Posts Tagged ‘ISP’

CISPA – Big Brother Never Sleeps

May 3rd, 2012

big-brother-posterIt’s likely you’ve never heard of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, also known as CISPA.  It is the latest round in the never-ending litany of SOPA-like bills designed to clamp down on the scourge that is the Internet.  And it just cleared the House last week by a pretty comfortable margin.  Comfortable that is, unless you’re a user of the Internet.

Much like the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, CISPA cloaks itself with a title that’s hard to be opposed to.  Cyber-terrorism is a very real threat, and who in their right mind would be against a measure to protect us from a cyber-attack?  Ahhh… if only it actually achieved that goal.

What CISPA actually does is provide immunity to ISPs and online  service providers for responding to government requests for information about the cyber-activities of anyone related to cybersecurity, cyber crime, protecting people from harm, protecting children from exploitation, and national security.  Note that the bill does not compel companies to turn over such information, and because it’s a voluntary request, it requires no court approval or any other sort of burden of reasonable cause.  But keep in mind that during the post 9/11 illegal wiretapping scandals, AT&T, Verizon, and other companies were only too willing to hand over your data.  So much so that there were efforts to prosecute the telecom companies for violating citizen’s rights, which ultimately required that the telcos be granted immunity.  Under CISPA, they will have permanent immunity as CISPA explicitly states that companies may provide requested information “notwithstanding any other provision of law.”  In other words, CISPA trumps all other laws.

CISPA would “waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity,” Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and onetime Web entrepreneur, said during the House debate. “Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on.”

Yet all this begs the question, will it make us safer?  After all, in the last decade Americans have repeatedly shown that they are willing to sacrifice considerable freedoms in the interest of domestic security.

The fundamental issue would seem to be that this is a bill about cyber-security. Yet the allowances to deploy the law for purposes such as protecting children from exploitation seem pretty hard to defend as essential to preventing cyber-terrorism.  Still, it’s hard to argue that protecting children is a bad thing.

Moreover, the issue would seem to be the relative ease by which potential cyber-terrorists could thwart the efforts enabled by CISPA.  VPN tunnels and anonymous proxy services are well known technologies, and would make it impossible for anyone monitoring network traffic to even determine who was talking to whom, much less eavesdrop on the conversation.  You could certainly argue that the average citizen might not have the geeky skills to set up such a secure Internet connection.  But certainly anyone with the mad tech skills to conduct cyber-terrorism is going to be able to handle an encrypted network tunnel.  Don’tcha think?

So who are we catching here?  One possibility is that this is all just more security theater.  We’ll spend a lot of money and politicians will use CISPA as a campaign slogan, but it will have very little net impact on security.  Another possibility is that CISPA will be exploited for less noble purposes, unrelated to cyber-terrorism.  Instead of hunting down Chinese hackers, it will be used to hunt down your spouse streaming an illegally broadcast Celtics game on her laptop.

The bottom line is that this bill will not accomplish what it purports to.  The bill is highly focused on domestic surveillance, and there is no evidence that we are at risk of a domestic cyber-attack from citizens with poor tech skills.  Further, there are ample laws on the books now that allow the government a pretty wide berth to eavesdrop on citizens when they can show cause.  And those laws have already been routinely circumvented in the name of national security.  If anything, we need to be shoring up the Fourth Amendment, not tearing it to shreds.

Just because technology provides the means to unobtrusively invade our personal privacy does not mean we should be surrendering those rights.

Fortunately, while CISPA started out with bipartisan support, it has become a partisan issue.  It may have been passed by the House, but its chances of getting through the Senate are slim, and Obama has already threatened a veto.  Yet this is no time for complacency.  These sorts of bills just keep on coming, and sooner or later, one of them will slip through.

Be vigilant.

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Big Brother Likes to Watch

January 26th, 2012

big-brother-posterSOPA and PIPA may be dead, but the battle is far from over.  The dust had barely settled from the online community’s successful revolt against Hollywood’s attempt to toss out due process in an effort to protect it’s Luddite-like business model when Rep. Lamar Smith, SOPA’s author, introduced the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.

That doesn’t even sound related does it?  Further, it’s obviously about protecting children, and who could be against that? Well, that’s kind of the point. The problem is, this bill doesn’t really introduce any additional protections for children or make any bold new strides to stamp out child porn.  At least not directly.

