

A Frightening Week - cwan
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/a-frightening-week.html

======
quanticle
_The Internet was designed to be immune to such things._

It wasn't. That's a common misconception. The Internet Protocol was designed
to be a simple, easy to route protocol that would push computational load
towards the edge of the network and away from its center. Resistance to damage
wasn't a design consideration.

~~~
ThomPete
Hmm interesting got any references?

~~~
influx
"It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started, claiming that the
ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war.
This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure
voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did
emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand
losses of large portions of the underlying networks"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Misconceptions_of_desig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Misconceptions_of_design_goals)

~~~
ThomPete
Very enlightening thanks.

------
jdp23
"My business interests are based on the availability of the wired and wireless
Internet to everyone all over the world. Our firm has been active in working
with the US government to make sure that continues to be the case in our
country. We support net neutrality rules and oppose legislation such as COICA
and the Internet Kill Switch."

Well said. Now would be a good time for Hacker News to re-examine its bias
against discussion of civil liberties.

EDIT: downvoted! Are you (a) saying the Fred Wilson quote isn't useful or (b)
saying civil liberties are such a poisonous topic that we can't even propose
talking about them?

~~~
dstorrs
I wasn't among those who downvoted you, but here's my two cents:

1) I don't think the quote added anything new to the discussion. Nor was it a
good summary of the article.

2) You asked a loaded question that implied a bias on the part of your
listeners. You are deliberately creating a situation where discussion is
impossible, since only one answer is "right". Why, then, would anyone want to
engage with you?

~~~
jdp23
Thanks for the feedback. On point #1, I wasn't trying to summarize, but
thought it was pretty relevant that a superstar VC like Fred Wilson sees these
civil liberties issues as affecting the companies he invests in. Entrepreneurs
should be paying attention to stuff like this, and nobody else had mentioned
it.

On #2, I'm not the one who created the situation. RiderOfGiraffes announced
that he'd be downvoting anything TSA related and encouraged others too.
'tptacek (who's got the highest karma on HN) weighed in that the posts were
"manifestly off topic". Paul changed the ranking algorithm to penalize TSA
posts and commented that they were a "danger" because "if there's a road from
hacking to politics, it's probably civil liberties." When I replied to his
post, he didn't respond.

It seems to me like I want to engage in dialog and others don't. How does it
look to you?

> only one answer is "right"

If you care about civil liberties, then I would love to hear why you see "we
won't talk about civil liberties and will downvote anybody who does" as a good
answer.

~~~
Pahalial
While I care a great deal about civil liberties, HN has a topic bias. The TSA
situation, while touching on tech via backscatter x-ray, is really a purely
political situation: there is opposition grounded either in medicine or
general civil rights, but it does not specifically or unduly impact tech
entrepreneurs. Shutting down all internet access is far more directly relevant
to the web-centric startup world.

It was you who chose to lump in the anti-TSA moderation with this article and
launch this thread into that debate based on that relationship - none of the
'site authorities' you mention have commented on this piece, and there has
been substantial discussion of the situation in Egypt on HN in the past week.
It seems to be fairly accepted that Internet censorship affects us all.

And as for your last point, again, HN has a stated topic bias. You might as
well bring up the death penalty or gun control - of course they both affect
everyone, and of course most people will have (likely very strong) opinions.
That does not necessarily make HN a good place for the discussion.

To close with a question of my own: why are you so set on making this the
place for all civil liberty discussions? Given the sizeable overlap of this
community with Reddit these days and the clearly stated opposition to holding
the debates here, why persist rather than just go there?

~~~
jdp23
Agreed that HN has a stated topic bias. I'm suggesting changing it.

The TSA stuff very definitely affects tech entrepeneurs who have to travel as
part of their business. So yes, especially given Paul's quote about the
dangers of discussing civil liberties, I do see them as related.

> why are you so set on making this the place for all civil liberty
> discussions?

We'll only start to recover civil liberties in the US when enough people start
doing something about it, so I discuss the topic wherever I hang out. Just as
Slashdot used to be, HN's a great opportunity to reach a lot of people who
believe in civil liberties but aren't currently engaged in the battle.

------
whereareyou
When I saw the title of this post, I thought it might be about Yuri Milner and
SV Angel's new Start Up Fund!

~~~
fredwilson
that gave me a chuckle

however, i'm not frightened by anything that helps entrepreneurs

------
kiba
I believe that technological solution is better than the political solution,
primary because we don't have to get everyone interested in anti-censorship
tech.

So if we can invent a censorship mesh network(pardon my ignorance), two geeks
can set it up and connect to each other. Then, another geek come along, and
connect his node to their. Next week, doubled the geeks come. Next week,
double the geeks come, but also documentation on how to build such a wireless
mesh node. Well, you get the idea.

Once a lot of people is interested, geeks that manufactured anti-censorship
kit can achieve an economy of scale.

Empower one individual; empower an entire crowd.

~~~
alecco
Land based wireless communications are trivial to track and authoritarian
governments already do so. A better solution could be satellite based
communications. Or directional microwave/laser.

It's a very hard problem.

~~~
rst
But satellites would also likely be controlled by entities subject to
government pressure. (Perhaps a different government than the one in control
of the local territory, but whichever, it won't always be in sympathy with the
people on the ground.)

Tight-beam directional laser is an interesting idea, but does require a fair
amount of advanced setup and calibration. And the base stations would still be
vulnerable to detection if they're transmitting to something else that isn't
tight-beam, like mobile handsets.

Perhaps balloon-based relay stations in the stratosphere, or solar-powered
drones, which could be deployed without the expense of a satellite launch?

It is indeed a very hard problem.

EDIT: Further discussion, both on base stations and alternatives (packet
radio, and the severe limitations thereof) here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158111>

------
quellhorst
This is why the "Internet Kill Switch" is a bad idea. Also, ISPs need to say
no to the government more often.

~~~
protomyth
An ISP's default answer to government should be "No".

~~~
jacquesm
It should have been 'no' too when the government wanted unlimited tapping
abilities of internet traffic, instead the answer was 'how much?'.

------
guelo
Governments will always have the power over the physical infrastructure that
the internet lives on top of. The only way to protect our access is via
education, people need to see the internet as owned by the people, not the
government (backdoors, unlimited taps) or corporations (net neutrality, anti-
competitive caps). It needs to be seen as a new basic human right in the 21st
century.

<http://i.imgur.com/YU3Ww.jpg>

------
thisrod
Summary: the author, who is apparently not familiar with the terms "buggery
act", "13th amendment" and "people's republic", realises that freedom ain't
free.

