On 2/3/2011 7:43 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
An armed FBI special agent shows up at your facility and tells your ranking manager to "shut down the Internet".
Let's look at this from a different perspective. What level of impairment would the feds face if they ordered wide spread net shut downs. Do the feds have a big enough network of their own, that they can continue to operate without the commercial nets being up? I mean they would need to declare martial law and coordinate enforcement activities. Can they do this all via satellite networks? Also what's to stop the operations staff from saying "no way jose" and walking out? Ok. Let's say they aren't dependent on the net being up. What would the scenario look like? Presumably this would be at a major IX, colo etc? Like say One Wilshire or something? They would show up with several agents, and probably some tech folks. One presumes they would have an injunction or some other legal authority to order you to terminate connectivity. This would have to be spelled out to the letter (terminate all IX traffic, drop all external sessions, take down core routers etc).
What do you do when you get home to put it back on the air
Put what back on the air? Regional connectivity to let people coordinate a revolution? (I'm dead serious by the way. If things have gotten to the point where the feds are shutting down the net, it's time to follow our founding code: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it Depending on the geography, one could establish some long distance links via 802.11/3.65ghz. Hopefully that gear is already on stand by.
-- let's say email as a base service, since it is -- do you have the gear laying around, and how long would it take?
Well I'm a huge data ownership guy and have been preaching to folks the importance of self hosting. Lots of details are on my wiki at http://wiki.knownelement.com/index.php/Data_Ownership So yes, I have the gear in service already doing my hosting. I also run a small neighborhood WISP. I only offer net access via that WISP, but it would be trivial to stand up a neighborhood xmpp/irc/mail/www server in that VLAN. Maybe I should do that now. Get people using it before hand, so it's what they naturally turn to in time of distress/disaster. Hmmm....
Do you have out-of-band communications (let's say phone numbers) for enough remote contacts?
How much phone service would still work, if the feds hit all the major IX points and terminate connectivity? I seem to recall much discussion about the all IP back bone of the various large carriers (Qwest/ATT). I guess calls in the same CO and maybe between regional CO's might work. Think of this from a disaster preparedness perspective (ie a major earthquake or terrorist attack significantly damages One Wilshire and/or various IXes in the bay area). AT&T has a very large CO right next to One Wilshire, with something like 1.5 million lines terminated in the building. It wouldn't take that much work for the FBI to shut those places down if they felt a significant need to. Interesting thought exercise. Let's keep the conversation going guys/gals!