What the bill does require is that your ISP maintain a record of what IP addresses are assigned to you for 18 months.  It is required to keep those records sealed, unless the government, and only the government, requests them.

Some sites are reporting the bill requires ISPs to keep a record of every site you visit.  That’s not true, unless you live in Hawaii, where a separate and unrelated state bill has been proposed requiring your ISP to keep tabs on your every YouTube view and Facebook stalking venture.  The federal bill makes no such requirement.

This means the Fed won’t have the ability under this bill to demand your Internet history as part of an investigation.  But, if it is monitoring network traffic or if it seizes a web server and the logs on that server, they can trace your activity back to your house.

So in theory, FBI agents bust a child porn provider, find out that someone at the address 123.123.123.123 has been a heavy user, and grab the ISP records to find out that on the day in question, that address was assigned to your house.  Then you hear a knock on the door.  Okay, if you’re into child porn, then someone should knock at your door and haul your ass away.  But what if it wasn’t you?  What if your neighbor jacked your WiFi, and he’s the real pervert?  What if you own a coffee shop and provide free WiFi to your customers?  Are you now suspect because of their actions?

And you’d have to be completely naive to think this tactic only applies to child porn.  Gee, have you been to Megaupload or Pirate Bay lately?  And there’s the SOPA/PIPA tie in.  Once this data is being collected and is at the government’s disposal, it will be used for all manner of things.  This isn’t about protecting the children. That’s just the ruse to get the law passed.

And before someone argues that if you’ve got nothing to hide you shouldn’t be worried… that’s not the point.  The Forth Amendment guarantees a right to privacy.  The Supreme Court recently ruled that your car can’t be GPS tagged without a warrant.  This means the police can’t decide to electronically track and log wherever you go in the real world so that  just in case they uncover a crime, they can go back and see who was near the scene when it was committed.  The virtual world should not be different.

As ill-conceived as they were, SOPA and PIPA were at least upfront about their intentions and motivations.  Hiding behind the specter of child porn to erode constitutional rights is despicable.  The children deserve better.

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Former Senator Chris Dodd breaks promise not to become a lobbyist

March 2nd, 2011

Chris Dodd Bobblehead

Chris Dodd's ethics bobble with the breeze (Photo by DonkeyHotey on Flickr)

Recently retired Senator from Connecticut Christopher Dodd said upon leaving office he would not seek to become a corporate lobbyist.   But that was two months ago, and times change.  The former five-term Democratic senator announced yesterday he accepted a job as head of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Technically, Dodd is legally barred from becoming a lobbyist for two years after leaving the Senate. However, like so many retired legislators before him, he skirts that rule by not officially being hired as a lobbyist.  Still, as the head of one of the most high profile lobbying groups in the country, it’s a distinction without a difference.

Interim MPAA CEO and president Bob Pisano told Hillicon Valley last month that his organization’s unwavering focus was on increasing the federal government’s efforts to stop online film piracy. Pisano also talks up the importance of COICA and how happy he is that Homeland Security has been seizing domains in violation of the First Amendment and basic due process, even taking down tens of thousands of perfectly innocent sites.

It remains to be seen how or if Dodd’s new million dollar job will change his previously professed positions on related issues. He was on record as a big supporter of Net Neutrality. However, the MPAA has come out against net neutrality, claiming it would hamper its efforts to “fight piracy.” He was also against ISP data retention, which the MPAA has supported (again as a way to fight piracy). On copyright he was somewhat non-committal, but did talk about how fair use rights are important. A position likely to disappear once he takes the role formerly filled by Jack Valenti—the man who once declared that fair use doesn’t exist.

Dodd co-authored the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This legislation was targeted at improving the accountability and ethics of the banking system.  Too bad Dodd’s own ethics now seem to be bobbling in the breeze.

