The End of the Internet?

[Bottomfeeder 244]

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies have a vision for the Internet's future. Verizon, AT&T (formerly SBC), Comcast, and Bell South want to create a privately run and branded "pay-as-you-go" Internet, making everything we do online a "billable," revenue-generating service. Our every cyberspace move will be tracked and stored so we can be better marketed to (a data collection system that might even rival the NSA's!). Those with the deepest pockets--think corporate special interest groups and major advertisers--will get preferred treatment. Their content will show up (and be processed) the fastest on our computer and television screens. Content seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, may be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out, say "white papers" and other documents given to the cable and phone industry.

http://www.democraticmedia.org/issues/JCnetneutrality.html

[AURaptor 1,126]

Don't know if it'll ever come to that, but one thing's for certain, the Gov't is licking its chops to grab control of the internet , tax goods bought online, and control content.

Truly, these are the glory days of the internet. Enjoy it while it lasts.

[Tigermike 3,050]

Get in line, the United Nations has wanted to control the internet for years.

Will the U.N. run the Internet?

 

By Declan McCullagh

Published: July 11, 2005, 4:00 AM PDT

 

An international political spat is brewing over whether the United Nations will seize control of the heart of the Internet.

U.N. bureaucrats and telecommunications ministers from many less-developed nations claim the U.S. government has undue influence over how things run online. Now they want to be the ones in charge.

While the formal proposal from a U.N. working group will be released July 18, it's already clear what it will contain. A preliminary summary of governmental views claims there's a "convergence of views" supporting a new organization to oversee crucial Internet functions, most likely under the aegis of the United Nations or the International Telecommunications Union.

Beyond the usual levers of diplomatic pressure and public kvetching, Brazil and China could choose what amounts to the nuclear option: a fragmented root. 

At issue is who decides key questions like adding new top-level domains, assigning chunks of numeric Internet addresses, and operating the root servers that keep the Net humming. Other suggested responsibilities for this new organization include Internet surveillance, "consumer protection," and perhaps even the power to tax domain names to pay for "universal access."

This development represents a grave political challenge to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which was birthed by the U.S. government to handle some of those topics.

A recent closed-door meeting in Geneva convened by the U.N.'s Working Group on Internet Governance offers clues about the plot to dethrone ICANN. As these excerpts from a transcript show, dissatisfaction and general-purpose griping is rampant:

• Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable."

• Brazil, responding to ICANN's approval of .xxx domains: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries. In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names."

• China: "We feel that the public policy issue of Internet should be solved jointly by the sovereign states in the U.N. framework...For instance, spam, network security and cyberspace--we should look for an appropriate specialized agency of the United Nations as a competent body."

• Ghana: "There was unanimity for the need for an additional body...This body would therefore address all issues relating to the Internet within the confines of the available expertise which would be anchored at the U.N."

The "nuclear option"

Those proclamations served to flush out the Bush administration, which recently announced that it will not hand over control of Internet domain names and addresses to anyone else.

That high-profile snub of the United Nations could presage an international showdown. The possibility of a political flap over what has long been an abstruse Net-governance issue casts a shadow over ICANN's meeting this week in Luxembourg, and will be the topic of a July 28 symposium in Washington, D.C., called "Regime Change on the Internet."

The nuclear option could create a Balkanized Internet where two computers find different Web sites at the same address.

Beyond the usual levers of diplomatic pressure and public kvetching, Brazil and China could choose what amounts to the nuclear option: a fragmented root. That means a new top-level domain would not be approved by ICANN--but would be recognized and used by large portions of the rest of the world. The downside, of course, is that the nuclear option could create a Balkanized Internet where two computers find different Web sites at the same address.

"It wasn't until now" that a fragmented root was being talked about, says Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University and participant in the Internet Governance Project. "China and other countries might be pursuing responses that lead to fragmentation."

Such an outcome remains remote, but it could happen. That possibility means an obscure debate about Internet governance has suddenly become surprisingly important.

Biography

Declan McCullagh is CNET News.com's Washington, D.C., correspondent. He chronicles the busy intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired.

link

U.N. group seeks control of Internet

By John Zarocostas

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

GENEVA — Governments spearheaded by China, Brazil, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia are trying to place the Internet under the control of the United Nations or its member governments, a move that the United States and other developed countries are determined to resist.

