Former FBI Agent Calls for a Second Internet 486
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... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that many countries just want to forbid things, with regards to the internet, rather than adjust to a new way of looking at crime committed through the internet.
If it turns out that law enforcement can't or won't adjust to the speed in which cybercriminals operate, maybe the only way to help prevent crime is to educate the users, or even help write better software (against spoofing etc.).
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Let's hook up to both 'nets, and bridge 'em!
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet is an enabling technology and as it enables certain crimes they become MUCH more prevalent than they used to be. Not necessarily fundamentally different, just easier to carry out. Kiddie porn or fraud are good examples.
I think that laws don't necessarily need to change, but investigators need to be able to accomplish more (notice I didn't say they need more powers). Simply finding the kiddie porn sites is hard enough when the guys know they're being hunted and are hiding from the cops already. Being able to find the bad guys, develop a case, and bring it to prosecution needs to be easier without violating anyone's existing civil rights. I would focus on more hiring, better training, and straightening the paths within DOJ and among law enforcement agencies.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I quoted the word "cure" because I know there's no "cure", but treatments could be developed that would minimilize a pedophiles impulses and thus allow them to lead a normal and productive life. Putting them in prison or on Dateline is not the solution.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Two Words: Anonymous Layer (Score:5, Insightful)
Soooo how are they going to stop people from encrypting data and obfuscating it?
Soooo how are they going to stop people form implementing a "slow drip" protocol through random nodes which is also encrypted?
There is absolutely no way to police the Internet without significantly impacting response times, etc. QoS will suck and they will still never be able to touch 99.99% of the "criminals".
Re:Two Words: Anonymous Layer (Score:4, Insightful)
Segregating the Internet!!!! Why do I get dejavu when I think of that? Oh what that's how it all started.
Honestly this idiot is suggesting we work backwards and devolve the Internet.
~Dan
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a very short step from finding scammers and criminals and holding them accountable to finding political dissidents and persecuting them. You cannot have one without the strong likelihood of the other. If the potential for abuse occurs, then abuse is inevitable.
Re:Two Words: Anonymous Layer (Score:5, Insightful)
"You were hiding jews in your house ? Prepare to die !"
Accountability means that you are accountable to someone. That someone can easily abuse his powers; Hell, even the finnish police, the police of the state repeatedly voted the least corrupt in the world, began abusing the kiddie porn filter immediately after it was implemented. There is no authority worth the trust accountability requires.
Unfortunately, in Real Life, accountability is a neccessity. While it inevitably leads to abuses, lack of it means us violent monkeys live up to our murderous nature and rape, kill and loot each other. That's why we have governments, nation-states and courts of law.
However, it is impossible to murder anyone in the Internet. It is just as impossible to rape them, or cut a single hair from their heads. It is impossible to even rob them - altought it is possible to spy on them enough to gain access to their online accounts, which is one of the reasons why I don't have any. In fact it is impossible to do anything except say something nasty to them.
So, why would we need accountability in the Internet ? Who, exactly speaking, is actually being hurt by the spam, botnets or porn ? No one.
No, this "accountability online" is simply a guise for tracking down the people who leak nasty secrets of politicians and corporations, in order to punish them and thus cause a chilling effect. Internet and especially the anonymous protocols working on top of it - such as Tor and Freenet - are every politicians worst nightmare: an information propagation channel they can't block. "The truth shall set you free", so is it any wonder that every overlord in history has tried to prevent it from getting out ?
A democratic society - indeed, any free society - needs an anonymous communication channel with no accountability of what you say. If that is also useful for criminals, then that is simply the price you have to pay. The alternative is freedom of speech a la Soviet Russia: you are free to pee on Lenin's statue while shouting "down with communism", but you'll be sent to a Siberian labor camp for it.
Re:Two Words: Anonymous Layer (Score:4, Insightful)
The ballot box is an unfortunate example, because it leads to confusing anonymity with confidentiality.
