When was the first time you got online? For me I think, 1994-1995-ish. And it was a surreal place largely because the Internet was and still is a lawless anarchistic Wild West. Nazi types set up their Geocities websites because hate speech laws were not enforced. Restrictions on pornography in certain countries were overriden by looking at it from abroad. Age verification, a fairly important rule, was overridden so much that lately many porn sites don’t even care anymore and now minors can access it. Hoax websites scammed people out of money. Socially inept nerds became millionaires. Filesharing and piracy. Uncontrolled free speech and under pseudonyms, so you are not only allowed to wear a smear campaign against a political big dog but even they don’t know who you are. It was the Wild West where Anything Goes.
I and many “old-timers” got attached this anarchy online because freedom. It is at some level romantic in the Samizdata / Doctorow sense and of course in many things even useful.
But look, can we realistically happen it will always stay an uncontrolled Wild West or sooner or later the Real Powers in the Real World will bend the Internet to their world? I think they will. We will probably lose this marvelous, crazy, anarchistic freedom. But we will probably also overcome these problems as well, as in the longer run it will be corporate controlled, almost like a somewhat more interactive TV. For a lot of people, the Internet basically became Facebook. Much of what they are interested in is controlled by one corporation. And Facebook AFAIK is trying to become more media like.
I don’t think we will lose the anarchistic freedom; it’s too powerful. The internet has toppled enemy regimes; to shut down the anarchy would be to lose an incredibly potent weapon. Given that it’s a weapon that can be used without significant diplomatic issue, I’d guess the internet is a more powerful weapon than nuclear bombs at this point, and anybody who actually takes significant steps to shutting down that anarchy is at least to some extent disarming themselves. A foreign state can’t do much of anything when your citizens are fomenting revolt among their citizens. With anarchy, a state actor is indistinguishable from a citizen.
But a hacking attempt comes from China. Does anybody -not- think it was the Chinese government?
Me.
China is big. In particular it has lots of people. Lots and lots and lots. And then some. A bunch of them are hackers for the same reason there are many hackers in Russia and Eastern Europe, for example. Some work for the government. Not all do.
In EE it tends to be connected with a certain… not openly rebellious but still anti-authoritarian attitude set, of gaming the system, getting away with bending or breaking the rules and going in the window when the door is closed. This is very similar to the Latin American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeitinho and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malandragem although I don’t know of a specific name. I don’t know if there is anything similar in China. They look like a very disciplined type of culture… Also this thing should deserve an English name now. Perhaps System D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_D
But if they truly shut the anarchy down—prevented VPN and proxy connections to external anarchy—would that still hold?
No, not really, because you can’t “truly shut the anarchy down”.
Consider, say, the night streets of New York City. Is there anarchy there? Certainly not. And yet there is some level of crime, you can buy drugs, you can get mugged, etc. If you get shot in the Bronx, it doesn’t mean that a government agent shot you (though sometimes that is so).
“Shutting down the anarchy” means getting it down to meatspace level.
Meatspace analogies don’t apply to bitspace. Autonomous government agents are expensive in meatspace, but have only a marginal cost in bitspace if you prohibit secure-against-government-search communications, which is easy to do once you’ve committed to creating said autonomous agents to identify anybody attempting to engage in them.
if you prohibit secure-against-government-search communications
That’s a very big IF and I’m fairly optimistic that the cryptography genie will be hard to stuff back into his bottle.
Even if you try to enforce plaintext-only communications (which by itself leads to a host of issues), I can stuff a wide communication channel into the lower bits of cat videos (and such) after which we are off to the arms races and your “marginal cost of governement agents” becomes not so marginal after all.
In any case, if we get to THAT totalitarian society, we’ll have bigger things to worry about than the freedoms of the internet.
You don’t need to catch every secure communication. Even a 1% identification rate is enough; less if you’re willing to toss in some traffic analysis into the mix. Your goal, after all, isn’t to prevent secure communication, or even to identify what’s inside it, it’s to identify the people doing it, because the secure communication itself, rather than the contents of the communication, are what you’ve banned.
But I don’t think anybody -wants- this level of control. The Internet is too powerful a weapon.
