ICE -- what's the plan?

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ICE -- what's the plan?

Any geeks in the house? In addition to the basic nightmare of a fascist government taking over, I can't live without this place. How do we connect if they start playing around like that?

Is there another way to connect?

Aside from the idiotic babble we play with the private internet is one of the major economic drivers of the country involving paying bills, advertising, information source, etc. It is highly unlikely it will get shut down.

There's absolutely no situation where any politician should have such direct power over the last free realm of information. As it is, it's bad enough that net neutrality is in danger.

If they cut off the internet in the country from the ISP's, there's nothing anyone within the country can do shy of being able to connect to, say, a wireless internet service (like what phone companies offer) from overseas. IE, if you have a Vodaphone aircard, that may still work if such a horrific thing were to happen.

Times they are a-changin.

We are just a few short years from personal broadcast internet. The ISPs will fight and gasp like the record companies are now, but we dont have to pay them. We wont have to use their services.

The Internet is a very decentralized system. I doubt it would even be technologically possible for the federal government to just shut it off.

They can try I bet. I imagine our government could do a better job at it than Iran did during their crackdown. Some tech savvy folks could get through but vast majority couldn't.

Tell that to China.

It is 100% possible to "lock down" the Internet so that only approved communications can get through. China does that now, and that they want to have the ability to do it here is frightening. They've already been doing it by political influence in the corporations that own the vast majority of ISP companies. Now they just want the ability to do it openly for any "crisis" they can cook up.

What about direct wireless links to satellites?

In any case that is not going to happen in the U.S. anytime soon. There are too many laws in place to permit a flagrant takeover of the internet. Nothing short of a declaration of war by Congress will bring it about.

ruveyn

ruveyn

So, the plan is to hold hands and think happy thoughts,
and trust that our benevolent rulers will keep our best interests at heart.
It's not like they've ever failed us in the past.

Ok. I'll just go back to sleep now.

Actually not. The largest criminal organization in the United States is the Government of the United States. Fortunately the Law still has some clout. For how long, I do not know. Obama is the first president to rule entirely by decree. I suspect he will not be the last.

ruveyn

Go back to sleep, ruveyn. You must be very tired to let all those wild mental animals loose.

What law? They trashed that years ago.
What president? We haven't had one of those since Bush declaired
himself emperor, back around 2003. No, wait a minute, he wasn't
even elected. We haven't had a president since Clinton.

Sweet dreams.

Didn't we kill this thread in another forum a while back? Went past 6 pages, if'n I remember correctly.

If they cut off 'private' access to the Internet, they'll torpedo the business model of all those 'private' donations from corporations that use the Internet...talk about a 'third rail'...

It may eventually be regulated, but I doubt they'll ever actually cut it off...

No, Tahitiii, I wasnt kidding. If the conspiracy theorists were right, the intertoobs are the sedative of the masses. Why would the powers that be cut them off? The fact that you worry about losing them proves its a carrot that shouldnt be tossed out.

But anyway. LAN extenders and broadcasters are readily available, as is the ability to have home based servers. An adhoc internet would pop up if the ISPs were taken down. But that is not going to happen, because the ISPs are mostly the big phone companies.

I'm not too familiar with this bill, but from what I've heard, it's probably not going to make its way out of committee, and it was intended to keep critical infrastructure (e.g., nuclear power plants and hospitals) off the public Internet if some kind of "cyber-attack" were taking place so that they would not be open to attack. Again, I have not read the bill, so I can't say whether it could be interpreted to apply to commerce and industry in general or private individuals, and I don't know if this law would be redundant, but if the gist is that Barack Obama has a nefarious intention to disconnect dissidents from the Internet, let's not get paranoid.

You got the wrong Evil Emperor. It is Dick Cheney. Dubya was only Dumb Vader.

ruveyn