I have no problem with someone knowing that I have voted, and indeed a record of this fact is kept to ensure that I can't vote twice. I am thus not an anonymous voter, and I hope we'd agree that allowing arbitrary anonymous votes is not likely to meet with democratic success.
Who I voted for is a different question. That is private/confidential information. Since the information is not publicly available, I don't believe it is necessary for me to put my name to that information.
As it happens, there is also no crime that can be committed by voting in a certain way as long as I am casting my vote(s) according to the rules of the election, and no-one else's rights can be infringed by my doing so. Thus there would be no legitimate need to break confidentiality anyway. I think this is a separate issue to the anonymity question, though.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
He can't have a legislative solution, so he comes up with a technical one.
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Funny)
The whole idea is that in Soviet Amerika, Second Internet spys on YOU!
Cybercrime can be stopped without monitoring! (Score:5, Insightful)
The article talks about hacking into bank accounts and identity theft etc. So if the government wants to crack down on this, why don't they just mandate that banks have to send their customers a bootable read only flash drive that contains a basic operating system, browser, SSL certificates and a one time pad? It wouldn't matter how badly some clueless moron's computer was trojaned to hell, because the bank would only accept connections from the booted flash drive.
You can't get mugged on the internet. You can't be coerced on the internet. Criminals need YOUR COOPERATION.
The U.S. could also stop using checks like every other civilized country, because they're a ridiculously huge security hole and a huge pain in the ass compared to direct bank transfer. But all of this would make too much sense, because none of it involves more government monitoring of its citizens.
The land of the free. Where no laws must ever tell corporations what to do, but citizens must compensate for their ineptness by being spied upon.
Re:Cybercrime can be stopped without monitoring! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't get mugged on the internet. You can't be coerced on the internet. Criminals need YOUR COOPERATION.
Well, that is almost true. With certain Windows exploits, you can be doing perfectly normal things on your PC and still become infected. You can even have a firewall and anti-virus/anti-spam spam filter.
Unless, of course, you think that "cooperation with criminals" means "I don't digitally arm my computer to the hilt with every possible kind of protection, down-to-the-second patches, and anti-hacker voodooo ninjas." Just because my house is not surrounded by a moat filled with hungry pirahnna, does not somehow mean that I am cooperating with thieves. Next you're going to blame women for being raped...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, and that's why the only solution is to boot from the flash drive.
A trojan could of course run the flash drive in a virtual machine, but this is one case where the Trusted Platform Module could be used for good instead of evil (DRM).
Additionally, it gives the bank power to root your machine, but all y
Re:Cybercrime can be stopped without monitoring! (Score:4, Insightful)
why don't they just mandate that banks have to send their customers a bootable read only flash drive that contains a basic operating system, browser, SSL certificates and a one time pad?
While I suspect this will protect many, what about others, perhaps the majority that were not broken into this way?
Lots of cases of people walking in to banks and jacking in a USB drive right to the tellers or bank managers machine. So far we have even trusted bank employees and government officials. They too could be on the take for a list of ...
Don't overstate the users complicity in identity theft, while it does happen, not nearly as often as the banks would like you to think. This feeds the bank image, "we didn't do it" when in fact most of the time it was bank failure, not user failure.
But it is also why the banks do not do what you suggest, as then the only avenues of leaks are theres and they don't want us to realize how uncontrolled it really is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
The US military is taking a step in this direction with Common Access Card (CAC) readers.
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
Dunno if credit cards/cash makes a good analogy for the two use-cases, but it least the analogy lacks wheels.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
This is great for Big Brother, or his cousin the NSA, and for warrant-free unauthorized searches of electronic content. It's exceptionally bad for individual privacy. I just keep hoping that someone will find some vulnerability similar to the one that shot down the SkipJack, federally created encryption system. (It turned out you could forge your own keys, and there were at least 3 significant patent violations.)
VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:VPN (Score:4, Insightful)
also much easier to implement than trying to build an internet around catching crooks.
so what do you do with the criminals from Africa who are connected to organized crime, who have whole 'internet cafes' and people standing watch so they can get out of there if the 'police' come, who are more than likely on the take anyways...
remember the 'untouchables' it took a special breed of cops to go against organized crime and get results, and with 'cyber crime' often being 'international crime' it's difficult to police.
'spying' on what people do over the net is really the only way to catch the criminals in the act. however, doing so in a country that you don't work for is impossible with the way the internet works. unless of course, you create a law governing how 'backbone' providers work with international police, to allow certain countries to be 'locked in' to a certain backbone, where the data traveling from that backbone to other backbones can be monitored... and evidence of crime can be monitored, and controlled.
doing something like that would discourage the growth of online crime in iran and africa without affecting internet usability in 'modernized' nations, but countries like china russia etc would be much harder to try and stop crime in, without completely redesigning the internet around catching criminals, the problem will only get worse.
remember the prohibition, when a layman could make a fair bit higher salary rum running, than doing decent work, crime spiraled out of control. an internet that doesn't care who does what or when or why and does everything to make any packet go through to recipient... will only breed a den of thieves.
can the global economy take a 7 billion dollar a year hit to cyber crime every year, for the next 20 years? no it can't and that's why tracing criminal activity is Going to become standard. right now to credit card fraud, identity theft, and check fraud scams etc... i seem to recall hearing that europe and the usa were combined losing 7 billion dollars a year, but it was on dateline nbc, not on the internet so the figure might be off.
tracking the criminals down is going to get easier, and the crime harder to pull off. It's only a matter of time.
although i Seriously doubt they're going to make it easier for the movie and music industries to track down users, and catch them 'in the act' what is going to get targeted is the stuff that really steals from the banks, and the rich and gives it to the criminals.
if i had the money I'd bet a billion dollars that within a decade hacking will be traceable world wide, through hardware ids before they get the money transfered from one bank account to another one.
if i had another billion dollars, I'd wager that in 10 years banks will process checks the way wal-mart does now, before they hand the user any money, and before they can 'wire' the money to another bank account, the original account is checked for the money, and the check is scanned by the computer for identifying marks, that can verify it as original.
taking 3 days to verify a cashiers check just doesn't cut it when that's what check cashing fraud scams are banking on.
Re:Restricting to VPN (Score:5, Funny)
Pedo 2: 13, f, nyc. u?
Pedo 1: 12, f, nyc 2!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
(and the handcuff party a few days later gets kinky)
Re:VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
While they are in prison or once they get out?
Or are you going to keep convicted criminals in prison because it "would be a step in the right direction"?
Or keep them permanently on public "* Offender" lists?
If rehabilitation rates are so low and nobody really gives a damn, why not just execute them like they do in China? Since obviously "everyone hates them so much".
The only big difference between you and a convicted criminal is you haven't been caught yet.
Is copying stuff a criminal offense yet?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The smart criminals have been using encryption (and steganography) to communicate with each other since before the government figured out that export controls don't keep strong encryption out of the hands of foreigners.
They'll happily keep using encryption, too, on top of whatever "second internet" you force everybody to use. This isn't about not being able to spy on scary cybercriminals who are hiding from the law, it's abou
Um, no (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's going to happen.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Informative)
That said, I agree with your conclusion.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The reasons of the different parties vary, but they are all pushing consistently for the same outcome -- a monitored and controlled internet. Most worryingly, their lobbying and scare tactics are increasingly getting results.
First, everyone under the hat of IFPI and the various Recording and Movie Ass. of wherever are in the game as their business model is evaporating. They want more restrictions and more monitoring, so that they can eat into your consumer surplus better. Most other copyright and related rights owners jump on this bangwagon, as they have strong vested interest in having their monopoly to be extended in various ways.
Then, there are the newspapers and the TV -- in addition to belonging in the first group, they feel their revenues are being eaten by a random collection of bloggers, aggregators and other uncontrollable internet evils that deliver more targeted and interesting commentary faster and at lower cost. Besides, their relevance as propaghanda tool (and their position as "the fourth power") is also threatened, and they'll fight hard to keep it.
