Do We Need a New Internet? 690
Richard.Tao and a number of other readers sent in a NYTimes piece by John Markoff asking whether the Internet is so broken it needs to be replaced. "...[T]here is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over. What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a 'gated community' where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there." A less alarmist reaction to the question was blogged by David Akin: "If you build a new Internet and you want me to get a license to drive on it, sorry. I'm hanging out here in v.1."
Short Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
The Interent is not a 'place'. (Score:4, Interesting)
You cant "go" there.
The Internet is a communications network. I happens to be a "the world's" communications network, more or less.
Just like in the real world, you are (mostly) anonymous as long as you chose. Just like in the world you can choose what information you want to send, and what information you want to request (Notwithstanding the tendency of certain mainstream operating systems to make some of those choices for you)
Just like in the world, there are certain networks which are connected to the Internet in a restricted way (compare to 'gated communities'). To communicate with them, you may need some form of credential (password, public key, etc).
The Internet as it exists today is an entirely different network than it was even just 10 years ago. Its continuously being 'rebuilt'.
Also, there are many 'private' networks that are built on top of the Internet as it currently stands.
Basically, this is never going to happen, and yet is already is happening, it's just hard to see for the average clueless moron.
It's been done (Score:5, Interesting)
It was called AOL, and it didn't work. It became, in fact, what Congressional investigators called "a magnet for pedophiles."
This isn't about safety. It's about control. Control of piracy, control of political agitation, and control of the truth. For all its faults, the net has created a populace that at least has the opportunity to be far better informed about the real world than our parents' generation.
Totalitarian states (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Privacy vs. Anonymity (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone else might hold back a bit on the truth or the vitriol, but back their comment with their reputation.
I think there is room in the world for both.
Reality says otherwise. Fight it. (Score:-1, Interesting)
Corporate and University intranets are already like this. There is no anonymity, privacy, right to use the facilities owned by all and everything is monitored. Prisons are like that too, but no safety is gained. It is your rights that protect you from abuse. No one gives these rights up, they are taken by force. It would be nice if these non free networks protected the rest of us from the Windows cesspool but we are all threatened as by the botnets that fester there, much as we are all threatened by enslaved people in places like China. The lack of freedom and dignity is exactly what makes the world dangerous.
Fight for your network freedom as if your free press and all your other rights depended on it, because they do. The rest of your freedom and safety fall with your ability to share with and learn from your neighbors.
ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
This is simply a horrendous idea that certainly has no place. It is basically seems to be a ploy of those who long for a tolitarian police state to get their way. This is a very tpical pattern that we see with shutting down an open society and create a police state, create fear and some horrendous problem, creating a reaction and then you can get people to demand a solution, offer them your solution which is taking away their freedom. You can basically get people to beg you to enslave them. The reason they want to do this is to gain greater control and mastery over the people and keep them from exercising control over their lives and government. They want to be able to monitor what everyone says and does, so they can then punish those who are saying things which run contrary to their agenda or who are advocating for democratic change. To stay in power indefinitely a tolitarian state needs to supress all dissent. Getting rid of privacy is the first step on the road to totalitarianism since to supress dissent they need to know who has what opinions and views so they can attack and punish them. They want to supress views and opinions as well, and want to manipulate and control information to psychologically manipulate the population by with-holding information and providing propoganda which manipulates people to support whatever objective they wish or behave in the way they please. Yo can bet that the desire to prohibit for instance pornography as a psychological and social engineering purpose, for instance.
The internet is just fine the way it is. No censorship should be allowed and anonymity should be a basic right. Only with such rights can free speech exist. There can be no free speech without anonymity since they can suppress and attack those who hold opinions they do not like.
Sure with how things are now there are spam messages in my mail box but I would rather have that and choose to opt in for a filter in my own software, than to have some mass surviellance scheme. I also think that government and the big brother nanny state poses far greater risk to our children coming from the tolitarian terror state that emerges from this than anything they will see on the internet. Those who give up their liberty for so called safety will be creating out of the government a much worse menace than anything it was supposed to protect them against.
The main thing that needs to be addressed with the internet has nothing to do with increasing surviellance or reducing privacy. There needs to be more use of SSL and there needs to be secure encrypted BGP and DNS to make sure that routing tables cannot be hacked.
It makes me quite angry that after we have fought so hard as a country to secure our liberties from a tolitarian oppressive government prying into our lives and deciding what we should look at, that we have people who are actively trying to undo these hard won liberties and turn the country into a totalitarian nightmare where people live in fear of an oppressive and tyrannical government, like china.
