11 ms·

Wartime Is a Bad Time to Mess with the Internet

260 points by CTOSian 5y ago

hirundo 5y ago
As a matter of policy in this event I agree with the EFF. But given this timeline of modern wars, I can't agree with the literal headline, since war is almost always going on somewhere. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/timeline-of-20th-and-21st-century-wars https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/timeline-of-20th-and-21st-cen... A better heuristic is to not make policy when upset or angry, and the existence of war is a poor proxy of that. And even that rule can be a hindrance to adequately and rapidly responding to novel stimuli.
- Sallywell 5y ago
  Someone made me think, questioning: 'First try, but you can't fix mistakes if your trying teaches you something? Now present in European-MSM 'The Weakening Of Russia', Hint: 'Initially, the Energy Charter process aimed to integrate the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe' The 'EU' broke the contract (one-sided) September'21 (with 'a grain' of 'Green-Deal' (1,8 metric billions in Euro) euphoria ^^) regards,
- scratcheee 5y ago
  You're right, but I think they were making a different point in the title than that the pressure of war would lead to unwise decisions (though they may have been going for both at once). They were also pointing out that the internet is likely to do more good than harm as far as de-escalating tensions goes, if you want to end a war, then turning off the internet is probably not a good policy, since it closes off an opportunity for dialogue and shared perspectives, so could do more harm than any potential good caused by the economic/social pressure. So "[As a sanction during] Wartime is a Bad Time to Mess with the Internet [if the eventual intent is to de-escalate the war]" is a more reasonable interpretation of the title.
Ekaros 5y ago
I wonder would these actions be then applied equally. Let's say USA invades Iran. Should we then terminate all of the domains and tlds hold by any USA based entity. Reclaim all of the IP space hold by them too? Surely it would solve some starvation issue, and be just, but do we want that?
- dainiusse 5y ago
  Lets say aliena invade mars. This is bs...
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  You don't have to wonder. The usa did invade irak against the vote of the UN and while lying about WMD. Nothing happened.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    I would disagree that nothing happened. If anything, I'd say that Bin Laden actually mostly met his goals here - He mired the US in an unpopular and horrendously expensive set of wars, that made a LOT of everyday Americans much more mindful of the military industrial machine that is the US state (and I say that as an American). Not to mention we're seeing a more clear decline in US influence abroad because of it. Did we face a similar set of retaliatory sanctions? No, but that's because the cost/reward structure is hugely different. It's hard to sanction the largest economy in the world, which owns and prints the currency most of the world uses as its reserve, and which is also the military backer that has mostly kept Europe from becoming another series of land wars after WW2. Thats... just so significantly different from the challenges present with sanctioning Russia. Even this discussion about the internet - The ICANN is an american company. Hell - well more than half the sites people want to take action here are American companies. If you tried to saction the US by cutting off their internet... are you sanctioning the US or yourself?
- Karsteski 5y ago
  Goes back to my comment yesterday on the topic of ICANN not removing Russia from the internet: "It's interesting how the world rallied immediately to the aid of Ukraine in a big way, compared to the middle eastern countries that have been destroyed by the likes of the US and allies, or the South American countries that have been completely destabilized by the US government. Really makes you think..."
dangerface 5y ago
Russian attacks on Ukraine infrastructure need to stop its putting the lives of citizens in danger. Ukraine citizens use the internet to communicate and evade the Russian Military while Russian citizens using it to play league. Who's use is more legitimate seems pretty easy to answer if you ask me. The fear that the west will appear as hippocratic if they condemn Russia because of the Iraq invasion doesn't make sense to me. The Iraq invasion was completely unjustified, we lied about weapons of mass destruction the same way Russia lie about a holocaust. We don't gain nor lose any ground by acknowledging our past. Both invasions are unjustified and easy to condemn. If we can't condemn unjustified actions because in the future we might wan't to do the same then we are truly worthy of condemnation.
- filoleg 5y ago
