Which technologically advanced democratic countries DON'T have this capability already developed and deployed?
Do you think the 3 letter agencies in the likes of UK, Israel, Australia, Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden, etc don't know how to turn off the internet in their countries? They'd be really incompetent if they don't.
Switzerland even had all its bridges wired with explosives from like the 19th century and all the way through the cold war to blow them up inc ase of an invasion.
Do you think the internet infra is somehow spared this kind of strategic planning?
Famous last words.
I'm more than shocked that people STILL haven't learned how quickly laws came become meaningless. Which is why history keeps repeating itself.
If fascist government goons break into your house to kill you, do you think waving a piece of paper with the law in their face will stop them? Isn't that the whole point the found fathers made the Second Amendment? Even they knew this 300 years ago. Have people already forgotten?
At the risk of going off on an entirely different direction ... no, I don't think that was the point of the second amendment, not really. It was more about making sure they had something that would function like a standing army (in the absence of the real deal) should a foreign government invade. Defense against tyranny from our own government doesn't really feel like it was something they worried deeply about (at least with regards to the right to bear arms), and the self-defense justification for the second amendment wasn't even a commonly held viewpoint until about the 20th century.
Most countries (including the US, obviously) follow their laws. Can you please give an example for a first world country that *consistently* ignores it's own laws?
History repeats itself because people ignore history, not because people ignore the law.
In the US, it's standard to do ten miles an hour over the speed limit past a cop, and there's probably 20 Federally illegal marijuana dispensaries within a few miles of me. Our current President got convicted of 34 felonies, but any possible consequences were automatically voided when he got elected again.
So just because something is illegal for the government TODAY, doesn't mean it will stay like that for the next 500 years.
Laws aren't real, they're just made up constructs on worthless pieces of paper, but the only thing that is always consistently real is the enforcement of the will of state through means of violence and they'll put that in writing to give it legitimacy but ultimately the people in charge of the guns can make whatever they want legal or illegal.
The world changes. Maybe in 50 years child pornography will be legal, who knows? It doesn't change based on what those rulers want, because in a true Democratic country, the people rule.
Somehow there's always a failure of imagining that whatever the current administration is won't always be current.
The link you provided says:
In 1942, during World War II, Congress created a law to grant President Franklin D. Roosevelt or his successors the power to temporarily shut down any potentially vulnerable technological communications technologies.
The Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act would reverse the 1942 law and prevent the president from shutting down any communications technology during wartime, including the internet.
The House version was introduced on September 22 as bill number H.R. 8336, by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI2). The Senate version was introduced the same day as bill number S. 4646, by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
The bill did not pass and did not become law. So what are you referring to?
For whatever reason it's taboo to talk about how fragile infrastructure is, but if you wanted to shut something like comm links down, that's a problem for whoever installs the new judiciary. Chances are, whoever gets the job of being the new judiciary is likely to rule it as acceptable use of emergency powers.
In fact, it's likely that you can turn off the internet, and then, after some time, a judge will rule on the topic.
Oh sweet summer child.
Good one, buddy. That's a good one.
Starting insurrection to overthrow election? Pardoned. Killing police officer? Pardoned. Ordering contract killings? Pardoned. Large scale drug smuggling operation to the US? Pardoned.
Brand anyone who follows the law as a criminal and make sure to have them fired, and you can even ignore the constition that says power to regulate trade lies with the senate and enough of civil society might just decide to play along.
The parent asked "Which technologically advanced democratic countries DON'T have this capability already developed and deployed?" and there are many, every country on earth isn't run by warmongering corrupt idiots.
Famous last words.
In case of war or major cataclysmic event, your government will definitely just hand-wave a lot of things you take for granted in order to keep the country and society from collapsing, including elections, democracy, freedom of speech, internet access, travel, etc since then the nation's survival becomes more important than your individual rights and freedom. See Covid hysteria, Ukraine war, etc.
I think coddled people from rich countries who never saw anything but prosperity since WW2 and no conflicts or events with major loss of life, have no idea just how radical governments can switch in an instant when society is threatened with collapse.
Section 2 basically allows the Westminster government to make regulations as they see fit during an emergency, but with a short time scale (like a month or so) before parliament gets a say.
Does ANY country from the list above own their internet infrastructure?
So what? If it's on Swedish ground then it's under Swedish government(military) enforcement in case the shit hits the fan.
>The government could impose legislation to force providers to comply with shutting down international peering but I have a hard time seeing it pass.
Do you think if Russia invades Sweden tomorrow, private businesses can still do whatever they want like in peacetime, or will they have to follow the new waartime rules set by the government and enforced by armed soldiers knocking on their door dragging them to court if they refuse to comply?
Pretty much
> or will they have to follow the new waartime rules set by the government and enforced by armed soldiers knocking on their door dragging them to court if they refuse to comply?
They'll be dragging them to court. We're a democracy, we don't just send soldiers after our own.
I think this type of idealistic fantasy world mentality is exactly why Europe has been so ill prepared to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
You guys do. Säpo and Telia were a customers of mine when I was still an IC.
The American model is still preferable, but being preferable often gives people the false impression that open communication is a solved problem because they have limited assurances at the political level when what they should be after is more expansive assurances at the technical level.
Half the internet goes down by accident when AWS or Cloudflare have a big issue every few years.
We also run tons of crucial stuff over commercial links thanks to encryption. Taking Internet trunks offline would disrupt most domestic functions of government, for example.
And they largely rely on a surprisingly centralized infrastructure to function.
> Taking Internet trunks offline would disrupt most domestic functions of government, for example.