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031117-113002-7678r.htm

[DKW 86 7,440]

I am as pro privacy as the next guy. But if they could start a "lynch the hacker movement" I would be all for it.

[Strychnine 1,803]

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies have a vision for the Internet's future.  Verizon, AT&T (formerly SBC), Comcast, and Bell South want to create a privately run and branded "pay-as-you-go" Internet, making everything we do online a "billable," revenue-generating service.

I suppose the revenue generated by monthly fees for access to the existing internet just is not enough to keep the lights on at Bellsouth corporate HQ. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Verizon would be part of a plan like this. They maintain a stranglehold on the ability to import content such as wallpapers and ringtones to your cellphone via Get It Now. I use a Motorola V710, and Verizon has a unique firmware for it that cripples Bluetooth and standard data-cable file-sharing functionality, thus forcing me to use Get It Now. The same phone from Alltel does not have those functions crippled, but Alltel has a service similar to Get It Now (they just do not force you to do it by eliminating functionality provided by the manufacturer). If I cared more for content than the quality of cell coverage I would switch from Verizon for that reason alone.

Our every cyberspace move will be tracked and stored so we can be better marketed to (a data collection system that might even rival the NSA's!).  Those with the deepest pockets--think corporate special interest groups and major advertisers--will get preferred treatment.  Their content will show up (and be processed) the fastest on our computer and television screens.  Content seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, may be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out, say "white papers" and other documents given to the cable and phone industry.

That would take care of one of the first steps necessary toward establishing the Ministry of Truth.

[WarTim 3,457]

The Internet is not over until algore SAYS it is over!

[Grider 1]

The United States is the only country in the world allowing corporations to put up roadblocks to basic internet access by charging exorbitant amounts of money and blocking anything through legislation that would allow cities to provide what has become a basic service through wifi or even through fiber the city already owns. Way to go!

I hate the old big telecom companies; they want it like the days of AT&T where you rent the phone from them and pay 50 cents a minute for long distance. Except they want to charge you 50 cents a megabyte on a throttled connection of 768k/sec. Then sell your information out to people who fill your mail box and computer with ads and crap, raising the total data rate and charges. (that is all hypothetical, but it does not take much imagination to see that coming to fruition with all the crap that is shoved at people through spam and spyware/adware)

[TrueBlue72 0]

I don't think this is going to happen, in spite of the desires of several large companies. The internet, as it exists today, has become such a part of our society that any attempt to turn it over would be political suicide for any supporter. This sort of thing cannot be done without political support and if today's politicians support it, their replacements won't.

[DKW 86 7,440]

The United States is the only country in the world allowing corporations to put up roadblocks to basic internet access by charging exorbitant amounts of money and blocking anything through legislation that would allow cities to provide what has become a basic service through wifi or even through fiber the city already owns. Way to go!

I hate the old big telecom companies; they want it like the days of AT&T where you rent the phone from them and pay 50 cents a minute for long distance. Except they want to charge you 50 cents a megabyte on a throttled connection of 768k/sec. Then sell your information out to people who fill your mail box and computer with ads and crap, raising the total data rate and charges. (that is all hypothetical, but it does not take much imagination to see that coming to fruition with all the crap that is shoved at people through spam and spyware/adware)

217677[/snapback]

Speaking as an Educator in CIS, Open gateways for wifi suck. They would allow almost limitless hacking and other problems. I do not want them AT ALL and would donate my money to stop them. Without boring everyone here with a ton of details.....It is pretty easy to now track a criminal with an IP. An ISP can tell you what user had what IP at a specific time. Walk up to the door and you have the guy. With WANs, the IP is the same for ever user on the WAN. you could concievably have 100K users with the same IP. You would have to fall back on NIC cards being registered. That would piss off everyone on the Internet because you only have a about a jillion nic cards out there and how do you know that the nic cards dont change, are registered right, arent changed nightly, an overnight black market in NIC cards, etc. No thanks....

ex1: Terrorists could Internet access with a laptop with no method for tracking them. Wire tracking is currently the only method. Any idiot could change a nic card on a laptop in minutes and stay free.

ex2: Child pornographers would be able to utilize the free access wans to freely access child porn. Uploading and downloading, etc. Chil;d pornographers WANT WANs installed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ex3: Civil and legal hackers would be free to commit mayhem at will because they would have no way to track them physically without a huge increase in manpower.

