Australia To Pass Bill Providing Backdoors Into Encrypted Devices, Communications (theregister.co.uk) 168
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The Australian government has scheduled its "not-a-backdoor" crypto-busting bill to land in parliament in the spring session, and we still don't know what will be in it. The legislation is included in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's schedule of proposed laws to be debated from today (13 August) all the way into December. All we know, however, is what's already on the public record: a speech by Minister for Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Angus Taylor in June, and the following from the digest of bills for the spring session: "Implement measures to address the impact of encrypted communications and devices on national security and law enforcement investigations. The bill provides a framework for agencies to work with the private sector so that law enforcement can adapt to the increasingly complex online environment. The bill requires both domestic and foreign companies supplying services to Australia to provide greater assistance to agencies."
Apart from the dodgy technological sophistry involved, this belief somewhat contradicts what Angus Taylor said in June (our only contemporary reference to what the government has in mind). "We need access to digital networks and devices, and to the data on them, when there are reasonable grounds to do so," he said (emphasis added). If this accurately reflects the purpose of the legislation, then the Australian government wants access to the networks, not just the devices. It wants a break-in that will work on networks, if law enforcement demands it, and that takes us back to the "government wants a backdoor" problem. And it remains clear that the government's magical thinking remains in place: having no idea how to achieve the impossible, it wants the industry to cover for it under the guise of "greater assistance to agencies."
Apart from the dodgy technological sophistry involved, this belief somewhat contradicts what Angus Taylor said in June (our only contemporary reference to what the government has in mind). "We need access to digital networks and devices, and to the data on them, when there are reasonable grounds to do so," he said (emphasis added). If this accurately reflects the purpose of the legislation, then the Australian government wants access to the networks, not just the devices. It wants a break-in that will work on networks, if law enforcement demands it, and that takes us back to the "government wants a backdoor" problem. And it remains clear that the government's magical thinking remains in place: having no idea how to achieve the impossible, it wants the industry to cover for it under the guise of "greater assistance to agencies."
Open source crypto to the rescue (Score:5, Insightful)
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There will be scripts that will setup VPNs, crypto social networks, encrypted devices with no backdoor.
The last one will be illegal, and thus a tiny niche thing, and others don't mater. All they have to do is mandate a way for the device to capture data before it enters your lovely VPN and crypted social networks. You type it, the devices says, "Here you go AU!", and then passes it along to your crypted social network. All the encryption in the world does no good. And yes, that is a horrible horrible idea for the reasons we all know, but that makes no difference to the law.
That is exactly where the road
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That will last about a week, until somebody important wants to buy some electronics and finds out they can't, because Australia only has niche devices.
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Unless said things are made illegal.
If unbreakable encryption is illegal then ISPs can tell law enforcement of anyone using it on their networks. They don't need to be able to see whats inside to know you're using it.
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Wrong. The only real way to identify crypto not in line with demented laws is to try and break it.
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No, you're wrong... because you are confusing how crypto works TODAY with how they COULD legislate it. "Breakable crypto" can be made easily identifiable in the datastream, vs "unbreakable". Its a very trivial thing to mandate actually, if they wanted to.
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Have a look into the research literature before you claim complete nonsense, will you?
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It is actually completely trivial to do so: Just layer things, i.e. put a layer of "breakable" over a layer of unbreakable and only breaking the breakable layer will tell you what is really there. More complex schemes exist, but there are hard proofs that breaking the breakable layer is necessary to find out what is underneath it as long as the breakable layer still offers some real protection. No other possibility unless you make the breakable layer so weak that basically anybody can get in. That is clearl
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Even easier: Put that breakable crypto on top of non-breakable crypto and you have the signature in place. There are no effective countermeasures for this and the only way to detect it is to break the breakable crypto. As that still needs to require real effort, it is not a viable option.
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If unbreakable encryption is illegal then ISPs can tell law enforcement of anyone using it on their networks.
Only against low hanging fruit making no attempt to mask the fact encrypted communication is taking place.
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Most automated steganography is very easily detectable and/or defeatable by automated tools - even the simple act of compression and decompression of the data can defeat a lot of stenographic techniques. And if you made it open source, as you propose, it would also likely be extremely easy to detect and defeat. Making your plan work would require some kind of revolutionary discovery in steganography that gave it the same mathematical protections encryption.
