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."
Absolutley Not (Score:5, Insightful)
No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
To quote my main man on the C-Note [wikipedia.org]: "They would trade essential liberty in return for a little temporary safety deserve neither." The B-man was talking about firearms, but it goes for the Intartubes as well.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Informative)
To quote my main man on the C-Note [wikipedia.org]: "They would trade essential liberty in return for a little temporary safety deserve neither." The B-man was talking about firearms, but it goes for the Intartubes as well.
The correct quote is "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." [google.com] The quote is in the context of Massachusetts resisting the amendment of its laws by Parliament, and doesn't seem to have anything to do with gun control.
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:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Essential Liberty" is the sacrifice of many speech rights, including anonymity and unpleasant speech (which would be banned the moment the UN got involved).
Perhaps you mean that in the hypothetical situation Markoff is proposing, the benefit would be real and permanent, and the sacrifice not necessary; but that's a flight of fancy that most of us know is unrealistic.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
The UN? Please, take off the tin foil hat, step away from the keyboard, and prepare yourself for the bad news.
It's not the UN you have to fear. Far from it. It's the first local folks who don't like what you have to say.
Think smoking pot isn't a big deal? Most Americans don't. But if you boss can find out you said that... well, chilling effects are a bummer, dude.
Partner swapping? Amatuer fireworks? Liking big guns? Owning internet security tools? Taking apart the technology you "own"? Whistleblowing of any kind? Say, "my peanut-butter plant is filthy?" Yes, you had better fear the loss of anonymity. There are lots of people who don't want you to have it.
But the UN? Bitch, please.
It was overall a terrible, fear-mongering article. It reduced IPv6 to a single, rather inaccurate sentance.
OK, put your tin foil hat back on now. Live in fear of the wrong things, asshole. Fearing the UN is like waiting for the Care Bare invasion.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:4, Insightful)
The UN is definitely something to fear. It's not that the UN itself is some evil, calculating organization; it isn't. It's a bunch of bumbling diplomats. However, the UN is a way for people in power to try to push their power onto other, sovereign nations, and for corrupt politicians in sovereign nations to subvert the democratic process in those countries by pushing laws "required" by UN treaties, in violation of those countries' own laws and constitutions.
For instance, the UN is very big on gun control, and keeping guns out of the hands of civilians. After all, look what a great job keeping civilians disarmed is doing in Darfur. Trying to disarm the civilian population in the US, however, is a problem because of our Constitution (which is frequently misinterpreted). But by ceding some sovereignty to the UN, signing up to some global gun-ban treaty, and then saying we have to comply with it, our gun-grabbing politicians can try to get around our Constitution in their quest for power and control over us. After that, they'll get rid of the other inconvenient parts of the Bill of Rights they don't like, such as prohibitions on unreasonable search and seizure and freedom of speech.
The whole problem with the UN (besides the obsolete cold-war-era Security Council) is the idea that countries run by dictators and thugs get as much representation and respect as democratically-run first-world countries. This is how they wind up with things like the UN Human Rights Council being headed by Libya. Just the fact that that ever happened is a reason for any decent country to withdraw from the UN.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except there's no such thing as permanent safety. See, the safety is only as complete as the people in charge of making things safe are trustworthy. Creating safety requires giving people power, and power corrupts. Therefore, the people in charge of safety will be corrupt. Sure, the system may work for a while, but eventually a person that is very susceptible to corruption will be put in charge, and it will break down, probably quite spectacularly and quite quicky.
Re: (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
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now most bandwidth is lost to spammers, crackers and scammers.
Really? How much bandwidth does it take to run a cracking script? I'd bet most bandwidth is "lost" to peer-to-peer downloads.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:4, Informative)
Really? How much bandwidth does it take to run a cracking script? I'd bet most bandwidth is "lost" to peer-to-peer downloads.
I host a few servers at a local, regional ISP. I was out there the other day taking care of a power problem with the net ops, and he mentioned all the network upgrades, OC this, fiber that, and I asked him what was driving all the upgrades.
