Former FBI Agent Calls for a Second Internet

An anonymous reader writes "Former FBI Agent Patrick J. Dempsey warns that the Internet has become a sanctuary for cyber criminals and the only way to rectify this is to create a second, more secure Internet. Dempsey explains that, in order to successfully fight cyber crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with international law enforcement officials. The problem is various legal systems are unprepared for the fight, which is why he claims we must change the structure of the Internet."

Hmm...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Will the second internet have Third Life?

That annoying "internets" word will be real!

[dbIII]

That very annoying "internets" word will be real and I won't be able to threaten to kill a puppy every time sombody that should know better uses it.

Also...

[TheWizardTim]

... the FBI want's a pony.

Second Nigeria

[Viking Coder]

If only we could create a second, more secure Nigeria.

I'm sorry....

[nebaz]

I'm not going to be lectured about the internet by Dr. McDreamy.

i'm gonna go build my own internet!

[Deanalator]

.. with blackjack, and hookers!

Re:Ummmmm, no.

[morgan_greywolf]

yup. there are plenty of old fashioned brick & mortar ghettos full of criminals too...

Yeah, last time I was in Washington, I saw a few. One of them is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and the other one is on the opposite end of the Mall.

spam is just a special case of "cybercrime"

[Darkforge]

so we can re-use our old forms. It's a bit surprising how effective this is.

--

Patrick J. Dempsey, your post advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting international "cybercrime." Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from nation to nation.)

( ) spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) legitimate Internet uses would be affected
(x) no one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) it is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) it will protect us for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) users of the Internet will not put up with it
(x) microsoft will not put up with it
(x) the police will not put up with it
(x) requires too much cooperation from criminals
(x) requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) many users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

specifically, your plan fails to account for

(x) laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) lack of centrally controlling authority for the Internet
(x) open relays in foreign countries
( ) ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) asshats
(x) jurisdictional problems
( ) unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) huge existing software investment in the Internet
(x) willingness of users to install os patches received by email
(x) armies of worm riddled broadband-connected windows boxes
( ) eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) extreme profitability of international crime
(x) joe jobs and/or identity theft
(x) technically illiterate politicians
( ) extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with criminals
(x) dishonesty on the part of criminals themselves
( ) bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
(x) smtp headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) blacklists suck
(x) whitelists suck
( ) we should be able to talk about viagra without being censored
( ) countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(x) countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) sending email should be free
(x) why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(x) incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(x) i don't want the government reading my email
( ) killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

furthermore, this is what i think about you:

( ) sorry dude, but i don't think it would work.
(x) this is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) nice try, assh0le! i'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

Re:Ummmmm, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

calling it a sanctuary is hardly apt.

I believe the number is 1 in 5.

Re:i'm gonna go build my own internet!

[CrazyJim1]

The internet already has blackjack and hookers.

ummm

[djupedal]

"The problem is various legal systems are unprepared for the fight..."

I think Mr. Dempsey misspelled 'all'...

In light of the real issue:

[merc]

Dempsey explains that, in order to successfully fight cyber crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with international law:

I call for a second FBI.

Actually, yes.

[Max Littlemore]

"Former FBI Agent Patrick J. Dempsey warns that the Internet has become a sanctuary for cyber criminals

Any time you have a new community or resource to exploit, there will be criminals. However, calling it a sanctuary is hardly apt. I can think of more than a few places that are a sanctuary for criminals, yet you won't see the government razing those neighborhoods and starting anew, would you? Besides, who gets called a criminal?

Actually, the internet is a sanctuary for cyber criminals. You don't find cyber criminals holding up armoured trucks at gun point, regular meat criminals do that, you find cyber criminals on the interwebs. That's why they're cyber criminals. The intertubes are a sanctuary for cyber criminals for exactly the same reason that the FBI is a sanctuary for corrupt FBI agents.

I totally recommend creating a second internet, and a second FBI, a second stock market, a second local primary school. Everything.

No one thing should get all the cred for harbouring criminals. If people want to be paranoid and really stupid, let them be paranoid and really stupid and have a good laugh at their expense.

Interesting idea...

[Ambiguous Coward]

Now, maybe I'm mis-remembering here, but I seem to remember hearing about this little doo-dad called "Internet 2." You know, for scientists and certain authorized parties and such.

But yeah, we definitely need to get to work on that "Internet 3." Screw Web 2.0, I'm already on Internet 3!

-G

Re:Well gee, who's to blame for that?

[pedrop357]

a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Re:Ummmmm, no.

[tsm_sf]

Pulling common sense into a discussion about law enforcement is practically unamerican. We want more criminals, but harder penalties. Prevention doesn't fill jails, buddy.

Buggy Whip FBI

[Doc Ruby]

Yeah, and these newfangled "automobiles" make it so much harder for the cops to catch crooks, since the cops now have to move so much faster, and even cooperate with cops in the next county. Instead of the cops getting automobiles and some radios of their own, we should get rid of automobiles, make them illegal, and instead give everyone some other kind of automobiles that all have cutoff switches in their motors that cops can stop with their radios.

And no criminals will ever figure out how to wire around the cutoff switches. Then cops can just go back to being lazy again. Oh, and by the way, we should let the cops trample all over our rights that we discarded because protecting those rights was too much work.

I feel safer already. Don't you?

Re:Yay

[c6gunner]

When the government or agents of the government ask for something, the opposite is probably in your best interest.