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One very simple steganographic technique that comes to mind that I do not think would be feasible for computers, or anyone, to detect would be hiding the data in the rightmost few decimal places of each x and y coordinate, each extending some number of digits past the decimal point so that alterations are not visually distinguishable. The hidden data, in turn, can be encrypted using whatever unbreakable encryption is desired. Unless you knew in advance that a particular svg image was using this techniq
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Its not that simple. You don't need to just create the technique, you also need to create a way that recieving programs can detect that the technique is being used. You also need to have a huge number of techniques to avoid behavioural and anomaly detection algorithms (it is pretty trivial to spot a pair of communicators who do nothing except shuffle SVG images all day, this would set off already-existing behavioural security alarms in any network monitoring package that exists today).
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Obviously, this technique is very low bandwidth, but its as fucking undetectable as shit.
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VPNs and Tor are illegal in China, but also widely used.
They are not easy to detect either, even with their great firewall and full cooperation of the ISPs. For example, people host the VPNs and Tor proxies in the Microsoft Azure cloud so that the connections are indistinguishable for millions of others to secure web sites, streaming platforms, apps and games.
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*SIGH*
Again, the reason this is not easy to detect, *is because other unbreakable encryption is legal, and you can't tell one encryption from another*. You can't look at a stream of HTTPS bytes and know if it is a VPN tunnel or other, non-VPN traffic - its impossible because the encyryption is not breakable.
IF HOWEVER all encryption HAD to use flagged and breakable algorithms, this would no longer be the case. Any encrypted session that was using an unflagged algorithm would easily be detected during negoti
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But even China isn't crazy enough to even try that. They still use HTTPS for secure web site connections, for example.
In practice they know they can't really stop it, what they actually want is the ability to throw charges at anyone they catch using it.
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Well, Australia is talking about doing it. That is exactly what this article is about, making unbreakable encryption illegal.
RTFA.
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They only need enough backdoors to view the contents of your screen, listen to the microphone and speaker output. How you stream data to your phone doesn't matter.
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You realize that this means that speaking in a language that they don't know (or have a convenient translator for) would be illegal under this law... since they don't have any backdoor way to know what is being said.
You mean Welsh, right?
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Utter and complete IDIOCY. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Didn't someone tell the AU government that they were asking the impossible with something like "you can't change the laws of physics" to which the Aussies replied "The only law we follow is Australian law"?
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Yes,
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/201... [gizmodo.com.au]
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They can pass all the legislation they want, it will NOT change reality. 'Backdooring' encryption of ANY kind RUINS it. Proper encryption CANNOT be broken easily, if it can then it's garbage.
the laws don't require or request any such backdoor or breaking of encryption. What they appear to require is companies to provide what information they already have and the ability to force/compel them to comply.
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so that things like hacks and remote surveillance can take place
Sure. So those things will be that much easier for criminals to do to whoever they want. Great fucking idea.
AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Sorry, sorry.. (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry I mean, AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAahahahahahahahhahaAHAHHAHA!!!hah haha heh. Oh fuck they're serious.... AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
XYZthing* (Score:5, Insightful)
*This product is not available in Australia.
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*This product is not officially available in Australia.
FTFY. We haven't cared about what was available for many years, availability never stopped us.
The real situation (Score:5, Insightful)
This story says 'Australia to pass bill'. No, the bill is scheduled for debate and the government will hope to pass a bill, but they have a weak majority. It's likely to be contentious, I would not bet on it passing at all.
Secondly, there's the implication of a encryption backdoor. This is lifted from the TFA which is an opinion piece. So far the only real source is a political speech made by Angus Taylor (minister for law enforcement and cyber security) in June [homeaffairs.gov.au]. The Register (TFA) implies encryption backdoor, despite the minister's own words ("This Government is committed to no 'backdoors' ... We simply don’t need to weaken encryption in order to get what we need.").
That said, the TFA is right to be concerned because elsewhere Taylor says "We need access to digital networks and devices, and to the data on them", which does imply an attack on encryption. Now, I'm no fan of our current government, or regressive right-wing government in general, but I have to say, the speech demonstrates a fair bit more understanding than previous efforts in Australia, the UK and recently the US, aimed squarely at encryption. There's only one group arguing for golden keys, and that's the spooks. If a government listens to spooks *and* industry, they usually come to understand why it's not practical. Angus comes out and says industry has moved towards encryption, and that's good, that tech giants oppose weakening encryption, and that's not what they government wants to do. He spends more time talking about that, than the clumsily worded line that implies he's lying in all the other bits.
I find myself in the unlikely position of defending the government in this narrow sense because miscategorising their position makes it harder to present a reasoned opposition when it is needed.