He didn't hesitate, even for a second. "Online Video!". Turns out that everybody is discovering sites like hulu.com [hulu.com], youtube.com [youtube.com], wtso.net [wtso.net], Netflix instant play [netflix.com], and on and on.
Yeah, Bit Torrent isn't anything to sneeze at. But the change is in the air, and my household is living proof. We moved to a nicer house (that cost less!) on the 1st of this month. First on our list was DSL service with a 3.0 Mb plan. Our dual-TV dish DVR? Sent back. We have no intention of bothering with cable.
The TV (we brought over only one) in the living room is only used for the Wii and the PS2. Everything else is done online, on a computer, or on my HTC Mogul [mobiletechreview.com] - awesome phone.
We really haven't missed the "normal" TV much at all.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"According to expert estimations the amount of spam in the global Internet traffic is much more than a half. While optimists consider it to be around 60% pessimists insist it is not less than 80%." [articles-about-spam.com]
"DDoS (i.e., brute-force flood-based attacks) have over the past 18 months consistently accounted for ~1-3% of all a [arbornetworks.com]
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one use peer to peer networks, for (some) legal purposes
Yeah, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I put "lost" in quotes because the bandwidth isn't really lost, it's just used. It's like claiming sections of the highway are "lost" because there are lots of cars on them. That's why we BUILT the highways. You could argue the opposite is true, they're wasted if we we AREN'T using them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
It is indeed correct, which by the way putting quotes around correct is not, that rights are not valuable if they go away when it becomes difficult to maintain them.
And that there is indeed a very important qualifier that was put in, that word being "essential" meaning it's not the unimportant liberties, but the essential ones.
Of course we don't have to blindly live by it, but we are sufficiently well off that we can.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Abso-fucking-lutely. Blind obedience and faith in anything is stupidity. That's why I abhor people who a) state something is the truth by referencing "doctrine" or b) state the laws are correct, simply because they are laws.
We should always use our own intelligence to evaluate these statements and come to our own conclusions about their value, or wisdom.
Do you not understand this particular catchphrase, or do you not understand why people use catchphrases?
This particular phrase is absolutely correct. When we have essential liberties that we have agreed amongst ourselves that we possess, and then in turn sacrifice these liberties (and the principles that created them) in order to provide greater security from threats both known and unknown, we have in fact, accomplished absolutely nothing.
That is what is meant by sacrificing "freedom" for "security" while receiving "neither". We lost freedom, and history has taught us (and will teach us again), that we never received the security we were looking for in the first place.
I agree that we should never blindly agree to statements like these, but the wisdom is in this particular catchphrase has been well debated and I would say is "tried and true".
The reason why we use this catchphrase is that is quicker to summarize our arguments by referring to it than to enter into a lengthy explanation (which I just did) of just what it means. You may not have understood the catchphrase (which was admittedly worded strangely), but it is your responsibility to determine what it meant if you really want to understand it. Otherwise it's just a language barrier.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, in my opinion the "gated community" metaphor fits perfectly: providing the illusion of security for a substantial sum without providing any actual benefit. It's not even giving up freedoms in return for safety, it's giving up freedoms in return for the illusion of safety.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the Americans will be all for it then.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not entirely true though.
We already have gated communities on the web. They're https sites.
I would say a second secure webspace in which trusted commerce can take place in addition to the existing web wouldn't be a bad thing. I would be willing to completely give up my anonymity when wanting to make a secure transaction. In fact I would be willing to give up my anonymity on the normal internet, but like that I *could* be anonymous if ever needed.
Hybridization seems like the key here.
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:No way in hell! (Score:5, Informative)
It's hilarious that you mention that. One of my clients lives in a gated community where the average home price is 3 million dollars, even by today's standards. HOA fees are about as much as rents for some cheap apartments. Gates, armed guards, 24 hour security, and constant surveillance on the streets.
Last night around 2am a group of people entered the community, broke into over a dozen cars on the streets, stole everything of value from them, AND stole three cars outright.
