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Botnet The Internet Communications Government Security Politics Technology

We'll Likely See a Rise in Internet Blackouts in 2019 (newamerica.org) 58

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
We'll likely see a rise in internet blackouts in 2019, for two reasons: countries deliberately "turning off" the internet within their borders, and hackers disrupting segments of the internet with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Above all, both will force policymakers everywhere to reckon with the fact that the internet itself is increasingly becoming centralized -- and therefore increasingly vulnerable to manipulation, making everyone less safe. From a report: The first method -- states deliberately severing internet connections within their country -- has an important history. In 2004, the Maldivian government caused an internet blackout when citizens protested the president; Nepal similarly caused a blackout shortly thereafter. In 2007, the Burmese government apparently damaged an underwater internet cable in order to "staunch the flow of pictures and messages from protesters reaching the outside world." In 2011, Egypt cut most internet and cell services within its borders as the government attempted to quell protests against then-President Hosni Mubarak; Libya then did the same after its own unrest.

In 2014, Syria had a major internet outage amid its civil war. In 2018, Mauritania was taken entirely offline for two days when undersea submarine internet cables were cut, around the same time as the Sierra Leone government may have imposed an internet blackout in the same region. When we think about terms like "cyberspace" and "internet," it can be tempting to associate them with vague notions of a digital world we can't touch. And while this is perhaps useful in some contexts, this line of thinking forgets the very real wires, servers, and other hardware that form the architecture of the internet. If these physical elements cease to function, from a cut wire to a storm-damaged server farm, the internet, too, is affected. More than that, if a single entity controls -- or can at least access -- that hardware for a region or even an entire country, government-caused internet blackouts are a tempting method of censorship and social control.
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We'll Likely See a Rise in Internet Blackouts in 2019 More

We'll Likely See a Rise in Internet Blackouts in 2019

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  • Not happening here (Score:5, Funny)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Monday January 21, 2019 @03:29PM (#57998018)

    It's not going to happen in Canada, where prices are so high that companies have to be investing all those profits in upgrades and maintenance... I mean, surely they're just not pocketing the profits, right?

    Anyway, I think tha -- Hey! Wait! Don't pick up the ph{#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER

    • Yeah, hilarious. I just spent the weekend with no internet because the cold weather somehow affected the cabling here. I can live with that but of course I won't get a credit since I am with a bandwidth re-seller, they simply shoveled the blame up to Bell.

    • In all seriousness, I've been saying this for a long time: we need to establish a robust decentralized DNS system, rather than the hierarchical system which lets central authorities take control. (Aside from hardware, that is.)

      I understand that Namecoin, unfortunate though the chosen name is, has made some progress in that regard.

  • not only internet (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    power grid is affected too - in on of the (still) industrial countries called Germany the grid is on the verge of collapse - every year in january and february is the same story - the windmills stand still, the sun is too low or there are clouds everywhere yet people still cook with electricity. On 12.1.2019 the frequency fell from 50 to 48.8 - there are industries where taking off the grid on order from the government to easy up temporary spike of demand or fall of production. To some it may come as a shoc

    • in on of the (still) industrial countries called Germany [...] On [2019-01-12] the frequency fell from 50 to 48.8

      It looks like your country needs a Tesla battery like the one at Hornsdale, South Australia, to help even out peaks on the grid. In 2017-12, Hornsdale Power Reserve immediately compensated for a failure [slashdot.org] at a power plant nearly 1,000 km away. Or is sustained power loss on the German grid during calm, cloudy winter days bigger than even a 400+ gigajoule battery can correct?

  • Satellite Internet should help with this, surely? Our boy Elon Musk has us covered. [wikipedia.org]

    • This is actually what I was thinking. And even if Starlink fails for some reason, Samsung, OneWeb, Telesat, and others have all announced competing satellite constellations. Sometime in the next 0-3 years, it seems likely that anyone on earth will be capable of having high-bandwidth, low-latency Internet access from virtually anywhere.

      It'll be interesting to see how repressive regimes adjust. After all, how will China maintain its Great Firewall when anyone can vault over it via satellite? I sincerely doubt

      • Is there some magical new high speed way for end users to cost effectively upload data to these satellites? Maybe my technology understanding is rusty, but one way internet doesn't allow for things such as uploading video evidence of police abuse, or government abuse of citizen rights or similar. How does the end user get his query to that satellite without going through the oppressive regional regime of choice?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          What prevents sneakernetting the SDHC card to a station with a dish antenna?

        • Is there some magical new high speed way for end users to cost effectively upload data to these satellites?

          Rather than cost, isn't the uplink problem with geostationary satellites that they have to deal with so many users? Whether with TDMA and FMDA, you end up reserving part of your bandwidth (either as time or frequency) for each and every user to do their uploads. As the number of users increase, you necessarily need to divide your bandwidth into more and more pieces, each of which will be smaller than before, which basically means bad upload speeds for everyone.

          I think that's the problem you're talking about

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The internet is more diverse than ever before. There are more peers and routes now than previously, and this number is ever increasing. I think the author means the WEB is more centralized, as global service behemoths (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, and others at this scale) take an increasingly larger share of the web based content web consume, while simultaneously making it harder for smaller players to enter the market.

    The internet is quire resilient. The content transmitted over the inter

    • Is the pedantic distinction between "Internet" and "web" still useful? Especially in the context of TFA?

      Serious question.

      • Re:Internet vs Web (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:11PM (#57998282)

        Is the pedantic distinction between "Internet" and "web" still useful? Especially in the context of TFA?

        Yes, because even if a site likes Facebook goes down, there are plenty of alternative mechanisms to communicate. But if a country shuts off the pipes, then there are no alternatives if they rely on the Internet.

