
How Egypt did (and how your government could) shut down the Internet - kylelibra
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/how-egypt-or-how-your-government-could-shut-down-the-internet.ars
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GHFigs
It's still strange to me that the press and discussion sites all over the web
are directing a lot of attention towards the idea that the US (or European
democracies) would do this to itself (for reasons continually left unstated)
while the evidently[1] more[2] credible[3] threat[4] of a foreign state actor
doing this kind of thing _to_ the US is readily dismissed. As if it really
makes a difference to the router who turns it off.

[1]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain>
[2]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia>
[3]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberattacks_during_the_2008_So...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberattacks_during_the_2008_South_Ossetia_war)
[4]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_cyberattacks_on_Myanmar>

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j_baker
It would be difficult enough for the _US government_ to shut off the internet
in the US (although I don't doubt they could do it). You can't really take a
few simple DDoS attacks as an indicator that such a thing could be possible in
the US. Besides that, why would they want to shut off the internet when they
could probably do any number of much more violent and heinous acts with much
less effort and sophistication?

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Raphael
Just switch off electricity for ISP buildings.

~~~
eclark
All of the tier one carrier hotels have battery backups, diesel back ups, and
contracts for thousands of gallons of fuel. Some are even looking at more
interesting solutions to that.

However if you really wanted to just cause some mayhem. With a good map and a
chainsaw lots is possible.

<http://signalfire.org/?p=2039>

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StavrosK
That's a bit of a fallacy. They compare the US to single European countries.
I'm guessing it would be as easy to turn off the internet in California as it
would be to turn it off in Greece.

~~~
iujyhgftrgh
It would be very easy to turn it off to somewhere like Greece. There are
probably only a few companies connecting to the outside world. And these are
either government owned, or were until recently but are still so civil service
minded and government linked that they will do as they're told. Any commercial
outfits want to keep operating in that country, so unless they think they will
get a better deal from the next ruler - are also going to obey order.

California is trickier, there will be lots of links to towns in other states
just because the cable run was shorter or a telco in Oregon wanted more of the
market. There will also be a more complex backbone links so someone in Seattle
may connect through california to Texas, so blocking out those individual
routes without killing the whole network is a lot more difficult.

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kongqiu
Would investing more in satellite-based infrastructure be one possible
solution?

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BigZaphod
I doubt it. All it'd take to shut down a satellite is to take over the control
room on the ground and transmit a "power down" command or something.

Perhaps a better approach is to work to decentralize as much of our existing
infrastructure as possible. Eliminate DNS. Fundamentally change how routing
occurs to become more organic. Etc. Non-trivial, to be sure, but possible,
IMO, and I think it needs to happen.

The goal should be that any internet-enabled device can mesh with the internet
from any other internet-enabled device. Example (contrived) would be my cell
phone talking to your cell phone with bluetooth, your phone talking to your
laptop with a wifi connection, and your laptop talking to another device via
ethernet, etc... and that ultimately, packets flow and end points can find
each other all without central routing tables or artificial hierarchies, etc.

~~~
pyre
Maybe we should create a site/wiki/working group/mailing list to discuss these
issues. Otherwise it won't get talked about and never done because the corps
definitely don't have incentive to do this.

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hugh3
You're talking about defending against the hypothetical and implausible
situation where for some reason the US Government decides to turn off the
internet.

I don't have any good ideas about what could possibly cause that to happen,
but I'm pretty sure that if it _does_ happen then things are sufficiently
screwed up that a lack of internet access will be the least of your problems.

~~~
pyre
Though many see internet access as a luxury, it's not just a pornography
delivery method. In Nazi Germany, I gather the one of the most difficult
issues for underground groups was communications.

