Citing Snowden Leaks, Russia Again Demands UN Takeover of Internet 275
Lauren Weinstein writes "In a clear demonstration that actions do have consequences, often unintended ones, 'The New York Times' reports that Russia is again demanding a UN Internet takeover of exactly the sort repressive governments around the world have long been lusting after, and using Edward Snowden's continued presence in Russia as a foundation for this new thrust. Acting as a catalyst for a crackdown against freedom of speech on the Net was certainly not Snowden's intention — quite the opposite, it's reasonable to assume." Not to worry.
How about alt roots instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see how the UN could fuck the domain system up much more than the USA already has. But still, how about fuck the statists? Let's get a proper decentralised DNS system in place, and use that instead. Meanwhile, we can use alt-roots.
Seriously, the USA has proven that they can't be trusted with control of the Internet. Demonstrated it totally. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be insane, or suffering from selective blindness.
Oh, yeah, we're going to take your domain of you because you link to sites that host torrent files (which themselves aren't copyrighted material, but merely link to copyrighted material). For example.
So yeah, fuck the USA, fuck ICANN, and maybe let's see if the UN (who manage the international postal telephone systems) can't do a better job. Or even better, let's say "fuck authority", and go it alone.
Re:How about alt roots instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
No government can be trusted with control over the internet. There should be a separate body for that, 'manned' only by robots. Or something else completely separated from anything that even remotely has to do with real world politics.
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You want to give the control of the internet to Skynet?
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Robots? Programmed by humans?
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Yes that is a weak spot in my argument. But I don't know a better solution.
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That's what we had in the early days, until the internet became really popular. Trust etc like you describe it only works in communities where everyone knows each other, but the internet community is too large for that now.
Re:How about alt roots instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see how the UN could fuck the domain system up much more than the USA already has.
Then you are seriously lacking in imagination.
I'm not suggesting the gTLD fiasco is anything but, but never underestimate the ability of bad people to make things worse.
Seriously, the USA has proven that they can't be trusted with control of the Internet. Demonstrated it totally. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be insane, or suffering from selective blindness.
The trouble is, so has everyone else, and demonstrated it even more convinvingly.
At least the USA (unlike my own country, the UK) is one of the few not constant pushing for massive scale filtering.
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The trouble is, so has everyone else, and demonstrated it even more convinvingly.
No.
I could ask you to name an example but you would only bring out China.
In what way do you think Norway have demonstrated that they can't be trusted with control of the Internet?
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Ever heard of France? Nice place, official motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?" Actual motto "Liberty for white Catholic Frenchman, Equality for white Catholic Frenchmen, Fraternity is BS but it sounds nice?" Actual French behavior during the Rwandan genocide: veto all potential actions that stop the genocide, as soon as the murderers ran out of targets insist on sending hundreds of troops to protect the murderers from justice. The rebels spoke English, and potential Anglophiles are a greater threat to th
USA's filtering (Score:4, Insightful)
uhm.. USA's filtering stance is just different. their filtering tactic is to remove the offending site from the servers end. that's much more worse.
instead of banning megaupload for example, they went ahead and arranged the servers to be shut down. instead of censoring the dns results for some omar this and thats magazine they drop a bomb on the guy running it.
filtering that happens just inside the country that decides to do it is much less severe than that.
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Seriously, you think that the NSA or CIA wastes time astroturfing Slashdot?
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You don't seem to understand why everyone is worried about UN Control.
It's not that we're worried the formal documents would allow bad shit to happen. The thing that makes a dictatorship a dictatorship is that the formal documents are ignored. What we're worried about is that increased UN Control means Russia gets a lot more information on things like who owns a domain name. They could easily get their guy in a position to acquire all information a domain registrar or domain host has on a specific domain na
mmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, he called it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce Schneier saw this [schneier.com] coming. And he's got a point...on one hand, we argue against the policies of countries like Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, China when it comes to free, uncensored and unmonitored use of the Internet (or lack thereof in the aforementioned countries). And then, oh...look what we're doing with all those network links that pass through our own country. You can argue that the motives are different, the means are more surgical (but only to a point since 1, they are classified programs and 2, intelligence agencies lie their assess off, by necessity, to foreign powers) but the argument still won't carry much weight.