  > Ukraine citizens use the internet to communicate and evade the Russian Military while Russian citizens using it to play league. I don't know about where you got this from, but my father (who currently lives in Russia) uses internet to communicate with me (I live in the US) and to consume news and information about the war outside of the Russian government propaganda. Thanks to internet still being generally available there, I didn't need to spend any time trying to drop all that info on him myself, as he already came into the call fully aware of all Zelenskyy speeches and other atrocities Russian government is committing during this invasion. And thanks to internet again, he gave me a perspective on the amount of brainwashing going on in Russian media regarding the situation right now, as well as first hand boots-on-the-ground info regarding protests in major Russian cities right now. I am extremely glad for that, as my other side of the family (the one I don't communicate with) has completely fallen for Putin's propaganda, but that's on them given that internet is still accessible. I wouldn't be able to stand to lose my father to this, and I believe that with no internet access there would have been much less choice in the matter. Want to cut off access to Russian governmental portals and cripple network capabilities of Russian government/military systems? I am all for it. Want to cut off access to some specific internet resources that might directly assist Russian military with the invasion (e.g., certain Google Maps features and such)? Also fully on board with this. But I am extremely against cutting off general internet access for russian population en masse, as that's their only window into the reality that isn't Putin's propaganda machine. For once, internet is also used by Russians to communicate with their friends/relatives in Ukraine (and in the west in general) who can give them a direct view into the atrocities happening there and slowly sway the general population. P.S. a silly nitpick, but you must be getting some really strange info, if you think that League was ever even nearly as popular in Russia as Dota/Counter-Strike.
squarefoot 5y ago
I agree that blocking access to the Internet would do more harm than good over there, although it would be fun if say their key military and pro-Putin propaganda domain names would magically resolve to 127.0.0.1, that is, without touching other services the population depends on.
- femiagbabiaka 5y ago
  Russia has been doing tests of onshore web infra in the event of widespread internet outages since 2019 at least. This would only make things much worse for the average Russian citizen: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50902496 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50902496
thriftwy 5y ago
Can't say I understand the chutzpah. Russia has invaded Ukraine with full force of military. But, it did not invade %your country% yet. If you participate in hostile actions against Russia while being in %your country%, why don't you expect the retaliation of some kind? Imagine some country such as the USA doing a large damage to Russia's connectivity. This will lead to direct loss of life in Russia, such as by disruption of cellular networks, 911 not working, hospital domain not resolving, etc. What would then prevent Russia from starting a cyberattack against that country's vital infrastructure which will, too, lead to loss of life before your doorstep? People in some countries are seen humiliating or even attacking regular russians (some of them already on the local citizenship). Ask yourself, is there a chance %your country% own people are in Russia right now, and what happens if Russia pays back with the same coin? There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it.
- 1shooner 5y ago
  >There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it. You are saying that a military invasion is before the red line, and taking away TLDs is across the red line?
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    Okay. Correction. There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines with regards of %your country% whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it.
    - bobthebuilders 5y ago
      And that's where strength in numbers and coordination comes in, and why the West had to unite behind sanctions to get any one nation to apply them.
      - 5y ago
kemitchell 5y ago
It's statements like these that really broke me as an EFF fanboy. The impact litigation arm---great, keep it up, represent poor hackers. The policy arm seems to seesaw between competing with itself to be as tone-deaf libertarian rational automaton as possible and paralyzed in some internal debate brought on by pangs of conscience. Loud and proud when the issue was human trafficking. Then suddenly more nuanced when it was right-wing extremism and the election. Now we're back to this. This comes after ICANN responded to Fedorov. They even mention that at the bottom. It's a dunk. So who is this blog post for? And why does it feel like a copy-and-paste job of totally generic ideological boilerplate, without any more than a cursory attempt to apply to the situation at hand? The Russian government doesn't need anyone's help building or defending an information bubble. See, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487 Channel One is still on YouTube, if you can stomach it: https://www.youtube.com/c/1tv/ https://www.youtube.com/c/1tv/ I haven't seen a Levada Center poll since the invasion, but we can guess what we might see: https://www.levada.ru/2022/02/24/putin-uveren-chto-grazhdane-rossii-podderzhivayut-priznanie-dnr-i-lnr-no-tak-li-eto-na-samom-dele-intervyu-denisa-volkova/ https://www.levada.ru/2022/02/24/putin-uveren-chto-grazhdane... The Kremlin didn't succeed with Internet-isolation tests on schedule, but has recently got around to publishing its whitelist of Internet services, with legal provisions ensuring all citizens access, even when they fall behind on their bills. Essentially, it's home-grown, state-run Free Basics. The precedent argument is nothing more than a dressed up slippery slope. If we take countermeasure X in exceptional situation Y---the Russian Federation invading Ukraine and overtly threatening the world with its nuclear arsenal is hardly a seasonal political staple---we will immediately lose our minds, void all accountability, topple all balancing notions, and overdue it thenceforth, forevermore. How does the RPSL and RPKI stuff even apply here? The vague security, privacy, and "trust" arguments are pure hand waving. Nobody is convinced by language like that. It's just there to nod along with, for existing true believers.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  " Loud and proud when the issue was human trafficking. Then suddenly more nuanced when it was right-wing extremism and the election." These issues are not comparable in the slightest