The Register has, I think, the right of the real goal here. To ensure that end devices are breakable. Of course they dog whistle about phones shipping with 'root kits', but before we all get hysterical... this is what law enforcement already does. When they nab crooks, they break into their phones. I suppose if I was an American I'd be worried because it's pretty clear the US gov will want to systematically break into everyone's phone when they enter the country... but most of the industrialised world isn't there yet. We all worry about law enforcement overreach, we all know breaking or weakening encryption is impractical, regardless of what any one nation state desires (barring nuclear options available to systems like China's GFW).
There are, however, probably some reasonable cases when you want law enforcement to be able to break into stuff. I don't know where the line is, I guess we'll be worrying about this for decades but it'd be nice if it wasn't categorised as a binary proposition. We get enough of that in politics.
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That's true, but intelligence agencies and law enforcement are entirely different silos. The secret methods of the former aren't available to the latter. Well, until it means there's an exploitable back door which happens to get commercialised and then sold to regular law enforcement. Intelligence services aren't usually staffed by idiots, so they generally keep a lid on things. As Snowden showed, they can be pretty damn effective...
For me, I'm not worried about what spooks do*. They're not interested in me
We beat web censorship, unlike UK (Score:3)
Took a huge battle. Both Labor and Liberals (conservatives) were for it. But in the end the huge backlash won.
That said, Labor will agree with any government moves on security. Tough on terror. Labor will have the worst aspects watered down, but will not disagree.
You see, they have been invited to top secret security briefings in top secret rooms in which top secret people gravely discuss vague threats. Works every time.
There has been steady increase in the power of security forces at the expense of ou
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Yeah look, you might be right in the end. We've seen it before as you say.
That said, what we *know* so far is only a speech and that wasn't a speech full of stupid. Sure it was full of dog whistling on crime, because that's what the Coalition does, it is a fear machine. It specifically acknowledges the views of the tech sector, and specifically said they don't intended to backdoor encryption.
Of course we shall soon see when the bill arrives.
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>"That said, the TFA is right to be concerned because elsewhere Taylor says "We need access to digital networks and devices, and to the data on them", which does imply an attack on encryption. Now, I'm no fan of our current government, or regressive right-wing government in general, but "
I don't know about how it is with left/right in Australia, but in the US, it is not a "right-wing" issue. For example, the Patriot Act was passed by both parties and extended by both parties. Obama is quite "left-wing"
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I don't think they are interested in breaking the encryption. I think they want to know who is talking to whom.
The content of the messages themselves is less important than the people involved. They already have that data from phone providers and ISPs are required to record what sites / addresses people visit.
When it comes to a messaging platform that encrypts the content of the message what the govt will be aiming for the participant data.
An identified person of interest will have their communication net
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Maybe, but do they need cooperation from message companies for that? Just trace IP packets.
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I find myself in the unlikely position of defending the government in this narrow sense because miscategorising their position makes it harder to present a reasoned opposition when it is needed.
I don't see how it's a miscategorization to say that the government's postion is exactly what the govenment says it is.
Secret Backdoor Code: 1,2,3,4,5 (Score:2)
How This Will Work... (Score:5, Funny)
Australia: "Please work with us to create this software."
Company Programmers: "No."
Australia: "Well then, you won't be able to sell your products here."
Companies: "Okay. Bye."
Australia: "Wait..."
backdoor = no more security (Score:2)
>"and that takes us back to the "government wants a backdoor" "
And if there are back doors, they *will* be found and used by everyone. Your government, private industries, malware, other governments, terrorists, everyone. Period.
Who is the bogeyman in Australia? (Score:2)
As an American, I think I know who I'm supposed to be afraid of and that justifies government intrusion. It doesn't mean I believe it, but at least it seems plausible -- we've been bombing and killing plenty of people, so really any group fills in.
How about Australians? I know there have been 1-2 incidents with Muslims, but is it that big a fear thing there? Or is a secret cabal of Chinese? Some kind of panic over a wave of Indonesians? Some kind of organized crime thing?
It just seems odd that there wo
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I think you hit a key issue, and a sort of proof of a kind.
the proof: that countries are power-grabbing on the anti-privacy thing. they love to snoop (people who are attracted to power tend to be that kind of person) and they love to control others. they simply can't stand being told NO, to things.
its not that they NEED to read our shit. but they feel left out if country A has this power and they don't.
this is all there is to it. the need to control is so strong, with those sociopaths that they use any
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I hadn't considered the role of exaggerated self-importance.