Re:Well, he called it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Internet under UN control will become a politically correct, culturally sanitized My Little Pony land.
Exactly. Add "heavily censored" to that list.
Re:Well, he called it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's face it, when the argument for leaving the US in charge was "they have stood up for internet freedom and neutrality", a failure like this was ultimately inevitable. I just don't think anyone expected it to be practically immediate. The choice now is whether to let nations establish their own internet authorities with their own goals, yielding the idea of the internet as a universal commons; or to create an ostensibly neutral overseer, something the UN is hideously inefficient at.
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(The third option is to get the US to respect the privacy of foreigners' internet traffic as it respects the traffic of its own citizens, but that's never going to happen.)
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The do respect the privacy of foreign traffic as much as the do the domestic, that is to say they don't respect privacy at all.
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Hey, at least you have some legal recourse under your constitution. If I'm reading US politicians' reassurances correctly, the NSA can do whatever the hell it likes with my data, and your local press will consider that perfectly fair.
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Pretty much. Americans we're terrified that Big Brother was reading their email, but their attitude towards everyone else is FU Foreign bastard. And technically they're right. The Constitution gives rights to Americans.
If you think this is annoying try being non-white in NYC. Stop and frisk is almost certainly unconstitutional because white people don't get stopped or frisked, but because white people don;t get stopped or frisked nobody with power to fix it actually gives a rat's ass.
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(The third option is to get the US to respect the privacy of foreigners' internet traffic as it respects the traffic of its own citizens, but that's never going to happen.)
Thanks. I just snorted diet coke out of my nose!
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I'm not worried that the UN would be hideously inefficient with overseeing the Internet, I'm worried that they would be hideously evil overseeing the internet.
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I'm not worried that the UN would be hideously inefficient with overseeing the Internet, I'm worried that they would be hideously evil overseeing the internet.
The problem with the UN is that it is very nice to all it's member states.
For example, back in the mid-90s one of those states had a problem with rebels. The problem was the rebels were winning. So that state began hacking hundreds of thousands of people to death. By the time the UN declared a cease-fire all the potential victims were dead, and the cease-fire only served to protect their murderers because those murderers were losing every damn battle.
In a lot of ways I suspect Wikileaks actually wants this
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Fair enough on the monitoring aspect, but we demonstrably arent arresting people for political opnion blogs or tampering with web site queries for politically "hot" topics. Ie, you wont be arrested or detained or disconnected for googling "Google NSA PRISM". Try that sort of thing in China.
So theres a point to be made, but we're still a lot less "dangerous" as caretakers of the internet than folks like Russia or China.
Thanks Obama! (Score:2)
Seriously. Thanks to Obama's administration we have this problem. He has single handedly wrecked trust in US operating systems, web hosts, hardware, online services... everything.
I know someone's gonna say this started under Bush, but Obama could have stopped it. In fact, Obama ran on the promise that he would stop it. [cnet.com]I know someone is going to split hairs: "He's NOT wiretapping!!11!!ONE He's only collecting teh metadatas." Obama's running mate, Joe Biden would like to have a word with you. [youtube.com]
Fuck you Obama/B
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Total agreement. Although I think I'd start with criminal prosecution of Clapper for perjury. It's such a slam-dunk case that if we can't even do that, nothing is possible.
As long as we're wishing, I'd like to see three constitutional amendments:
1) clarifies that "papers" as used in the 4th amendment includes digital content of any type, including metadata relating to that content.
2) eliminates the business records exception and recognizes that in the modern world of digital communications, people's priva
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As to #3, if it is made a crime, punishable by a min. 10yrs in PMITA Federal prison plus forfeiture of pension etc., to introduce or vote in favor of, an unconstitutional law, I think we'd get some more well thought out laws.
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The links are still uncensored. They just happen to be listening to what is being said over them. And as far as monitoring goes, the day they can use that information to actually arrest someone for something other than a bona-fide national security issue, let me know. Then I will start becoming actually worried.