imwillofficial 5y ago
Access to the internet should not be something wielded like a weapon. It is not a political tool to beat those we disagree with. If we use it like that it will cease to become reliable, and therefore useful, to a large contingent of the planet who might take their ball and go home. E.g. Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran
- stuu99 5y ago
- indemnity 5y ago
  I see only benefits to cutting those countries off. Sources of malware, DoS attacks based on who their governments currently have a disagreement with, scams, ransomware. This reason always gets trotted out but Chinese and Russians have no interest in our internet / news sources / information. Allowing them to connect to us just opens a point of attack, and is a weakness. Cut the fibre, remove them from DNS. Let them build their own internet if they can.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
I disagree, I think Russia should be cut off from the global Internet, and that all connections from Russia or its allies should be cut off. I understand that when you cut off a country you allow them to intensify the misinformation that they are spreading, but by cutting off rush you’re also cutting them off from knowledge they can use in the war effort. It was a miatake for ICANN deny the petition, and I think it’s a political decision for EFF to take this position.
- chernevik 5y ago
  What's political about it? It's a position that applies to any country in any war.
  - Overtonwindow 5y ago
    Politically because EFF cannot agree to cutting off a very bad actor like Russia, even when there is just cause to do so, because it undermines their position on net neutrality domestically. Cutting off a country from the global internet is not a decision to be taken lightly by any means, but it's one that should be considered for a set of circumstances.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Politically because EFF cannot agree to cutting off a very bad actor like Russia, even when there is just cause to do so It's called having principles. What do you call it when you say that you stand for x but do a 180 when x doesn't suit your agenda (ie. "just cause to do so")? >because it undermines their position on net neutrality domestically Can you elaborate? I fail to see the connection here.
tpoacher 5y ago
> Also like most people, we are not experts on military strategy or international diplomacy. Surely they meant to say "Also , unlike most people on the internet" :p
PHGamer 5y ago
dns needs to be peer to peer like with any important service. its the only way. that being said its not like russia and china don't block domains and redirect traffic already.
sha_burn 5y ago
Seems like there's a high probability of inducing extreme individual isolationism
ComradePhil 5y ago
It's inevitable that those with power will try to abuse it. What surprises me is not that people, companies and governments are threatening to cut off internet services from certain groups, but the fact that these entities have that kind of power in the first place. I think those who have built their foundations based on enemy technology deserve what is coming to them. However, I hope it helps others at the sideline think hard about their own reliance on enemies and work more towards independence.
teekert 5y ago
Good. Are we again forgetting that the Russians love their children too? What would it do to any of us if we had a leader hungry for a war we don’t want and the rest of the worlds kicks us off the internet to boot. What does this do to the normal Russian people?
- stuu99 5y ago
  "Are we again forgetting that the Russians love their children too?" Most people are indoctrinated and unaware why russia is invading ukraine. When you study the history of the conflict it's easy to see why Russia is doing what it is doing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
  - teekert 5y ago
    I just wonder how many Russians would vote for war in a referendum.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Good. Are we again forgetting that the Russians love their children too? What would it do to any of us if we had a leader hungry for a war we don’t want and the rest of the worlds kicks us off the internet to boot. What does this do to the normal Russian people? No, but we shouldn't forget Ukrainians also love their children, and they're getting bombed and driven from their homes. The world isn't perfect, and there's always going to be some collateral damage in any resistance to injustice.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Collateral damage among civilians is what creates deep hate and “terrorists”. Whatnot your kids are collateral damage? There are only losers here.
    - teekert 5y ago
      *what if
ralusek 5y ago
The idea of a free and open Internet should undergird any individual conflict.
yobbo 5y ago
The internet is one of the crucial things that are needed to solve this. They should put on the front page of russian google: "current events in Ukraine", or something like it.

