Does the Internet belong to one country?

[damian]

It is clear some of you don't understand how the internet works. Kiwigeo, good try - didn't work. I can't think of a simple analogy unfortunately.

Anyway, obfuscating your activity is trivial. VPN is a really obviouse tool and I am sure that if the Australian government actually does introduce it's silly filter offshore vpn hosts will prosper. There are so many caches nowdays that even if you killed all the top level servers dns would still chug along. There are national gateways and that is how china keeps control, but there are too many now in most western countries. I remember well when all our traffic went out through melbourne, that was 20 years ago.

Besides I thought obama's kill switch was only search engines, and the major ones for that matter ?

[kiwigeo]

It is clear some of you don't understand how the internet works. Kiwigeo, good try - didn't work. I can't think of a simple analogy unfortunately.

It's true I'm not an IT guru but I do know enough about the internet to know that the US is going to have a very hard time shutting down the internet outside it's borders. Correct me if I'm wrong but the internet was originally designed with the aim of creating a network that couldn't be taken down in it's entirety.

[caity]

Now try reading post #14 and tell me what you think of the aussie government attitude...

For the most part most countries are latch ons to what the US and Canada developed - the internet. If Australia is too cheap to develop their own in country network that doesn't rely on outside influence for it's access to the rest of the world then that's their problem not the US's.

I don't think it takes a genius to see why such a plan would be put in place... It's ridiculous and stupid to think they would try to turn off the internet on a whim as some are alluding to here. I know you all hate the US but come on folks think a bit. No more threatening than suspending air traffic during 9/11 or... when a volcano erupts... the stuff of conspiracies.

Dude....
Aussies are not cheap. We're just not that close to fascism that we need to control what our people can and cannot view on the internet. Honestly, if one was that desperate to find out terrorist information, they would find a way around firewalls (like that US kid did not too long ago), or use means other than the internet.
Also, in response to your belief it is "our" problem and "not the US's", the two countries have been tight allies since WWII, closer than either of us are to England. So if an issue in Australia were to arise, the US, due to it's alliance with us, would be caled in for help, as we have done fro the US (Sorry, where did most of your international support come from with the twin towers?)

[two fingers]

The US might be able to make it difficult for the internet to function 100% but I don't see how they could shut it down completely.

This from Wiki:

The Internet is a globally distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body. However, to maintain interoperability, all technical and policy aspects of the underlying core infrastructure and the principal name spaces are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), headquartered in Marina del Rey, California. ICANN is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters. Globally unified name spaces, in which names and numbers are uniquely assigned, are essential for the global reach of the Internet. ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the DNS root zone that lies at the heart of the domain name system. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet. On November 16, 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

The problem being bantered around is that the US, if needed, will shut down what they can if needed. Most countries have done little to establish their own networks that don't rely on the US's infrastructure - similar to GPS. No they can't shut it down completely but they can cause some serious slow downs - but that's not their problem.

[two fingers]

That you don't, its an assumption. I was married in the US of A and have a lot of fond memories as well as many friends there.

The point I was making is that some behave with amazing arrogance, an arrogance born out of past glories that have little if anything do with today.

If you don't have an ignorant hate for the US then you are in a minority in this country... so I apologise to you if that's the case...


What a load of rubbish! Do you not understand why a country would want to have the option of shutting down a potential threat? It has nothing to do with arrogance... Time and time again it has been shown the effectiveness of cyber attacks and the effect they have on a country. Any country's government that doesn't have a contingency plan in place are at best obtuse but probably simply stupid and or cheap...

[two fingers]

Dude....
Aussies are not cheap. We're just not that close to fascism that we need to control what our people can and cannot view on the internet. Honestly, if one was that desperate to find out terrorist information, they would find a way around firewalls (like that US kid did not too long ago), or use means other than the internet.
Also, in response to your belief it is "our" problem and "not the US's", the two countries have been tight allies since WWII, closer than either of us are to England. So if an issue in Australia were to arise, the US, due to it's alliance with us, would be caled in for help, as we have done fro the US (Sorry, where did most of your international support come from with the twin towers?)

I can't say that I've lived in a lot of countries but of the ones I've experienced Australia takes cheap to a level I've never seen before. It's a way of life here.

Are you serious! this has nothing to do with censorship! This has to do with cyber terrorism. The US is close to the top for least censorship prone countries on the planet! Most of the internet you down load originated in the US, but I digress...

An analogy I used in this thread has to do with GPS. The US put up all the satellites. The EU is now putting up their own... But if the US decides to alter the signal and all your GPS's no longer work that's your problem not theirs as everyone latched on to them - on the cheap. It's the same with the servers and infrastructure for the internet that exists in the US - it's the back bone of the internet and most countries have done nothing to alleviate this. Why should they worry about it? It's not their problem.

Tight allies! Try to say that to the person on the street. I have never seen such hatred for the US that is so unfounded than I have in australia. To the outsider you'd think the hatred was taught in school. Visions of little australians rocking back and forth chanting I hate america, I hate america...

[two fingers]

It's true I'm not an IT guru but I do know enough about the internet to know that the US is going to have a very hard time shutting down the internet outside it's borders. Correct me if I'm wrong but the internet was originally designed with the aim of creating a network that couldn't be taken down in it's entirety.

Bingo! The US doesn't want to shut down the internet. They simply want a plan in place to halt a potential catastrophic cyber attack. It's something every country should have in place... I can only think of three countries that might actually have such a plan: US, UK and Canada. Australia, hmmm maybe in about 10 years if at all.