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Boehner says Net Neutrality is reinstating the Fairness Doctrine

March 1st, 2011

Speaker John Boehner

Boehner ties Net Neutrality to a political agenda

Speaker Boehner addressed several tech points in his speech to the National Association of Religious Broadcasters on Sunday. He railed against Net Neutrality and new FCC regulations that he characterized as a government takeover of the Internet.  He went on to say:

“Now, you know the old saying: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ Well in Washington, it’s more like, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, tax ’em and regulate ’em,” Boehner said in his speech. “So, some members of Congress and the federal bureaucracy are still trying to reinstate – and even expand – the Fairness Doctrine. To them, it’s fair to silence ideas and voices they don’t agree with, and use the tools of government to do it. “

Opposing Net Neutrality has been pretty standard Republican boilerplate.  Much like with the healthcare debate, the GOP prefers that corporations make decisions for consumers rather than the government. The new twist here is the conflation of Net Neutrality with the Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in 1949 and required that broadcasters present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was honest, equitable and balanced.  Reagan overturned the policy by executive order in 1987.

Republicans are apparently afraid the Internet might become a place of fair and balanced treatment of controversial issues.  This is a confounding stance, not to mention that the distributed nature of content creators on the Internet would make such a rule impossible to enforce.  Yet the larger issue is that Net Neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with editorial content.

Net Neutrality simply guarantees that the ISPs who provide the backbone for and access to the Internet cannot preferentially treat one content type over another.  This assures that you have equally speedy access to Fox Nation and the Huffington Post.  It means your access to Netflix won’t be throttled by Time Warner, or that Comcast will cut a deal with Microsoft to make Bing twice as fast as Google.

There is nothing about any proposed or existing Net Neutrality rules that in any way attempts to legislate editorial content on the web.  Nothing.  Tying Net Neutrality to the Fairness Doctrine is either an act of colossal ignorance or a blatant attempt to mislead and confuse voters.

We report, you decide.

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Internet Kill-Switch Bill is ill-timed, ill-named, just ill

February 2nd, 2011

Easy Button

The kill-switch that doesn't exist (Photo by Craig Dugas on Flickr)

Sen. Lieberman reintroduced his ‘Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010’ this week. The bill has been widely dubbed the Internet Kill-Switch Bill, and its reemergence unintentionally coincided with Egypt shutting off its own Internet connection.  Egypt is back online today, but debate rages anew over whether or not the President should have the power to shutdown the web. What’s being widely ignored is that Lieberman’s bill doesn’t really provide the President with that power. Rather it broadens the power he already has to make the Internet go dark.

Under the Communications Act of 1934 the President has very broad power to shut off any or all wired or radio communications networks in the event of war or even the threat of war. This would include throttling the Internet.  Lieberman’s bill would broaden the definition of threats to explicitly include cyber-threats, But it’s not at all clear this power doesn’t already exist.

Over the last decade the threat of terrorist acts have widely been accepted politically as existential threats to America.  Clearly, a major attack on our communications networks would be considered an act of terror, and the threat of such an attack would allow the President a great deal of latitude to prevent such an attack, including shutting down parts or all of the network.  Lieberman’s proposal does little to change the scope of executive power in such a situation.

However, the bill’s primary purpose is to create a plan that would force the private providers of critical digital networks to come up with ways of managing their traffic in the event that something bad happens.  Is that a good thing?  Yes, in the sense that any competent network should have plans in place to deal with cyber-attacks.  Yet there are already ample incentives for any private provider to have such plans in place. Lieberman’s proposal would legislate what is already considered standard practice.  While the bill doesn’t obviously do much harm, it doesn’t do any obvious good either.  And it does create additional federal bureaucracy, which would seem ill-advised at a time when both sides are looking for ways to cut administrative expenses.

While Lieberman’s bill doesn’t create an Internet Kill-Switch, the specter of Obama having a big red button on his desk that would sever the web looms large in the minds of conservatives and liberals alike.  Yet this nervousness is ill-founded.  Such a button does not exist.  The mechanisms by which the government would shut off the Internet would be that it would have to coerce or demand the cooperation of private telecommunications providers to cut off their external network connections. The sheer number of companies managing such extra-national networks makes such a prospect considerably larger than Mubarak’s turn down of the three Egyptian ISPs.  It would take days to weeks for the government to effectively kill the American Internet, if it was possible at all—and more than enough time for any particular cyber-attack to do its damage.  Further, the prospect of a President getting widespread ISP cooperation to execute an Egypt-style quelling of popular dissent is even more remote.   The “kill-switch” as a defensive measure is neither practical or effective.