Where was the security? At the gates eating pizza and watching TV. Where was the surveillance footage of the cars entering? Those systems have not worked in over a year and it was just a "visual" deterrent. Where was the license plate numbers and inspection of the drivers licenses required by policy? Not performed on entry, as the guards barely looked at them before letting them in. Can't even recall who came in around 2am or what they may have looked like.
The illusion of safety here is not an opinion. It is a fact. All the hassle of having the guards and the costs of the HOA are apparently wasted in this community.
Yes, I think this a PERFECT example of what would happen in Secure Internet 2.0 :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
thank you for a very excellent example of an anecdote.
On the flip, I've experienced an increased security in gated communities. But obviously, ymmv.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you really sure about that? Was it your perception or was it actual security?
Security is really just a defensive state. It represents safety from the outside "world". A gated community can only have an increase in security if it actually provides additional barriers to damage or loss from outside individuals or actions.
I have lived both inside and outside of gated communities. In the last couple of years I
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Soft, chewy interiors. Not much else to say about gated communities, except that they sound like incredibly sterile, boring places to live.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:4, Insightful)
Others have explained why gated communities don't provide additional security. I believe they're correct. But even if gated communities were effective, they'd still be both wrong and worrisome: You can tell the degree of a society's progress or regression by examining the change in the number of gated communities.
Gated communities are a sign of a diseased society with a siege mentality. In Europe, the manors that started appearing in Late Antiquity (i.e., after the Roman Empire was in irreversible decline) were that era's gated communities: by building walls and becoming economically self-contained, petty landlords became more secure against the bandits of the day. (Our word "vandal" actually comes from the name of a tribe that sacked Rome.) The empire was increasingly unable to guarantee security for all, and so fomented an insular mentality that would stop the clock of progress until the Italian Renaissance.
Likewise, every gated community we build is a symbol of our giving up on collective security a bit. There's a reason you see gated communities in countries with high wealth disparities, like Mexico, Brazil, and the Middle Eastern nations: gated communities allow those inside to view the people outside as somewhat less than they are, which of course leads the inhabitants to adopt views and policies that further these views. In a way, are both the result and cause of policies that lead to further wealth inequality and eventually, complete societal collapse.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, tell me what kind of new internet we're talking about and then we can have an intelligent discussion about it. There's a lot that can be done without sacrificing anonymity and freedoms that would help make a more secure internet. One example might be to get sensitive transactions (like purchases or online banking) out of HTTP and out of your web browser, and into a more purpose-built protocol. This could eliminate important dangers like cross-site request forgery and cross-site scripting. I await what other examples people can suggest.
Re:No way in hell! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are dead right. Gated community is FUD/PR Spin machine running full tilt. First, lets look at the reasons that some might argue that the current Internet is a dangerous place?
Got those in your head? Don't forget social engineering as the number one threat to Internet security, and that it CANNOT be fixed with hardware other than removing the network cable from the back of user's computers.
Now, let us look at how a gated community might fix security issues:
-social engineering dangers? Nope
-Spam? Nope
-open WiFi APs at home? Nope
-DDoS? Nope, those are not end user issues. If an end user can reach a given service, their pc can be taken by a bot and used in a DDoS.
-Viruses? Nope, gated communities will not stop all, if any, attack vectors
So, quite initially, the benefits here are nil, null, void, empty, vapor... So what is the impetus to make such gated communities? To remove your privacy. Period. there is no other reason. ever.
How can the current Internet be made better? There are lots of ways. First large ISPs need to re-organize their networks to handle the traffic required of them. Decentralization is imperative to both remove DDoS dangers and to ensure that user's across town from you are not using the bandwidth that you would otherwise be using. Content on demand can not be served efficiently from a single data source. Current network designs are designed that way for financial reasons and not network functionality. If you think the current state of Internet infrastructure is fucked, you have only your large ISP's to blame. They did not, and ARE not planning for a network topology that will support safety or expected data throughput requirements.
Those that have been fighting DDoS attacks can tell you more. Gated networks won't stop the real problems. They will ONLY take your privacy for the facade of security.
