'Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet': Julian Assanges New Book

[cpm@]

Julian Assange has released a new book on the fight against Internet surveillance and governments taking control of the web.

More...

 

[Deleted member 30996]

It's a real concern:

The U.N.'s Internet Sneak Attack

"Who runs the Internet? For now, the answer remains no one, or at least no government, which explains the Web's success as a new technology. But as of next week, unless the U.S. gets serious, the answer could be the United Nations.

Many of the U.N.'s 193 member states oppose the open, uncontrolled nature of the Internet. Its interconnected global networks ignore national boundaries, making it hard for governments to censor or tax. And so, to send the freewheeling digital world back to the state control of the analog era, China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are trying to hijack a U.N. agency that has nothing to do with the Internet.

For more than a year, these countries have lobbied an agency called the International Telecommunications Union to take over the rules and workings of the Internet. Created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU last drafted a treaty on communications in 1988, before the commercial Internet, when telecommunications meant voice telephone calls via national telephone monopolies.

Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations."

More at...

 

[cpm@]

How to respond to this threat to freedom? They want to control our minds, the same way we control the computers? This is an insult to every rule. What a F...... government project! I hope this opinion will not be misinterpreted (out politicking).

 

[Crivens]

Good Morning Sheeple!

Is anyone suprised by this? Yes?

It's been on the way a long time and it follows some pattern which is used for a lot of other "unpopular" things. If you can not do the legislation by your own, then you bounce it back some other institution. A prime candidate for this is, at least for us here in Europe, the EU commision. Not elected in any way, does not answer to the voters, staffed by career politicans. And then they tell you they have no choice to skip this, it is comming "from upper management". But who launched it there in the first place?

And then you read that the ACTA thing was signed off by the EU fishery commision. That's right, they who argue about fish quotas. But, oh the irony, they seem to be those with knowledge about dragnets there. Maybe it is because of that it ended up on their agenda.

But when it comes to the ITU ruling the internet, I would not place any bet on them. This is an attempt at the bounce-back game by n00bs in that arena, they are up against other interests which have more experience in this than these states. That is not neccesarily a good thing, but imagine someone competent got it into his head to do this?

 

[cpm@]

The European Parliament opposes ITU control of web.

In advance of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), the European Parliament has issued a resolution stating that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should not have control over the web.

Is better to remain alert to the changes that occur in making unwelcome measures on political control of the internet.

 

[Deleted member 30996]

Syria now 'cut off from internet'

"Technology companies which monitor web traffic have reported that Syria is now effectively cut off from the Internet.

Akamai, one of the firms which monitors global traffic, said traffic stopped from 1026 GMT (2126 AEDT) on Thursday, and that this supports the observation from another IT firm, Renesys, 'that Syria is effectively off the internet'.

According to activists, sudden communication cuts regularly occur before major military offensives."



Syria Off The Air

"Looking closely at the continuing Internet blackout in Syria, we can see that traceroutes into Syria are failing, exactly as one would expect for a major outage. The primary autonomous system for Syria is the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment; all of their customer networks are currently unreachable.

Now, there are a few Syrian networks that are still connected to the Internet, still reachable by traceroutes, and indeed still hosting Syrian content. These are five networks that use Syrian-registered IP space, but the originator of the routes is actually Tata Communications. These are potentially offshore, rather than domestic, and perhaps not subject to whatever killswitch was thrown today within Syria.

These five offshore survivors include the webservers that were implicated in the delivery of malware targeting Syrian activists in May of this year."

 

[cpm@]

On 17–19 January 2010, the Syrian Arab Republic hosted in its capital, Damascus, the Arab States’ preparatory meeting for the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2010 (WTDC-10), taking place in India from 24 May to 4 June.

This was one of the regional priorities about cybersecurity:

Nevertheless, compared to other world regions, Internet usage (particularly broadband access) is still rather limited in the Arab States. “The focus now is on rolling out broadband access. This is the right and necessary course to take, as it will increase the number of Internet users and accelerate the spread of e-applications and services which will, in turn, contribute to achieving rapid social and economic development,” noted Mr Al Basheer.

http://www.itu.int/net/itunews/issues/2010/02/13.aspx

Response from the Internet community:

Just saw the blackout, Internet users and activists numerous Internet freedom came forward and spread through social networks multiple phone numbers and registration information for the Syrians to access the Internet for free.