If people are truly concerned about the Internet remaining a free and open means of communication for everyone, they should be supporting true Net Neutrality legislation, not fretting about mythical kill-switches.

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TWC demands broadband customers subsidize TV business

January 5th, 2011

Time-Warner-logoTime Warner Cable announced that its rates in the Rochester area will increase between 6% and 10% on Jan. 15th.  The rate increases will happen across the board so the increased costs will be borne by digital phone and broadband subscribers in additions to cable television watchers.

Unfortunately, the price increases are not reflective of changes in TWC’s cost to deliver each of those respective services.  Cable TV profits are clearly down.  Subscribers rates are not continuing to increase year on year as in the past.  There’s debate if this is because people are watching more TV online or if the customers are belt tightening because of the economy.  Margins are being further eroded by TV content suppliers demanding higher rates from TWC, such as their most recent spat with Sinclair Broadcast Group.  Meanwhile, costs to deliver broadband service are falling and profits for that business are continuing to rise.  In addition, America ranks 28th in global speed of Internet connections while having comparatively more expensive ISP service.

The only reasonable explanation is that broadband customers are being forced to subsidize cable TV service.  For customers who subscribe to both this may be a financial wash, but it still hides the true cost of TV service.   And while there are other TV options in the market, there is nowhere else to go for true broadband ISP connections.  This is yet further reason why we need unbundled service options and more competition in this space.

TWC has an effective monopoly in Rochester on broadband service.  While their speed is paltry by international standards, it blazes with respect to other ISP options in the area.   It is completely unfair of TWC to now demand that the broadband customers it is holding hostage prop up its faltering cable TV profits.

Competition would solve this problem as would regulation.  At present we have neither, and broadband consumers are left at the mercy of TWC.  Ouch.

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What you likely don’t know about Net Neutrality

January 2nd, 2011

Budding Web Surfer

Net Neutrality: keeping the web free for the next generation (Photo by Ilya Haykinson on Flickr)

A recent Rasmussen poll showed that a mere 20% of us are following the debate on Net Neutrality.  Meanwhile 54% are opposed to the FCC making any Net Neutrality regulations, while 21% were in favor.  A likely explanation is that most Americans don’t really understand what Net Neutrality is.

The FCC recently approved a new slate of so-called Net Neutrality rules.  The new rules ensconced a few tenets of Net Neutrality, but also propped open the door for companies to engage in some very non net neutral business models.  The result being that almost everyone wound up unsatisfied by the result.  Still, the vote came down strictly along party lines which bolstered the perception that Net Neutrality is a liberal vs. conservative issue.  Net Neutrality is often positioned as a government takeover or government regulation of the Internet.  It’s not either of those things, nor is it particularly political in a left vs. right sense.  But those perceptions are driving public opinion nonetheless.

The question is, what is Net Neutrality, independent of any specific proposed policy or rules?  At its core, Net Neutrality is simply freedom of the Internet.  It is a belief that Internet network access is a public resource that should not favor any content over any other.  That as a user of the Internet, you should be entitled to access any site or service with the same pricing and speed from the provider of that connection.

This means that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) cannot charge you more for using Yahoo! than Google.  It cannot provide speedy access to Netflix while throttling Hulu.  It cannot make it prohibitively expensive to do online banking with Citibank, while providing bargains for banking with Chase.  It cannot prohibit you from accessing The Drudge Report because it doesn’t like its political views.  As far as the network is concerned, traffic is traffic, and no preferential treatment shall be given.

The talk of government regulation of the Internet is not really accurate.  It sounds as if the government would be regulating content.  Instead, Net Neutrality proposes that the government regulate ISPs to insure they do not regulate the content of the Internet.  Net Neutrality is about insuring freedom for consumers and making sure ISPs don’t take that away.

Analogies have been made to the power company charging you more to run a TV than a washing machine, or giving you a discount for running Maytag appliances.  Rather, you pay for the kWHs you use, rather than whether you burn them using your PS/3 or your dishwasher.   Net Neutrality is simply ensuring that same agnosticism applies to your ISP.

