Article

2009-08-29 Science & Technology

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

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Posted by Fred 2009-08-29 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ] Top

#1 This is one of those issues that is so highly technical that not even the people writing the laws understand it.

First of all, there is no such thing as "the internet" as any kind of physical entity. "The Internet" is thousands of networks exchanging traffic privately. Lets say you are on AT&T or Comcast or Verizon. If ou are on one of those networks and want to go to yahoo.com, for example, chances are that your provider directly connects to Yahoo. In order to shut down "the internet", thousands of networks would have to turn off their border routers they use for traffic peering with other networks.

If you are on a smaller network, your traffic might need to go through a third party (transit) in order to reach Yahoo.

Take Rantburg. Rantburg's IP addresses are apparently owned by someone called "Datapoint". Traffic from my network at work reaches Rantburg by first going to the Equinix facility at 11 Great Oaks in San Jose. From there it goes to a network owned by Level3 communications where it is hauled over Level3's network to an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia and handed to a network called e-xpedient.com who then gives the data to datapoint. At no time did my traffic touch anything called "The Internet". It went over private networks.

In order to shut down "the ineternet" the President would need to order all networks not to communicate with any other network over their own private connections.

Now, having done that, what is there stopping people from loading Quagga on a linux box for routing and stringing cables between neighbors and creating their own "internet"?

Maybe the government could shut down the root nameservers, but people would create new ones. And many of the root name servers are outside of the US and not under the authority of the US President. The only way to shut down "the internet" is to physically shut off the links between private networks.

I don't believe the network operators would follow such an order even if given.

Posted by crosspatch 2009-08-29 02:46|| 2009-08-29 02:46|| Front Page Top

#2 First of all, there is no such thing as "the internet" as any kind of physical entity.

But the courts and lawyers are already establishing its legal entity through precedent case law.

And many of the root name servers are outside of the US and not under the authority of the US President.

For which the UN bureaucrats have already started to demand control over. Yep, that's the key, let the UN regulate it.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-08-29 07:27|| 2009-08-29 07:27|| Front Page Top

#3 There are only a few carriers who own the fiber trunks that carry comms and data traffic. Shut down their data traffic and the internet shuts down.

Posted by ed 2009-08-29 07:56|| 2009-08-29 07:56|| Front Page Top

#4 Immediately following 9/11 all flight operations across the country were shut down in a matter of minutes. If you don't think Barry could direct a series Computer Network Offensive (CNO) measures be taken against domestic networks and systems you are sadly mistaken.

Posted by Besoeker 2009-08-29 08:06|| 2009-08-29 08:06|| Front Page Top

#5 Shut down the DNS servers and you'll shut down enough of the 'internet' that the rest won't matter.

Posted by Steve White 2009-08-29 10:10|| 2009-08-29 10:10|| Front Page Top

#6 So be sure to write down the IP address of Rantburg and the rest of your favorite Blogs.

Posted by CrazyFool 2009-08-29 10:14|| 2009-08-29 10:14|| Front Page Top

#7 Rahm Emanuel and his cronies can "manufacture" any crisis they deem necessary.

Posted by WolfDog 2009-08-29 11:26|| 2009-08-29 11:26|| Front Page Top

#8 We will have to go back to faxes like dissidents did in the ex Soviet Union. If we are lucky, we can vote out some of these scoundrels in 2010, if an election is held.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2009-08-29 11:59|| 2009-08-29 11:59|| Front Page Top

#9 He wants control of everything. Doing the things tyrants do.

Posted by newc">newc 2009-08-29 12:45|| 2009-08-29 12:45|| Front Page Top

#10 All your base are belong to us.

Posted by eltoroverde 2009-08-29 13:25|| 2009-08-29 13:25|| Front Page Top

#11 Krystal Nacht is coming. What the Acorn SS.

Posted by 3dc 2009-08-29 14:22|| 2009-08-29 14:22|| Front Page Top

#12 "3 There are only a few carriers who own the fiber trunks that carry comms and data traffic. Shut down their data traffic and the internet shuts down."

Not exactly true. I can connect my network to Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Google without ever leaving the building. That is over private fiber strung directly. No, going outside the building there are many carriers what will lease "dark" fiber to you. Some you may have never heard of (remember MFS? They are AboveNet now). In order to shut that traffic down they would need to basically break the cable which would disrupt more than just Internet traffic as telephone, video and lots of other services uses those paths as well.

"The Internet" architecture is one of cooperative communications between private entities. There is no government ownership or public entity through which the traffic flows. And the "problem" gets more interesting as more foreign carriers own infrastructure here. Want to connect to China Telecom? No problem, they appear in San Jose, California. British Telecom? Telecom Italia? No problem, they appear in several places in the US over their own infrastructure.

It would be a massive exercise in futility to "shut down the Internet". You could overload popular destinations like google, msn, yohoo, and aol but taking down ALL networks would be practically impossible as most are interconnected at several points.

Posted by crosspatch 2009-08-29 15:07|| 2009-08-29 15:07|| Front Page Top

#13 Worth noting that back in the Jurassic era, before the days of always-on DSL, we built ad-hoc networks over dial-up phone lines with tools like Point-to-Point Protocol and used UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program) to route mail and files. It depended on friendly sysadmins and people willing to share a little server space, but it could be done again if the need arises.

Posted by SteveS 2009-08-29 16:18|| 2009-08-29 16:18|| Front Page Top

#14 You mean the old bulletin board system. What would you need to set that up using today's systems? Maybe put together a toolbox of needed items and post it just in case.

Posted by Steve">Steve 2009-08-29 18:49|| 2009-08-29 18:49|| Front Page Top

#15 crosspatch: Interesting analysis.

One point I would make is in networks. Although Yahoo, google et al have private networks that are routable to the internet, if you can connect to them, they are not private, they are public. They may strictly control traffic at the router level, but they are considered private.

So my reading of this bill is that in an emergency the government would get unfettered access to large private networks which are ordinarily not connected to the internet for its own purposes. Similar to comandeering airliners to transport materiel in time of war.

It is actually a reasonable proposal but for the current leftist government to make use of unaffected private computing power in the event of an attack.

Posted by badanov 2009-08-29 19:12|| http://www.freefirezone.org]">[http://www.freefirezone.org] 2009-08-29 19:12|| Front Page Top

#16 The government wants the power to pull the plug on the internet to protect critical infrastructure. Here's an idea for them: Don't put critical infrastructure on a global public network!

Posted by Snuger Prince of the Welsh4131 2009-08-29 20:19|| 2009-08-29 20:19|| Front Page Top

#17 I think Bambi may be overreaching here. Imagine what businesses would do if they lost the internet on which so many depend. What about the banking system? The stock market?

Many federal courts now REQUIRE that pleadings be filed electronically; that requires the internet. What happens if Bambi cuts off access to a good portion of the internet and plaintiffs/defendants miss an important deadline because of it?

How about medicine? A lot gets done over the internet; who pays if people get sicker or die because of no internet access?

And what the hell is a "cybersecurity emergency" anyway?

Tar. Feathers. Pitchfork. Some assembly required. >:-(

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2009-08-29 21:52|| 2009-08-29 21:52|| Front Page Top

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