UN Agency Working On Tech Standards To Get Rid Of Anonymity
from the that-doesn't-seem-good dept
Declan McCullagh has a somewhat scary report about how the UN's International Telecommunication Union has been quietly working away on a proposal for new core internet technology that would allow a "traceback mechanism" to effectively get rid of anonymity, and allow those with access to identify who provided any particular piece of content. Not surprisingly, the proposal for such a technology was first suggested by a Chinese official, who has long tried to control the use of the internet in that country. The leaked documents related to this effort even indicate that one potential reason for such a mechanism would be to crack down on gov't opposition.It is true that not everyone agrees that anonymity is a good thing, but it's taking it to another level to try to block out the possibility of anonymity altogether. While some are trying to position this as way to track down "bad" players (such as those running DoS attacks), the problem is that the definition of who's "bad" may depend heavily on who's in control. Regardless of whether any such anti-anonymous technology gets very far, pursuing it is probably a wasted effort. Plenty of folks have already learned to spoof and hide themselves and pretend to be others. It wouldn't take long for the same thing to happen with any "traceback mechanism" as well. Also, as the article notes, the ITU has no power over the internet these days, but has been pushing to get more power, which is why it's worth following what they're discussing behind the scenes.
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Filed Under: anonymity, infrastructure, internet, itu, united nations
Companies: united nations
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Re:
Like it's a big deal to be "first." Moron
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Like every other enforcement scheme........
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Re: Like every other enforcement scheme........
When guns are outlawed, only rednecks will have guns.
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Re: Like every other enforcement scheme........
Just like Hemmingway and Dick Cheney.
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Eventuality
But it's not real anonymity - anything 99% of the population do, can be easily traced back. NO action you currently take on the internet is anonymous.
As the web advances and matures, anonymity diminishes. Every single person that does not employ encryption, should know and expect that every single action he takes on the web is recorded and can be traced back to them, even today.
Employing a standard it will not change much, and as the web matures we are to expect the option of anonymity to not be available to mainstream users at all. That's just life.
And to Haywood - it's an idiotic sticker.
"If killing is outlawed, only outlaws will kill" "If rape is outlawed, only outlaws will become rapists" , etc...
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Re: Eventuality
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Fifth !!!!1111one!!1
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Re: Eventuality
Total anonymity is easily accomplished by the masses with a Knoppix cd and a few open hotspots.
And, it's not an idiotic sticker; simplistic in statement, yes; idiotic, not quite so much. I'm just betting you don't have/like guns. If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.
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Re: Re: Eventuality
On a side note...
I come from a place where everyone knows how to use guns, grenades, grenade launchers and mortars. It's mandatory.
Me having or liking guns has nothing to do with the sticker's poor logic.
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Re: Re: Re: Eventuality
There is nothing wrong with that logic. Since the Brady bill mandatory waiting period, all that has happened is; now to buy a gun off the street it is an the hundreds of dollars, not the 10's. You still can buy all you want, no waiting period, you just have to pay more. If that isn't guns bing outlawed, yet outlaws having guns, what is?
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Re: Re: Eventuality
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Re: Eventuality
Idiotic? Poor logic?
What that pithy little statement says, if you care to read between the lines, is that passing a law to ban guns is just one more law to ignore for someone who is already demonstrably inclined to do so. The only people who will obey this law are the law-abiding citizens, who (as law abiders) are NOT THE PROBLEM.
Banning guns does NOT take them out of the hands of criminals. Look about the planet a bit and see for yourself.
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Damage
"The Internet treats censorship as damage, and re-routes around it".
Same would apply to a new subset of the Internet that rejected "anonymous" packets. Anyone is welcome to set such a thing up, but the rest of us will just ignore it.
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Big Brother
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Another idiot politician
IP V6 has enough address space for everyone. But, there has a been a recent blather of folks insisting on NAT with V6 to make internal corporate systems "better protected" in their view, since they cannot be directly addressed from the public Internet.
You want to set other bits as a unique ID? Someone will build a proxy that modifies those bits. Mandate software? Good luck with open source, and those still running Windows 3.11 or OS/2.
Politicians can't engineer. So, let's try having engineers run the government for a while...
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This is the UN we are talking about.
Giving this little nugget of work to the UN is a guarantee of failure. The final report and that is what it will be is a report will emerge in 9 years with recommendation that will take 7 year to adopt and another 5 years to start enforcement. It will be like trying to manage dial-up internet access today.
We are safe.
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Re: This is the UN we are talking about.
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Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
Seems a little ridiculous to ban something because someone could misuse it.
Let's expand it even further - some Muslims have committed terrorist acts, so let's outlaw Islam.
Get the point?
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Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
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Re: Re: Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
Want to ban guns because of accidental gun deaths != want to ban everything that can accidentally kill someone. Try again, this time addressing the actual argument if you please.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
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Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
The usual next step in this argument is "utility". It goes something like this - "Yes, a car can cause accidental deaths, but it has a useful, beneficial purpose. A gun has no such useful purpose, it's only purpose is killing things."
I'm not even going to broach whether "killing things" is "useful" or any other direct rebuttals of this argument. The whole argument is a red herring, meant to distract from the actual argument at hand.
The actual argument is this - Person A wants to participate in $activity$. Person B does not. If Person A and Person B decide for themselves and go about their merry way, that is the defining characteristic of a free society and horray, so much the better.
Problems arise when Person A and Person B start trying to decide for each other. That is called "errosion of liberty" no matter which direction the water runs.
So I want to bear arms. You do not. I am not trying to force you to own a gun. You ought not be trying to take mine away from me.
