FBI seeks rerouting of certain traffic

[Anthony J. Gabrielson]

Eric Raymond came to speak at NU the other day.  He gave his freedom
speach, which has changed greatly since 9/11.  He said so him self many
times.  One of the points he maid, that I had put together my self, is
that the US has not had any casulities on its on soil due to a war in over
100 years.  Intrestingly enough it was the war of 1812.  

This is interesting as there is no one alive that can remeber the war  of
1812.  Politicians and agencies have no idea how to react to what has
happend - where should they go from here? 

Heres my tid bit.  I have met several politicians in my short life.  I
wouldn't say alot but a few.  I have not met a politician I could ever
truly respect.  They all seem to be out for themselves, and only
that.  I'm sure there are a few good politicians, but all and all they
don't seem to want to take the time to be at least partially informed on
the matters they vote upon.  I think thats where we come in.  We as a
community of geeks tend to be rather reclusive, we stay to ourselves.  I
could be mistaken but if you like at university setting you will never
mistake a business major and comp major.  Its a fairly distinct
setting.  So its not all the politicians fault.  Who does the politician
have to bring s/he up to speed on matters of this nature.  Has any
politician heard of Alan Cox, or how he will not give out security
breaches to US citizens as it could violate the law.  Have they ever heard
of Theo de Raalt.  Have they heard of Linux, or any of the BSD's.  I would
say probably not.  I think what could happen, if it happens is partially
our fault.  We bitch about these laws - I see it on the UNIXies news
sites.  How many of us have told our politicians how wrong they are at
this point.  I certainly have not, and I would venture out so far as to
say you probably haven't either.  I highly doubt they read the news sites
we keep our browsers on.  So we are all to blame for what could happen.

Sorry for the long rant, I don't even know if its true.  At my first
glance it seems to be true.

Thanks,
Anthony

On Thu, 22 Nov 2001, John Chambers wrote:

> ccb writes:
> | Cool!  Take down a couple of these "choke points" and you've nuked the
> | internet!
> 
> Yup. Maybe what we should be doing is teaching a history lesson.  Way
> back  when  the  US  Defense  Department's  ARPA  (Advanced  Research
> Projects Agency) started funding development of what we now call  the
> Internet,  one  of  the  oft-quoted requirements was that the network
> continue to function under battlefield conditions.  This  meant  that
> the  software  had  to  deal with multiply-connected machines (hosts,
> gateways, routers, whatever), and if a path failed, the routing would
> automatically  switch to alternate paths.  The idea was that if there
> existed a path between two machines, the network would  automatically
> find the path and deliver messages.
> 
> We have had more and more violations of this.  The  commercial  world
> prefers  to avoid redundancy for cost reasons.  And programmers often
> ignore  the  multiply-connected  cases  because  it's  more  work  to
> program.   All  these  are  violations  of  the Internet's design and
> intended use.
> 
> The FBI's proposal is directly aimed at  weakening  the  Internet  by
> creating  critical  "choke"  points  that can be disabled by a single
> bomb (hardware or software). We should be making a big point of this,
> and demanding that the Internet's redundant, fail-safe design be kept
> despite the desires of organizations (commercial and  government)  to
> control the traffic.
> 
> Maybe a good analogy for those who don't  understand  packet  routing
> would  be  the  old comparison with highways.  We have a huge grid of
> streets that give you a lot of alternate paths.  Suppose that the FBI
> were to persuade the local highway departments to install barriers so
> that all traffic is routed through a  single  intersection,  so  that
> they  can  look  into  the  vehicles for criminal suspects.  So to go
> between any two points in the greater Boston area, all  drivers  must
> first drive to the Pike/I93 interchange, and then drive from there to
> their destinations.
> 
> This sort of explanation could get the idea across pretty fast.
> 
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