<story><title>Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)</title><url>http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/1/28/urgent-egypt-has-shut-off-the-internet.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jerf</author><text>I am at a loss as to what this additional infrastructure really permits that having lots of armored men with guns does not. Armored men with guns are a flexible bunch, they can do lots of things. The marginal distinction to the person in power between pressing a button and ordering other people to go shut the net down is pretty minimal; it&apos;s not like without this switch, the President is going to actually have go out and point guns at the network admins himself, Independence Day-style.&lt;p&gt;My real worry, and the real reason this shouldn&apos;t be done, is that it shouldn&apos;t be made so easy that some clever hackers can do it, or gets accidentally triggered for some reason. But ye olde &quot;shoot the place up&quot; can take down the internet pretty effectively. &quot;Stray backhoes&quot; have done a decent job a couple of times within my experience as it is; the hard part is keeping the net running, not shutting it down.</text></item><item><author>Zak</author><text>Passing a law like that means they&apos;ll put in the infrastructure to actually do it. If things deteriorate significantly in the US, it is likely that attempting to gain the ability to shut down the internet would directly trigger some sort of civil unrest while now it only triggers angry blog posts.</text></item><item><author>jerf</author><text>Well, good news, it doesn&apos;t matter. If the situation has deteriorated to that point, the government will just do it anyhow.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t support the bill anyhow, because I&apos;m not really a &quot;let&apos;s just give one central authority all the power because why not?&quot; kind of guy, but honestly, there&apos;s not much point worrying about that particular kind of misuse of that particular power. Standard martial law concepts would probably be enough to take the necessary actions to shut down whatever networks you like; pointing guns at network admins can be pretty effective. You&apos;re actually not being &lt;i&gt;cynical enough&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>Zak</author><text>I read this, and become more concerned about bills to give the US President an Internet kill-switch. They say it&apos;s to protect against cyber-warfare, but something makes me think it&apos;s just as likely to be applied to civil unrest, and civil unrest doesn&apos;t usually happen unless there&apos;s something pretty wrong with the government.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>awakeasleep</author><text>I see this argument get a lot of play.&lt;p&gt;These sorts of things are important because ease dictates more of what happens in life than posibility. Make it easier to turn off the net, there is more chance of it happening, and it&apos;ll take less resources from the controlling party to do it.&lt;p&gt;Like you said, &apos;they&apos; could already turn off the internet.  So why bother with the effort to make a killswitch? Because the resources it&apos;d take to kill the internet manually matter.&lt;p&gt;~~~~~~~&lt;p&gt;An similar argument might be, &quot;If someone can always find a flaw in crypto implementations, why bother with cryptography?&quot; or &quot;You can walk anywhere a car can go, what&apos;s the point of having a car?&quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Egypt has shut off the Internet (update: not everywhere)</title><url>http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/1/28/urgent-egypt-has-shut-off-the-internet.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jerf</author><text>I am at a loss as to what this additional infrastructure really permits that having lots of armored men with guns does not. Armored men with guns are a flexible bunch, they can do lots of things. The marginal distinction to the person in power between pressing a button and ordering other people to go shut the net down is pretty minimal; it&apos;s not like without this switch, the President is going to actually have go out and point guns at the network admins himself, Independence Day-style.&lt;p&gt;My real worry, and the real reason this shouldn&apos;t be done, is that it shouldn&apos;t be made so easy that some clever hackers can do it, or gets accidentally triggered for some reason. But ye olde &quot;shoot the place up&quot; can take down the internet pretty effectively. &quot;Stray backhoes&quot; have done a decent job a couple of times within my experience as it is; the hard part is keeping the net running, not shutting it down.</text></item><item><author>Zak</author><text>Passing a law like that means they&apos;ll put in the infrastructure to actually do it. If things deteriorate significantly in the US, it is likely that attempting to gain the ability to shut down the internet would directly trigger some sort of civil unrest while now it only triggers angry blog posts.</text></item><item><author>jerf</author><text>Well, good news, it doesn&apos;t matter. If the situation has deteriorated to that point, the government will just do it anyhow.&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t support the bill anyhow, because I&apos;m not really a &quot;let&apos;s just give one central authority all the power because why not?&quot; kind of guy, but honestly, there&apos;s not much point worrying about that particular kind of misuse of that particular power. Standard martial law concepts would probably be enough to take the necessary actions to shut down whatever networks you like; pointing guns at network admins can be pretty effective. You&apos;re actually not being &lt;i&gt;cynical enough&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>Zak</author><text>I read this, and become more concerned about bills to give the US President an Internet kill-switch. They say it&apos;s to protect against cyber-warfare, but something makes me think it&apos;s just as likely to be applied to civil unrest, and civil unrest doesn&apos;t usually happen unless there&apos;s something pretty wrong with the government.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sunir</author><text>The question is how many armed men with guns will it take. Armed men with guns are not an infinite supply, and during a massive unrest, presumably in high demand. Why make it easy?</text></comment>