Finally, there is the government. The establishment want to know more about you so that they can tax you (and, in general, manage you) better. Surveillance is always a boon to them, and anything that can bring more is very welcome. Especially lobbying groups like those above, who make seemingly "legitimate" cases for more surveillance and control. But it doesn't end there. The internet is also a threat to the establishment in that it allows exposure of their questionable activities; it keeps track of their past deeds. This threat makes the life of the establishment politicians hard, and they'll fight to remove it. Bribery is a big source of income, and threats to it are hardly welcome. Finally, the internet allows "fringe politicians" and large groups of people to gather behind a cause quickly and efficiently. This tends to make, among everything else, lobbying less efficient, and decrease the amount of legal bribery income.
And, this push against the free internet is happening everywhere. Draconian internet laws have sprung fast virtually everywhere in the past year or two - the US, Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea, which suggests what happens is not a random process at all.
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, neither Dufus Feeb, nor his colleagues need "to be on" anything, or be brainwashed, wear tinfoil and goggles. They have a vested interest in spreading this bullshit -- it directly gives them a larger paycheck. So they'll happily sell you any story to that effect.
It is not the "conspirative" part that worries me, it is the part that these efforts are now mainstream and "legitimate" that's worrying.
Ummmmm, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
and the only way to rectify this is to create a second, more secure Internet.
Ummmm, no. What he means is that they want to form a new network that can routinely be filtered, scanned and probed with no means of anonymity (already going away) or flexibility.
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.
How about figuring out how to deploy a network within your own agency first, that agency employees can actually use?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I believe the number is 1 in 5.
Re:Ummmmm, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about figuring out how to deploy a network within your own agency first, that agency employees can actually use?"
More importantly, how about ending crime by extreme economic inequality, tax breaks for the rich and going after tax havens?
I'd rather see money spent on Prevention rather then re-action, making a society that people don't feel the need to turn criminal to begin with.
Human beings have this awful tendency to neglect the human environment and thus they bring revolution and crime down on themselves for their apathy and neglect.
Re:Ummmmm, no. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, yes. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Ummmmm, no. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
to the FBI.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I care about speed, anonymity and integrity of data.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Successfully fight[ing] cyber crime" can fairly important when it comes to integrity of data. Unless you decide that fighting cyber crime is really up to network administrators or something like that. In which case we may as well make phishing and hacking and whatnot entirely legal or something... internet theft, etc.
not that I actually support the former FBI agent's idea. actually it seems to be pretty stupid, heh.
Self-authenticating identifiers! (Score:3, Informative)
If the identifier for a block of data is a hash of the data [freenetproject.org], you can verify its integrity without knowing a hill of beans about who or where it came from.
If the link pointing to a secured, anonymous site [torproject.org] is a hash of the site's public key, you can verify that the site you're talking to can use the corresponding private key, which is the same thing SSL buys you. The high-priced "secure site certificates" just certify that the owner of $DNS_NAME a
That annoying "internets" word will be real! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That annoying "internets" word will be real! (Score:5, Informative)
While we are at it why don't we create new cities (Score:5, Insightful)
Since major cities have more crime than before why don't create new cities.
As opposed to extraditing murderers, mafiaa members etc is easy with respect to "traditional" crimes?Why hire competent people who technology as tools and adapt your law enforcement agency when you change the world around you to adapt to your incompetence?
And for those who says "Think of the children": No law can effectively parent your child for you. Do you damn duty.
Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay (Score:4, Funny)
Also... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
At least, that's the impression one gets these days. I mean, even on brick-and-morter store signage that's visible from a few blocks away. *sigh*
Good idea..but (Score:5, Insightful)
Second Nigeria (Score:5, Funny)
Security is impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind an overhaul on DNS and SMTP to slow some spammers and other jerks down.
