

Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. - ojbyrne
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/business/30pipes.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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glymor
It's not because of some mysterious security reason. Latency between Asia and
Europe is doubled by going through the US. You can't argue with the speed of
light.

~~~
ojbyrne
Even when the speed of light is not an issue (i.e. Canada), many people are
essentially barred from storing data in US websites, because the possibility
of warrantless searches conflict with privacy laws.

~~~
anamax
That's nice, but the article was about transport routes, not what happens at
the end points.

~~~
ojbyrne
"Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other
government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European
traffic away from the United States.

Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United
States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc
Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in
Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will
gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity
about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet
traffic that goes through U.S. switches."

Direct quote, above the fold, first page.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
"some say.. those actions. may be"

Sure would be nice if the newspaper of record could come up with something a
little more substantive in their reporting/analysis.

I'm not arguing with the premise -- I have no data to go one way or another.
But I still have no data, and I read the article. Something wrong about that.
The NYT really should be better than that.

~~~
ojbyrne
That paragraph is followed immediately by an example, which I included.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
A general, vague statement followed by an anecdote does not a news story make.
It's just noise.

A study, with details on how the study was done and comparisons to previous
studies/measurements? Different animal entirely.

Think about it this way. It would not be hard, using the same standards of
journalism, to write another true story with the opposite conclusion.

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tlrobinson
I'm surprised by the frankness of the CIA and other experts talking about how
much of a "home court" advantage the US has in terms of intelligence
gathering...

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sh1mmer
Maybe the NSA will each do something for the public good by insisting on a
massive network upgrade to ensure continued use of American routing.

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trezor
The internet was supposed to provide redundant routes between points.

Increasingly due to financial reasons people have moved away from that model,
since building redundancy typically costs money, and 99.9% of the time the
lack of redundancy isn't causing issues.

However, as the requirements for bandwidth, speed and responsiveness keeps
increasing, there is no doubt that people will look into establishing more
efficient and direct routes to help accomplish this, instead of just sending
everything out in the wild, and across the US.

Add to this the incredibly arrogant US "we own the world" powertrip and
communications monitoring, and you have to wonder why people are still routing
things trough the US when not strictly needed.

