Bitcoin Forum

So what do you all think of this little tidbit?

"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must disclose its plans for a so-called Internet 'kill switch,' a federal court ruled on Tuesday. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the agency's arguments that its protocols surrounding an Internet kill switch were exempt from public disclosure and ordered the agency to release the records in 30 days. However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling."

No one's killing the internet man. We always have rock solid Russian servers if US ever misbehaves.

Mesh Networks.

This really does worry me. First I think we should all try to understand "the internet", then we can use our minds to solve the issue.

As far as I know American military created the internet,
so they already have all kinds of kill and spy switches.
This is just an attempt to legalize it.

We'll still have TOR, we'll still have Bitcoin, we'll still have eachother.
That kill switch is really only a decentralize-everything-switch.

No you won't, not over the internet you won't, and no it isn't.

The internet is made up of lots of wires. The way to get access to it is organised. YOu can't use it without an ISP company. ISP compnay get their operating licence from the government. They get access to the network from the government. The main trunk of wires that carry the big bandwidth are leased out to maintenance companies by the government.

So, basically, via several layers of stratification, the government owns the wires that make up the internet we all use.

Let's make our own internet. All we need is a bunch of wires.

Of course, plus if the internet dies, you still have your bitcoins. Connecting to the internet will not be easy but it won't be impossible either.

If you're an early adopter you can just move to another country and finance your move with Bitcoins.



If someone tried to kill the internet there would be a revolution in the US. Everyone would be pissed.

well the problem is that if the internet went down, the price for BTC would completely crash as fewer people would believe in it or have access to it.

have you watched Terminator 3? Skynet spread over the internet, infecting millions of computer... Neah "killing" the internet isn't that EZ, at least i hope so.

That's kind of scary, knowing they could just shut it all off at a moments notice. I doubt they ever would except in an extreme situation because without the internet the whole country would basically freeze.

Internet is rather fragile if Tier 1 operators would start messing with it.

There is rather large amount of hand craft on the deeper levels... Just stop handful of entities from routing traffic and you can kill the internet... Or at least make it unbearably slow...

"Too big to fail"

^^^  I'm of the same opinion.  The internet will tried to be tamed like bitcoin but it is just not going to happen.

You can do severe damage to internet in right places with right resources.

Just mess up with routing and dns servers...

First one can stop large amount of inter network traffic and later one the regular use of internet.

It can stand a nuclear war, but only if there is someone keeping it running...

The internet cannot be stopped any more.

Its already been tamed just that we are still  unaware of it.

I remember the days before the internet became more widespread, and at the time when the internet or dot com boom happened,

I was wondering how it could be, that they could unleash this internet thing, without many controls as it seems they had done.


So, perhaps they did have some controls? An internet kill switch?


Sure, I think it may be possible. Planned early on, with the help from all the big tech companies in the US,

in affiliation with the US Government or FBI or CIA ?

Sure, maybe they have that.

I think its possible.

If the internet went down, the price of BTC would be the least of your worries.

yes. this would be dramatically for the economy of the world. but its not possible to kill the complete internet, but you can cut of single countries.

Exactly, inside the individual countries it would work, but between there can be major issues. On other hand also inside countries depending the infrastructure, destruction of single or a few points can have major impact.

I'm starting to believe that Internet even working is a small miracle itself... I think it's the most complex thing humans have build...

Not really, if you are heavily invested in bitcoin it would a primary concern.
The world got by before the Internet, bitcoin didn't.

It doesn't quite work that way.  Assume that at some moment in the next year, a major country goes off the Internet.  Hackers and other individuals seeing market opportunities, immediately COMPENSATE.  The result is massive numbers of interconnected mesh networks, including long haul connections of sorts we may not be able to conceive of today.

If the result is lower long haul bandwidth, then one of the compensatory mechanisms is quicker loading web pages. 

Action .....  reaction

Let them hit the kill switch.

The world of 2013 does not get by without the internet.

Does bitcoin actually require the Internet and if so, for what?

Message protocals are not internet protocals.  I think....

Well, you can always use this:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149)
 :D

No. You could jurry rig it to work over any medium that allows you to transfer data.

Still, it wouldn't be too good... The issue is that it needs to stay in sync, and you can redo transactions in different forks if there is no doublespends, but it get's rather messy if those forks are really long...

Yeah.

Let's think unused capacity on Sirius radio.  There are ways the blockchain could easily be kept up.

It doesn't need THE INTERNET.

the blockchain is confirmed through the internet. it's the ledger that says "so and so address (which means wallet) has this amount of BTC." without the internet, BTC would be worth nothing.

I think we are saying the same thing two different ways, but there are implications.

Here's where I'm coming from.  Usenet, and FTP, as well as MIRC, are separate protocals from Http.  Email is a different protocol, too.

When I think of Internet, it is http and https.  These protocols may be useful, but are clearly not required to maintain the blockchain or verify it.

But perhaps when they use a phrase like "Internet Kill Switch" it means shutting all this stuff down.

In my understanding, it's not about the Internet. It's about shutting down mobile networks in times of "National Emergencies".
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/15/5107676/court-orders-homeland-security-to-release-kill-switch-protocol (http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/15/5107676/court-orders-homeland-security-to-release-kill-switch-protocol)
In other words CALM DOWN IT'S NOT ABOUT THE INTERNET

For me Internet is TCP/IP, with dash of UDP and handfull of others... Okay it's a real mess when you get in too deep. Just look at the wikipedia...

There is two alternatives for "Internet Kill Switch", one is the DNS-system and the other one is lot of inter network connections...
First case isn't impossible to handle, second one is rather deadly.