I just finished a fascinating conversation with Ron Deibert. Ron is director of The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, and The Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto, and an expert in issues around security, openness, and surveillance online. We started out talking about how countries can ‘shut down’ the internet, as Egypt did. We also talked more broadly about the risks associated with a more centralized internet, and why he thinks internet access should be considered a human right.
A shorter version of this interview will air on the 137th episode of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3.
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Did I hear that right: that the justification for the Internet kill switch in the USA is to "protect" the Internet?
Isn't that like the government claiming that they are going to protect my life from terrorists by shooting me first?
I have heard about this, and have signed a petition to stop the pending bill that does this. Details are at http://www.savetheinternet.com .
In countries such as Egypt, the Internet infrastructure is controlled by that country's government. Here in the US (and in Canada), much of the infrastructure is in private hands.
To use a "kill switch" here would be very detrimental to the economies of both Canada and the US, as many businesses rely on Internet connectivity to function.
It is bad enough that the Internet has been taxed by recent weather events, including the recent blizzard that hit Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit/Windsor., London, Niagra Falls, and as of this writing on its way to New York and Boston.
A "kill switch" isn't necessary since any government can already do this. If you are an ISP and you get a court order to shut down your network, you have to shut it down. This is possible in every country already I would assume, certainly in Canada.
Also, any sort of "freedom of the internet" is also not necessary as it is already covered under freedom of speech and freedom of the press. If the Egypt government wants to shut down the newspapers or telephone system then you have the same problem.
Most of these discussions have already have solutions and assume too much uncertainty about the internet. Typically, ISP shut down things at the source. All internet traffic require a source address and a destination address in the packets so they just block the source addresses in most cases. There are ways around the source by distributing or faking the source but that another discussion.
I don't understand why people are surprised that it's so easy to shut down the internet. It doesn't have a life of it's own, lol, and we wouldn't want it to either
I wanted to post you that very little note to finally give many thanks as before for all the nice things you’ve discussed in this article