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The Internet is freest in US hands
- devx 13y agoI'm not so sure that will continue to be true. Maybe if Americans convince me that they can elect a Congress and a new president that is very against these mass surveillance practices, campaigns on that, and has a proven track record regarding that, maybe I'll change my mind. But as long as US keeps giving itself "freebies" with every foreigner's data, I'm not trusting it. I want some well established rules for how US can access my data, and only with the agreement my government.
- krapp 13y agoThat may not be as impossible as it seemed when this all first came to light. Assuming that businesses in other countries put any real financial pressure on American interests by avoiding entanglements with US IT firms or networks, and that there's political traction to be had running against NSA surveillance (at least as long as Obama is President) then there could be pressure to amend, repeal or alter the existing surveillance apparatus on the right as well as the left. That there are, at least, cogent arguments on both sides against it suggests to me that someone's campaign somewhere is considering it.
- anologwintermut 13y agoI think it's important to draw the distinction between freedom in terms of the freedom of speech on the internet and freedom from surveillance on the internet. The US is the largest monitor of the internet because most of the traffic passes through points it can monitor. Changing this would restrict US spying, but it would make it easier for other countries to do it (consider, given the announced Olympic surveillance plans) if all the traffic went through Russia). So you'd have to simply hope traffic doesn't get routed through countries who want to spy on each-other(remember, few if any countries have legal restrictions on foreign surveillance). It seems the only real solution to prevent surveillance is end to end cryptography. The part where it gets dicier is that many of the countries trying to get control of the internet have much poorer legal protections for freedom of speech or social acceptance of it than the US (e.g. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil).
- schoen 13y agoThis is one reason I think it would be helpful to have a clearer articulation of which functions people are referring to when they talk about "Internet governance", so that other people can understand whether we want those functions to exist at all, and (if so) what kinds of institutions we would like to try to empower to do them. Many things that can be called "Internet governance" have little bearing on Internet users' free speech or privacy -- but others do. This might be akin to the way that RMS suggests that saying "intellectual property" (instead of "copyright", "patent", "trademark", "trade secret", and several sui generis regimes) leads to conceptual muddles. "Internet governance" may have the same problem; maybe it's a term in need of some disaggregation!
- verandaguy 13y agoI can't say that I agree with the author's view on this. The American organizations that 'control' the Internet (ICANN, W3C, WHATWG, and even the IEEE, who were involved in the 802.11 standard design) would all more likely create better, more free standards and specifications if they worked as committees from countries which 1. Have no bad blood (so there's no reason to sabotage specs), and 2. Aren't too closely related, either; collaboration can result in a return to the current state of the web.
- mhurron 13y agoName the country that fits those two points.
- FBT 13y agoThe alternative to US control that we want of course isn't UN control. I would even go as far as to say that this article is attacking a strawman. What we object to is the "control" part of "the US controls the internet", not the "US" part. If China, or Russia, or Australia, or France, or whatever other country was doing what the US is doing now, we'd object just as much. Or if the UN was in control. That's not the point. What we want when we object to US control isn't foreign control, it's no control.
- tn13 13y agoYou are mistaken. No one gives a sh to US spying on Indians, Brazilians or Iranians. Most of the outrage you see on internet, on HN and everywhere else is only because US is spying on American citizens. (Control is not same as spying but I would assume spying to be a subset of it) That is why as a non-american I don't sign any of those petitions condemning NSA for spying on Americans.
- hitchhiker999 13y agoNo, people REALLY do care that the US is spying on everyone. A lot of people (I assume) also dislike the entire situation we're living in at the moment (tiresome police state crap).
- pkinsky 13y ago>Why so? Because there is no better political system—the constitution, separation of powers, civil society and citizens—than the United States today that can protect liberty and free speech. We may pass the low bar set by China and Russia, but each of these claims needs a citation.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sp332 13y agoDefinitely! I agree with the headline, but it's because of the track record of the specific agencies in the US that currently "control the internet", not because I think US agencies in general are superior.
- rayiner 13y agoWhich country large enough to do the job does a better job than the United States? Leave aside China and Russia. How about the U.K., which put the whole country under video surveillance years ago? How about France, which is currently waging a war on head scarves? Read this and tell me which country does a better job protecting speech than the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech.
- Spearchucker 13y agoHow about all of them?
- gibwell 13y agoAre you joking?
- jeremysmyth 13y agoAll != each
- healsjnr1 13y ago
- maxk42 13y agoNo -- it's freeest when NOBODY controls it. Support darknets.
- zimbatm 13y agoAnd darknets live on thin air ? Who writes the software of the darknets ?
- maxk42 13y agoYes. And anyone. The whole point of darknets is that no one person is in control of them.