Grider, just as absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute freedom would also corrupt absolutely.

[Grider 1]

The United States is the only country in the world allowing corporations to put up roadblocks to basic internet access by charging exorbitant amounts of money and blocking anything through legislation that would allow cities to provide what has become a basic service through wifi or even through fiber the city already owns. Way to go!

I hate the old big telecom companies; they want it like the days of AT&T where you rent the phone from them and pay 50 cents a minute for long distance. Except they want to charge you 50 cents a megabyte on a throttled connection of 768k/sec. Then sell your information out to people who fill your mail box and computer with ads and crap, raising the total data rate and charges. (that is all hypothetical, but it does not take much imagination to see that coming to fruition with all the crap that is shoved at people through spam and spyware/adware)

217677[/snapback]

Speaking as an Educator in CIS, Open gateways for wifi suck. They would allow almost limitless hacking and other problems. I do not want them AT ALL and would donate my money to stop them. Without boring everyone here with a ton of details.....It is pretty easy to now track a criminal with an IP. An ISP can tell you what user had what IP at a specific time. Walk up to the door and you have the guy. With WANs, the IP is the same for ever user on the WAN. you could concievably have 100K users with the same IP. You would have to fall back on NIC cards being registered. That would piss off everyone on the Internet because you only have a about a jillion nic cards out there and how do you know that the nic cards dont change, are registered right, arent changed nightly, an overnight black market in NIC cards, etc. No thanks....

ex1: Terrorists could Internet access with a laptop with no method for tracking them. Wire tracking is currently the only method. Any idiot could change a nic card on a laptop in minutes and stay free.

ex2: Child pornographers would be able to utilize the free access wans to freely access child porn. Uploading and downloading, etc. Chil;d pornographers WANT WANs installed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ex3: Civil and legal hackers would be free to commit mayhem at will because they would have no way to track them physically without a huge increase in manpower.

Grider, just as absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute freedom would also corrupt absolutely.

218026[/snapback]

Who said anything about an open gateway? Not I.

I agree with you, but I think you took what I said to be a little farther than what I meant.

I use WiFi as an example of wireless technology, not what SHOULD be used.

Hell no I would not give anybody a private address or anything else unless they were authenticated in some way. RADIUS authentication or something similar when connecting so that you know who is connecting, when they are connecting, and what they do, within reason. (You are not going to be able to log SSH tunnels...yet). If you really want to get fancy, then 3 part authentication with a username, a password, and a token of some kind (fingerprint, smartcard, RSA "random" number keyfobs).

My wireless at home is not open, nor is any other of the 10 signals I can get from my living room. Of course everybody is using WEP... and I am sure most of use run DHCP on the router, ap, or some other service in the house, so getting a path to the net is relatively easy if someone wants to take the time to crack the WEP keys.

When I said that, I did not intend for someone to be just throwing caution to the wind and giving free wifi to the masses without some form of registration or tracking.

[DKW 86 7,440]

Wrote a paper recently on WANs or wifi. Went to the top of Monte Sano in HSV. In the highest tech city in Alabama and probably in the Souteast outside of Raleigh or Houston, we found ten wireless networks with ZERO security. I mean ZERO. They hadnt even changed the default admin passwords. This is in one of the higher income and higher class subdivisions in HSV. I repeat there was NO security.

War Driving

wardriving Last modified: Thursday, July 28, 2005

The act of driving around in a vehicle with a laptop computer, an antenna, and an 802.11 wireless LAN adapter to exploit existing wireless networks. Set on promiscuous mode, the wireless adapter, typically a NIC, will receive packets within its range. Wardriving exploits wireless networks that have ranges that extend outside the perimeter of buildings in order to gain free internet access or illegal access to an organization’s data. One safeguard against wardriving is using the WEP encryption standard.

List of WEP hacking tools

Automated Wireless Hacking for Script Kiddies

Forum for Wireless hacking

Famous Child Porn War Driving instance.

War Driving and circumventing laws

In short, there is no security for a wireless network because there is an unlimited time and access to hack a wireless network. The first part of security is opportunity, and wifi gives bad guys unlimited opportunity.

As far as registration and tracking, that would offend any real Internet user. Who will pay for the registration? Who will pay for the tracking? Unfortunately, it will be those corps you criticized earlier. If you think that we want a govt agency doing it, mismanaging the money, etc. then we are all better off has it is just now.