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Post by Einherjer on Jun 19, 2010 22:20:30 GMT -5
www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3831440/Obama-internet-kill-switch-proposedThe basic run-up is this: Joe Liberman has created a bill, co-sponsored by Susan Collins, that claims the Internet is a national asset of the United States and wants the President and Homeland Security to have the power to shut it off in case of an emergency to prevent terrorism. My thoughts: Joe Lieberman, a name I've no doubt most of us cannot help but spit out, has proposed this bill, backed by Susan Collins. I'm not exactly one to normally say "call your representative and say NO" but in this case, considering the horrific levels of potential trouble this could cause if it were ever enacted, it might be a time for non-activists to start checking their voices. The United States is the only nation in the world with enough control over the Internet (enough of its Backbone) to truly be able to accomplish something like this, and while they would not be able to shut off the entirety of the Internet, they would be able to cause enough of a disruption that the Internet for the rest of the world would be crippled, at best, and unusable, at worst. Let us hope this bill dies a swift death.
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Post by DarkfireTaimatsu on Jun 19, 2010 22:41:48 GMT -5
On the other hand, if we'd had this, it wouldn't've been left for Oracle to do, and maybe we could've prevented Darkseid from taking over and causing the Final Crisis. =3 |
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Post by Art Vandelay on Jun 19, 2010 22:59:52 GMT -5
Wait, I'm confused. Isn't one of the major properties of the internet the fact that it's so decentralised that the idea of shutting it off is quite frankly laughable. I mean the most the government could do is order all American ISPs to close down, but I doubt any terrorists would be relying solely on American ISPs in the first place.
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Post by Sigmaleph on Jun 19, 2010 23:17:03 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shutting down American ISPs sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would accomplish nothing against terrorists and severely fuck up the lives of millions around the world.
What the hell, people.
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Post by Mira on Jun 20, 2010 0:18:35 GMT -5
Joe Lieberman can kindly fuck off. Totalitarianism is not the solution for anything.
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Post by Einherjer on Jun 20, 2010 0:50:30 GMT -5
Wait, I'm confused. Isn't one of the major properties of the internet the fact that it's so decentralised that the idea of shutting it off is quite frankly laughable. I mean the most the government could do is order all American ISPs to close down, but I doubt any terrorists would be relying solely on American ISPs in the first place. The problem is that, while it is mostly decentralized, the biggest and strongest of the backbone servers are located in the States. If these were disabled (the government wouldn't have to order all ISPs to shut down, they'd just have to do the 6-7 backbone servers located in the States, out of the 11 or 12 that exist in total), and that would cause such a massive influx on the other 5-6 backbone servers that if they did not crash, they would be so slow as to render the Internet almost unusable. Correct me if I'm wrong, but shutting down American ISPs sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would accomplish nothing against terrorists and severely fuck up the lives of millions around the world. What the hell, people. Welcome to the world of United States Politics. |
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Post by Sigmaleph on Jun 20, 2010 1:12:30 GMT -5
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shutting down American ISPs sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would accomplish nothing against terrorists and severely fuck up the lives of millions around the world. What the hell, people. Welcome to the world of United States Politics. I preferred United States politics when they only fucked over the Middle East and their own citizens. |
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Post by HarleyThomas1002 on Jun 20, 2010 1:19:35 GMT -5
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Post by SimSim on Jun 20, 2010 8:04:59 GMT -5
Why is Liberman the head of the Homeland Security Committee? He shouldn't even be the head of the committee that counts votes to see if people want pizza or burgers for lunch.
This just seems like a terrible idea. If they are truly worried about a cyber warfare, there must be better solutions than this.
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Post by matante on Jun 20, 2010 8:18:28 GMT -5
This plan could only be used once. After it is, most of the other nations would move not to depend on the USA for their communications this much and the country would have lost influence.
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Post by Vidi The Mostly Hatless on Jun 20, 2010 9:41:29 GMT -5
The problem is that, while it is mostly decentralized, the biggest and strongest of the backbone servers are located in the States. If these were disabled (the government wouldn't have to order all ISPs to shut down, they'd just have to do the 6-7 backbone servers located in the States, out of the 11 or 12 that exist in total), and that would cause such a massive influx on the other 5-6 backbone servers that if they did not crash, they would be so slow as to render the Internet almost unusable. No. There's a huge number of internet backbone servers around the world since the backbone is just a lot of networks all maintained by different telecommunication companies that all communicate with each other. What you're calling the "backbone servers" are the DNS servers, that resolve a URL to an IP address. However, there are in fact 206 DNS servers, often with a large number of redundant systems and backups. While there are 13 addresses to get to those servers, they automatically go to the nearest physical server (a system called Anycast). This means that a large number of the servers are outside of the US. Wikipedia has a fairly good article on the root nameservers. www.root-servers.org/ is a good list of all the DNS servers around the world, organised by cluster. ETA: To shut down the entire internet would be impossible since that would be literally cutting up the cables and breaking all the networks, a pretty difficult thing to pull off especially with a number of networks outside the US. The US could cut off the WWW by shutting down all the DNS servers, but again they're placed all over the world, and if they somehow did all go offline, we would just go back to using IP addresses to reach our favourite websites again. (67.199.124.90 reaches FSTDT without going through the DNS system). But then that's a website. The internet is a lot more than the WWW, and to cut off all communication with the internet would require all networked computers to suddenly become un-networked. This could only be done if they cut off computers through their ISPs. Again, they can't do this for other nations. As such, it would only effect the US. Though of course, there would be economic issues if the US did isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Many businesses rely on the internet, banks for example. It would completely destroy the economy. ETA2: It should also be added that many ISPs have their own DNS servers. They take the information from the root servers, so even if the root ones are turned offline, your ISPs' DNS will still take you to the websites you want to go to. However, new website addresses would be unable to propagate through the system. It'd be like using a phone book that's a few years out of date. The only way for this idea to work would be a complete shutdown of all the networks though the US. So physically turning off all the routers and all the switches for those networks. |
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Post by shykid on Jun 20, 2010 10:21:51 GMT -5
I lol'ed. Real hard. Good luck with that, Joey. |
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Post by Shane for Wax on Jun 20, 2010 10:46:22 GMT -5
I was not aware we were in China.
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Post by worlder on Jun 20, 2010 11:10:48 GMT -5
I was not aware we were in China. Hell the far-right crazies would love to control the internet. But they will shout that it was the liberals that placed such a restriction on the American people. PS: You know what I want to take their slogans, and use it against them (aka out tea party them in the opposite direction). PPS: Okay I was just joking about the PS. |
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Post by aboveathletics on Jun 20, 2010 18:15:57 GMT -5
Joe Lieberman is a Zionist lemonpartying totalitarian whore. I found out what the word "lemonparty" meant the other day and am glad I found an opportunity to use it so soon.
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