It's not that Australia doesn't punch above its weight in terms of population and cultural prominence -- I'd wager its seen as kind of a peer to most European countries that are actually much larger in terms of population and economy in the US and probably elsewhere.
But it's not like it carries the diplomatic weight or military power of a Britain or France, either. And while it has a certain geographic strategic importance, it's relatively remote
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It's funny how being abroad alters your perceptions.
I was in London just after the Brexit vote and I couldn't believe the number of Britons who asked my American opinion of it. I would have thought the last thing they cared about was what an American thought of it. Certainly the last thing I wanted to be asked to defend was Trump!
But pretty much anyone who asked me about it seemed genuinely interested in my opinion. I don't know if that's just because people who ask are chatty by nature of there was some
Egg-on-Face timer set (Score:1)
There may well be a day when a slimebag(s) finds the backdoor and compromises consumer data. The Australian gov't would then have egg on its face.
But, lawmakers tend to think short-term, perhaps because constituents mostly only reward them for the short-term. The "tough on crime" angle seems to win votes more often than the side-effects of "tough on crime" lose votes. The second requires the attention span to understand nuance, while the first has a direct guttural feel to voters, along the lines of "burn
Not enforceable (Score:1)
The reason why is that while the gov can mandate being a middle man in encrypted channels between international ISPs as well as data going through international pipes - they can't prevent you from encrypting your data before it reaches the ISP. So we'll just end up adding an additional encryption layer on top of whatever layer they want to be able to inspect.
Not even going to bother arguing about the fact that if the government is a middleman, there is no doubt that hackers and corrupt officials will be ab
Not encryption backdoor, Man-in-the-Middle (Score:2)
It looks to be mostly about getting IPSs to help the government conduct man-in-the-middle attacks rather than backdoors (initially).
There is better coverage of it at itnews;
https://www.itnews.com.au/news... [itnews.com.au]
Three types of notices;
1. Request for Voluntary assistance
2. Technical assistance (within their current capability, eg handover known keys)
3. Technical capability notice (build/provide new capability)
The third type is obviously most dangerous, especially the following can-of-worms;
- Substituting,
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- Facilitating or assisting access to whatever law enforcement wants: a facility, device, service and any software used in conjunction with those things
I assume that would include broadcasting antenna
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Actually, i think i was overly optimistic.
"Designated communications provider must not be required to implement or build a systemic weakness or systemic vulnerability etc"
So the ISP isnt allowed to install a backdoor, but they can be required to conduct a man-in-the-middle attacks which can be used to install backdoors.
So how does Australia (Score:2)
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Or is it just relying on rural voters who either don't understand or don't care?
Australia is one of the most urbanised countries on earth, after Japan. We rely on city voters who either don't understand or don't care.
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Actually, now that you mention it, there has been a lot of publicity over crime by large gatherings of South Sudanese refugee youths. .
Not nearly as bad as the refugee sex assaults in Europe, but still very scary
They use social media to organise. That fear could be used to drive public acceptance for the laws.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/b... [heraldsun.com.au]
https://www.google.com.au/sear... [google.com.au]
Draft bill text (Score:1)
The draft bill is now available from the Home Affairs website. https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistance-and-access-bill-2018 contains seem details and factsheets; the draft bill is here: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/the-assistance-access-bill-2018.pdf
Contains some provisions saying that the requests can't require a company to 'weaken' a cryptosystem or not-fix a flaw in the cryptosystem; that's presumably where the "no backdoors" thing comes in.
Not clear to me
Does nobody remember this story from last year? (Score:2)
"the laws of mathematics come second to the law of the land"
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull [slashdot.org]
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I'm still waiting to see his legislative solution to the discrete logarithm problem.
Good luck. (Score:2)
I'm sure the Chinese will provide you with such devices.
"See! We have them all backdoored already!"
Expect a bunch of people to have their lives ruined via this shit though.
Banking? Compromised.
Online spending? Compromised.
In other news (Score:2)
The Australian government has passed a law banning the tides coming into effect on 1st September. A government official has announced that the new law will allow Australias to head to the beach at any time of the day this summer and be assured that there will be enough sand left to lie on.
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I think that was an appendix on the anti-global-warming bill.
People of Australia, (Score:2)
It is time to replace all your leaders. Time to replace your government. All of them.
Re:Is your name not Bruce? (Score:5, Interesting)
This really, really, REALLY [openpgp.org] doesn't matter. The cat is out of the bag. If Australians won't rise up against their tyrannous government, they can have SKUs with all of our protections ripped out. But there will be many dead men turning over in their graves before the US succumbs to such a law. We've seen this encroachment before, and it has never passed.