The reason I am not concerned is that they are going to have a similar capability to listen no matter what you do. UN control won't change anything in that regard. It's not like they were using
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How many days was it between the French freaking out about PRISM, and us finding out they ran their own version of it?
I'd trust a handful of countries to act more honorably then the US. Trouble is they're pretty much all white and European (the non-white ones are too new as Democracies for us to know whether they're trustworthy), and from a non-Western point-of-view an all-white-European internet governing body is not much of gain over a US internet governing body.
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So you would stop the US government from stripping away rights by taking away control over the Internet from them, and giving it to Russia etc.?
That would help freedom of speech how exactly?
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That would have been a sensible argument before Obama took office.
Since he's taken office he's pulled back on a lot of Bush's excesses. He hasn't done as much as he said he would, but he's definitely stopped waterboarding, sending people to GitMo, he's ended warrantless wire-tapping, etc.
BTW, Warrentless Wire-Taps are actually legal in almost every country but the US, so FISA is more protection then you get in almost every country.
Come again? (Score:2)
Re:Come again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any nation on the planet can implement PRISM and just like the US they can only really adequately collect data that is within their borders. Any data not within the borders requires the complicity of other nations. Who has "control" of the Internet (by virtue of top level DNS servers) really has no impact on whether the programs can occur. In fact, maintaining freedom of speech is actually in the interest of a program like PRISM as people would feel freer to speak more and with others more permitting a bet data collection.
That aside, the US still does have one of the best freedom of speech while the UN doesn't seem to have any desire to enforce or even go after member nations that are hostile to freedom of speech.
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"That aside, the US still does have one of the best freedom of speech while the UN doesn't seem to have any desire to enforce or even go after member nations that are hostile to freedom of speech."
Huh? That's not the UN's job, or are you suggesting the UN should exist to impose US was of life on the whole world against their will?
I'm not even sure what you say makes any sense, "the UN doesn't seem to have any desire" - why would it? It's composed of the very nations you're saying it should go after, whateve
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Read the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
The UN claims that Freedom of Speech is a core freedom for all people and yet member states completely ignore that declaration, which they agree to.
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It's a non-binding statement and given that a majority of nations have not agreed to it indicates that the UN is certainly not the proper place in which to vest control of the biggest tool that enables free speech. That's the problem. Most of the 48 signing nations have either demonstrated that they have a much lesser respect for freedom of expression than the US or they have questionable clout.
Further you seem to be comparing a violation of X and Y humans rights as a sign that Z will be violated. It is a s
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Also, any nation can choose to route its internal comms through an external 3rd party country who does all the snooping and then returns the snooped info to the nation state.
eg. France routes all its internal comms via Belgium who snoops it and then passes the info back to France. Belgium routes all their internal comms through France who pass the snooped info to Belgium. Both countries aren't snooping on their own citizens and is only obtaining legally snooped info from a foreign state.
Most transatlantic c
Irony (Score:2)
UN is not the governmemt, its the planet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do americans get so paranoid that letting the world itself control the worlds telecommunications network, instead of the spooky us government is a somehow a threat to freedom.
I'm sorry but as a non american, reading about PRISM doesn't fill me with confidence that letting a foreign power control my communications is "freedom".
It SHOULD be controlled by a democracy of the world, not Obama and the NSA.
Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally, neither the US nor the UN should "control the Internet." The US might be bad, but don't think the UN is some sort of "democracy of the world." When you look at who's demanding UN control of the Internet (countries like Russia, China, and various dictatorships around the world) and what proposals they keep floating (things like prosecution for offending their religious sensibilities - yes, if they had their way, posting "Religion X stinks!" would be a crime), you realize that UN control of the Internet would result in LESS online freedoms, not more. About the best thing that might happen if the UN took control of the Internet would be if it bungled its control in such a way as to render it unable to enforce provisions. More likely, though, anti-freedom provisions would be rammed through and the Internet would fracture into "countries who refuse to enforce the provisions" and "countries who enforce them." (Or, even more likely, a shade of grey where most countries enforce some but not all of the provisions. Resulting in the near-impossibility of moving to a place where the provisions aren't enforced at all.)