You are Pro-Life. I am Pro-Choice. I personally don't think abortion is desirable most of the time, but that is my choice, and I ought not be making it for other people. Neither should you. I have to say, I've never noticed the pro-choice side of the debate attempting to force people into having abortions.
On the whole, most of the time, on most issues, the rule "Live and Let Live" seems to be the fairest application of the principles of a free society.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
See above about utility. The argument is not that guns cause accidental deaths. The argument is that the accidental deaths caused by guns (and I think specifically handguns were mentioned) may outweigh their beneficial use. It is certainly fallacious to equate this to claiming that the accidental deaths caused by cars outweighs their usefulness, and there is no need to demonstrate anything about cars or any other topic in order to make this particular argument about guns.
Personally it looks to me like in any neighborhood where I would want to live, having a gun in the house would make the house less safe, not more. So I will choose not to have a gun in my house. Extending that to the claim that the government should prevent anyone from having a gun, or even any particular kind of gun, is problematic at best.
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Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
No, see the paragraph right under that where I call the utility argument irrelevant BS. The argument to be made is how those against gun ownership should be allowed to make a decision on behalf of 99.some% of personal firearms owners who never have an incident - accidental, criminal, or defensive.
Nearly all guns in the US have had a perfectly harmless existence. And if it's not causing ME any problems, it surely isn't causing YOU any problems, so I invite you to kindly step off.
Thanky!
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Re: Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
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Re: Re: Potential Misuse != Reason to outlaw
This is in response to Other Ben's comments. Before stating facts, please do some research. At the least, don't just make them up.
You state that kids get hold of guns and accidentally shoot someone "all the time". Wrong, it very rarely happens.
You state that that the chances of a regular gun owner stopping a crime with lethal force are slim to none. Wrong, it happens very frequently. But you're right, lethal force isn't used much in that case, just the *threat* of lethal force is enough. And it happens far more often than accidental shootings occur.
You state that concealed handguns cause way more harm than they prevent. If by "harm", you count scaring people that are already scared of weapons, then maybe. But you know that one is false is well.
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down with traceback
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Second - even if they succeed, remember one thing about the internet and computers... Its all just software. At the end of the day, each and every program is nothing more than text that tells a computer to do something. So as long as that remains true, there will always be someone who can write some other text to tell the computer to disregard the old text and do something different. No matter what these people come up with, someone will come up with a way to defeat it, get around it or use it to their advantage. It is like the whole software piracy thing. While I understand companies want to invest huge amounts of money to protect their software with DRM and keys and all kinds of crazy methods... It usually only takes a few days for someone to write a piece of code that totally destroys their protection. So will go this effort. They'll implement it and within days, someone will figure out how to beat it. Why worry.
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Internet Anonymity
It seems to me that "enhancing" the existing internet protocol and service suite in the manner being described will add a whole set of tools to the Hacker's toolbox.
Having said that, no you really don't have anonymity now. It is not that difficult to trace back an IP address, and it is done constantly for commercial purposes. Has anyone here ever been to a website that suddenly popped up with listings for beautiful women that apparently live right down the street in , USA?
NAT and PAT provide some protection at the perimeter by hiding the originating address which is generally a non-routable private address anyway, hopefully assigned randomly by DHCP servers. This same socket model can also be exploited to find port vulnerabilities for network access. If the UN has difficulty finding the identity of Internet Patrons, I suggest they hire better IT staff.
I am not entirely certain where/how they would implement this anyway. They don't control the IP protocol suite, InterNIC or anything else that should give them this sort of global influence. The biggest disincentive to identity tracking on the internet is the sheer volume of traffic, so even if they could track this someone would have to analyze and reveiw the traffic, and I don't see the UN having the resources to do this.
I am not sure why it is relevant to this thread, but I would also comment that I grew up with guns, absolutly love them, but can not think of a single reason I need to carry a concealed weapon. Gun Control does not necessarily mean taking everyone's guns, just regulating how they are bought, sold and to a lesser degree used. I am actually all for that, and until someone can show me a society that has high gun related deaths, where the civilian population does not have relatively easy access to guns I will remain that way.
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Did you ever notice
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Not surprised
China lacks many types of freedom of speech or expression, and known for human-rights violations. This is a China problem, not a world problem.
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Tor anyone?
There's always Tor.
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Anonymity is not really such a good thing...
The problem here, is that this is a tool held by the few to spy on the many. So if my ex works for the state department, and stalks me online, she can ruin my life by gathering my personal info and using it against me.
What would be much better, is a tool held by everybody to spy on everybody. So if my ex works for the state department and wants to stalk me online, that's ok because I can prove what she's doing because she isn't anymore anonymous than I am. And I won't falsely believe that my online actions are anonymous, so I'll be more careful to control my personal info in the first place.
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Re: Anonymity is not really such a good thing...
Anonymity protects the voice of dissent when those on the receiving end might otherwise respond ... unkindly.
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Re: Re: Anonymity is not really such a good thing...
You make a good point. There always need to be provisions that EFFECTIVELY protect political speech, artistic speech, etc. Anonymity does that...when it can be maintained. So the question is, can you (as things stand) maintain anonymity online against the government, or others who might respond unkindly?
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who needs it?
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And so who claimed that accidental deaths caused by cars outweigh their usefulness (other than your strawman, that is)?
You wish. When someone starts claiming that things should be banned because they might/maybe/could accidentally cause harm then there are a whole lot of other things that the argument could also apply to. Things that might not fit the original political agenda. Or even worse, might expose it.
It might be nice to only have to go places where you want to (or only be around people you want to), but a lot of people aren't so lucky.
OK. Same here.
Well, at least we agree on that.
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