Dave Farber
2018-10-18 22:04:05 UTC
Date: October 19, 2018 at 12:25:41 AM GMT+9
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] There May Soon Be Three Internets. America's Won't Necessarily Be the Best.
There May Soon Be Three Internets. Americaâs Wonât Necessarily Be the Best.
A breakup of the web grants privacy, security and freedom to some, and not so much to others.
By The Editorial Board
Oct 15 2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/internet-google-china-balkanization.html>
In September, Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and Alphabet chairman, said that in the next 10 to 15 years, the internet would most likely be split in two â one internet led by China and one internet led by the United States.
Mr. Schmidt, speaking at a private event hosted by a venture capital firm, did not seem to seriously entertain the possibility that the internet would remain global. Heâs correct to rule out that possibility â if anything, the flaw in Mr. Schmidtâs thinking is that he too quickly dismisses the European internet that is coalescing around the European Unionâs ever-heightening regulation of technology platforms. All signs point to a future with three internets.
The received wisdom was once that a unified, unbounded web promoted democracy through the free flow of information. Things donât seem quite so simple anymore. Chinaâs tight control of the internet within its borders continues to tamp down talk of democracy, and an increasingly sophisticated system of digital surveillance plays a major role in human rights abuses, such as the persecution of the Uighurs. Weâve also seen the dark side to connecting people to one another â as illustrated by how misinformation on social media played a significant role in the violence in Myanmar.
Thereâs a world of difference between the European Unionâs General Data Protection Regulation, known commonly as G.D.P.R., and Chinaâs technologically enforced censorship regime, often dubbed âthe Great Firewall.â But all three spheres â Europe, America and China â are generating sets of rules, regulations and norms that are beginning to rub up against one another. Whatâs more, the actual physical location of data has increasingly become separated by region, with data confined to data centers inside the borders of countries with data localization laws.
The information superhighway cracks apart more easily when so much of it depends on privately owned infrastructure. An error at Amazon Web Services created losses of service across the web in 2017; a storm disrupting a data center in Northern Virginia created similar failures in 2012. These were unintentional blackouts; the corporate custodians of the internet have it within their power to do far more. Of course, nobody wants to turn off the internet completely â that wouldnât make anyone money. But when a single company with huge market share chooses to comply with a law â or more worryingly, a mere suggestion from the authorities â a large chunk of the internet ends up falling in line.
The power of a handful of platforms and services combined with the dismal state of international cooperation across the world pushes us closer and closer to a splintered internet. Meanwhile, American companies that once implicitly pushed democratic values abroad are more reticent to take a stand.
In 2010, Google shut down its operations in China after it was revealed that the Chinese government had been hacking the Gmail accounts of dissidents and surveilling them through the search engine. âAt some point you have to stand back and challenge this and say, this goes beyond the line of what weâre comfortable with, and adopt that for moral reasons,â said Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, in an interview with Der Spiegel at the time.
But eight years later, Google is working on a search engine for China known as Dragonfly. Its launch will be conditional on the approval of Chinese officials and will therefore comply with stringent censorship requirements. An internal memo written by one of the engineers on the project described surveillance capabilities built into the engine â namely by requiring users to log in and then tracking their browsing histories. This data will be accessible by an unnamed Chinese partner, presumably the government.
Google says all features are speculative and no decision has been made on whether to launch Dragonfly, but a leaked transcript of a meeting inside Google later acquired by The Intercept, a news site, contradicts that line. In the transcript, Googleâs head of search, Ben Gomes, is quoted as saying that it hoped to launch within six to nine months, although the unstable American-China relationship makes it difficult to predict when or even whether the Chinese government will give the go-ahead. âThere is a huge binary difference between being launched and not launched,â said Mr. Gomes. âAnd so we want to be careful that we donât miss that window if it ever comes.â
Internet censorship and surveillance were once hallmarks of oppressive governments â with Egypt, Iran and China being prime examples. Itâs since become clear that secretive digital surveillance isnât just the domain of anti-democratic forces. The Snowden revelations in 2013 knocked the United States off its high horse, and may have pushed the technology industry into an increasingly agnostic outlook on human rights. Its relationship with the government isnât improving, either, when the industry is being hammered by the Trump administrationâs continuing trade wars. (This month, Vice President Mike Pence condemned Dragonfly as part of a longer, confrontational speech accusing China of âeconomic aggression.â)
[snip]
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-------------------------------------------Subject: [Dewayne-Net] There May Soon Be Three Internets. America's Won't Necessarily Be the Best.