Re: (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 Interne
Re: (Score:2)
Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
Whenever I read this kind of stuff I really don't think any of these people get what an "internet" is... Once more with feeling the internet is not a network; it is a network of networks.
Last time your home windows computer went down with a virus, my computer worked fine. Even with the incompetents we have in outsourced IT support, last time your corporate network collapsed under attack, mine didn't. The internet is the cess pool^W^W happy village square where we all meet together. Your own network is not the "internet" and you can run it any way you want; it won't influence the rest of the world. If you cut off the internet it by declaring "a gated community" as the article (you did read the article didn't you?) suggests, you are no longer part of the internet.
Anyone trying to build a "new" internet should be encouraged at the same time as given a gentle education in basic network theory. If it's any good, then enough people will join it that when other particular bits of the internet collapse, they can still continue with their own useful lives. We need this kind of thing. If someone could build a network for their own country which could be relied on for emergency calls and at the same time let me read slashdot that would make a real difference (no BT's "all IP" network doesn't count). Definitely it would have to have some priority mechanism so that my slashdot couldn't get in the way of your emergency stuff; however, there's no way that such a new network can be successful if it can't cope with being connected to the current internet. That would just be security through obscurity and uselessness. Like claiming a computer is secure because it's had concrete poured into it.
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
Last time your windows computer went down with a virus, I had to install a virus scanner for KMail, not because your viruses were in any way likely to infect my computer, but because there so many of the dammed things in my inbox that I needed something to filter them out so I could find my real mail amongst them.
And your infected Windows computer is the reason why my uninfectable Linux computer gets bombarded with so many ads for fake pills etc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the reason you get those ads for fake pills is that someone with antisocial tendencies is sending them to you using hijacked systems.
Let's not blame the wrong people for what is clearly a hostile act on the part of spammers and and the pimply losers who believe they've accomplished something because they've shit on our sidewalk. I'm referring to the botnet assholes, of
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the reason you get those ads for fake pills is that someone with antisocial tendencies is sending them to you using hijacked systems.
So you were robbed because a thief stole your stuff, and not because you left the door open?
The blame goes both ways. Of course botnets wouldn't exist without malware authors, but neither would they without that many Windows and IE vulnerabilities.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who was doing the same thing even before Winsock, I have to correct you.
It's true there were viruses in the wild before Windows. You either got one by downloading warez, or by rebooting with an infected floppy disk in the drive.
However the notion of getting a virus *simply by opening an email* was a ridiculous impossibility before MicroSoft made it reality with Outhouse. I used to get 5 or 6 inquiries about this a week - chain letters went from one clueless user to the next quite regularly - but
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Both of you have it wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been done before (AOL, Compuserve, etc.) (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the AOL system was pretty much what the op is suggesting--a gated, fee-driven system that is safe for the kids and spam-free.
The problem is that systems like AOL are inherently limited, with a corporate team that decides its content and direction from week to week.
The Internet is amazingly varied and dynamic by comparison and it's little wonder that AOLers eventually left to join the greater outside world.
Comparing a Net 2.0 to a gated community is an intriguing concept, but in reality it would probably be too self-limiting for people.
It's possible today to stay in your own backyard on the wild and woolly Net 1.0. Just don't publish your email address, or else change it whenever you start getting junk mail. A lot of unsophisticated users just use the email assigned to them by their broadband vendors anyway, xxxx@verizon.net for example, and whenever they move or switch services their addresses change, too.
Also, just stick to a few trusted web sites, don't browse promiscuously, and you'll be fine. But life will be boring.
Re:Absolutley Not (Score:5, Funny)
It is! And it is needed.
The current Internet is too hard to control. Just about anyone can get on and say anything. There is no class structure, no censorship, options for extracting money from users are limited and getting a cohesive message across to everyone who uses it is downright impossible.
What is needed is a tightly regulated Internet where only those with enough good wealth are able to control what is being said and payment is extracted in an easy and orderly fasion. One which all information is available to the right people who can use it to control the unruly mob and masses of the underclasses.
