I didn’t see this posted yet if there is already a thread mods can feel free to delete or merge as needed…
Technically not feasible.
The Internet was designed to be self healing. Just as it is incredibly difficult to block SPAM and malware it would be at least as difficult to “shut off” the Internet.
Unfortunately even having a Cyber Czar will not make turning off the Internet a reality.
I think his point wont be to shut down the internet as a whole but will be easy for him to shut down servers here hosting stuff he does not see fit !!!
its a control thing as I see it
so I agree no way he can shut down the internet but he can shut down a ton of servers holding info and DNS info etc… which will have massive results on the net as a whole and since he can then control how the info and how fast it gets out and to who !!!
and if he stops all your communications on the net ! what then ? besides knowing how china feels !!!
Just another form of control by a control happy bunch on capital hill.
I agree it is a total control/power grab thing. However the Internet (that Al Gore invented - chuckle, snicker, belly laugh) was a genius design by the military. It was distributed computing before there was such a thing.
Take the Root Servers for example. They are the controllers of DNS and all other DNS servers (like the ones at your ISP) look to the Root Servers if they cannot resolve names to IP addresses. However even if the govt. somehow managed to block access to the US based Root Servers, there are many that are based outside the US. It might slow access, but would be nearly impossible to stop. Also they would have to block access to all subordinate DNS servers (that every ISP, University, and large company maintains).
Let’s say Big Brother wanted to block Google. Again a very distributed architecture that would take a great deal of time and effort to block. But again it is all about the power grab. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
As for licensing or certifying cybersecurity professionals. We already have that and the government already recognizes us and requires us to hold certain certifications to be employed by the government and requires many defense contractors to have us on staff.
Again this just shows how out of touch Congress is.
PU - you should read the proposed bill - the government will write the standard and put all the internal control standards in place. You are thinking of things in terms of how they are, not how they want them to be.
Secondly, I just got done reading The Secret Sentry and it made it pretty clear - anything related to communications via an incumbent service provider in the US is, or can be monitored, interrupted, rerouted, or curtailed b/c incumbents are in bed with the Government and have been since the '40s.
In short, they may not have legal footing or a master switch now (but that is the design of the proposed legislation); however the do have collusion with industry and substantial ability now.
Good luck
I did read it. It is based on how things were 20 years ago. The reality of today is far different. Back when only data traversed the Internet it might have been slightly more possible. Now, I have great difficulty believing it can work technically.
Anything can be monitored and is. However information overload and other challenges make this a bigger problem for the watchers than the watched.
The brouhaha over ATT and Verizon allowing NSA and others to access records clearly shows the ability to watch. However the telecommunications industry has moved away from the master switch and moves further away every day.
seeing as the internet is truly the last bastion of free speech its only natural that it would be a target for oppression.
Since you seem to know more than I do about the technical side of this - can you break this down crayola style to tell me why this would not be possible given the level of control proposed by SB 773 and SB 778? For a non tech person like me, it reads like they will have that level of control. Being able to read more about it and make an informed decision would be better.
The reasoning laid out in the bill does make some limited sense for the need.
TIA
Good luck
TIA
I am not sure there is a Crayola version of explaining this, but I will give some examples.
Let’s say this is actually about protecting a business. Let’s use a defense contractor as an example. Most defense contractors are pretty large which means there are multiple locations. If the contractor is based in MD, has a development office in VA, manufacturing in TN, IN, TX and CA each of those locations has as least one connection to the Internet, at least one connection to the home office and probably connections to at least some of the other plants or facilities. And that is just for data.
If the home office has a data connection from ATT and one or two other providers, TN uses one of the Baby Bells, IN and TX use Verizon plus some local ISP and California uses SBC and US West; what one switch shuts down access to the Internet? And the Internet is a pretty obsolete term since more than just web sites are connected by the Internet. In reality data, voice and many other protocols traverse what was called the Internet.
And what about telecommuting workers, sales and tech people in the field, workers connecting via cellular tethering, Wi-Fi in a coffee shop, etc.? What one switch could turn them all off?
Let’s take another example, a website. While it might be fairly straightforward to go to a web hosting company in the US and shut down a server what about a site hosted overseas? A great example of this is the many off-shore gambling sites. One of the few ways the government has even put a dent in their business model is via the credit card companies. (But that has just bred a whole new payment industry.)
And there are plenty more examples of why turning off the Internet is not technically feasible. I can assure you as one of the a fore mentioned cybersecurity professionals, defending our nations infrastructure is a huge challenge, however I can also say that many parts of our government do not get it.
OK - I get that part of it.
I also gather from the book that there is a relationship that exists far beyond what the public has knowledge of between the government and the incumbents now. So while I will grant you that based on public knowledge, absent legal authority - there is no master switch.
However, what this is setting up is that legal authority. So if the ‘master switch’ ultimately is in the hands of the provider all that is missing is the legal authority. Secondly, I am confused - part of what makes the net difficult to control is protocol aspect and this bill will streamline and uniform it. So what am I missing?
TIA
Good luck
There are relationships far beyond what the public understands in many industries. This is nothing new. It is how government abuses its power that is the concern.
Again legal authority is what is being abused or more correctly has the possibility of being abused by those without enough technical saavy to turn on a blender.
Trying to regulate protocol aspect (say everything that runs on IP) is just too broad an idea and nearly impossible to regulate. If the Internet was self contained in the US, utilized programs and protocols only written in the US by US companies and programmers, I would give a maybe. However that is not the case.
This is not Communist China (at least not yet) where telecommunications is controlled by the government and there is literally only one connection to the Internet that can be controlled and regulated.
