other out there. Giving it naked legal authority to do so is tantamount to suspension of the constitutional protection of free speech at the discretion of the executive office.

Trying to regulate protocol aspect (say everything that runs on IP) is just too broad an idea and nearly impossible to regulate. If the Internet was self contained in the US, utilized programs and protocols only written in the US by US companies and programmers, I would give a maybe. However that is not the case.

It is clearly stated in the bill - the oversight group will work to mount the effort to make this the one standard both domestically an internationally. When you say it is nearly impossible - so was sequencing DNA, going to the moon, or the atom bomb. What if the ILECs figured out a way to reject non conforming protocol data packs from being transmitted? Wanna do business on their line or with any US based entity? Do it in the Gov approved format. (Again I don't know about the specifics of tech but I do know that if there is a will, humans have proven there is a way). By that same token, I'd bet dollars to donuts that ILECs are currently capable of individually flipping the switch on singal entities. The simple leap from there is grouping entities by type in order to shut off a bigger switch. I have no doubt that in times of "National Emergency" the net will be up and running for certain sectors. No different than the GPS system which will be down for everyone else.

Again - willing to learn but thus far you haven't said anything other than - 'based on current means it would be difficult'. Is there anything specific that you can point to which would bolster your claim that this is much ado about nothing?

Good luck

[Preferred User]

Clarification: when you all are talk about tier 1 and tier 2 you're talking about ILECs and CLECs - incumbent providers that own the regional / continental / trans global back bone (QWEST) and leased line providers (anyone else) - correct?

An ILEC is not necessarily a Tier 1 provider. A Tier 1 provider is typically described as a provider that does not buy bandwidth to transit to any other point on the Internet (using the most broad definition of Internet). ILEC and CLEC refer to local carriers. However with the convergence of carriers, and the rapid changes in the industry many of these terms are rapidly becoming obsolete.

There are relationships far beyond what the public understands in many industries. This is nothing new. It is how government abuses its power that is the concern.

It may not be new but it is less understood and far more invasive than most any other industry. This particular incestuous relationship has and continues to erode personal privacy more than any other out there. Giving it naked legal authority to do so is tantamount to suspension of the constitutional protection of free speech at the discretion of the executive office.

When you say less understood do you mean by the public? Do you think the defense, healthcare or energy industries are better understood by the public? You might find this article on the erosion of privacy in the Internet era interesting. Technology is really just an avenue to the erosion of personal privacy.

There is also plenty to read on Carnivore (DCS1000) or many of the other monitoring programs.

Trying to regulate protocol aspect (say everything that runs on IP) is just too broad an idea and nearly impossible to regulate. If the Internet was self contained in the US, utilized programs and protocols only written in the US by US companies and programmers, I would give a maybe. However that is not the case.

It is clearly stated in the bill - the oversight group will work to mount the effort to make this the one standard both domestically an internationally. When you say it is nearly impossible - so was sequencing DNA, going to the moon, or the atom bomb. What if the ILECs figured out a way to reject non conforming protocol data packs from being transmitted? Wanna do business on their line or with any US based entity? Do it in the Gov approved format. (Again I don't know about the specifics of tech but I do know that if there is a will, humans have proven there is a way). By that same token, I'd bet dollars to donuts that ILECs are currently capable of individually flipping the switch on singal entities. The simple leap from there is grouping entities by type in order to shut off a bigger switch. I have no doubt that in times of "National Emergency" the net will be up and running for certain sectors. No different than the GPS system which will be down for everyone else.

Lots of things can be stated, lots of oversight groups try to come to a consensus (feel free to read up on how long IPV6 has been looking for consensus - it started in 1998 in case you are interested), but that does not mean it can happen or happen soon. Could it happen? Sure anything might happen.

Again - willing to learn but thus far you haven't said anything other than - 'based on current means it would be difficult'. Is there anything specific that you can point to which would bolster your claim that this is much ado about nothing?

You asked for a Crayola explanation. When you post, "I'd bet dollars to donuts that ILECs are currently capable of individually flipping the switch on singal entities" I am not sure I can convince you that an ILEC is incapable of disconnecting a multi-homed entity without falling into a deep morass of jargon and technical descriptions.

Is the language in S.773 a concern? Of course. A lot of things the government proposes concern me. The on/off switch is a far smaller area of concern than other portions of S.773.

I leave you with this quote from the GovInfoSecurity post:
Remember, there is no on-off switch for the Internet and as important, the Internet was originally architected to remain functional in a nuclear attack. The idea was that the network of networks would continue to function in a national emergency. To redesign that architecture to give the president that on-off switch, though theoretically possible, would be costly and realistically impractical.


http://blogs.govinfosecurity.com/posts.php?postID=292

http://blog.soleranetworks.com/on-th...y-act-of-2009/

http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/bl...y_legislation/

[Honu]

tier 1 to me is like qwest or L3 or GBLX or Verizon

[Mo_Zam_Beek]

PU - thanks I will do some reading.

ETA - I really DO want to know if this is a big deal or not. The newsys spin it like it is, I just want to be able to make my own decisions.

[tpd223]

I thought only Al Gore could turn off the internet?

[Preferred User]

Bill giving Obama power to shut Web takes on new tone