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Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Ideally, neither the US nor the UN should "control the Internet.""
Idealistic crap. The first person to find the Titanic thought, this should stay here no one should own it. SO he did not file for salvage rights.
So someone else did.
Someone with power has to be in control of the Internet, because otherwise anyone with power will just take control. And i would rather have a reluctant defender, than a tyrannical oppressor.
Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, we don't have one of those.
The UN(as its name might suggest) is representative(approximately, the details can be pretty ideosyncratic, and the Security Council is serious business) of Nations, not people. Given the revelations either connected to, or spurred by, about the spying programs various other countries(even the 'good guys', the fact that any 'bad guys' who can afford to do it are doing it has been known for ages), and other countries collaboration with the US spying program, do you feel lucky?
Heck, Mr. Secretary General himself, asserts that Snowden's 'digital misuse' has created problems [guardian.co.uk].
I certainly wouldn't trust the Americans to operate internet infrastructure without spying on it; but the list of people I would so trust is Not Very Long(and none of them are in power).
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The infrastructure isn't even in discussion though, really the debate is only about ICANN and domain name assignment - i.e. should the US really have the final say on who can and can't have gtlds and who can and can't have international domain names?
The problem is that the argument has been blown out of all proportion and context. I suspect this is in part by vested interests who want to maintain the status quo. By framing it as an argument about freedom of speech, civil liberties, access to and spying on t
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It isn't just framed as as argument about freedom of speech etc. Just google for the WCIT-12 leaks. Here is one hit with the original PDFs linked: http://www.zdnet.com/wcit-12-leak-shows-russia-china-others-seek-to-define-government-controlled-internet-7000008509/ [zdnet.com]
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It SHOULD be controlled by a democracy of the world, not Obama and the NSA.
Agreed. However I don't think that the UN is the right body; it has shown itself spineless and prone to manipulation. What we want is an Internet that is not beholden the country/block intererests. This does not mean that it is not controlled (ie a wild west), but that the governanance is in the best interests of the vast majority of humanity. Something that is determinedly neutral.
Finding the bodies to do this will not be easy; I would readily vote for the likes of Jon Postel, but although his heart would
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As an American, I am not opposed to our country relinquishing control of the Internet to another party. As has been pointed out, we haven't done a very good job proctoring it recently.
However, I'm not really convinced that the United Nations is the best alternative. I'd like them to be; the idea that the citizens of the world - rather than the citizens of a single state - have dominion over the Internet suits my egalitarian fancies. Unfortunately, the track record of the UN doesn't seem much better than tha
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Why do americans get so paranoid that letting the world itself control the worlds telecommunications network, instead of the spooky us government is a somehow a threat to freedom.
It's not just Americans (I'm not), and it's not "the world itself" that we're worrying about controlling the Internet.
What we're worried about is undemocratic, opaque bodies that would do an ever worse job than the US. The US is a decidedly less worse controller of the Internet than the UN or any of its arms.
It SHOULD be controlled by a democracy of the world, not Obama and the NSA.
I absolutely disagree.
First, a democracy consisting to a large degree of undemocratic participants is not a democracy.
Second, no, a medium that relies on the free exchange of information should NOT be
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Why do folks think that UN control is some sort of panacea? Giving the UN control would do nothing at all to help with abuses like PRISM, and that's true regardless of how one feels about the UN, simply on account of what the situation is.
When folks talk about various entities (usually the US) "controlling the Internet", they're referring to one of two types of control:
1) The control all countries possess by virtue of having sovereignty over the infrastructure located inside their borders.
2) The unique form
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By the way, I kept getting "Filter error: Lameness filter encountered" when trying to preview that message, until I deleted a line that said something like "But abuses like PRISM would still be possible even if the UN had control of ICANN and DNS" at the end of the second to last paragraph. No clue why. Maybe the filter thought my point was a bad one?