260 points by CTOSian 5y ago

As a matter of policy in this event I agree with the EFF. But given this timeline of modern wars, I can't agree with the literal headline, since war is almost always going on somewhere. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/timeline-of-20th-and-21st-century-wars https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/timeline-of-20th-and-21st-cen... A better heuristic is to not make policy when upset or angry, and the existence of war is a poor proxy of that. And even that rule can be a hindrance to adequately and rapidly responding to novel stimuli.

Sallywell 5y ago
Someone made me think, questioning: 'First try, but you can't fix mistakes if your trying teaches you something? Now present in European-MSM 'The Weakening Of Russia', Hint: 'Initially, the Energy Charter process aimed to integrate the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe' The 'EU' broke the contract (one-sided) September'21 (with 'a grain' of 'Green-Deal' (1,8 metric billions in Euro) euphoria ^^) regards,
scratcheee 5y ago
You're right, but I think they were making a different point in the title than that the pressure of war would lead to unwise decisions (though they may have been going for both at once). They were also pointing out that the internet is likely to do more good than harm as far as de-escalating tensions goes, if you want to end a war, then turning off the internet is probably not a good policy, since it closes off an opportunity for dialogue and shared perspectives, so could do more harm than any potential good caused by the economic/social pressure. So "[As a sanction during] Wartime is a Bad Time to Mess with the Internet [if the eventual intent is to de-escalate the war]" is a more reasonable interpretation of the title.

Ekaros 5y ago

I wonder would these actions be then applied equally. Let's say USA invades Iran. Should we then terminate all of the domains and tlds hold by any USA based entity. Reclaim all of the IP space hold by them too? Surely it would solve some starvation issue, and be just, but do we want that?

dainiusse 5y ago
Lets say aliena invade mars. This is bs...
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
You don't have to wonder. The usa did invade irak against the vote of the UN and while lying about WMD. Nothing happened.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  I would disagree that nothing happened. If anything, I'd say that Bin Laden actually mostly met his goals here - He mired the US in an unpopular and horrendously expensive set of wars, that made a LOT of everyday Americans much more mindful of the military industrial machine that is the US state (and I say that as an American). Not to mention we're seeing a more clear decline in US influence abroad because of it. Did we face a similar set of retaliatory sanctions? No, but that's because the cost/reward structure is hugely different. It's hard to sanction the largest economy in the world, which owns and prints the currency most of the world uses as its reserve, and which is also the military backer that has mostly kept Europe from becoming another series of land wars after WW2. Thats... just so significantly different from the challenges present with sanctioning Russia. Even this discussion about the internet - The ICANN is an american company. Hell - well more than half the sites people want to take action here are American companies. If you tried to saction the US by cutting off their internet... are you sanctioning the US or yourself?
Karsteski 5y ago
Goes back to my comment yesterday on the topic of ICANN not removing Russia from the internet: "It's interesting how the world rallied immediately to the aid of Ukraine in a big way, compared to the middle eastern countries that have been destroyed by the likes of the US and allies, or the South American countries that have been completely destabilized by the US government. Really makes you think..."

dangerface 5y ago

Russian attacks on Ukraine infrastructure need to stop its putting the lives of citizens in danger. Ukraine citizens use the internet to communicate and evade the Russian Military while Russian citizens using it to play league. Who's use is more legitimate seems pretty easy to answer if you ask me. The fear that the west will appear as hippocratic if they condemn Russia because of the Iraq invasion doesn't make sense to me. The Iraq invasion was completely unjustified, we lied about weapons of mass destruction the same way Russia lie about a holocaust. We don't gain nor lose any ground by acknowledging our past. Both invasions are unjustified and easy to condemn. If we can't condemn unjustified actions because in the future we might wan't to do the same then we are truly worthy of condemnation.