- betterunix 13y agoThe problem is that most people do not really want an Internet controlled by its users, because what most people want is a ton of somewhat-reliable throughput. An Internet run by volunteers out of their homes, cooperatively, could work -- Fidonet works -- but would likely have much lower throughput than today's Internet. Overlay networks (darknets included) cannot work if the ISPs that run the Internet do not allow people to run them or connect to them.
- rhizome 13y agoThe problem is that most people do not really want an Internet controlled by its users, because what most people want is a ton of somewhat-reliable throughput. A complete non-sequitur.
- grecy 13y ago> Because there is no better political system—the constitution, separation of powers, civil society and citizens—than the United States today that can protect liberty and free speech. Spoken as only a sheltered American could believe.
- oconnor0 13y agoWhile I may agree with you sentiment, would you expound on it?
- grecy 13y agoAmericans go on an on about how they're the 'best country in the world' and how the constitution is amazing. They ramble about how what makes them great is freedom and liberty. For some reason they're extremely proud of free speech, like it's something only they have and how lucky they are to have it. When comparing to China, or maybe North Korea or the USSR, or even Nazi Germany, sure, those things are great and you should be proud. In the year 2013, there are at least 20 countries that have all of that and more, and don't spend their days rambling on about how great it all is. All of that stuff doesn't in any way make America special.
- greenyoda 13y agoApparently, the author is an Indian writing in an Indian publication, not a "sheltered American".
- atlanticus 13y agoThis is written by an Indian so I don't think he is sheltered. America is the only superpower and gets a lot of flack because they have no credible peer. Some people can't stand it and will be disappointed for a long time.
- EliRivers 13y agoAmerica is the only superpower and gets a lot of flack because they have no credible peer. That and all the terrible stuff they do.
- tn13 13y agoI can understand the hacker community disagreeing with the author but to do him justice, the article needs to be read in the following light 1. Other countries like China, Iran, Russia etc. will use Snowden's revelations (and likes) to lobby for a system where these countries get an "equal" say in how internet is being run. 2. If at all any government wants to "control" internet it better be US alone than some other nation of mixture of others nations.
- rhizome 13y agoWhat do the scare quotes around "equal" mean? And what trait(s) connects the countries you list? 2. If at all any government wants to "control" internet it better be US alone than some other nation of mixture of others nations. Of course this is what light the article is being read in, isn't it the title?
- tn13 13y agoThe trait that connects these countries: Sufficiently large countries whose opinion is reported in newspapers. The scare quote around "equal" : It means country X's opinion about how internet is to evolve and run would matter as much as country Y. Which is to say some countries such as United States who have contributed to growth of internet would be under represented and some countries like Sri Lanka will be over represented. This often happens in UN and eventually the large countries like US or China have to use different tactics to gain favorable opinion.
- saraid216 13y ago
- hitchhiker999 13y agoThe internet should continue to be decentralised, as intended, and not be under the control of any one government or people. Certainly not the U.S, Russia or China. That article just wasted 2 mins of my life.
- hitchhiker999 13y agoAlso, you can't comment on that article - it's moderated, so far the only 5 comments allowed through are either a) neutral b) pro US. Silly this.
- lnanek2 13y ago> The United States has strong and vocal free speech and privacy advocates who can hold their government accountable without fear of harm Then why did Snowden have to run away to a foreign country? Why is Manning in jail for 35 years?
- pertsix 13y agobreaking the law
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- guelo 13y agoEven the most repressive regimes have laws that activists are charged with violating.
- anologwintermut 13y agoBecause, right, wrong, or otherwise, he did actually break the law and not in some twisted way that's meant to punish people the government doesn't like. But you are right, it's not a good example. On the other hand, the fact that the Washington Post can still publish what he "stole"(from the gov's view) is telling about US respect for free speech.
- felipe 13y agoChen Guangcheng also "broke the law". So in your logic does that excuses China?
- anologwintermut 13y agoIn that case, it appears that the Chinese went looking for a law he broke to get rid of a pesky dissident. I.e. he pissed them off for other reasons and then they found something. What Snowden did, in terms of the actual act of disclosing massive amounts of classified data, was in and of it self very illegal. And it's that actual act that the government takes issue with, so the situation is completely different. Of course, a major question is do Snowden's motivations grant him an exception to that law or at least grounds of a pardon or such. I'd say yes, though it also depends on what he leaks.
