Lieberman: China Can Shut Down The Internet
- Thread starter arrbsthw
- Start date
If you know how the Internet works, and if you've actually read the bill rather than read bloggers who pump out just a snotload of misinformation (like the one in the linked article), then you'd know Lieberman is right about needing the ability to turn off sections of the Internet in times of not only war, but it times of certain kinds of cyber attacks. Currently, our country is wide open to cyber probing and attacks from both state and private attacks.
Frankly, I'm surprised that some terrorist group, or someone like China, who is constantly trying to hack into things over here, hasn't done a lot more than they have. There's no way to prevent it currently. There are too many ways into the system and no easy way to shut off access to an intruder. For example, near the end of last year, China was caught red handed trying to get into a military server farm in Omaha. Individual computer and network router firewalls are somewhat effective, but they're not bullet proof to certain kinds of attacks, and the only way to stop them quickly in an emergency is to shut down the backbone, or pull the plug.
When China was trying to get into the server farm, the UUNET backbone, which contains 56 trunks to its network, had the trunk carrying the attack shut down, but within seconds it was re-routed to another one of the 56 trunks. The entire UUNET backbone was shut down for a time (couple of hours), but again within seconds the attack was rerouted to the CWIW backbone, which has 23 trunks. Those are but two of US's 26 major Internet backbones and more than 600 minor and regional backbones, all with distinctly separate international connections comprising more than 45,000 separate data trunks. The intruder (a network of computers, actually) was finally isolated and the attack was stopped. Official protests were quietly lodged, but the snooping and hacking continues around the clock.
China, on the other hand, has four backbones with thousands of trunks, but all of them routed and switched through a central network that the government controls. Censorship and a Kill Switch on a network like that is a piece of cake, comparatively speaking. Because of their geographical location, Australia is another example of how the government can have total control over the Internet, since they have only three backbones with international connections, all of them routed through a single location. They have a Kill Switch, though they've never used it, and their Internet is largely uncensored (they only censor child pornography, for the most part).
There are a few countries who have installed Kill Switches (which isn't really a switch, but just the ability to block data transfers over the network, or portions of the network), but for the most part, especially here in North America, the responsibilities of security falls on the end user or the network, depending on the kind of security. Even if this bill passes and the government gets its Kill Switch, it will still require cooperation from backbone operators to shut things down expeditiously, something that isn't likely to happen because the President wants to silence dissent or in "politically sensitive times to stem the flow of information about government abuse and atrocities" (the way China routinely does).
The story's author, Paul Joseph Watson, states that under the terms of the Lieberman bill, the federal government will have "absolute power" to shut down the Internet. That's a lie. He (and others) also says the emergency powers handed to the government could be used (not will be, but could be) to silence free speech under the guise of a national emergency. That's true. But, because they could, does that necessarily mean they would? Because, they have that power right now, today, where they can silence free speech any time they want. It would be a violation of the US Constitution, yeah, but they can still do it. And there was a time when they had very easy access and control over the entire country's telephone system, because there was just the one system, and they didn't shut it down even once. People are freaking out over this because they think that if the Internet is shut down, then any and all forms of free speech will be silenced. That's absurd on the face of it.
Read the bill.
Frankly, I'm surprised that some terrorist group, or someone like China, who is constantly trying to hack into things over here, hasn't done a lot more than they have. There's no way to prevent it currently. There are too many ways into the system and no easy way to shut off access to an intruder. For example, near the end of last year, China was caught red handed trying to get into a military server farm in Omaha. Individual computer and network router firewalls are somewhat effective, but they're not bullet proof to certain kinds of attacks, and the only way to stop them quickly in an emergency is to shut down the backbone, or pull the plug.
When China was trying to get into the server farm, the UUNET backbone, which contains 56 trunks to its network, had the trunk carrying the attack shut down, but within seconds it was re-routed to another one of the 56 trunks. The entire UUNET backbone was shut down for a time (couple of hours), but again within seconds the attack was rerouted to the CWIW backbone, which has 23 trunks. Those are but two of US's 26 major Internet backbones and more than 600 minor and regional backbones, all with distinctly separate international connections comprising more than 45,000 separate data trunks. The intruder (a network of computers, actually) was finally isolated and the attack was stopped. Official protests were quietly lodged, but the snooping and hacking continues around the clock.
China, on the other hand, has four backbones with thousands of trunks, but all of them routed and switched through a central network that the government controls. Censorship and a Kill Switch on a network like that is a piece of cake, comparatively speaking. Because of their geographical location, Australia is another example of how the government can have total control over the Internet, since they have only three backbones with international connections, all of them routed through a single location. They have a Kill Switch, though they've never used it, and their Internet is largely uncensored (they only censor child pornography, for the most part).
There are a few countries who have installed Kill Switches (which isn't really a switch, but just the ability to block data transfers over the network, or portions of the network), but for the most part, especially here in North America, the responsibilities of security falls on the end user or the network, depending on the kind of security. Even if this bill passes and the government gets its Kill Switch, it will still require cooperation from backbone operators to shut things down expeditiously, something that isn't likely to happen because the President wants to silence dissent or in "politically sensitive times to stem the flow of information about government abuse and atrocities" (the way China routinely does).
The story's author, Paul Joseph Watson, states that under the terms of the Lieberman bill, the federal government will have "absolute power" to shut down the Internet. That's a lie. He (and others) also says the emergency powers handed to the government could be used (not will be, but could be) to silence free speech under the guise of a national emergency. That's true. But, because they could, does that necessarily mean they would? Because, they have that power right now, today, where they can silence free speech any time they want. It would be a violation of the US Constitution, yeah, but they can still do it. And there was a time when they had very easy access and control over the entire country's telephone system, because there was just the one system, and they didn't shut it down even once. People are freaking out over this because they think that if the Internet is shut down, then any and all forms of free speech will be silenced. That's absurd on the face of it.
Read the bill.