In the past couple centuries the ruling elites have been lax in their duties and the lower classes have risen, creating a "middle class" and fostering the wrongheaded idea that every man is equal. With a new Internet combined with other mass media such wrong ideas can be properly quashed.
It will also catch some pedophiles so it is for the children and anyone who doesn't want it to be this way is obviously a perverted child molester and unpatriotic coward.
Re:Absolutley Not (Score:4, Funny)
The Final Boss (Score:3, Funny)
A new internet? But I haven't even beaten the old one yet!
as old ben would say (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't deserve (and won't get) either.
Re:as old ben would say (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is alarmist, here are some quotes,
"Unless we're willing to rethink today's Internet," says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, "we're just waiting for a series of public catastrophes."
"If you're looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships streaming toward us on the horizon," Rick Wesson, the chief executive of Support Intelligence, a computer consulting firm, said recently.
We are going to get a new Internet, but incrementally. It will continue to be developed, which is what the Standford (and other) researchers are doing.
Re:as old ben would say (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, the internet is designed to avoid political intervention. So the logical next step is to further decentralise the net and promote wireless mesh networks.
And the worst argument of it all:
So lets abandon the free net because of Microsoft's security holes. Great idea.
In my opinion the French military should rather develop its own national operating system.
Re:as old ben would say (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Like what? What could be MORE vulnerable than a Microsoft operating system without a firewall?
As much as it sounds like a troll, you're correct. Most of the malware out there is for Windows.
But that's not the only factor. Stupid users are cross-platform. (Well, not so much on, say, OpenBSD or Haiku, but still.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's based on the WiFi network you are connected to. There are companies like Skyhook which create maps of WAPs, and uses that to find your location. Much more accurate than cell towers, much less than GPS.
Harden up (Score:5, Informative)
Fucking cry babies who literally want to trade liberty for security.
Re:Harden up (Score:5, Insightful)
No that is just plain wrong, don't support their lie in any way. They absolutely don't want to trade liberty for security, they want to trade 'your' liberty for 'their' control over you. Control over what you read or see, write or say, in any digital format. They have found that as a result of the internet, our voice is louder than theirs, that the majority view point now creates itself and dominates the minority view point that dominated mass media.
Want a more secure internet, simple step one no more plain modems, all modems should incorporate a hardware fire wall based upon open source software, open source so that the public can see what is going on. Step two, simply use more secure software, that tightens up on internet access and that is a simple as using a better operating system, again open source is forced as the public has a right to know what is going on in a very integral part of their digital lives, what is basically becoming an essential service, no more secrets and no more lies.
Re:Harden up (Score:4, Insightful)
The old power base is attempting to leash and control the new power base to their own ends. The young, creative talent has moved to the Internet; and the previous powerbase is populated with a docile, unproductive herd. And not realizing any functional leash on the Internet populace will again capture only the docile followers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Young creative talent? Yeah maybe in 1996 or so, but today the internet is just another avenue for established business. It might make you feel self-important that the "man" is after you but in reality there's no such thing going on. Also, please turn down your Rage Against the Machine. I can barely hear you.
Re:Harden up (Score:5, Informative)
The option to be anonymous is liberty.
Closed ballots and open democracy go hand in hand.
Re:Harden up (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy is not a freedom?
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There is no need to abandon privacy (Score:2, Troll)
If "they" came up with a security model that required giving up privacy, then "we" would just come up with another that did not. There is no technical reason that privacy cannot be maintained... if anything, better than it is now.
Users (Score:5, Insightful)
Build all the "new" Internets you want. As long as you have clueless users on your network, you'll have attack vectors.
Oh hey (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh hey (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of people with money and power who would like to make more money and get more power by controlling the flow of information.
Easily answered (Score:5, Funny)
Do we need a new internet? Yes, absolutely. My wife informs me that "the internet is down" probably two or three times a week on average.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you tell putting the plug back in fixes it?
my letter to the editor (Score:5, Insightful)
To the Editor:
Re "A New Internet? The Old One is Putting Us in Jeopardy," by John Markoff (Week in Review, Feb. 15, 2009):
Mr. Markoff both misstates and overstates the security problems faced by the Internet as currently designed.
