
You can't control the internet. GCHQ needs to grow up and accept it - edward
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/11411166/You-cant-control-the-internet.-GCHQ-needs-to-grow-up-and-accept-it.html
======
jacquesm
The fact that it can't be done is no reason for clueless politicians to try to
achieve it.

Internet control implies that it has become worthless as a medium for commerce
or discourse and that would lead to it being replaced by something else.

Governments had it easy when all they had to deal with was one state owned
telecommunications provider. The explosion in connectivity options and the
associated increase in traffic far outstrips that capacity of any intelligence
agency in the world to accurately monitor and process.

The result of that is that the real data falls right through the cracks when
at the same time innocents the world over have their 'profiles' built up in
ridiculous detail (maybe on the off chance that they will commit some future
crime).

It's security theatre, just like what you get when you go about your daily
business at an airport, lots of hassle for extremely little - if any - gain.
Some believe even the smallest amount of gain is worth an incredible amount of
discomfort and should require giving up any semblance of privacy.

But it's a ridiculous stance, in the end the terrorists (or whatever the
bogeyman is called this year) will simply up their game to disappear even
further into the background noise.

A terrorist is a person with a problem of the mind, education and spreading
the worlds wealth more evenly will do more to combat it than any amount of
legislation to forbid encryption and dragnet surveillance will ever achieve.

If terrorists really wanted to blow up commercial airliners they could do so
with impunity, I can think of several ways in which they could achieve this
and _none_ of those would require communication via the internet or the
telephone.

So my conclusion is that the terrorists aren't really the target here.

~~~
bigbugbag
It would be a grave mistake to think politicians are clueless, lacking on the
technical understandings maybe but they're far from clueless. It could be said
that they didn't see it coming but it's here now and they do understand
threats to their established power and how they can leverage this medium to
push forward an agenda.

It's a long know fact that child pornography and terrorism are the story told
to justify the lawmaking process trying to get a grip on the internet.

~~~
disputin
In the UK it seems that politicians are guilty participants in the world of
child pornography.

~~~
rasur
ironic, no?

------
jdbernard
_Yet in a strange quirk of British manners, nobody ever seems to have a good
word to say about [intelligence agencies], despite their remarkable record. It
is as if they, not bigoted murderous fundamentalists or powerful autocratic
governments, are the real threat to liberty._

I don't think it is just British manners, especially since it is not
constrained to Britain. At the end he concludes:

 _In the end - and maybe this is the biggest change of all - we all have to
accept that perfect safety is illusory. [...] But I think any democracy worthy
of the name can live with that, because it’s the price of freedom._

The reason we are more afraid of agencies like the NSA or the GCHQ than
murderous fundamentalists or autocratic governments is that they have shown us
that they are violently unwilling to accept the illusory nature of perfect
security. In their fevered race to gain control over the cyberspace they have
violated our freedom--in this realm anyway-- _far_ worse ways than any other
attacker to date. We've had all of our worst digital security nightmares
confirmed. And the perpetrators are our own "protectors."

Earlier he says this:

 _More than ever, we will need a strong and capable intelligence agency to
keep our society safe._

In light of what we know now I have no doubts about the strength or capability
of our intelligence agencies. I worry mostly that they aren't particularly
interested in keeping us safe, let alone free.

~~~
matthewmacleod
_The reason we are more afraid of agencies like the NSA or the GCHQ than
murderous fundamentalists or autocratic governments is that they have shown us
that they are violently unwilling to accept the illusory nature of perfect
security. In their fevered race to gain control over the cyberspace they have
violated our freedom--in this realm anyway--far worse ways than any other
attacker to date. We 've had all of our worst digital security nightmares
confirmed. And the perpetrators are our own "protectors."_

I really think you've overstating this. It's naive to think that security
agencies are 'unwilling to accept the illusory nature of perfect security' –
in fact, they're almost certainly the most acutely aware of it.

Let's be blunt—security agencies want access to all of our communication not
so that we can be 'terrorised' or 'have our freedom violated', but because
they consider it an effective tool to achieve their ends. That's typically
things like preventing international crime and terrorism, though there's no
doubt that such a power is also abused for less justifiable ends.

Much more effective than cliché complaints about security services
'perpetration' of 'violation of our freedom' would be the honest realisation
that security services want such a power because they believe–I think fairly
rationally—that it would benefit them. It's the job of the rest of society to
push back against that, and to make it clear that it _is not an acceptable
compromise to make_ , and that we are willing to constrain them.

