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I can't help but think that the only way to avoid this sort of meddling is to make it technically impossible. To some extent, this is on us: the Internet, at i

I can't help but think that the only way to avoid this sort of meddling is to make it technically impossible. To some extent, this is on us: the Internet, at its core, is just a bunch of computers that are all physically connected, with protocols for sending messages to each other. We should have, from the outset, made sure that as long as computers have a physical connection, sending data between them in a standardized way was solid and unbreakable, even with malicious actors. We should have been considering how to design this system so that even if a government that controls a large (say up to 50%) subset of the nodes tries, communications between certain nodes could never be blocked without degrading communications between all blocks and losing the entire functionality. Then we'd be justified in saying that bills like this would destroy the Internet, and nobody would ever even try to pass them. Unfortunately, as thing stand, DNS is a too-easy weak-point in the infrastructure, so unsurprisingly, repressive governments target it as a way of imposing their will on the Internet. With a single point of failure, are we really surprised that governments will pick it out and exploit it? We had many other architectural options, did we perhaps choose one that was just too trusting when put up against the shitty world that we live in? Maybe I'm just naive, perhaps I don't understand the details and subtleties and just assume that a technical solution would be easier to come up with than it really is; I'm not a crypto or networks expert, so maybe the current situation is the only viable one. I'm sure any better solution would not be simple, and I'm sure it would require a lot of research. But in any case, it doesn't exist, so we're pretty much screwed for the moment. Issues like this make me think that dark-net plans are extremely useful, but happening far too late to matter in the real world, where everyone already follows protocols that allow for network-destroying interventions...

Kaizyn 15y ago
When the Internet was started, the researchers had no concept of the Internet growing to become a world-wide phenomenon where bad actors wold also exist on the network. Everyone involved was basically from an academic/research background and the funding was coming from DARPA. Even now, could you imagine researchers at say Stanford and Berkeley devising research collaboration methods that assume that either organization's management/governance will interfere with or act maliciously against that collaboration effort?
- bravura 15y ago
  Even now, could you imagine researchers at say Stanford and Berkeley devising research collaboration methods that assume that either organization's management/governance will interfere with or act maliciously against that collaboration effort? Yes, I could. I'm not saying that a technological approach to this problem is best. (I prefer a political response.) But I believe that current knowledge of computer security is sufficiently advanced that a more secure internet could be invented.

Kaizyn 15y ago

When the Internet was started, the researchers had no concept of the Internet growing to become a world-wide phenomenon where bad actors wold also exist on the network. Everyone involved was basically from an academic/research background and the funding was coming from DARPA. Even now, could you imagine researchers at say Stanford and Berkeley devising research collaboration methods that assume that either organization's management/governance will interfere with or act maliciously against that collaboration effort?

bravura 15y ago
Even now, could you imagine researchers at say Stanford and Berkeley devising research collaboration methods that assume that either organization's management/governance will interfere with or act maliciously against that collaboration effort? Yes, I could. I'm not saying that a technological approach to this problem is best. (I prefer a political response.) But I believe that current knowledge of computer security is sufficiently advanced that a more secure internet could be invented.