Weekend Gedankenexperiment - The Kill Switch

Sat Feb 5 02:25:27 UTC 2011

On Fri, Feb 04, 2011 at 02:27:32PM -0800, Matthew Petach said:
  >The Internet itself will continue to function, no matter what silliness the
  >US political system attempts to engage in; from the perspective of those
  >in the US, it may appear that "the Internet" is unable to survive such an
  >attack; but from the perspective of the rest of the world, it really will be
  >localized damage in the US, and not at all a case of the Internet being
  >shut down.

Hardly.

A lot of top level/very popular sites likely have no extra-US
redundancy.

However, shutting the internet down (you know, when they press the
magic button that makes my telebit trailblazer no longer able to do
UUCP) would instantly create a market for services more robust/localized/
culturally-customized than those that suddenly go missing on that day.
(wonder if anyone has contingency plans in the wings waiting for such
an event).

That's a pretty dumbass business decision, IMHO.

Will nevar evar happen. Political and economic suicide.

"internet presence vacuum" - there I coined it.

[ side question, how many of the root servers evaporate on that day? ]

[ additionally, when the usa is shutdown taking 80% of Canada with it,
  (truly, w'iz yr biyatches) do we declare a diplomatic emergency/act of war
   for american actions?  or do we just hang our heads in shame at our poor
   redundancy? ]

I suspect the 'internet kill switch' will be used in far more localized
situations, like containing single ISPs/cells/threat vectors, as required.
(Harkens back to GWB's rarely-mentioned theorizing end-run around Posse
Comitatus suggesting 'who else but the military to contain an epidemic
outbreak' without mention of threat authentication by independent civilian
bodies).

Popular uprising in city X tweeting out the new version of Rodney King? Good
night and good luck.

/kc
-- 
Ken Chase - ken at heavycomputing.ca skype:kenchase23 +1 416 897 6284 Toronto Canada
Heavy Computing - Clued bandwidth, colocation and managed linux VPS @151 Front St. W.