The real problem is the diverse nature of laws between different countries and the strong enforcement in some places and near zero enforcement elsewhere. Think about it, someone in Russia can do almost anything outside their country and not be prosecuted. In other places, we have parts of the Internet filtered because of some lame moral code.
I just wish these people who don't understand the spirit of the Internet would take their marbles and go home.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is the diverse nature of laws between different countries and the strong enforcement in some places and near zero enforcement elsewhere.
From a defensive perspective, the problem is that most people are really bad at recognizing phishes, hoaxes, scams, and the like. At this point, 100% of the email forwards I get from my 60 year old aunt have been debunked. Most people just lack that "this is bullshit" detector.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sorry.... (Score:3, Funny)
I agree. (Score:4, Funny)
Mr Dempsey, head of the internets (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh that's just great. So just because poor mr Dempsey woke up one day believing that someone wasn't ready for a fictional fight then we all should just drop the world's communications infrastructures and rebuild it according to mr Dempsey's vision. For the sake of those poor unprepared legal systems, of course. And also the world's safety. And the children, now that we are at it.
What mr Dempsey is advocating is nothing more than taking over the control of the medium. No one has it and he wants it badly, claiming that it's in everyone's best interests to be controlled by an overreaching, totalitarian organization. Well guess what mr Dempsey, the internet works great just as it is and no one benefits from having a righteous mr Dempsey, head of the internets, fighting the fight that those poor, fictional legal systems are supposedly incapable of carrying out.
International crime means new internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, he goes from acknowledging that there's a jurisdictional problem and a speed problem when it comes to law enforcement to creating a new "verified" internet where you have to "prove" who you are? Umm..no.
And he goes on to hit every hot topic in security today: DDOS, identity theft. spam, etc. And then, he makes the claim "the fact is that Internet crimes are almost always international crimes." And he doesn't back it up, rather gives anecdotal evidence of a hacker in Russia using computers in Thailand to steal data.
I am not a security expert (and I'm not pretending to be) but this "sky is falling" mentality is crap. Most identity theft (the act of stealing) is not done over the internet, its done locally. Yes, selling lists of thousands of SSNs and credit card #s happens over the internet, but the thievery itself doesn't.
In fact, this would make things worse: you're creating a global ID. Once someone steals your global ID they can do whatever they want. And once again, your ID wouldn't be stolen over the "new" internet, it would be stolen because you didn't shred a document and someone went dumpster diving.
This doesn't solve any problems.
i'm gonna go build my own internet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:i'm gonna go build my own internet! (Score:5, Funny)
Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives (Score:5, Insightful)
The next generation of investigators will be digital natives. They'll have grown up with the web, email, blogs, message boards, IM, flickr, youtube, social networking, and the like. They won't all have CCNAs, but they'll have a sufficient understanding of how people use the internet to know when to bring in forensic experts.
The transition will be difficult. The digital immigrants with extensive investigative experience and the digital natives who are novices in their profession will have to cooperate and exchange their knowledge and wisdom, and in the meantime, some criminals will slip through the cracks. That's the price of progress.
Good Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
We all stand and applaud, then cut them off from ever returning to the old internet.
Then we can go back to the days of sharing information and having fun without that stupid "punch the monkey" ilk...
spam is just a special case of "cybercrime" (Score:5, Funny)
--
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!
Common but fallacious reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Changing X would fix that problem.
3. Therefore, we should change X.
With no regard for whether X has any value of its own. Open your eyes and look outside of your own field before you decide to change the world in your favor.
ummm (Score:5, Funny)
I think Mr. Dempsey misspelled 'all'...
typical law enforcement drumbeat (Score:5, Interesting)
I see this now in almost every arena of law enforcement... and for good reason. It *is* getting harder to do low enforcement. The thought process is something like this: "As law enforcement, we know we're failing; we can't really stop the criminals, so let's treat everyone as a suspect." Basically enforcing laws is a traditional behavior. It is the way to maintain stability and control on society and in a similar way that traditions maintain cultural norms. Traditional behaviors are the antithesis of innovation.