[jimbur]

Does the following, taken from the ABC news site add anything to the conspiracy theories or even to this discussion?

WikiLeaks has built an information repository it thinks is foolproof. Instead of secret documents physically changing hands, they are anonymously sent to digital drop boxes and stored on servers around the world. Finally, they are posted on the WikiLeaks site.

Cheers,
Jim

[damian]

It's true I'm not an IT guru but I do know enough about the internet to know that the US is going to have a very hard time shutting down the internet outside it's borders. Correct me if I'm wrong but the internet was originally designed with the aim of creating a network that couldn't be taken down in it's entirety.

It's possible you misunderstood my comment. I was complimenting you on a good effort at explaining it, not questioning your understanding of it.

Unfortunately to properly understand why the internet is robust you have to understand tcp/ip, packet structure and routing protocols, encryption and dns for that matter. I don't know any simple way to explain all that. I guess that's why network administrators are amongst the highest paid of all IT professionals (I'm not one but I was a Unix sys admin for some years and understand the basics).

Ok try this:

You have a road network. Your at home and your sending out "cars" to some destination and they come back with parcels of information. You can block roads but your cars can find other ways around the blockages. Even if they put a road block on some critical point in the road network and it can't be bypassed and all cars are being searched before being let through you have several tools to hide stuff in the cars so it can't be found. You can also disguise your car as an ambulance or diplomatic vehicle. Also if some of your cars get stopped you have an infinite supply of them so you can send out more until enough come back to put your parcels of data together into a coherent document/picture/whatever.

That is (very badly) how tcp/ip works.

I just read the later comments. Australia was an early adopter/developer of internet. The origional was developed by the US military and expanded to a few US universities. Our academic institutions took it up early. As I said our first overseas link was to the us out of melbourne. I can't remember the years or the details. Anyway now the us is just a part of a world wide computer network linked by all sorts of devices from bluetooth to satellites. The US is not surprisingly still the largest user and has the largest network but truth is if the US suddenly ceased to exist the network would stay up and chug along quite happily. Mostly there would be some administrative changes. It is really NOT like GPS where the US made a signifigant capital expenditure and made that available to us all free.

And the obama proposal, keeping my analogy above, is bascially like turning off all your GPS navigators, and most people haveing no paper back up road maps.

Hope that helps.

[kiwigeo]

I guess that's why network administrators are amongst the highest paid of all IT professionals (I'm not one but I was a Unix sys admin for some years and understand the basics).

Wish they'd pay IT help desk people more..maybe then I'd get a straight answer when I ask them a question and maybe they wouldnt keep telling me to go upstairs and see my IT Manager whenever I give them a problem they cant solve (Im on an oil rig 200km off the WA coast....the only thing upstairs is a drill floor and a bunch of burly roughnecks).

Your car analogy pretty well describes TCP/IP for a layperson.

[damian]

There is a cear heirarchy in IT. Helpdesk is at the bottom, it's the job you get when you start. Next are programmers, they don't get paid as much as most others. Next is probably sys admins, then data base admins and at the top of the technical payscale are network admins, assuming they are good. CCIE's get the sort of salaries you associate with CEO's. This of course doesn't count sales people and managers and other non technical staff.

I was lucky. I stepped out of engineering for a few years and went straight to 3rd level support. Even then IT is a pretty yukky place to work. I've done many things over the years and eng is amongst the most rewarding, probably no. 1. For me anyway...

[jimbur]

If anyone wants a good read (if somewhat outdated) then Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll is excellent. It has spies from both sides, hippy astronomers, the internet, computer viruses, recipes for biscuits and is absolutely true.
Cheers,
Jim

[hughie]

What a load of rubbish! Do you not understand why a country would want to have the option of shutting down a potential threat? It has nothing to do with arrogance... Time and time again it has been shown the effectiveness of cyber attacks and the effect they have on a country. Any country's government that doesn't have a contingency plan in place are at best obtuse but probably simply stupid and or cheap..

The threat to a country like the USA is small as far as the establishment goes. The threat to the populace is far greater and of less consequence on the Government of the day other than voting power.

The key services have far more sophisticated security and tracking methods than most folk realize or imagine. I would be very ,very surprised if a successful attack was made on the USA. But this is not the place to discuss any details of any US security arrangements in regards to internet or anything else.

I do understand that they would have back up plan. Nor did I suggest other wise,my comments were directed at the individual who in the USA who is endeavouring to bring it about and his high handed attitude.That '' we'll shut it down goddammit, its our right.'' etc etc.That was the way it struck me at the time.

Tight allies! Try to say that to the person on the street. I have never seen such hatred for the US that is so unfounded than I have in Australia. To the outsider you'd think the hatred was taught in school. Visions of little Australians rocking back and forth chanting I hate America, I hate America...

International Arrivals-2010 Year-To-Date Analysis

We sure like to visit the place you say we hate, Hmm I guess your travel experiences in this matter to be different from mine. From my wandering about over seas for several years I bumped into some very serious anti US sentiment. I am not sure what part of Oz you live in as I have not seen it anything like it here at all.
Other than a certain ethnic group that seems to hate all, other than themselves.
__________________

[jimbur]

I gather the bill has now been passed.
cheers,
Jim

[snowyskiesau]

I gather the bill has now been passed.
cheers,
Jim

Apparently this power of cutting off communications by the president has existed since 1941.
The current bill adds a few restrictions to how the president can activate this power.