Internet Being Slaughtered in Back Room

[Mark]

The Internet is Being Slaughtered in the Back Room

- the police state’s granular Internet tap -

by Paul Rosenberg
(abridged and copy edited)

A group called the Secure Inter-Domain Routing Working Group is working on a technology called Secure Border Gateway Protocol, or BGPSEC.

BGP (without the SEC) is how autonomous networks tell each other which IP addresses are available behind them, and it is necessary for the Internet to work. No BGP would mean no Internet. Routing information exchanged over BGP is currently not verifiable. That can be a problem, especially because of a spying scheme called hijacking. The fix for this involves the verification of unique resources (like IP addresses). BGPSEC is one possible solution, among several.

Under BGPSEC (and using a protocol called Resource Public Key Infrastructure or RPKI) a permanent hierarchy is created: rigid, centralized and mandatory. It is a solution to highjacking, at the cost of complete dominance.

Another solution would be to give out resources without hierarchy, like Bitcoin does for currency, but the people pushing BGPSEC ignore all such possibilities.

While BGPSEC guarantees that no one can hijack the top layers of its hierarchy, it allows its top layers to hijack anyone, at any time. In other words, it centralizes absolute power – precisely what the Internet once freed us from.

The group that will distribute resources (such as IP addresses) is called IANA, and it is more or less controlled by the State Department of the U.S. government.

Worse, RPKI can use another protocol (called Neighborhood Discovery) to take over any IP address they want – even a single IP address.

So, the people at the top of the BGPSEC pyramid will be able to shut down a whole country or a single troublemaker. They will also be able to spy on anyone they wish to, while preventing anyone from spying on them.

There are technical difficulties with BGPSEC. The required cryptography, for example, is complicated and it may slow down route changes. But another core protocol called DNSSEC had similar issues, and it became a standard anyway. People threw resources at the problem and got used to it. The average user never knew.

The same thing will happen with BGPSEC. The bosses will compromise at some level, slide it into the arena, and before many years it will become mandatory. There will be fewer highjacking attacks, but the Internet will be fully enslaved and the U.S. will be a super-empowered spymaster.

The technical discussions for this are going on right now, and the free Internet is being destroyed as we speak.

The military-industrial-intel-control-fetish complex wants this. US government-funded contractors and US government agencies (like the National Institute of Standards & Technology) are the big pushers. The process works, more or less, like this:

• A real routing problem is identified by researchers.
• A clever contractor proposes a control-friendly solution.
• An agency hires them. The funding cycle ends.
• The contractor writes an even more appealing proposal.
• The agency continues funding.
• Continue.

Many people who actually run things are complaining about BGPSEC. These complaints will either be ignored, or will be used to write still more proposals, with more contractors being hired to address the problems.

At the base of it all, however, are engineers – smart guys – who are willing to do whatever they are asked, so long as they get a paycheck. They are forging electronic chains for humanity, and passing it all off as "a harmless piece of software," or, "a systems design."

More at The State Versus the Internet.

[Selene]

Mark:

Thanks for starting this thread.

With the advanced data mining that is occurring with "tracking" school children and the immense centralization of data through the Affordabl Care Act we are right on the edge of complete censorship of thought and action.

A...

[jts]

More at The State Versus the Internet.

Holy conspiracy theory! -- Robin

[Mark]

Administrator:

Please remove and ban "jts" from this thread.