filoleg 5y ago
> Ukraine citizens use the internet to communicate and evade the Russian Military while Russian citizens using it to play league. I don't know about where you got this from, but my father (who currently lives in Russia) uses internet to communicate with me (I live in the US) and to consume news and information about the war outside of the Russian government propaganda. Thanks to internet still being generally available there, I didn't need to spend any time trying to drop all that info on him myself, as he already came into the call fully aware of all Zelenskyy speeches and other atrocities Russian government is committing during this invasion. And thanks to internet again, he gave me a perspective on the amount of brainwashing going on in Russian media regarding the situation right now, as well as first hand boots-on-the-ground info regarding protests in major Russian cities right now. I am extremely glad for that, as my other side of the family (the one I don't communicate with) has completely fallen for Putin's propaganda, but that's on them given that internet is still accessible. I wouldn't be able to stand to lose my father to this, and I believe that with no internet access there would have been much less choice in the matter. Want to cut off access to Russian governmental portals and cripple network capabilities of Russian government/military systems? I am all for it. Want to cut off access to some specific internet resources that might directly assist Russian military with the invasion (e.g., certain Google Maps features and such)? Also fully on board with this. But I am extremely against cutting off general internet access for russian population en masse, as that's their only window into the reality that isn't Putin's propaganda machine. For once, internet is also used by Russians to communicate with their friends/relatives in Ukraine (and in the west in general) who can give them a direct view into the atrocities happening there and slowly sway the general population. P.S. a silly nitpick, but you must be getting some really strange info, if you think that League was ever even nearly as popular in Russia as Dota/Counter-Strike.

squarefoot 5y ago

I agree that blocking access to the Internet would do more harm than good over there, although it would be fun if say their key military and pro-Putin propaganda domain names would magically resolve to 127.0.0.1, that is, without touching other services the population depends on.

femiagbabiaka 5y ago
Russia has been doing tests of onshore web infra in the event of widespread internet outages since 2019 at least. This would only make things much worse for the average Russian citizen: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50902496 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50902496

thriftwy 5y ago

Can't say I understand the chutzpah. Russia has invaded Ukraine with full force of military. But, it did not invade %your country% yet. If you participate in hostile actions against Russia while being in %your country%, why don't you expect the retaliation of some kind? Imagine some country such as the USA doing a large damage to Russia's connectivity. This will lead to direct loss of life in Russia, such as by disruption of cellular networks, 911 not working, hospital domain not resolving, etc. What would then prevent Russia from starting a cyberattack against that country's vital infrastructure which will, too, lead to loss of life before your doorstep? People in some countries are seen humiliating or even attacking regular russians (some of them already on the local citizenship). Ask yourself, is there a chance %your country% own people are in Russia right now, and what happens if Russia pays back with the same coin? There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it.

1shooner 5y ago
>There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it. You are saying that a military invasion is before the red line, and taking away TLDs is across the red line?
- thriftwy 5y ago
  Okay. Correction. There's a built-in assumption that Russia will observe some red lines with regards of %your country% whereas %your country% doesn't need to. This assumption may fail eventually if you try it.
  - bobthebuilders 5y ago
    And that's where strength in numbers and coordination comes in, and why the West had to unite behind sanctions to get any one nation to apply them.
    - 5y ago

kemitchell 5y ago

It's statements like these that really broke me as an EFF fanboy. The impact litigation arm---great, keep it up, represent poor hackers. The policy arm seems to seesaw between competing with itself to be as tone-deaf libertarian rational automaton as possible and paralyzed in some internal debate brought on by pangs of conscience. Loud and proud when the issue was human trafficking. Then suddenly more nuanced when it was right-wing extremism and the election. Now we're back to this. This comes after ICANN responded to Fedorov. They even mention that at the bottom. It's a dunk. So who is this blog post for? And why does it feel like a copy-and-paste job of totally generic ideological boilerplate, without any more than a cursory attempt to apply to the situation at hand? The Russian government doesn't need anyone's help building or defending an information bubble. See, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487 Channel One is still on YouTube, if you can stomach it: https://www.youtube.com/c/1tv/ https://www.youtube.com/c/1tv/ I haven't seen a Levada Center poll since the invasion, but we can guess what we might see: https://www.levada.ru/2022/02/24/putin-uveren-chto-grazhdane-rossii-podderzhivayut-priznanie-dnr-i-lnr-no-tak-li-eto-na-samom-dele-intervyu-denisa-volkova/ https://www.levada.ru/2022/02/24/putin-uveren-chto-grazhdane... The Kremlin didn't succeed with Internet-isolation tests on schedule, but has recently got around to publishing its whitelist of Internet services, with legal provisions ensuring all citizens access, even when they fall behind on their bills. Essentially, it's home-grown, state-run Free Basics. The precedent argument is nothing more than a dressed up slippery slope. If we take countermeasure X in exceptional situation Y---the Russian Federation invading Ukraine and overtly threatening the world with its nuclear arsenal is hardly a seasonal political staple---we will immediately lose our minds, void all accountability, topple all balancing notions, and overdue it thenceforth, forevermore. How does the RPSL and RPKI stuff even apply here? The vague security, privacy, and "trust" arguments are pure hand waving. Nobody is convinced by language like that. It's just there to nod along with, for existing true believers.

