What would an Internet “Kill Switch” Look Like?
Probably nothing. Until it looked like Egypt, at which point it could be too late:
For those trying to follow events in Egypt, Wednesday was a chaotic experience. Unlike the close of Tuesday, when there was a single, dramatic episode to concentrate the signs of Government and opposition — the gathering in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo — yesterday forced the observer to try and gather information on a series of running battles.
Difficulties were compounded by the restrictions on communications by Egyptian authorities, who blocked Twitter and may have interfered with Facebook as well as disrupting cell phones in an effort to snap links between protesters. And of course the Government put security forces — thousands of them — on the streets of the cities.
Outside of squelching citizen-led protests, the government gains very little by commandeering the Internet. In any other time of crisis, media both old and new have always lined up voluntarily to help. The only time they wouldn’t — that is, the only time we’d need a kill switch — would be if the government had lost the support of a large share of the people. In which case, protest may be a crisis, but if so, it’s a healthy one.
The fact is that we have never had a “cybersecurity emergency.” No more, at any rate, than we’ve ever had a “TV security emergency” or a “print security emergency.” The very term should be laughable.
In all our real emergencies, like the Deepwater Horizon spill, Hurricane Katrina, or September 11, all the media outlets cooperated, instantly, in providing information about events as they developed, so that people could make the best of things in the aftermath. Not only did the media disseminate information as the government asked, they also withheld information as asked, blocking out about troop movements and intelligence to help the war effort.
It’s just really, really difficult to dream up any scenario in which a takeover would be needed, except to stop the sort of legitimate citizen protest guaranteed under the First Amendment. Terrorists hack a computer at a nuclear power plant? (Do you really imagine the plant’s owners wouldn’t cooperate with the feds?) Terrorists somehow come to own a nuclear power plant? (If they did, the fault would lie with the SEC, the CIA, or any number of other agencies that could have stopped it a long time ago. And even then, it’s not like terrorists would say “Oh, killswitch law. Here ya go. My bad.”)
> It’s just really, really difficult to dream up any scenario in which
> a takeover would be needed, except to stop the sort of legitimate
> citizen protest guaranteed under the First Amendment.
More disturbing, it’s very very easy to dream up a scenario where a takeover would be a bad, bad idea, and yet some rule-happy idiot would flip the switch with the best intentions and make the situation itself orders of magnitude worse.
It’s also very easy to dream up a (very unlikely, granted) scenario where the capability itself is suborned, which is downright horrifying.
Finally, it’s basically impossible without completely re-engineering the Internet at a very low level; a massive (and hideously expensive) undertaking with no real positive value.
The entire concept of the Internet, for those who don’t remember the DARPA days, was to create a computer network that could continue to route data even should a *substantial* portion of the network suddenly disappear from existence (if Texas disappeared in a mushroom cloud, one still wanted data to make its way from Washington to Los Angeles). As a result, the basic protocols are extremely inefficient, but have very robust linkage correction capabilities.Report
It’s what Comcast will do to Netflix, if given the chance.Report
Mikie, does Netflicks (I love ’em, dude) run on comcasts highway? It’s a question!Report
Can Comcast both claim the status of being a common carrier (e.g. have no liability for content than’s libelous, fraudulent, or a violation of copyright) and downgrade content for their own commercial advantage? That’s a question too.Report
It’s a more difficult question than you propose, because the parallels between the common carriers of old and today’s ISPs are not exact.
I’m undecided on net neutrality. I consider it beyond my technical ken and not something I’d enjoy commenting about. But if you’re slyly suggesting that a government killswitch is okay — because, hey, Comcast is doing it — then I have to object very strongly. There’s a bright line, or there should be, between business and government.Report
but if you’re slyly suggesting that a government killswitch is okay
In no way.Report
People ask me what I do for a living. Rather than say “I’m an SOA systems architect with a specialty to realtime AI interfaces and embedded systems” I generally say “I connect things. Square pegs, round holes, that sort of thing.”