Sure, but in the sort of scenario you're considering "take the Internet down", that has already occurred.
No, the goal of “take down the Internet” is to degrade the organizing of protestors / agitators / insurgents, while preserving the ability of government to organize against them. It only works if the government has a separate sufficient infrastructure, or completely controls routing on shared infrastructure. Neither of those are true in the U.S.
To pick just one recent newsworthy example, the federal government does not have a way to deny Signal messaging to their opponents, while preserving their own use of it.
A disrupted regime can still be a dangerous regime. The Islamic State largely couldn't govern, but they could certainly get organized enough to wreck shit.
> It only works if the government has a separate sufficient infrastructure, or completely controls routing on shared infrastructure. Neither of those are true in the U.S.
Maybe it's hopelessly optimistic of me, but I like to think the giant organization that includes FEMA has some plans for what to do if the internet isn't available.
> To pick just one recent newsworthy example, the federal government does not have a way to deny Signal messaging to their opponents, while preserving their own use of it.
But could they survive without it? Probably. The protocol is open source.
But because Iran is not yet an active war zone the Iranians can deploy those systems close to the cities.
Also, Starlink terminals can be located via their RF emissions. So using a Starlink terminal in Iran seems to come with a high risk that security forces can locate and arrest you.
Starlink terminals use highly-directional antennas that point at the sky (see. beamforming) and therefore they don't leak much in terms of RF emissions. So unless you can afford to maintain a host of overhead drones on permanent rotation and wide-area coverage, it would be very hard to actually locate anybody. Not that it's impossible, but largely intractable at scale. We use Starlink a lot in Ukraine, and even though the russians have platforms with sophisticated signal processing capabilities (think Xilinx RFSoC) perfectly capable of locating emissions from most communication equipment, they are still unable to locate Starlink terminals. And this is along the frontline, mind you. To cover all of Iran would surely be prohibitive.
Ukraine has one other advantage: The jamming tends to come from one direction. If you set up a barrier on that side of the antenna, the signal from the satellites is less likely to be drowned out. People in Iran have no idea where the jammers are in related to themselves. If they're in a city, they might be surrounded.
Starlink terminals also require a clear view of the sky and they broadcast on certain frequencies, so it's quite possible for governments to find the terminals and confiscate/destroy them. Still, it's a lot more difficult to shut down than a few fiber optic lines.
That's not quite true. You can conceal the terminal using a number of materials that won't significantly interfere with the signal like a thin piece of cloth or a thin plastic bag (like a garbage bag) as long as the cover doesn't get too wet.
It's an active transmitter actively shouting "I'm here!" to the right gear.
IIRC, the Ukrainians found it's best to have a nice long wire between you and the terminal for this reason.
It's naive to think that our countries don't play the influence and propaganda war online.
a good cyberwarfare attack would be disabling whatever is being used to prevent Starlink from working. Even if it only lasts for 12 hours the flood of images, video, and just general communication from inside Iran to the world would be a blow to the regime.
I would guess the Iranian government is capable of at least the same: Triangulating specific radio frequency sources.
This is a capability that makes sense to have to use when absolutely necessary.
I think the differentiator is always when governments choose to employ these things.
I definitely disagree with this. Currently there is no reason to believe we'll ever have sentient AI, or AGI or whatever term you prefer, much less a runaway one. There is definitely reasons to worry about governments using this power in an era of increasing authoritarianism, I mean we're talking about this because it is literally happening right now to cover up a massacre.
I don't want the power to turn off all communications to exist, because I don't want my political enemies to have it if they win an election.
Wouldn't a centralized ability to shut down all communications and power also be one of the most vulnerable targets to an runaway AI attack though? Seems like a double edged sword if I've ever seen one.
RF is rife in our brave new world.
https://spacenews.com/aircraft-links-with-satellite-using-la...
If you emit RF in a contested environment as a civilian, you can be found using multilateration (for this context, I assume if you have military comms equipment, you have access to exotic RF that will make this difficult similar to have quick and saturn). SDR networks on the public internet enable this today, as long as there are enough receivers online in an area and you know what you're looking for, so I don't think it's beyond the grasp of nation state actors.
TDOA Transmitter Localization with RTL-SDRs - https://panoradio-sdr.de/tdoa-transmitter-localization-with-... - July 17th, 2017
Europe is already flirting with it. Look at their draconian internet speech laws. If you think that ISPs would try to stand up to the government you should read about how quickly they bent over after the PATRIOT act.
democratic states like Iran
non-democratic states like north korea
No. It's about iran, so it'll get stuck on the frontpage for a while. If this was about israel, then you'd have point.
> but all it takes is one person to say some out-of-pocket shit like "the country currently massacring protestors is the real democracy" for it to descend below HN's standards for political discourse.
The US has massacred people, even protestors. Are you saying we are not a democracy?
> And FWIW, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is ostensibly a democracy, too.
There is a difference between one claiming to be a democracy and another that actually is. No?
Maybe you remember one of the most shameful, egregious acts of police violence against protestors in America, with 4 dead and 9 injured? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
EDIT: But WAY more importantly, c'mon the HN admins are not super biased. I disagree with them on lots of policy decisions, but implying that they're a secret Zionist influence is goofy. They delete political threads of all kinds with gusto unless it's incredibly important or somewhat tech-related.
I think a lot of them took a look at how Twitter and Facebook were used for organising during the Arab spring and decided that it was by far the most dangerous non-military threat.
Still wonder how exactly they are interdicting Starlink, I've seen rumors that they are using Russian EW systems but those same systems are not so effective jamming Starlink-guided drones on the frontlines.