In fairness, most ISPs have not yet tried to implement service structures that would not be net neutral.  However, there have been a few trial balloons floated, so there is justifiable reason for consumers to be concerned.  This is the primary motivation for trying to get Net Neutrality rules into effect now, before ISPs change to content biased business models.  It wil be much more difficult and much more disruptive to companies to force them to change after the fact rather than putting rules in place up front.

Viewed another way, Net Neutrality is like the Second Amendment, albeit for Internet rights rather than gun rights.  Your right to access the Internet content of your choice shall not be infringed.  This sort of basic freedom should appeal to card-carrying ACLU members as much as Tea Partiers.

So why does anyone oppose Net Neutrality?  Profit.  Being an ISP is a profitable business.  Demand is increasing while costs are decreasing, meaning that profit margins continue to rise.  A fast Internet connection is becoming a near must-have for households.  It’s like a car or a TV.  Most families would not chose to live without it.  So while ISPs are making good money with today’s net neutral business models, they fully recognize there are opportunities to make even more money by shifting to less content neutral pricing.

But wait, shouldn’t the free market sort all this out?  As a consumer, why would you opt for a restrictive ISP over a more open one?  The reason being that the vast majority of America lacks any serious market competition in the ISP space.  Only 4% of the market is served by 3 or more ISPs, while 78% is served by 2 ISPs.  If free markets were operating in the ISP space, you would not expect America to rank 28th in global speed of Internet connections while having comparatively more expensive ISP service.   The markets should have sorted that out by now as well.

The bottom line being that government rules enforcing that ISPs honor Net Neutrality wouldn’t be required if instead government required that ISPs unbundle their services and sell wholesale network access to small ISPs such that true competition existed in the market.  Either method works, and many other countries have successfully implemented the unbundling regulations.  However, American ISPs are understandably opposed to either option, and both options require some level of government intervention.  The alternative is that we simply have to trust that ISPs will be good citizens and not place profit motives over the interests of their customers—and history suggests that the customers rarely end up on the good end of that bargain.

Net Neutrality is not about restricting the Internet or your ability to post or access content on it.  On the contrary, its only goal is to ensure your continued ability to surf without restrictions or penalties.  While some government rules do impose constraints, Net Neutrality is one of those that promotes and ensures freedom.  What could be more American than that?

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USPS vs. Internet: pick a side

November 14th, 2010

USPS v Internet

Which is the more vital part of U.S. infrastructure? (created by Tim)

The venerable U.S. Postal Service announced last Friday that it lost $8.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended in September.  It is on pace to be completely broke by the end of 2011.  It is seeking freedom from onerous requirements that mandate Congressional approval for changes to delivery schedules and routes, closing post offices, and setting rates.

Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is set to lead the House committee overseeing postal affairs, is determined to assure the USPS doesn’t require a taxpayer bailout, but is not supportive of helping it either.  Instead he’s urging the post office to consider further cost cuts so that it lives within its revenue.  This leaves the USPS in a bind no private company would have to endure.  The USPS can’t raise its rates, and it can’t cut back its service offerings either.  It doesn’t even have the right to go out of business.

A combination of two outside forces have dealt the USPS dramatic blows to its business model.  Delivery companies like FedEx and UPS together with the adoption of the Internet have significantly eroded the need for and the value provided by the USPS.  While it was an essential and effective part of our national infrastructure at one time, those days are largely gone.

Given the current groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm for private businesses being able to do things more efficiently than the government, it’s inexplicable why Congress is clinging to this anachronistic heavily federally regulated and backed delivery system.

It’s conceivable the argument could be offered that the postal service is a vital part of our communications infrastructure and in our national interest to assure it keeps running.  But if that’s true, it would be impossible to then argue that the Internet should remain under the auspices of private companies, and remain unregulated.

At its core, this is an ideology issue.  Either the government has an obligation over our communications infrastructure or it doesn’t.  If it does, then stop worrying about telephone companies and the post office and pay attention to wireless carriers and Internet service providers.  That is unarguably the core of our national communications network today.  If the government has no such obligation, then set the USPS free.  Let it live or die as a for profit company, or be bought out by one of its competitors.  That is the nature of capitalism.

Republicans are currently on both sides of this issue.  They want the post office alive and well and under the government’s thumb, yet they oppose regulation or nationalization of  ISPs and wireless carriers.  Points which are ideologically at odds with each other.  It’s time to pick a side.

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