He never uses the word "Windows," but the virus outbreaks he describes are almost entirely a Windows phenomenon, and due to the poor design of that operating system. Microsoft's apologists have been saying for years that this was only because Windows' market share made it the more attractive target. But Apple's share of the desktop market has skyrocketed recently to 15% without any outbreaks of viruses targeting the Macintosh. And Microsoft has never commanded more than about half of the server market; the other half runs open-source operating systems such as Linux (used by Google) and FreeBSD (Yahoo), on which viruses are essentially unknown.
Markoff says it's hard to prove your identity on the internet, and proposes government regulation as a solution. But many people have been proving their identities for years now using proven technologies like public-key cryptography. The U.S. government played a negative role in the development of these technologies by attempting to regulate their distribution through export-control regulations originally intended for munitions.
NO. (Score:4, Insightful)
the success of internet is based on its freedom and anonymity.
Absolutely! (Score:2, Funny)
I, Mr. Anonymous Coward, hereby give up my anonymity. Now excuse me while I browse fake porn/warez malware sites with unpatched IE6 - after all, I am now safe!
Gated community? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (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 t
Sliding down.... (Score:2)
From the summary : "users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety".
*gets out clue by four* NO NO NO NO NO! *WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM*
Quote : "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
Listen...
Even if at first this New Improved Internet worked the way these fools said it should, you can have a pretty sure bet that,
human nature being human nature, a lot of the so-called "bad
Short Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
Long Answer (Score:4, Funny)
Nooooooooooooooooo.
Yeah, anonymity on the internet is broken. (Score:3, Insightful)
> ...asking whether the Internet is so broken it needs to be replaced.
Yeah, I agree. Anonymity on the internet is completely broken. It is trivial for law enforcement to get a subpoena to force websites to reveal the IP addresses of users, and also trival for law enforcement to get a subpoena to force ISPs to reveal who had that IP address at a given moment in time. Granted, there are ways to make sure that the IP address you are using can't be traced to you, but those methods are kind of a pain in the ass.
> ...where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety
WTF? Any rearchitecting of the internet needs to have subpoena-proof absolute anonymity built in from the beginning. This "proposal" is like suggesting we rearchitect transportation to make sure that vehicle occupants receive no shelter from the weather.
Hmm, here's some food for though... (Score:2, Funny)
I propose the new internet be named the patriot net.
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
600 people every year manage to defeat themselves and get killed by gun accidents
Yes, and over 40,000 in car accidents, 3500 in swimming pools. Where are cars and swimming pools mentioned in the constitution? It seems like it would be a lot less work and more useful to ban them first.
Cookies! (Score:3, Funny)
bring back my internets (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course no-one will use the new internet due to lack of porn and free warezes and advertisements. Part of the appeal and success of the original internet is largely due to lack of accountability, and the ability to share ones own sick fetishes with the world completely anonymously.
Not to mention the target your painting on your forehead.
I mean seriously if
Windows, not the Internet. (Score:2)
Windows, not the internet created the legions of Spammers, botnets and virii. In the Unix world, we closed the SMTP relays. Yet the Windows bots still swarm. Now. I am not saying that in the Unix world, we would be completely free of security vulnerabilities. There would still be hackers and spammers. But they would no6t be as widespread a problem. The proliferation of Spam has been directly attributed to the rise off Windows bots. Get rid of Windows, you get rid of the problem.
The other problem is the DMCA
Totalitarian states (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
If we cant make the comparitively tiny step of moving from ipv4 to ipv6 I think its nigh impossible to move to "a new internet".
I think Ill trust Benjamin Franklin (Score:4, Insightful)
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Ben Franklin 1775.