I just can't help but feel that painting such agencies as fools is an
ineffective approach to doing that.

~~~
jacquesm
They are fools because they are neglecting their real duties whilst wasting
enormous efforts and funds on the chaff. You don't find more needles by
exponentially increasing the size of the haystack in the presence of a fixed
number of needles.

~~~
sarciszewski
> You don't find more needles by exponentially increasing the size of the
> haystack in the presence of a fixed number of needles.

No, but if you declare more and more chaff as a needle, you can claim success.

[https://www.aclu.org/national-security/how-usa-patriot-
act-r...](https://www.aclu.org/national-security/how-usa-patriot-act-
redefines-domestic-terrorism)

~~~
msandford
Sadly very true. The average person can't tell the difference.

------
logn
... my comments are US-centric despite this being a UK-oriented article...

> We demand a perfect security which is getting ever harder to achieve.

In the US we claim to be "land of the free; home of the brave". I don't think
the public lives up to the bravery aspect. That involves accepting some level
of risk, in exchange for freedom. Humans have free will and theoretically
that's the root of evil. So unless we're going to lose our humanity we need to
stop worrying about irrational or rare possibilities.

The other things the author mentions I guess I agree with but I think it's
naive. Yes, better crypto and some help from the vendors and cloud providers
will improve things.

But ultimately any device can be bugged, any chip can be backdoored, and I
think we're a ways from securely printing our own computers. Satellites can
zoom in anywhere. Microphones like ShotSpotter can listen. To some extent the
people need to be brave about this surveillance too and not go paranoid.

But we also need to lay down some justice for those who broke the
Constitution. The leaders of these bureaucracies should be tried in capital
cases for treason, war crimes, or espionage. That would clearly establish
right and wrong in society for some years to come. And for all the lower level
LEOs knowingly sharing in NSA data or doing parallel reconstruction, they
should be tried for their crimes too. We need to clean house.

The states also need an new Constitutional mandate for provide oversight to
Congress. For some reason the checks and balances have completely broken down
and D.C. needs the power inverted on them.

After all that's done, then tell me about better encryption. But until then,
none of the tech matters except for making the intel agencies' lives slightly
harder. But in reality all we've done is give the 5-eyes an edge on the rest
of the world's intel by raising the difficulty mode to expert.

~~~
tomp
> To some extent the people need to be brave about this surveillance too and
> not go paranoid.

I don't think that surveillance is a problem per se. The problem is the law
enforcement agencies that _use_ surveillance to actually jail people. As long
as they keep charging pregnant women that trip and fall, arresting to people
based on tweets [1], or treating kids as sex offenders [2], they shouldn't be
trusted with wielding so much power.

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-
Buntin...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunting-
Leigh-Van-Bryan-UK-tourists-arrested-destroy-America-Twitter-jokes.html)

[2] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-
Buntin...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunting-
Leigh-Van-Bryan-UK-tourists-arrested-destroy-America-Twitter-jokes.html)

~~~
uxp
Both your links point to the same resource, when it appears you meant
otherwise. Also, the Daily Mail is considered a tabloid at best. More
reputable sources are generally preferred to them.

~~~
tomp
Sorry.

Arrest (actually, BBC uses the word "apprehended") over tweets:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312)

Kids as sex offenders:

[http://www.bostonreview.net/blog/youth-sex-offender-
registry...](http://www.bostonreview.net/blog/youth-sex-offender-registry-hrw)

------
mml
Whenever I read "in my new book", I realize I've been tricked into reading
advertising.

~~~
Zigurd
It's not a very good self-recoomendation, either, if it is full of more stuff
like this:

 _" Anonymous browsers like Tor, which allow you to browse the internet
without giving away your location, are growing in popularity, with 2.5 million
daily users at the last count. These are also used to access the 'hidden
services' \- an encrypted network of sites using a non-standard internet
protocol which makes it close to impossible for their users to be tracked."_

~~~
eterm
What is your objection to that? Isn't that a pretty good description of Tor?

If you're trying to say that tor doesn't replace the IP in TCP/IP, well that's
true, but I think the author used internet protocol in the wider sense of the
meaning.

~~~
Zigurd
There are at least two large errors: First, Tor isn't a browser. The Tor
project provides Tor packaged with a browser, but the Tor project is more than
that, while the Tor onion router is something completely different from a
browser. Second, "non-standard" is a terribly misleading way to describe Tor.
That's in the "not even wrong" category of being off the mark. Anyone not
familiar with Tor reading that will be worse off than uninformed.

------
falcolas
> You can't control the internet

However you can control how the internet gets into your country, and you can
control the ISPs which distribute the internet within your country, and you
can control the businesses which use the internet in your country.

It's a difference without distinction, particularly since there are lots of
companies and big thinkers who are dedicated towards helping others control
the internet.

We (proponents of an open web) are fighting a losing battle; we're postponing
the inevitable. Our generation will not be the dominant power in government
for another generation or two, and those who are interested in a career in
politics are too busy sanitizing their footprints to have strong opinions
about the value of having an open internet.

We have been able to avoid the elephant for quite some time, but it's stomping
across our playground now, and the scars of that stomping will affect our use
of (and behavior on) that playground for the rest of its existence.

