In Theory TV

Big news today is soon that the government will be able to take control of the internet at their whim. Of course this was only big news today as this bill has been around for a few months and these topics have been discussed by those who follow such things more closely. While it is a scary thought, it probably won’t work writes Jeff Wright.

To start with is the text of an email Fred wrote Jeff and link to the Fox story with the title: Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Senate Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet
From: Fred
Date: Fri, August 28, 2009 1:57 pm
To: “Jeff L. Wright”

Not good.

You might recall a conversation I had with you maybe last year regarding
Government control of Internet information. Sooner or later, some
version of this will will pass. This will be the first step to deal
with the liberty movement.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/senate-president-emergency-control-internet/
–
Never in the history of the world has there been a situation so bad that
the government can’t make it worse.

Here is Jeff Wright’s response:

Hi Fred,

I’m still not worried. It’s not an issue of the Liberty movement. If it were, we’d already be dead or completely under control. The article and the Bill has pretty much exactly the elements we discussed that I said would make it impossible.

From the FoxNews article:
________________________
“But many in the technology sector believe it’s a job the government is ill-equipped to handle, said Franck Journoud, a policy analyst with the Business Software Alliance.

“Simply put, who has the expertise?” he told FOXNews.com in April. “It’s the industry, not the government. We have a responsibility to increase and improve security. That responsibility cannot be captured in a government standard.”
________________________

Wow, that was polite. Plus the fact that the technique involved would have to be a bludgeon. There is no way the government or even a consortium of the larger commerical carriers could discriminate out all the various virtual traffic flows embedded in the digital streams at the bottom layers of the NTI. Therefore, it has to be just what they a call it, a “kill switch,” meaning they shut it down at the SONET (physical) up to the Network (TCP) layer. And that would also broadly affect the functioning of State and Federal governments as well. Outside of DoD, and even portions of DoD, state and federal government intermingle their traffic on the same physical network layers as do all the private comms. Separating even that portion out would be the mother of all configuration management projects. Specified and run by the government? HAHAHAHAHAHA! I’d love to be the Cisco, Lucent, Verizon, et al, Chief Engineer that gets handed that one. Job for life with no possibility of success. Hmmmm.

That doesn’t even speak to the problem of the global traffic that passes through the NTI and primary switches in the North American Switching Fabric to reach their destinations. Millions upon millions of virtual sessions transgress north america that neither originate or terminate here (~60% of all global internet traffic that originates and terminates outside of North America passes through our NTI switch fabric). Shutting down the NTI means shutting them down as well. America and the world commerce system, financial, industrial and government would totally freeze up. Now how long do you think that would last? After a couple of decades of doing large-scale I can’t even conceive of how to capture the complexity of the NTI between all the carriersand network providers in a wy that would enable the developmet of a network plan for that. I’ve talked to my friends at Bell Labs and elsewhere for a number of years on this. The typical response I get is a large groan with the statement, “I’d quit before I’d ever join the project.” The number of the most talented industry people such a project would take up and the cost would be something to behold, all highly likely to end in almost total failure.

It is an understandable general analogy, but shutting down the Internet is not like grounding a few thousand aircraft. It shows just how stupid, ignorant and naive they are that they think they could even propose something in law that would be remotely feasible.

This is an interesting subject to think about, but not one I’d lose sleep over. To do something even remotely like this is definitely cutting off their nose to spite their face. Their green-light conferencing on stupid legislation has simply gone into overdrive.

Other than targeted DoS and some finely targeted tracing interruption (which will launch thousands of hackers/crackers and subversives of all types into a frenzy of response to circumvent, there is not much to fear from the “kill switch” approach, which is really the only tool they have at this time. When all you have is a hammer everything is a nail.

Even if they pass it, it can’t be implemented. It humorously reminds me of the many conversations where some executive in a corporation would be telling me what the IT or network technology had to do for their new business requirments, without understanding anything about the underlying technology. I would tell them what they were asking was impossible and they’d demand like babies that it be done because it was “already in the new business plan” he or she’d briefed to some higher level executive. I’d respond with, “that’s great, now go back and tell them it can’t be done or I will.” Not every stupid scenario that these Bozos can dream up will come to fruition whether they demand it or not.

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