We were founded to avoid that kind of thing (Score:2)
The UN is a bunch of people overseas telling us what to do. We were founded to avoid that kind of thing. Furthermore, if it were ever to become an effectively governing body, it would be a monopoly. Where would a guy like Snowden run if there were universal agreement? Mars?
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They're conditioned from pre-school and up with "We're #1! We're #1!" nonsense, and "god bless America" several times a day. People in power never give up power, they only try to increase it.
Every single country does this. It is called nationalism, and it is a fantastic way to make your public complicit, if not fully supportive, of whatever crimes their country are committing.
As a young kid (perhaps 4th or 5th grade US) I learned in a lesson that "excessive nationalism" helped lead to World War 1. Then right after that another teacher goes on with the "We're #1! We're #1!" bullshit. Looking back that is the point where I realized that blindly following anything can lead to disasters, and that m
Re:UN is not the governmemt, its the planet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every single country does this.
At least in the Western world this is primarily a US phenomenon. You'll have a hard time finding even a fraction of this patriotism amongst European citizens. France might be the closest there is, and even there, I do not see this happening with the same level of intensity.
Honestly, as an Austrian, I find the thought of reciting the pledge of allegiance every day in school intensely creepy.
Sad reflection of modern times (Score:5, Insightful)
So a "repressive" government (like Russia) is asking for a U.N. takeover of the Internet, to the great consternation of "freedom-loving" governments (like the U.S.).
Given recent revelations, it doesn't seem like the U.S. government is very freedom-loving any more.
So it's really between governments that don't pretend to love freedom, and governments that pretend to. No real difference except for the pretense.
What a sad state of affairs.
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The U.S. might not be perfect, but they are a lot less oppressive than nations like Russia, China, Syria.
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True...those countries block "offending" content, the US simply monitors it. Wait...how is that much better?
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The simple fact that we all can express our opinions about PRISM shows how much better this is.
Do you think Russia, China, Syria would never ever consider building something like PRISM? What do you think would have happened to all the PRISM discussions if these countries were controlling the Internet?
Just look at what happens to bloggers in China who dare to write about things like the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
TFA is below par (Score:2)
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"Below par"? What the hell version of Slashdot are you reading, and can I have some?
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Oh, believe me, I appreciate Slashdot, I just like making that joke more.
Just fork it (Score:2)
The interenets is based on open source so just download, make, make install. Problem solved. It's not like your trying to build a soyuz capsule or somethin, sheesh *rolls eyes*.
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The Internet is mostly based on RAND, which may appear to be open source, but isn't [ietf.org]. (In some ways I would argue that RAND is better than strict open source; that, to put it mildly, is a matter for debate.)
And why would the US do this? (Score:3)
As I've pointed out every time this idea gets floated, why on earth would the US agree to this? Diplomatic efforts are only effective if there is a carrot or stick behind them. Neither is in evidence.
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What makes you believe the US needs to agree to this for other countries to take the control? As far as I know, there is nothing that would prevent other countries from just ignoring US protests and taking the control.
Sure. That will work. (Score:3)
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Can you explain your point? ICANN just is responsible for TLDs and Address Ranges, not Internet Policy.
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Can you explain your point? ICANN just is responsible for TLDs and Address Ranges, not Internet Policy.
Sure. ICANN is currently fucking up everything they control. The UN is currently fucking up everything they control. Adding the UN to the internet equation has no fucking chance in hell of being anything less than a horrible mistake. There are two types of people who want this. Those that will get jobs at the UN controlling everyone's lives and stupid people with no ability to learn and lots of education.
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Okay I'm not sure still how ICANN is fucking things up but the UN certainly is more about bureaucracy and fucking things up. So I can agree there. I was just looking for more clarity on why you thought ICANN was fucking things up in terms of specifics. IS the TLD naming system broken? Not really unless you want a TLD that's questionable or racist perhaps?