"Those who give up essential liberty for safety will deserve and shall get neither" -Benjamin Franklin
Needs a different form of routing (Score:3, Interesting)
What we really need is a return to bang-path routing. Everything after there was just downhill. Hard to use for newbies and not terribly hard for anyone with a clue.
And if the net was slow, you might actually be able to do something about it, not just hope your upstream got a freaking clue.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Interesting)
What permanent safety are you talking about? Do you really expect that this new 'gated community white-bread-people-only internets' would not be hacked in 5 minutes by some pimply-faced 14-year-old smartass with a chip on his shoulders and a few 1337 h4x0r t00lz?
Understand that network security theory holds that is no such thing as security that cannot be broken.
Re:Privacy vs. Anonymity (Score:3, Interesting)
There have been several occassions here on Slashdot where I've made posts giving information that I didn't want other people to know I was giving.
For example, I might not want my employer to see that I'm on Slashdot saying, "Password security at my current employer sucks," or something like that. Unless you know who my current employer is, the information is useless, but I don't want to leave it up to them to make that connection.
Besides stuff like that, I just don't want everybody I know to have full access to everything I do online. IRL, I may not want my coworkers to know how I spend my weekends. There's no IRL Google, so as long as I don't tell them, they can't really find out. If I don't want them to know how I spend my time online, the easiest way to do that is by using a psuedonym they don't know of.
I don't do anything illegal. I don't "pirate" music/video games/movies or anything like that. I don't troll. I'm just a very private person, and I don't want people to know anything about me unless I feel like telling them.
Re:Oh hey (Score:2, Interesting)
Article is full of it. (Score:1, Interesting)
The article talks about Conficker, a worm that ONLY affects Windows machines. I'm not advocating that everybody switch to Linux, but it's a bit of a stretch to go from "worm that targets Windows" to "internet needs to be replaced". If Microsoft started making software that was actually secure, we wouldn't be worrying about things like Conficker, would we?
What really caught my attention though was the second page of the article. The writer starts talking about IPv6 like it's going to solve all of our internet security problems. Here's a hint for you: it won't.
Clearly, John Markoff (the article author) has either not done any research into the subject matter he presents, or this is alarmist journalism at its "finest". Pay no attention to this utter shit.
Re:as old ben would say (Score:2, Interesting)
Like what? What could be MORE vulnerable than a Microsoft operating system without a firewall?
Maybe if people and companies paid more attention to their network configuration, and configured their network in such a way as to protect hosts on the outside from exploited hosts on the inside, we would have a much cleaner internet in general.
It doesn't have to be about OS if you take the necessary steps to not only scan and protect yourself from the inbound traffic, but also paid attention to the outbound traffic.
Warning: Known sockpuppet/troll (Score:2, Interesting)
User [slashdot.org] maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts [slashdot.org] on Slashdot.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:3, Interesting)
FTFY. The general populace doesn't give a damn, they'll just follow the rest of the sheep.
That's nice, but the sheep are stationary. The sheep like the status quo.
Nothing will change without a whole lot of work from ISPs replacing technologies with totally new ones.
There's very little financial incentive for ISPs to do that, and the major ISPs are controlled by greed more than anything.
The internet actually has an immediate need for IPv6 as well... what does the adoption there look like?
Changing the internet isn't something the public will themselves do, they simply don't have the knowledge or the skills to propose let-alone get the changes that need to be made in place.
When their browsers start breaking, as a result of ISPs trying to push a "new internet", the public WILL actively oppose (by cancelling their internet subscription, because of the fact they can't get to their favorite web sites).
Re:shit (Score:1, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No way in hell! (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is precisely why ISPs would want it. Right now most bandwidth is lost to spammers, crackers and scammers. Being able to provide more bandwidth for the same money and be able to provide a degree of safety, has a value.
The bigger issue is what the cost of doing the work versus the rewards later on.
Re:Gated community? (Score:3, Interesting)
Turning on the wayback machine.. Before they became ISP's for the real internet.. AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve were private networks with their own content, and controls. Obviously they couldn't provide what the internet now does.
To address the issue of a new internet.. As long as the old one stays, why not ? .. just as there are different morals and cultures all over the planet .. example Utah.. Why not make a separate net where people from Utah could be happy ? .. In fact I think Utah would be the place to find people to design this new squeeky clean separate internet... after it's built, then I don't have to listen to people whine about protecting their kids..
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that would be MS's fault. Whenever you flatten the learning curve you make it more accessible with less effort. That sounds nice in premise, but the problem is that because people don't have to put in the effort to learn how to do things they lack the skills to keep up. Leaving a huge number of people that don't even know if they have anti-virus software installed and running. Moreover they don't appreciate the technical skills either.