When was the first time you got online? For me I think, 1994-1995-ish. And it was a surreal place largely because the Internet was and still is a lawless anarchistic Wild West. Nazi types set up their Geocities websites because hate speech laws were not enforced. Restrictions on pornography in certain countries were overriden by looking at it from abroad. Age verification, a fairly important rule, was overridden so much that lately many porn sites don’t even care anymore and now minors can access it. Hoax websites scammed people out of money. Socially inept nerds became millionaires. Filesharing and piracy. Uncontrolled free speech and under pseudonyms, so you are not only allowed to wear a smear campaign against a political big dog but even they don’t know who you are. It was the Wild West where Anything Goes.
I and many “old-timers” got attached this anarchy online because freedom. It is at some level romantic in the Samizdata / Doctorow sense and of course in many things even useful.
But look, can we realistically happen it will always stay an uncontrolled Wild West or sooner or later the Real Powers in the Real World will bend the Internet to their world? I think they will. We will probably lose this marvelous, crazy, anarchistic freedom. But we will probably also overcome these problems as well, as in the longer run it will be corporate controlled, almost like a somewhat more interactive TV. For a lot of people, the Internet basically became Facebook. Much of what they are interested in is controlled by one corporation. And Facebook AFAIK is trying to become more media like.
I don’t think we will lose the anarchistic freedom; it’s too powerful. The internet has toppled enemy regimes; to shut down the anarchy would be to lose an incredibly potent weapon. Given that it’s a weapon that can be used without significant diplomatic issue, I’d guess the internet is a more powerful weapon than nuclear bombs at this point, and anybody who actually takes significant steps to shutting down that anarchy is at least to some extent disarming themselves. A foreign state can’t do much of anything when your citizens are fomenting revolt among their citizens. With anarchy, a state actor is indistinguishable from a citizen.
Looking at places like China, it doesn’t seem like they are disarming themselves.
They didn’t actually shut the anarchy down, they just made it mildly inconvenient.
But a hacking attempt comes from China. Does anybody -not- think it was the Chinese government?
Me.
China is big. In particular it has lots of people. Lots and lots and lots. And then some. A bunch of them are hackers for the same reason there are many hackers in Russia and Eastern Europe, for example. Some work for the government. Not all do.
In EE it tends to be connected with a certain… not openly rebellious but still anti-authoritarian attitude set, of gaming the system, getting away with bending or breaking the rules and going in the window when the door is closed. This is very similar to the Latin American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeitinho and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malandragem although I don’t know of a specific name. I don’t know if there is anything similar in China. They look like a very disciplined type of culture… Also this thing should deserve an English name now. Perhaps System D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_D
“by hook or crook”? “whatever it takes”?
True.
But if they truly shut the anarchy down—prevented VPN and proxy connections to external anarchy—would that still hold?
No, not really, because you can’t “truly shut the anarchy down”.
Consider, say, the night streets of New York City. Is there anarchy there? Certainly not. And yet there is some level of crime, you can buy drugs, you can get mugged, etc. If you get shot in the Bronx, it doesn’t mean that a government agent shot you (though sometimes that is so).
“Shutting down the anarchy” means getting it down to meatspace level.
Meatspace analogies don’t apply to bitspace. Autonomous government agents are expensive in meatspace, but have only a marginal cost in bitspace if you prohibit secure-against-government-search communications, which is easy to do once you’ve committed to creating said autonomous agents to identify anybody attempting to engage in them.
That’s a very big IF and I’m fairly optimistic that the cryptography genie will be hard to stuff back into his bottle.
Even if you try to enforce plaintext-only communications (which by itself leads to a host of issues), I can stuff a wide communication channel into the lower bits of cat videos (and such) after which we are off to the arms races and your “marginal cost of governement agents” becomes not so marginal after all.
In any case, if we get to THAT totalitarian society, we’ll have bigger things to worry about than the freedoms of the internet.
You don’t need to catch every secure communication. Even a 1% identification rate is enough; less if you’re willing to toss in some traffic analysis into the mix. Your goal, after all, isn’t to prevent secure communication, or even to identify what’s inside it, it’s to identify the people doing it, because the secure communication itself, rather than the contents of the communication, are what you’ve banned.
But I don’t think anybody -wants- this level of control. The Internet is too powerful a weapon.
That’s why people are busy constructing dark nets.