- tikhonj 13y agoIt seems that the internet would be freest if it was decentralized--in nobody's hands. I think this would certainly be true of things like DNS, although I'm not sure how to accomplish this. Of course, in many ways, decentralized systems are rather counter-intuitive. They're possible technically, and the math is often elegant, but very few non-technical people encounter enough systems like this to be comfortable with the idea. Of course, a market is a perfect example of a decentralized system, but most people don't think of a market as a system per se. So perhaps this argument comes because the author does not realize or intuitively grasp the possibility that nobody need control the internet. And sure, when given the choice of whom to trust, the US is much better than many countries! Certainly better than Russia or China. And these countries have serious sway in the UN. Moreover, his point that the UN is not accountable to anyone is actually very important: while a democratic country like the US[1] is accountable to the people, the UN is only accountable to governments. Even in the US, we don't vote for our UN representative! (Do we?) So it's very indirect. But what if nobody really controls the internet--what if we manage some decentralized, consensus based system? Or something. (As I said before, I haven't thought of the details, so let's keep it hypothetical.) Well, that's a different ball game. Yet people may not even realize this is an option. [1]: Yeah, yeah, there's all sorts of pedantic argument to be made here, but I think it's besides the point: the US government is, to some finite extent, accountable to the people in a way that even China's isn't.
- hitchhiker999 13y agoNo, you are absolutely correct. It was designed to be decentralized. Hopefully when we look back in history, from a place where the internet works that way. We'll wonder how it was ever a single government / set of corporations that was 'in charge of it.'
- krapp 13y agoI can't see how the internet can be entirely decentralized, and still operate at the scale that it does. There are laws that must be applicable to the transfer of money and to business done online (at least for any business that wants to operate legally - obviously this excludes the Silk Roads of the world), to say nothing of the physical server, routing and power infrastructure involved. This is not to suggest that the internet must be centralized but I believe that the bigger it gets the more pressure there will be for corporations and governments to assert some kind of order onto it. And I think that for the most part, people want that. Most people want the internet they believe they have, in which they can check their facebook and pay their bills online and sneak their porn in peace.
- jdonaldson 13y agoIt's hard to claim the US system "works" because of whistleblowers, when the whistleblowers themselves claim the system is broken.
- NAFV_P 13y agoIn this thread China and Russia have been mentioned several times. What hasn't been brought up is the origin of the software they use to surf the internet.
- triplesec 13y agoThis pretty terrible piece of rhetoric using a false dilemma involving the strawman that "non-US control" = "foreign government control" which is not a true statement. This strawman sets up the false dilemma whereby a dichotomy is framed to us so as to make the US control appear to be the lesser of two evils. There are many other possible options for internet governance (or non-governance and de-governance), some of which we haven't yet devised. I suspect this forum may come up with some decent new ideas.
- gibwell 13y agoIt's a false dichotomy from a strictly abstract point of view where other logical possibilities exist, but that's irrelevant. The people who are proposing to move control of the internet away from the US actually are foreign governments, and in particular Russia and the Chinese. In the real world it is not a false dichotomy. If we want other alternatives, we actually have to devise and validate them before they become real.
- hitchhiker999 13y ago"where other logical possibilities exist, but that's irrelevant" - That's not irrelevant. He writes "Indians are much better off putting their faith in their freedom-loving American counterparts than participating in grandiose international internet governance schemes." -> that's pretty powerful rhetoric, suggesting a black/white scenario. This probably isn't accidental.
- triplesec 13y agoQuite! Another comment has suggested a distributed model, but I haven't seen a social or technical mechanism for this yet. I hope we are inspired to come up with some options and protocols. I'm now putting brain backcycles on this for sure, and others may be work on this as a priority. I'm wondering if there's already an .org dedicated to this.
- hitchhiker999 13y agoConsidering this is HN, we should have seen this comment sooner. The entire premise was a text-book demonstration of a logical fallacy.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoI've been among the biggest screamers about the NSA and other atrocities against privacy, but the author is exactly right. Those who call for putting the internet under some kind of control by the UN or other world organizations are either purposely misleading people or direly uninformed. We have a technology problem. The technology we built was made (on purpose) by us to track people like lab rats in an elaborate zoo. This capability exists completely outside of where your server is, where your data resides, or any of that. It's a feature of modern life. It's this feature of modern life that is the problem. All Snowden did was show that some Americans aren't going to sit idly by while their government screws over the world. Defunding the NSA or moving your stuff to an offshore cloud, or making it illegal for the U.S. government to track you? That's going to do exactly nothing in the way of protecting your privacy and anonymity. So yes, let's rise up and take action. But by all means, we should know what the hell we're talking about. If you want to really see draconian state surveillance, let each individual country have it's way with the citizens. What we've seen so far is a cakewalk compared to that possible future.
- felipe 13y ago> Where is Brazil’s Snowden? Is the author aware that Glenn Greenwald (the reporter who first reported about Snowden) ACTUALLY LIVES IN BRAZIL??? This article is just a nationalistic piece written with a very specific agenda.