Re:Is your name not Bruce? (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone wants this done, it will happen the same way the repeal of neutrality did, they will just keep bringing up a bill for it until the public begins to grow tired of calling their representatives, and then just magically find a reason to ignore the mountain of public comments.
Re:Is your name not Bruce? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most Americans have no idea what "network neutrality" even is, and they certainly don't care about it as much as you do since you've decided that it is the type species for neutrality. When you say "neutrality," most Americans think of WWII, and those countries that were pretending to be "neutral" while helping to launder stolen gold.
And Americans know darn well we don't want to be one of the wish-washy European countries. The only reason they got to keep any of that money is that the Americans defeated the Germans before the Germans ran out of enemies in Europe. Another couple years, and the "neutral" countries would have been gobbled up as well.
But the American people do know what a government backdoor to a security system is. It is just like in one of the action-adventure heist movies, where some thief pays off the security consultant and now they're controlling the cameras that are supposed to be protecting your vault full of gold. Easy to understand. Plus, what would Fat King George have done with that power? Yeah, exactly! We can understand that shit, easy. What would Fat King George do to us without network neutrality? Nothing, the government isn't really even involved in the networking. Maybe the companies will suck, but companies do that sometimes. See how different these things are from the American perspective?
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As a fellow techie, I'm really curious as to why do you oppose net neutrality. Do you want providers to start selectively prioritizing traffic that benefits their financial interests? I'm wondering how you think the public benefits from that, because it WILL happen without net neutrality. It's only a matter of time.
Because bureacrats can't configure a carrier netwo (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not the one you asked, but I can answer for me. You asked why a techie opposed the Wheeler rules, and I can answer that.
I'm definitely a nerd / techie - name in the kernel changelog and all that.
One techie thing I've done is spend hundreds of hours learning how to configure large networks. I've studied literally thousands of pages, and I'm still nowhere near an expert. Just one of my low-level certs, CCNA routing and switching, is about 1300 pages of material. CCNA Security was a bit less. CCNA is an en
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Something to think about. 1970s network not good (Score:3)
> That's letting perfect be the enemy of good
That's certainly an important thing to think about! I'm glad you mentioned it. The thing is, the rules were not good.
One draft (not the final draft) was so outrageously stupid it made it illegal to refuse connections from well-known spammers generating millions of spams per day each. The final draft was slightly less stupid. Slightly.
I guarantee no national network was actually in compliance, because you can't run a carrier network, or probably even a mom and
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But now go try to sit down and write detailed rules of exactly how "fairness" has to be implemented within an operating system kernel
That's now how it would work. The law would simply state that accepting any form of payment to prioritise certain traffic is illegal, and that prioritising any particular service or web site is illegal. The precise definition of "service" or "website" isn't too important, a jury will make that determination if it comes to it.
It's not a technical issue, it's a business issue.
Read them. Also you just made web sites ilegal (Score:2)
Before telling me what Wheeler's NN rules say, read them. Especially, read them and think about how you would comply with each point while operating:
A small "mom and pop" ISP providing service to schools, day cares, Mormon families, and others who want a family-friendly service.
OnStar
Also, how do you think web sites / web servers get connected to the internet?
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Most of the examples you're describing are examples of a data connection + an additional service.
There's no inherent need or benefit to the end consumer for the two to be bundled together.
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You asked why a techie opposed the Wheeler rules,
Noooooo, he asked why a techie would oppose network neutrality.
The nets have been neutral LONG before Wheeler ran the FCC. "Market forces" kept them that way when there was a bunch of competition, but the market has consolidated and the telecoms keep trying to break NN and the backlash keeps getting less and less meaningful. (ESPN360 or ESPN3 is a blatant violation, but people have started picking and choosing which battles to fight). With no competition, the standard alternative is regulation. There are T
Good point. AOL and Prodigy lost to neutral ISPs (Score:2)
> The nets have been neutral LONG before Wheeler ran the FCC. "Market forces" kept them that way
Good point. Early on, companies like AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy tried selling non-neutral services, featuring their partners. Purchasers, the market, chose neutral services instead.
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And now we can all see that the market is fucked and the top telecoms are openly admitting they will not compete in each other's territory.
Without competition, there is no free market. With no choices, there are monopolies. Without these things capitalism doesn't work.
Check out the New York City map (Score:2)
On that note, check out the New York City map. It's ridiculous. Three providers in five blocks, each with a franchise for that particular block.
