Who Would Want to Take Down the Internet?

Thought this a good read, and an interesting viewpoint : https://blog.whitehatsec.com/who-would-want-to-take-down-the-internet/

 

IMO, this is the more likely scenario, one I believe is more likely than most people expect. By doing so, they could prevent most of the citizens from seeing any dissenting news or video and blame the "opposition" for the disruption. I completely expect to see this in the form of government plus big money vs the rest of the people in the not too distant future.

 

Thank God its the Government rather than Al Qaeeda or Iran or maybe those poor Palestinians. Really sick of proganda pieces.

 

No matter which government or group does it, it still deprives people of access to uncensored news and information. Yes, there is a lot of propaganda and nonsense on the net. The same can be said of the news on TV. In some places, such shutdowns are already happening. Many governments can shut down the internet on a national level. Some can disable it globally. Nothing good could come from it on any level.

 

Streaming media has become the largest throughput component globally, and its share is growing. Basically, the Internet is displacing TV and movie rental (as well as mail, newspapers, magazines, books, etc). Governments couldn't shut down access entirely. That would be too disruptive. But they do censor. So the people need their own Internet(s), hidden in streaming media. Vinge totally got it right. Get to work!

 

I agree with the author of the article at the end of the day it will be governments who shut down the internet, either as a weapon, or to shut out dissent. However I do not believe you will see the internet shut down in western societies. Governments and citizens alike of western culture are becoming more and more technologically connected. Governments rely on it just as much as their citizens and also use it for military, and surveillance. It would only take minutes to locate and track down a highly valued target in the U.S (citizen or otherwise) due to all the technological connectivity.

I feel citizens in the middle east or other smaller counties will feel the pain of having their networks shutdown as we see with Egypt, China, and Iran. Countries in the west will focus more along the lines of censorship and increasing cyber laws to punish for a lot of petty nuances we take for granted online today.

I can see more tech savvy people using eepsites while the rest get dictated what they can and cant view via search engines and government filtered DNS lists.

 

Great article. Not only is the government one of the few that want to take down their Internet, but also one of the few that can. The Internet as a whole though, probably can't be completely taken down even by the UN.