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Not really, I mean a TLD is just for categorizing a domain right? So we've overused .com till it's useless and now we have .co because people didn't want to type in an extra m. Then you have the government TLDs.. ala .co.uk that everbody was supposed to really use but only a few ISPs in few countries now use. Tuvalu hoped that selling .TV DNS entries would generate revenue but that looks like that hasn't transpired. [independent.co.uk]
A TLD really doesn't mean much unless you're blocking .sex or .porn or .xxx from your coun
Putin's exploits may be funny but he's no fool (Score:2)
You have a former Colonel from the KGB running the country. You know damn well he likes having Snowden in his country so he can drive any Russian agenda by pointing back at the US and saying "Because the US 'owns' the Internet they can spy on all of us! Now excuse me while I chase Geese in my ultralight."
The agenda of the UN and specifically the ITU controlling the Internet is going to represent an end to free communications as we know it. Don't like something said in a blog? they'll be able to track you
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I'm pretty sure Russia also has their own PRISM.
I expect Snowden knows that and probably has a PPT slide on it.
There's no way he (or Wikileaks) would make that information public - because of his asylum request. Plus if he did Russia would put him on a plane to the US.
Two-faced traitor. Started of with an ethical stance, degraded into the last stand of a desperate man.
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Oh no doubt they have their own PRISM system but in this case like during the Cold War, propaganda bargaining chips are valuable especially about little countries who don't really care about the issue of spying and more about feeding their inhabitants or preventing civil war. Those countries who have UN votes will align to whatever benefactor delivers the aid and in return asks for a favor in a UN vote. If anything this whole PRISM fiasco will push countries away from American Telecomm providers and to de
Slashdot Paradox (Score:2)
As the UN is dominated by these oppressive nations, in theory Slashdot should welcome an internet takeover by the UN because, you know, they're still WAY better tha
The home of the NSA (Score:2)
This rhetoric doesn't sound very convincing any more now that we know what GCHQ and the NSA have been up to and what their ambitions are. The US government clearly can't be trusted with stewardship over the Internet, they're as untrustworthy and malign as Russia.
Repressive governments (Score:2)
As in "against their own population", or "against other countries populations"? US is exporting its repression, control, and snooping all over the world, not just in the country itself. If in a democratic country the government misbehaves, the population could vote against it, rebel, or whatever. What if another country government the one that is misbehaving against you?
What Russia, and the other countries of the UN should do as retaliation is just give back some of what US is doing to the rest of the worl
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When we post links in the discussion thread, Slashdot helpfully tags them with the domain - so we don't have to worry about clicking a pointless or abusive link.
It's time for Slashdot to follow this same practice with submissions and summaries. Start showing us the domain EVERY link goes to so we can choose not to waste our time on these blog spammers. I am getting tired of "stories" being submitted in an attempt to push up ad revenue.
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It is exactly that sort of attitude that makes the USA the wrong ''controller'' of the Internet.
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Snowden leak: Microsoft added Outlook.com backdoo (Score:5, Informative)
NSA praises Redmond for 'collaborative teamwork'
There are red faces in Redmond after Edward Snowden released a new batch of documents from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division covering Microsoft's involvement in allowing backdoor access to its software to the NSA and others.
Documents seen by The Guardian detail how the NSA became concerned when Microsoft started testing Outlook.com, and asked for access. In five months Microsoft and the FBI created a workaround that gives the NSA access to encrypted chats on Outlook.com. The system went live in December last year – two months before Outlook.com's commercial launch.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/snowden_leak_shows_microsoft_added_outlookencryption_backdoor_for_feds/ [theregister.co.uk] [theregister.co.uk]
Better Idea: (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck the UN, and why not have ICANN and suchlike be it's own independent NGO? Each country pays into it to keep it going.
It would only take a few nations to support it, and it can stay independent. I can see a few housekeeping items that would have to be addressed, but at least this way the UN can keep their grubby paws off it, yet no one can bitch about the US owning it anymore (in spite of the whole shebang originating as a US gov't project, etc...)