Technology is changing at a breakneck pace, and increasing in the speed of change. It is hard, nigh impossible for large, bureaucratic, rules-based organizations to keep pace with innovation in technology, and the concomitant adoption by criminals.
The disturbing thing is that instead of law enforcement innovating to keep up with the demands of the job, many in law enforcement have lobbied successfully to change the rules of the game. This is most true in the United States over the last five years with the tired dirge: "give up your liberties or the terrorists will win".
I think the correct solution is to change the way we do law enforcement. Change the people who do it. Make smaller, more nimble organizations. Change the speed with which law enforcement operates. Remove entrenched, non-technical savvy deadweight from organizations. Incorporate the latest technology. Change quickly with the rest of society and keep the fundamental principles that make open society possible and successful.
And for christ's sakes, please stop degrading people by forcing them to take off their clothing and shoes to board an airplane. I know, it seems totally off topic, but the same idea we can't really stop the criminals, so let's treat everyone as a suspect.
At first I thought he was crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the article, however, and carefully thinking about his ideas, I've concluded that he is instead an idiot.
Has this man never heard of Metcalfe's Law [wikipedia.org]? His second, registration-only internet will be about as popular as BITNET [wikipedia.org] and Telenet [wikipedia.org] are these days. (Yes, Virginia there were globe-spanning networks before the Internet. It's true!)
While he's at it, he might as well call for a second telephone system, one that only allows people to say nice things.
In light of the real issue: (Score:5, Funny)
I call for a second FBI.
Go ahead Mr. Dempsey (Score:3)
Interesting idea... (Score:3, Funny)
But yeah, we definitely need to get to work on that "Internet 3." Screw Web 2.0, I'm already on Internet 3!
-G
Buggy Whip FBI (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Call for Second FBI (Score:4, Funny)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Score:5, Insightful)
Heinlein wrote about this decades ago - "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." Great read, and extremely relevant.
On a Related Note (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Exactly what we need! (Score:5, Funny)
RFC 3514 (Score:4, Funny)
Define "cybercrime" (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's the first, then it's not a new internet we need, but rather to fix what is allowing these attacks to take place.
If it's the second, then my friend, there's no solution. Crime was committed before the internet. Changing the internet won't solve crime. Child porn happens because children are kidnapped and abused. And that happens OUTSIDE the internet. Perhaps we need to spend less money on Iraq and more money on programs to prevent child abuse and all that.
If you want children not to be approached by stranger adults, then make some kind of "child ID" using a centralized certification authority or something. Or how about EDUCATING YOUR KIDS?
License to surf the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
A test run (Score:3, Funny)
We've already got an RFC for this (Score:5, Funny)
Can't he just recommend that routers check for the "evil bit"? It would be about as effective and much easier.
and how about a third internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
As the government tries more and more to clamp down on the internet and bandwidth becomes more and more free OR the government successfully forces us to go to this "Second" internet (let's call this "surveillance net"), people will come up with a new "freenet" to lay on top of this new freedom restricting internet.
All it would take would be an open source program protocol that would pass information over the "surveillance net" by encoding the data, chopping it up, and passing it through multiple nodes (think parallel, not serial distribution) before it gets to the recipient. That way nobody (i.e. government) at any single node would be able to tell what data was being passed or even to who. This would successfully nuke any second internet benefits. With this expectation of a free internet that the general masses have grown to expect, I think you'd get a large percentage of people who were willing to be freenet nodes. (you can of course try to mandate this like bittorrent nodes where you have to be a node on the freenet in order to use the freenet).
I think all this really requires is that bandwidth be cheap and a push by the government to clap down on internet freedoms. I think we'd very quickly see a counter-revolution and open source developers would create the freenet.
d
There may be a need for a "new" net (Score:3, Interesting)
Such a network would need to provide things like distributed caching by default and censorship resistance, as well as anonymity.