thatguy0900 5y ago
" Loud and proud when the issue was human trafficking. Then suddenly more nuanced when it was right-wing extremism and the election." These issues are not comparable in the slightest

imwillofficial 5y ago

Access to the internet should not be something wielded like a weapon. It is not a political tool to beat those we disagree with. If we use it like that it will cease to become reliable, and therefore useful, to a large contingent of the planet who might take their ball and go home. E.g. Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran

stuu99 5y ago
indemnity 5y ago
I see only benefits to cutting those countries off. Sources of malware, DoS attacks based on who their governments currently have a disagreement with, scams, ransomware. This reason always gets trotted out but Chinese and Russians have no interest in our internet / news sources / information. Allowing them to connect to us just opens a point of attack, and is a weakness. Cut the fibre, remove them from DNS. Let them build their own internet if they can.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

I disagree, I think Russia should be cut off from the global Internet, and that all connections from Russia or its allies should be cut off. I understand that when you cut off a country you allow them to intensify the misinformation that they are spreading, but by cutting off rush you’re also cutting them off from knowledge they can use in the war effort. It was a miatake for ICANN deny the petition, and I think it’s a political decision for EFF to take this position.

chernevik 5y ago
What's political about it? It's a position that applies to any country in any war.
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  Politically because EFF cannot agree to cutting off a very bad actor like Russia, even when there is just cause to do so, because it undermines their position on net neutrality domestically. Cutting off a country from the global internet is not a decision to be taken lightly by any means, but it's one that should be considered for a set of circumstances.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Politically because EFF cannot agree to cutting off a very bad actor like Russia, even when there is just cause to do so It's called having principles. What do you call it when you say that you stand for x but do a 180 when x doesn't suit your agenda (ie. "just cause to do so")? >because it undermines their position on net neutrality domestically Can you elaborate? I fail to see the connection here.

tpoacher 5y ago

> Also like most people, we are not experts on military strategy or international diplomacy. Surely they meant to say "Also , unlike most people on the internet" :p

PHGamer 5y ago

dns needs to be peer to peer like with any important service. its the only way. that being said its not like russia and china don't block domains and redirect traffic already.

sha_burn 5y ago

Seems like there's a high probability of inducing extreme individual isolationism

ComradePhil 5y ago

It's inevitable that those with power will try to abuse it. What surprises me is not that people, companies and governments are threatening to cut off internet services from certain groups, but the fact that these entities have that kind of power in the first place. I think those who have built their foundations based on enemy technology deserve what is coming to them. However, I hope it helps others at the sideline think hard about their own reliance on enemies and work more towards independence.

teekert 5y ago

Good. Are we again forgetting that the Russians love their children too? What would it do to any of us if we had a leader hungry for a war we don’t want and the rest of the worlds kicks us off the internet to boot. What does this do to the normal Russian people?

stuu99 5y ago
"Are we again forgetting that the Russians love their children too?" Most people are indoctrinated and unaware why russia is invading ukraine. When you study the history of the conflict it's easy to see why Russia is doing what it is doing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
- teekert 5y ago
  I just wonder how many Russians would vote for war in a referendum.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Good. Are we again forgetting that the Russians love their children too? What would it do to any of us if we had a leader hungry for a war we don’t want and the rest of the worlds kicks us off the internet to boot. What does this do to the normal Russian people? No, but we shouldn't forget Ukrainians also love their children, and they're getting bombed and driven from their homes. The world isn't perfect, and there's always going to be some collateral damage in any resistance to injustice.
- teekert 5y ago
  Collateral damage among civilians is what creates deep hate and “terrorists”. Whatnot your kids are collateral damage? There are only losers here.
  - teekert 5y ago
    *what if

ralusek 5y ago

The idea of a free and open Internet should undergird any individual conflict.

yobbo 5y ago

The internet is one of the crucial things that are needed to solve this. They should put on the front page of russian google: "current events in Ukraine", or something like it.