There May Soon Be Three Internets. Americaâs Wonât Necessarily Be the Best.
A breakup of the web grants privacy, security and freedom to some, and not so much to others.
By The Editorial Board
Oct 15 2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/internet-google-china-balkanization.html>
In September, Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive and Alphabet chairman, said that in the next 10 to 15 years, the internet would most likely be split in two â one internet led by China and one internet led by the United States.
Mr. Schmidt, speaking at a private event hosted by a venture capital firm, did not seem to seriously entertain the possibility that the internet would remain global. Heâs correct to rule out that possibility â if anything, the flaw in Mr. Schmidtâs thinking is that he too quickly dismisses the European internet that is coalescing around the European Unionâs ever-heightening regulation of technology platforms. All signs point to a future with three internets.
The received wisdom was once that a unified, unbounded web promoted democracy through the free flow of information. Things donât seem quite so simple anymore. Chinaâs tight control of the internet within its borders continues to tamp down talk of democracy, and an increasingly sophisticated system of digital surveillance plays a major role in human rights abuses, such as the persecution of the Uighurs. Weâve also seen the dark side to connecting people to one another â as illustrated by how misinformation on social media played a significant role in the violence in Myanmar.
Thereâs a world of difference between the European Unionâs General Data Protection Regulation, known commonly as G.D.P.R., and Chinaâs technologically enforced censorship regime, often dubbed âthe Great Firewall.â But all three spheres â Europe, America and China â are generating sets of rules, regulations and norms that are beginning to rub up against one another. Whatâs more, the actual physical location of data has increasingly become separated by region, with data confined to data centers inside the borders of countries with data localization laws.
The information superhighway cracks apart more easily when so much of it depends on privately owned infrastructure. An error at Amazon Web Services created losses of service across the web in 2017; a storm disrupting a data center in Northern Virginia created similar failures in 2012. These were unintentional blackouts; the corporate custodians of the internet have it within their power to do far more. Of course, nobody wants to turn off the internet completely â that wouldnât make anyone money. But when a single company with huge market share chooses to comply with a law â or more worryingly, a mere suggestion from the authorities â a large chunk of the internet ends up falling in line.
The power of a handful of platforms and services combined with the dismal state of international cooperation across the world pushes us closer and closer to a splintered internet. Meanwhile, American companies that once implicitly pushed democratic values abroad are more reticent to take a stand.
In 2010, Google shut down its operations in China after it was revealed that the Chinese government had been hacking the Gmail accounts of dissidents and surveilling them through the search engine. âAt some point you have to stand back and challenge this and say, this goes beyond the line of what weâre comfortable with, and adopt that for moral reasons,â said Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, in an interview with Der Spiegel at the time.
But eight years later, Google is working on a search engine for China known as Dragonfly. Its launch will be conditional on the approval of Chinese officials and will therefore comply with stringent censorship requirements. An internal memo written by one of the engineers on the project described surveillance capabilities built into the engine â namely by requiring users to log in and then tracking their browsing histories. This data will be accessible by an unnamed Chinese partner, presumably the government.
Google says all features are speculative and no decision has been made on whether to launch Dragonfly, but a leaked transcript of a meeting inside Google later acquired by The Intercept, a news site, contradicts that line. In the transcript, Googleâs head of search, Ben Gomes, is quoted as saying that it hoped to launch within six to nine months, although the unstable American-China relationship makes it difficult to predict when or even whether the Chinese government will give the go-ahead. âThere is a huge binary difference between being launched and not launched,â said Mr. Gomes. âAnd so we want to be careful that we donât miss that window if it ever comes.â
Internet censorship and surveillance were once hallmarks of oppressive governments â with Egypt, Iran and China being prime examples. Itâs since become clear that secretive digital surveillance isnât just the domain of anti-democratic forces. The Snowden revelations in 2013 knocked the United States off its high horse, and may have pushed the technology industry into an increasingly agnostic outlook on human rights. Its relationship with the government isnât improving, either, when the industry is being hammered by the Trump administrationâs continuing trade wars. (This month, Vice President Mike Pence condemned Dragonfly as part of a longer, confrontational speech accusing China of âeconomic aggression.â)
[snip]
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