Right! So the next time you hear a bomb technician yelling "RUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!!!", be sure to flip him the bird and stay exactly where you are! Fuck Da Man! Vive le Revolution!

I agree.

[game kid]

Dr. Montgomery [wikipedia.org], on the other hand, is more than welcome.

Holy Troll-y!

[Esteban]

I guess it's a matter of taste, but holy moly, this story pretty much epitomizes the Slashdot Troll Story. At least it's a new* variety of Troll Story (see also, the RIAA-Bites-Man story, the Crazy-Patent story, the Pro-Microsoft story, the Spammer-Tells-his-Story story, the now-faded SCO story, and many more).

* I write this half-expecting someone to produce an old Slashdot story about a crackpot scheme involving setting up a New Internet in order to fight crime.

Call for Second FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

... where the agents are significantly smarter than this ex First FBI agent.

On a Related Note

[PAjamian]

Former FBI Official Imaj Oke stated today that We need a new earth due to the massive amounts of crime and terrorism on this one.

"Our current planet is so rife with criminal activity that we need to populate a new planet that will be restricted only to fully law abiding citizens." He said at an interview earlier this afternoon, "Once we have established the new planet the old one will, of course no longer be necessary and will be dismantled for parts."

Oke went on to describe the technical merits of the new planet stating that life on the planet would be fully controlled by benevolent corporate monopoly interests to ensure that nobody's intellectual property is infringed.

Re:Second Nigeria

[JobyKSU]

You'd be surprised at how secure Nigeria actually is. In fact, it's so secure I'm currently having difficulties getting money out of the country. You may be able to help, though - I'll send you an email with details.

Exactly what we need!

[phliar]

Yes, we need a new Good Internet that the FBI, SS, RIAA, etc. will make safe and legal for everyone. The rest of us will stay on this one (to be renamed Evilnet).

Re:Translation

[tomhudson]

The whole idea is that in Soviet Amerika, Second Internet spys on YOU!

Re:Translation

[Hawkeye05]

I can see a day where you pay for entry to a secure, transparent community to conduct hassle-free transactions, while still having a wild, wild west internet for other activities like /.

Is it just me or does this remind anyone else of Firefly/Serenity? You Go To a monitered, military state like inner planet to find work, then you go to the outer planets/moons to fulfill the job and get paid, or possibly killed in the process.

Re:Restricting to VPN

[r_jensen11]

requiring convicted criminals to use a vpn would be a step in the right direction.

I would love to see the results of only restricting convicted pedo's to only VPN's.

Pedo 1: a.s.l?
Pedo 2: 13, f, nyc. u?
Pedo 1: 12, f, nyc 2!

Hmm, a network of only 13-year-olds.... So the real question is, would it be one giant digg?

RFC 3514

[Scareduck]

Clearly, he hasn't read that the current Internet has a provision for this: the Evil Bit set in the IP header, as specified in RFC 3514 [ietf.org], published 1 April 2003.

A test run

[Venik]

I heard NYPD will be testing this new concept developed by FBI: to deal with the Russian mafia problem a second, more secure Brooklyn will be set up on the outskirts of Ruby Valley, Nevada.

We've already got an RFC for this

[david_thornley]

Can't he just recommend that routers check for the "evil bit"? It would be about as effective and much easier.

Re:Hmm...

[phpmysqldev]

"Will the second internet have Third Life?"

No, no! Its a multiplier so it would have 4th life. Which raises the question of what happened to 3rd life?

Which is why I will be producing the new online sensation "5th Life: Search for 3rd Life"

Dont even get me started on the currency conversion.

Re:Hmm...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I have an Idea!

Let's hook up to both 'nets, and bridge 'em!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:That annoying "internets" word will be real!

[Shamanarchy]

There can be only one! Perhaps this explains the decapitated cables in the Mediterranean?

Re:Restricting to VPN

[that this is not und]

Two police agent decoys have entrapped each other.

(and the handcuff party a few days later gets kinky)

Re:Also...

[svettdajman]

Why is the letters "po" not in apostrophe? :P

Re:Hmm...

[sux0rz]

Why don't we just cut the cables to asia and the middle east? Oh wait..

The internet is unsafe???

[holyspidoo]

My net is completely safe:

My ISP caps my download so I can't download evil viruses

My ISP throttles my p2p traffic so I can't download music and become infected with the terrorist virus and become one of them like the RIAA video says

My websurfing experience constantly pops up with anticybercrime tools that I can buy for only 19.95, I have 204 of those tools installed so far

I have norton, so my internet apps are all blocked anyways and my computer is too slow to let me experience the web and get terrible cybercrime done to me.

Also, I installed vista SP1 and now my computer boots to a blue screen so it is even safer.

Why another internet?

PS. Without my PC, I decided to go play outside and got hit by a bus. Damn you internet!!!

Re:Hmm...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

I don't think the bicycle analogy is very good.

I agree. This is Slashdot; we only use car analogies here.

Re:Hmm...

[spun]

I don't think the bicycle analogy is very good.

I agree. This is Slashdot; we only use car analogies here.

Of course we do. A good car analogy is like a finely tuned race car. It gets you where you need to go faster. Although it's loud. And it's probably not street legal. And sometimes your car analogy crashes into someone else's car analogy and there's a big wreck but the fans love that anyway. And you need a lot of gas, did I mention the gas?