Sometimes I think my job would be far easier if it was, but it is not and I am glad that there is a wild and wooly Internet.
I dont see it as one switch ? its not that of course but its if they get something in place to call the major tier 1 providers and have them shut or flip their own switches in a sense
now the major problem is the info that flows throughout the world runs through are tier 1 also so doing this would do major disruption to other countries from banking transactions to so many things its insane to think even
talk about the world then hating our guts big time !!!
I cant see this ever happening or getting anywhere ? but crazy things do happen
so its possible in a sense but with so much devastation to the worlds connections though
since most tier 1 give bandwidth to tier 2
most ISP are tier 2
so they have tier 1 connections with a few providers ! by nature most tier 1 are not redundant like tier 2 they have a single peer or a few but not a lot !
so shut down the tier 1 so the tier 2 dont have info things go down hard and fast for many
it wont even come close to killing the internet but it will do major disruption to us in the US getting access to internet and other communications
the thing is the way its set up its not really setup to handle a gov telling the tier 1 providers to shut down !
so shut down access to the top tier 1 and you have a mess
again I cant see this happening ? but its like anything cut the few major supply lines and everything else gets hurt big time and really just creates a mess and gets the world pissed at us
here is my worst analogy 
it would be hard to shut down every plane in the sky but if you shut down the airports and each of the major airlines domicile you would wreak such havoc on the airlines and travel industry
while you wont shut down every airplane in the sky shutting down the majors and the major airports would wreak such havoc
while some small planes might fly and some small airports will let traffic out its nothing in comparison of shutting down a few major airlines and airports
again bad analogy maybe but might work
If you shut down a Tier 1 it would not just be data/Internet access. Almost all voice traffic also flows across the Internet, all point to point flows across the Internet, etc. Flipping the switch would have an impact on more than just the “Internet” as most people think of it.
EDIT
Honu is quite right that it would be crippling, but on a much broader scale than just denying access to some web sites.
Clarification: when you all are talk about tier 1 and tier 2 you’re talking about ILECs and CLECs - incumbent providers that own the regional / continental / trans global back bone (QWEST) and leased line providers (anyone else) - correct?
There are relationships far beyond what the public understands in many industries. This is nothing new. It is how government abuses its power that is the concern.
It may not be new but it is less understood and far more invasive than most any other industry. This particular incestuous relationship has and continues to erode personal privacy more than any other out there. Giving it naked legal authority to do so is tantamount to suspension of the constitutional protection of free speech at the discretion of the executive office.
Trying to regulate protocol aspect (say everything that runs on IP) is just too broad an idea and nearly impossible to regulate. If the Internet was self contained in the US, utilized programs and protocols only written in the US by US companies and programmers, I would give a maybe. However that is not the case.
It is clearly stated in the bill - the oversight group will work to mount the effort to make this the one standard both domestically an internationally. When you say it is nearly impossible - so was sequencing DNA, going to the moon, or the atom bomb. What if the ILECs figured out a way to reject non conforming protocol data packs from being transmitted? Wanna do business on their line or with any US based entity? Do it in the Gov approved format. (Again I don’t know about the specifics of tech but I do know that if there is a will, humans have proven there is a way). By that same token, I’d bet dollars to donuts that ILECs are currently capable of individually flipping the switch on singal entities. The simple leap from there is grouping entities by type in order to shut off a bigger switch. I have no doubt that in times of “National Emergency” the net will be up and running for certain sectors. No different than the GPS system which will be down for everyone else.
Again - willing to learn but thus far you haven’t said anything other than - ‘based on current means it would be difficult’. Is there anything specific that you can point to which would bolster your claim that this is much ado about nothing?
Good luck
An ILEC is not necessarily a Tier 1 provider. A Tier 1 provider is typically described as a provider that does not buy bandwidth to transit to any other point on the Internet (using the most broad definition of Internet). ILEC and CLEC refer to local carriers. However with the convergence of carriers, and the rapid changes in the industry many of these terms are rapidly becoming obsolete.
When you say less understood do you mean by the public? Do you think the defense, healthcare or energy industries are better understood by the public? You might find this article on the erosion of privacy in the Internet era interesting. Technology is really just an avenue to the erosion of personal privacy.
There is also plenty to read on Carnivore (DCS1000) or many of the other monitoring programs.
Lots of things can be stated, lots of oversight groups try to come to a consensus (feel free to read up on how long IPV6 has been looking for consensus - it started in 1998 in case you are interested), but that does not mean it can happen or happen soon. Could it happen? Sure anything might happen.
You asked for a Crayola explanation. When you post, “I’d bet dollars to donuts that ILECs are currently capable of individually flipping the switch on singal entities” I am not sure I can convince you that an ILEC is incapable of disconnecting a multi-homed entity without falling into a deep morass of jargon and technical descriptions.
Is the language in S.773 a concern? Of course. A lot of things the government proposes concern me. The on/off switch is a far smaller area of concern than other portions of S.773.
I leave you with this quote from the GovInfoSecurity post:
Remember, there is no on-off switch for the Internet and as important, the Internet was originally architected to remain functional in a nuclear attack. The idea was that the network of networks would continue to function in a national emergency. To redesign that architecture to give the president that on-off switch, though theoretically possible, would be costly and realistically impractical.
http://blogs.govinfosecurity.com/posts.php?postID=292
http://blog.soleranetworks.com/on-the-cybersecurity-act-of-2009/
http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/post/cybersecurity_legislation/
tier 1 to me is like qwest or L3 or GBLX or Verizon
PU - thanks I will do some reading.
ETA - I really DO want to know if this is a big deal or not. The newsys spin it like it is, I just want to be able to make my own decisions.
I thought only Al Gore could turn off the internet?