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My GOD! So in the original Apranet, MIT refused to forward emails from Lincoln towards the Pentagon unless they used the oxford comma!?
Network neutrality is an underlying principle of how the of how the Internet works. We all assume that once you're on the Internet you can go to any IP address, and website, from any nation, use any protocol, and theres's just the one Internet rather than separate Prodigy-net, Disney-net, China-net. *cough cough* ok that last one is a little rough. But anyway, in non-dyst
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how was your Internet experience from, say, 2000 to 2015?
A series of outrages as the blatent bullshit various telecoms tried to pull.
Paying out the ass for something other developed nations have higher quality at cheaper rates.
In the midwest, we've got exactly one choice for broadband in any given area and it was fuck-you levels of service. The term "Up to" was thrown around a lot. Because "who are you going to switch to? 56Kbps phone line modem? Spotty sat service?"
How did it appreciably change in 2015?
I know that if they fuck with my pipes like they've tried in the past I can get with the EFF and w
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Even if you don't consider the subsidies, the problem with the "It's their own infrastructure, they should be able to do what they want" is that in many areas, 1) the local ISP is a monopoly and there's no other options, and 2) Internet access has become fairly essential for modern life.
If Comcast is a monopoly in an area and decides to start up a mapping service to compete with Google Maps, and they start prioritizing their own service over Google Maps, or worse, deliberately degrading Google Maps traffic,
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Monopolies like the local ISPs can only exist if they were subsidized, have a captive market, or are losing money. If they are making money, then no. You (or one of the millions of other people out there) can offer competition in terms of better value / more open approach. Monopolies exist because of government regulation, not despite it.
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If Comcast is a monopoly in an area and decides to start up a mapping service to compete with Google Maps, and they start prioritizing their own service over Google Maps, or worse, deliberately degrading Google Maps traffic, the people who live in that area and only have Comcast as an option are fucked.
Since we're playing what-if's. If the residents of that area are unhappy with the choice they can petition their local government to step in.
How about we play reality. And reality is that net neutrality was being abused by content providers. It's just as bad if Comcast starts prioritizing their own traffic, but if neutrality rules are in place and comcast forcibly tries to prioritize their traffic what penalties must they pay? None. That is what happened with NetFlix in 2012.
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Somewhat neotenous, perhaps, like many tech types I've met, but not magical.
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begins to grow tired of calling their representatives
If this is required, maybe you have a crappy representative.
Re:Is your name not Bruce? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody living in the country that voted into law the so-called "Patriot Act" talks about what kind of encroachment on liberties won't pass in the US?
That's the funniest thing I've read all week. Also the saddest.
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There's a distinction between being forced to provide money for military (to draw a hasty analogy) and being forced to quarter troops at your home. The former might be distasteful and objectionable, but ultimately not protected against in our system of laws. The latter is distasteful, objectionable, and prohibited by our supreme law of the land [xkcd.com].
If they try to prohibit secure end-to-end encryption here (because that's what this amounts to), you can bet somebody will make a (successful) First-Amendment-based
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"The internet is scary and mean, and terrorists live there, but we can make you safe."
There is no way this type of legislation does anything at all, and they know it, but that's not the point.
It's an age-old political tool "Something needs to be done, look! We're doing something".
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They gave up their right to own firearms. Now give up access to their equipment? Keep going. I'm sure there are other things the Australians can give up. Give it all up. Give up your free speech.
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But there will be many dead men turning over in their graves before the US succumbs to such a law.
The US does not need laws to spy on its people. The NSA director committed perjury in front of congress, denying the surveillance program, and nothing happened.
And given the weak public reaction to the Snowden revelations, few people care.
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Yes and no, we might only have 25 million people here, but the average disposable income (while dropping, due to stupid govt fiscal management) is still pretty darn high.
We might only buy a fraction of the US or the UK but per population we're probably up there a fair bit.
Plus of course the "Aussie rape tax" as we call it. Why charge a reasonable price, when you know we have money? Scam the fuck out of us, seemingly, we don't care.
We pay well well above what most countries do for software and hardware.
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Wow, a post that's so off it's not even wrong.
A quick recap. Australia isn't asking for anything special. The USA is a "lot further along. 'Every' device manager? Out of the world's top ten phone makers, one is American, the majority are Chinese. And you think Australia will ask them to do something China isn't? Finally, the 'small' market of Australia is loosely equivalent to Canada, or all of Scandinavian countries combined. A market of tens of millions of relatively high end devices. Not a lot of scope f
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Mangled URL was supposed to be [nytimes.com].