For example the network would cache all cachable protocolls by default, as often as it can be done. Then no site could be slashdotted again as many of the routers in between would just cache the content. A great side effect is that the identity of the originator of the request would be obscured by the routers.
Another important point is that it must not have any "single points of control" like the DNS-system or IP allocations.
Furthermore we would need to focus on every participant beeing able to route. The network must not be tree-like anymore. If you have wireless LAN and your neighbour has, too, there must be automatic peering.
Another idea would be to make it work on scaresly connected networks. Imagine you have a mobile device. It could try to fetch your encrypted (!) e-mail and fetch it whenever you have a connection. Every router in the connection would try to accept the request and cache the response until you have a connection again.
The network is not the problem. The client is. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the security and crime problems associated with the Internet are problems with the client, not the network. In other words, Microsoft Windows is the problem.
If desktop clients ran each browser window in a separate jail, and downloaded programs were constrained by NSA SELinux type mandatory security, or a virtual machine monitor, to stay in their individual compartments, most of the attacks on personal computers would stop working.
If it weren't for those armies of zombie PCs out there, hiding where something unwanted was coming from on the network wouldn't work. Look what's happened to spam. Today, essentially all spam involves compromised machines. Any that doesn't is shut down, fast.
Ir's all Microsoft's fault.
Police state, no thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Network is the Message (Score:3, Insightful)
The internet shouldn't be made more 'secure' by the government. The internet as we know it, is designed as a network which gives everyone the opportunity to participate. Restricting these 'rights' would be against the ideology from which the internet is build. We should see the internet as a public domain, where users are responsible and should watch for cybercrime and fight it. Let's think of securing the internet by participating as users instead of giving this out hands to the government.
We already have a second internet (Score:3, Informative)
Gateway Router, Anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly how long does he think it will take before someone, somewhere, installs a router between the old Internet and the New Internet?
I would guess it might take slightly longer than a nanosecond. But not by much. Most of the first New Internet routers will be installed in schools, to protect the children. I'm pretty sure that there is at least one evil grad student in one of our schools who is fully capable of configuring a router.
On second thought, the New Internet would probably be connected to the Old Internet before it even boots up for the first time.
News flash (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously... every time I hear "cyberthis" or "cyberthat", it's inevitably someone in law enforcment, the media or k-12 education (but talking about some enforcement issue). The cops are the worst... every unit they create is cyber-something... I guess they think it sounds cool. In actuality, it's more like hearing your grandpa say "gettin' jiggy with it".
However, if they're serious about such an endeavour they should go study with those who've already begun this sort of thing: China.
I'm sorry, Mr. Dempsey, sometimes a job just has to be hard.
Formerly Free Americans Call for Second FBI (Score:4, Insightful)
When contacted for comment on the AFFA group, agent Johnson of the FBI commented: "It is clear that AFFA is a domestic terror group, all they want to talk about is freedom when we are fighting an endless war. We need to be able to do whatever we want because most certainly this group may kill babies, torture puppies and bomb buildings. This cannot be allowed."
When presented with the quote above, Smith replied "This is why we're calling for a second FBI, the criminals in our government have ruined the first FBI by either asking them to, or allowing them to commit crimes against the people; and be clear, we are not saying most FBI agents are criminals, that isn't the case, my uncle was a fed, but the corruption at the top and in certain "joint task forces" ruinz it for the 98% of good, America loving agents."
When asked what evidence the agency had of anything illegal acts by AFFA, or why they would suspect that a group committted to peace, freedom, and the rule of law would commit such heinous acts, I was detained and questioned for 10 hours about if I was part of a domestic terror group and whether I supported the constitution. I was released after I agreed to publish the following statement: "I now see that the the FBI is right, this group and their type is dangerous. We are all in danger, danger is everywhere, and the internets is where it hides."
The internet is unsafe??? (Score:4, Funny)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Typical government reaction (Score:4, Informative)