        Just because there's no Messenger or whatever doesn't mean there isn't Signal or other means to chat. But if the internet is down, then it's back to regular phone lines and such.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Much easier to disrupt physically. Simply drop in an electron magnetic pulse driver, to repeatedly pulse and not only completely disrupt traffic but damage the hardware across a broad region which would also disrupt repairs to the system, due to the disruption of repair communications and infrastructure and also further complicated by the abandonment of manual systems to fall back to when digital systems fail. You could build one around a diesel generator or probably hack the grid to generate repeated power

      • There is literally nothing pedantic about the GPS post. It is useful for a number of reasons, the first being that it dispels misinformation. It is phenomenally stupid to say that the internet is becoming more centralized. It shows that whomever wrote that has no clue how the internet works, and makes clear that they have no business being on Slashdot. A tangential benefit is we find out who else, like you, has no idea how technology works and, likewise, should be lurking and learning, not posting.

        • A tangential benefit is we find out who else, like you, has no idea how technology works and, likewise, should be lurking and learning, not posting.

          Oh, fuck off. You'll notice I asked the question. I didn't make a statement.

          Asshole.

        • It is phenomenally stupid to say that the internet is becoming more centralized.

          No, it is not. Service provision is becoming much more centralized, and too easy to shut down.

  • I don't really agree with the summary. Blackouts are mostly ineffective, and represent a last resort of a regime. Once it's gotten to that stage, it's over.

    Far more effective is the strategy of the professional totalitarian states. China and Russia. China has their great firewall and internal censorship. Last I heard it seems to work. Russia has no firewall, but are masters of trolling an manipulation.

    The reason these are effective is that they aren't so noticeable. The best form of censorship and ma

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by green1 ( 322787 )

      Either way though, censorship and propaganda are both easier and more effective the more centralized the resource. It's easy to troll 1 site, it's hard to troll thousands. It's easy to enforce your terms on one company, difficult on thousands.

      Centralized is not a problem for governments as the summary implies, it's exactly what they want.

  • As intended (Score:5, Insightful)

    by green1 ( 322787 ) on Monday January 21, 2019 @03:52PM (#57998186)

    will force policymakers everywhere to reckon with the fact that the internet itself is increasingly becoming centralized -- and therefore increasingly vulnerable to manipulation,

    The big thing that policy makers have always despised about the internet is that it's decentralized. The more centralized it becomes, the happier they are! It's very hard to censor (I mean, "protect the children" or "eliminate hate speech") a decentralized internet. It's far easier to just knock on facebook's door and tell them to take something down, or to give up the identity of the poster.

    • ...reckon with the fact that the internet itself is increasingly becoming centralized...

      As countries around the world tighten control of the internet within their borders, we can expect to see some governments with relatively centralized internets—particularly authoritarians or those with authoritarian leanings—literally disconnect their domestic internet networks from the rest of the globe

      If you read carefully you'll see that the author's concern is that some countries are building infrastructure in a way that it can be controlled by a central authority. This is always a concern when the state controls communication of any kind, and is a good argument for leaving telephone, television, and internet infrastructures in private hands.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )

        And yet, the author seems to think that this isn't the intention of every government. Saying policy makers should be concerned when it is in fact the policy makers who are purposefully doing this. It's not that they don't understand, it's that they DO.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      The big thing that policy makers have always despised about the internet is that it's decentralized. The more centralized it becomes, the happier they are! It's very hard to censor (I mean, "protect the children" or "eliminate hate speech") a decentralized internet. It's far easier to just knock on facebook's door and tell them to take something down, or to give up the identity of the poster.

      Actually I find that in the modern world they much prefer surveillance to censorship and when they do run active warfare it's more drowning out the truth with noise or curbing the visibility. A block, ban or take down is so obvious and heavy handed compared to just blasting the public opinion with crap until nobody's sure what's fake news and not.

    • Do not forget corporations in your little tirade. Very few have done more than Alphabet to suppress speech or book burn(or its equivalent). Due to technology, no one has been able to censor more people so effetely so fast. With centralization, it could be even more effective at slashing any idea it disagreed with. Just imagine...
  • ...all we need to do is get it working on and compatible with iPhone/Android/Computers and then we can literally use any direct-communications protocol to transmit messages. (TCP/UDP/BlueTooth/Radio/SomethingNotInventedYet) It'll be slower for sure, but if it could be game-ified somehow (like Pokemon Go), I'm certain we wouldn't have much of a problem with communicating messages - even over long distances. Centralized infrastructure works until governance is outside the will of the people. And we're getti

  • Neo-Venezuela: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge the Internet?

    Morpheus-China: No, Venezuela. I'm trying to tell you, when you're ready, you won't have to because we've built for you a system like in Black Mirror where everyone get a citizen rating and if they get too uppity, they can't get loans or rent.

  • That's nothing (Score:4, Informative)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:26PM (#57998348)

    Not only for political reasons.
    Algeria switches off the Internet during the annual high-school exams.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

  • Been to conferences where the "visionaries" are so excited how every flip of a switch will be sent to the cloud, with a followup action to then turn on/off my light. Or.. where my thermostat will signal a cloud services to tell my heater to turn on. What kind of utopia are they expecting? internet goes down and my Heat or lights or toilet dont work? Someone.. .please.....
  • Build better networks that can take over when one part is down.
    Hire real experts to make that network change over possible at any time.
    Have the needed networks in ready for such events.
    Hire skilled staff on merit who can direct the internet around any networking problems.
    That protects the wider surrounding internet. What a nation does internally to its own telco system is a policy for each nation.
    Any nation can alter its telco system in any way to find/stop "freedom fighters".
  • As long as the internet expands the number of anything to do with the internet will likely increase.

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