Re:Better Idea: (Score:5, Insightful)
It can stay independent? Of what? It would be presumptuous to say big NGOs are any less corrupt than anything else. The only workable solution is to abandon DNS and any other protocol that is vulnerable to such abuses. Nobody's stopping the Russians from setting up their own 'internet' with their own servers for their own purposes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People who wanted influence would work their own people in there. They are much more determined than a bunch of people who just imagine it will remain independent. Something, by the way, history sbould give them absolutely no confidence in.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody's stopping the Russians from setting up their own 'internet' with their own servers for their own purposes.
Yeah, because that won't have negative consequences of it's own.
Hey look 14,000 root DNS servers. Half of which are MITM attacks. Which ones do you use, or your ISP, or the next DNS hop?
Re:Better Idea: (Score:5, Informative)
While you can decentralize DNS, you cannot decentralize IP address assignments.
DNS is just kind of a starting point for stupid US politicians because they don't realize that what ultimately matters is being able to access the IP, so they frequently target DNS for filters in their stupid proposed laws (e.g. sopa.) However after their attempts at DNS based filters fail, they'll eventually get the clue that they've been barking up the wrong tree, and then you'll be back where you started, only this time a return to the late 90's where all kinds of people would snap up whatever domain name they could with the intention of doing nothing other than parking on it with the intent of selling it for millions. That, and snatching up domain names when somebody doesn't catch their expiration, and then holding them for ransom. No, the current system where DNS has accountability against that kind of thing is preferred, in my opinion.
Chinese, Iranian, Russian, and Pakistani politicians have already realized that blocking DNS is ultimately fucking useless and do their blocking by either BGP route poisoning or massive IP blacklists. Russia wants control of ICANN so that this becomes easier for that consortium; namely they get to say who gets what IP addresses, which makes their filters much easier to establish and maintain.
It is rather sad just how technologically illiterate our politicians are compared to theirs, but on the upside it currently works in our favor, and indeed the world's favor, because their technological ineptitude leaves them unable to figure out how to censor proper, and for that reason alone I think it is probably better that the US Department of Commerce holds the keys as they do, unless something changes.
As for NSA spying, this can and will happen regardless of who holds the keys to ICANN, and regardless of whether the internet is censored. Snowden is NOT at any fault here - not by a long shot.
Re:Better Idea: (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing to add that the "lameness filter" wouldn't let me post in that post:
Prism appears to operate at the provider level, which means that so long as you actually have a functioning network, even if it is a censored one, you aren't going to harm prism in any way. So long as e.g. google, microsoft, and facebook provide access to the NSA, prism can do its magic. I think Russia knows this, but they're hoping to be able to catch the attention of politicians equally as ignorant as US politicians.
AC post below this one suggests that Snowden was paid to do this for example - it's nonsense, and I really hope this doesn't detract from the work he is doing in the eye of the otherwise uneducated public.
Re:Better Idea: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To paraphrase an old saying..."the US sucks, but it still sucks WAY less than everywhere else in the world".
I disagree vehemently with the NSA and other govt snooping actions of the US, but I fear it would be much worse and a huge clusterfuck if given over to the UN.
Besides, it isn't like anyone really believes the UN has true authority over anything or could manage anything like this correctly. I fear it would get worse than it is in so many ways.
Re: Better Idea: (Score:2)
There is no point to that. All ICANN does is provide a "phone book" service. And it gives the individual countries governments their own TLD first to assign as they please.
The only "policing" ICANN does is over who gets to have names in the "phone book". Powerful as that is, you can connect to all the services perfectly fine with just a "phone number" (IP address).
Every country is free to tell their telco to throw up whatever extra rules they want... Many block ALL sites not in their TLD and the big compan
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He who funds it controls it. Which nations do you trust to control it?
France is obviously out, because nobody who pays any attention to them at all was surprised that their reaction to the NSA Story was extreme outrage, and that two goddamn days later it was all over the internet that they were just as bad. The German government may be trustworthy, but nobody actually trusts them. Same with the Japanese. I trust southern democracies (like Brazil) to an extent, but they've all got major bones to pick with va
Re: (Score:3)
I think not only DNS but they should oversee the major internet carriers as they participate on the public internet as well.
Compromise by government is still compromise.