If I have a choice between the people who gave us Echelon, Gitmo, Abu Grahib, DCMA, COPA, and failed to stop 9/11 versus virsuses and spyware...Ill take the viruses and spyware. I can protect myself from viruses and spyware much easier than I can protect myself from encroachment upon my liberty.
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.
nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety
so I'll be safer by exposing myself?
Of course we do. (Score:5, Insightful)
The new bourgeois world order demands it.
There is nothing more subversive and abhorrent to the owning/ruling classes than this peer-to-peer network, on which nobody can know you're a dog.
That the smallest pipsqueak running Apache can pass for the largest media conglomerate, oh! the humanity!
What is needs is a strict pay-as-you-go, one way network that will feed what the big media conglomerate want to the masses, in which nothing negative (to the owning classes) can travel. A virtual Disneyland(TM) where everything (appears) nice so that the masses can be fond of the status-quo.
Fine! (Score:4, Funny)
It isn't broken (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet itself isn't broken, not by a long shot. What's broken are certain applications that run across it.
And even then whether they're broken is arguable. Take SMTP for instance. One of the big complaints seems to be that SMTP doesn't make any guarantees that the sender is who they claim to be. My response to that is "And?". The USPS doesn't make any such guarantee about physical mail either, and we get along just fine anyway. It's just acknowledged that the identity of the sender isn't determined by the return address they put on the envelope, but by the claims in the letter inside and even those claims have to be verified independently of the Post Office. And when people are naive enough to believe any important letter just because it claims to be from someone without actually contacting that someone to verify it, we laugh at them. So when people say "I got an e-mail claiming to be from Bank of America and it was fake!", why don't we laugh at them and go "Well, YES! When the e-mail said there was a problem, why didn't you call BoA directly and ask about it?".
Same for Web browsers and web sites, and dozens of other applications. People want the transport layer to substitute for their own judgement and common sense. The Internet doesn't do that, any more than UPS or the USPS do. We don't need a replacement for them, do we?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, we do. I think it's something called the internet. I'm not so sure about it, but so far people have been saying great things. . . .
Moving the other way (Score:3)
Actually most of the problems on the internet come from to much controll, not to little controll. The 2 big problems are net neutrality and privacy. Both are in danger because companies are able to record information like your IP-Address.
So if you want to make a new Internet, get rid of source IP-Addresses. Make the router aware of connections.
Re:Privacy vs. Anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)
This so-called new Internet isn't about privacy as it is criminalizing bad behavior. So, you get to face charges when your machine gets a virus and now you have to prove that it really wasn't your fault.
Are you ready to handle that? When your car or your gun gets stolen, you can report it. Then you're off the hook if someone commits a crime with it after you report the incident. Most folks won't be able to tell when their computer gets owned in a botnet. Most people would rather quit the Internet forever than risk criminal prosecution over something they don't really understand or have any confidence in managing.
Re: (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.
If you want a serious answer... (Score:5, Insightful)
It has long been recognized by the courts that without the ability to "speak" (communicate) to the public anonymously, the whole concept of "freedom of speech" would be a joke.
It is necessary for proper political debate to be able to express one's views without fear of repercussion. If anonymity were outlawed or otherwise prevented, people would NOT be able to express their views without others knowing who they are... and potentially threatening them, or their wellbeing, or their employment, or their families...
It all fits together. But truly, without anonymity, freedom of speech would not last.
Keep in mind that the "Federalist Papers", and other important publications of information about the formation of our country, and the war of independence, were published anonymously or under pseudonyms. If they had not been, surely the people who wrote such things (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, etc.) would have been harassed, arrested, or even killed.
Re: (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
Re:Yes we do. All systems become antiquated. (Score:5, Informative)
The people working on core Internet protocols have known that these things have problems for a long time. This article doesn't contribute anything to the conversation. Microsoft themselves could contribute a lot to the problem of an "insecure Internet" if they just fixed their f'ing OS.
Re:We need a balance (Score:4, Insightful)
Public key cryptography can be used to assert identity in an otherwise anonymous communication medium. Anonymity cannot, however, be layered on top of an attributed communication medium.
Re: (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 T