~~~
jacquesm
If the internet becomes disconnected islands of countries separated by 'great
firewalls' it will simply cease to be the internet and something else that is
harder to control and censor will take its place.

The economic impact of that is such that I don't think it stands a chance of
becoming a reality.

~~~
falcolas
> something else that is harder to control and censor will take its place

I'd be curious what you envision such a thing to be, that doesn't rely on the
infrastructure and tacit support of governments to exist.

~~~
wongarsu
Wireless mesh networks operated with regular wifi routers are already popular
in some cities. 5GHz WiFi can supposedly bridge 50km with the right antenna,
which enables low-cost connections between cities and over borders. If the
entire infrastructure was decentralized this way it would be near impossible
to censor or control.

~~~
falcolas
Wireless mesh may indeed be the future, but scaling mesh networks beyond a few
hundred nodes requires a lot of coordinated work, and there has to be quite a
bit of work done in the routing protocols before it can be made to work
properly.

As for censoring a mesh network, there are many methods to do this, such as
prohibiting the use of the frequencies with more than a certain amount of
power (thus limiting the reach of any given network). Or the disruption of a
few key nodes. Or a malicious actor participating in the network in order to
disrupt communications. Or, perhaps the simplest method of all, adding enough
noise by way of simple jammers to make reliable, fast communication
impossible.

The Government regulates the use of the RF bands; they do this at our behest
because radio frequencies are a finite resource. To use Ham radio as an
example - which has access to the frequencies a citizen can use to reach the
furthest - they must operate within the restrictions outlined by the FCC
within the US (and their counterparts in other countries).

Specific to the problem of using RF as a replacement for the internet: ham
radio operators can not do anything commercially, nor can they use encryption
for which the key is not readily available. This necessarily limits what can
be done to build out a long distance communications network without the
government's tacit approval.

------
mason240
>You can't control the internet.

I don't think this true at all, and by telling ourselves it is we will be
complacent when it happens.

------
ColinWright
Stepping to one side of the actual content, I'm genuinely surprised at the
number of typographical errors:

    
    
        'The endless debate on security versus online
         privacy feels a little bit stuck of late. On
         one side, civil liberties groups demanding
         more privacy for the many and more transparency
         from the few." '
    

Where has that stray quotation mark come from?

I assume that

    
    
        "My owrry is that ..."
           ^^^^^^^
    

should be

    
    
        "My worry is that ..."
           ^^^^^^^
    

and that:

    
    
        "... more ‘old-fashioned’ intelligence
         work - te stuff of the movies."
               ^^^^
    

should be:

    
    
        "... more ‘old-fashioned’ intelligence
         work - the stuff of the movies."
               ^^^^^
    

These last two would have been caught by a spell-checker.

Irrelevant, I suppose.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I've been noticing that in pretty much every other article mainstream media
publicizes. It's as if the occupation of _an editor_ somehow completely
disappeared.

------
everyone
I'm wondering. Do these spy agencies actually achieve anything?

~~~
mgleason_3
This is THE question.

Why the comments above bother to debate any other aspect is beyond me. It
lends legitimacy to absolute non-sense.

And this BS about the world being different...the reality is that most crime
is exactly the same as it's always been. And when your car gets stolen and you
go to the police station to file a report (because they won't come to the
scene of the crime to investigate), they'll still tell you they can't take the
report because it's some other stations responsibility...

Is terrorism a new thing?

~~~
wongarsu
>Why the comments above bother to debate any other aspect is beyond me

Because for some of us that question is hardly relevant. In a constitutional
democracy the means don't justify the ends. Even if they were achieving a lot
what they are doing would still be wrong.

------
krek
It's not about pedophiles or catching terrorists. It's about the state having
power.

------
paulhauggis
After reading this article, why again do we want to make the Internet a public
utility? Do we really think that the government won't use the new power they
will have to control the Internet?

~~~
icebraining
Don't they already? And if not, is the private ownership of ISPs really the
impediment to achieving that?