What, exactly would “killing” anything mean? The undertaker has to shave the man’s corpse before the viewing: his beard goes on growing. We don’t die all at once. Very few creatures do.
To kill the Internet, you kill the Border Gate Protocol. Yes, yes, Bub, it’s a Wikipedia link. I write for Wikipedia, too. Sue me.
Anyway, for a civilian rendering of the problem, there’s this. The World Wide Web was designed as a footnoting system, folks. It was based on a network of trust which no longer exists.Report
Ugh, I don’t want to go back to the days of bulletin boards or the walled gardens of CompuServe and Prodigy.Report
You mean back to the days when computer networking was the domain of private, profit-seeking companies instead of a vast quasi-public utility, designed and built by government agencies and government-supported non-profits? Yeah, neither do I.Report
Interesting.
You look at the internet and you see the government.
I look at it and I see anarchy.
Huh.Report
Maybe because I was around when the sausage was being made.Report
That’s a fairly self-congratulatory reason that doesn’t necessarily take into account how anybody else could possibly have reached a different conclusion with similar information in good faith.
Have you considered Christianity?Report
Then perhaps it’s because I don’t consider everything that government does Evil.Report
“Evil.”
Ah, yeah. Seriously. You may want to check it out.
In any case, I’m beginning to suspect that if you think that you’re arguing against my positions when you say such things, you’re thinking that you’re scoring points while, since I’m under the impression that the position you’re arguing against is not, in fact, mine (and, I suspect, I’d know) my perspective is that you’re beating the crap out of a position that no one is arguing.
But, hey. I also imagine that there’s some amount of pleasure involved on your part and, hey, you aren’t hurting anybody.
Knock yourself out.Report
You’re the one that much prefers a system that was designed to be vendor-neutral by folks involved with and funded by the government to the commercial ones. You can draw the obvious conclusion or not.Report
I see a system designed to maximize liberty at the expense of monied interests to be far superior to one that has experienced regulatory capture at the hands of lobbyists looking out for the best interests of their clients rather than the best interests of Liberty.
I think that the government ought to treat the country more like it treats the internet.
As it stands, I suspect that we’re well on the way to treating the internet more like the country… and the argument I’m sure I’ll see given in response to my calls for “not changing” will be something to the effect of “you think that everything the government does is Evil”.Report
Are we talking about net neutrality, which is a refinement of the design?Report
Which came out first, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or The Matrix?Report
BlaiseP, you are one of those rare individuals who can entertain, educate, and threaten all in one comment.Report
I think part of the problem is that the terminology “internet kill switch” and the effect of the proposed legislation (to allow the federal govt to control particular, designated computer equipment in the event of a “cybersecurity emergency”?) don’t seem to have much to do with each other.
An “internet kill switch,” in the final analysis, looks like a backhoe. The internet is, by definition, the connections between systems. To kill it is to de-network everyone. See Jacob Appelbaum’s twitter stream for today (@ioerror); it appears that Egypt just pulled the plug on the cable in/out of the country. Suddenly all the questions about what services are filtered, IPs blocked, how many tor relays we’ve got up…not so relevant.
But yeah, scenario’s where the federal government can make things better by directly taking over computer equipment? Coming up dry here.Report
The intended effect of this legislation is a long term one. Obviously there is no practical “Internet Kill Switch” in Washington DC that can turn everything off all at once. This legislation is a manifestation of a bunch of security-minded policy wonks and professionals who’s persistent aim is to gain as much control as possible over the flow of traffic. Before 9-11-2001 the feds were having a very hard time gaining Congressional support for the Carnivore application. After 9-11-2001 the executive branch used the tool and let the New York Times report it to the legislative branch through their reporting on civil rights violations.
With legislation like this, it will give our security officials more impetus and gravitas when demanding cooperation from our ISPs. It will make building an “Internet Kill Switch” through BGP or other means a lot easier to implement.Report
Really, really difficult? I guess this is why you’re a think-tank wonk and not a science fiction TV show writer!Report