You saw what happened in Jurassic park. Same deal except fewer scientists and more calls for ass and shaved pussy.
How many people do you run into that use a *NIX CLI and are that kind of incompetent? I'm guessing a number in the range of 0 to 1.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:4, Interesting)
Splitting the internet might not be such a bad idea.
When you want anonymity, use Tor or I2P.
When you don't, get a trustworthy CA to issue you a personal certificate.
Also acceptable to me would be creating a new internet that requires passing a basic intelligence test to use.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh crap... here we go again with the Windows does not equals viruses BS. A someone who has been building and repairing and selling the tings since the old days when folks used cd-rom drives as coffee cup holders, please allow me to enlighten you. Are you ready?
LOL. Just a little sarcasm there :)
Seriously though, your argument basically boils down to the good ol' MarketShare Argument(tm). Windows has received the most attention from the malware developers simply because it is the largest market. I won't argue that you are wrong though. You are right. The presence of Windows specific malware and PEBKAC create a tornado of bullshit. The IT staff around the world constantly have to clear the rubble and start over.
However, don't overlook that Microsoft DOES HAVE SOME RESPONSIBILITY in all this mess. They are the ones that know their users are stupid and are tasty looking sheep to the rest of the world. You just cannot excuse them outright for creating the trailer parks of an Operating System.
There are quite a bit of bugs and design flaws in the various MS operating systems that could have saved us a lot of grief if they were corrected sooner. I would not give a pass to the corporate culture and design paradigms up at Redmond that quickly.
So I will completely agree that the users themselves must take the lion's share of the responsibility, but let's not say that MS has none at all. If anything just qualify your statement by saying it's 90/10 or even 95/5.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:1, Interesting)
When I worked at The Planet in Dallas, the 10Gb/s we watched moving in and out had (I believe) 60% of the packets as game communication traffic, and somewhere on the order of 80% of the bandwidth was e-mail. Those stats were (I believe) measured in a bi-directional fashion.
Their abuse department was aggressive as hell about spammers (however, in 80,000 servers good luck catching them all), but I'd wager 50-60% of that 80% was spam going off internet-wide averages at the time (4 years ago now). That would mean that approximately 40-50% of their total bandwidth was probably chewed up by spammers inbound and outbound, or roughly 4-5Gb/s. That's a shit ton of bandwidth when you're talking about a connection to/from the internet, not just within a network.
Crackers may not eat much bandwidth, but spammers/scammers sure as hell do.
Re:I can has Multiprotocol Label Switching? (Score:3, Interesting)
What exactly are you proposing? What changes in existing APIs and protocols would be required to implement your proposal?
Obviously, we need to be able to freely specify the destination address! And the source address already cannot vary much: that's what egress filtering [wikipedia.org] is for. Sure, you can give your outbound packets any source IP you want, but unless source IP matches your ISP's records, your packets won't be forwarded to the larger internet.
What benefit does your circuit-switched proposal give us that TCP doesn't?
Re:No way in hell! (Score:3, Interesting)
On the contrary, it is the article that is a rambling screed. It's not much different than saying we should rip up and replace the highway system because robbers use it.
The article fingers Conficker as a reason. The Internet is merely transportation, the real problem with Conficker is Windows. A provably bug-free, secure OS would stop much of that sort of thing.
Where the article really gives itself away is the paragraph about law enforcement finding anonymity "vexing". Like city streets, the Internet is NOT run for the benefit of law enforcement. Catching terrorists is all very fine, but where does it stop? Can you just see the MAFIAA eagerly suing thousands of new innocent victims? Because if anyone thinks this will improve their accuracy, think again. And worse, what about the potential for abuse of police powers to silence critics and opponents? And, there are various rules and laws about encryption intended to keep people from using it so law enforcement doesn't have to worry about trying to crack it. If the goal is a more secure network, this has backfired, because the methods for improving security need encryption.
Lastly, the article brings up the problem of proving identity, as if nothing has ever been done about that. Apparently, the author has never heard of the Web of Trust or public key encryption. Merely removing laws against encryption would help greatly.
Perhaps the worry is about the potential for DNS corruption, as is allegedly possible via cache poisoning. There are ways to deal with that problem, but maybe a new improved Internet would be the best way. A pity the article didn't explain that.
Here's a nice tip for you... (Score:2, Interesting)
Invest all the money you'd invest into the new internet into improving the OpenBSD firewall (incoming and outgoing), installer and mandatory access controls, Wine, X's DRI and a next-gen 3D game engine with insane powertools and not only would you save a shitload of money on the long run, you wouldn't even have to start over with internet v.3 because you wouldn't need any.
Kthnxbye. Grow some brains.