Google Knew! The Death of Internet 3.0, and Will AOL Rise From the Grave?

The Internet has been good to me this day.

I recently wrote a post on the (to me) unconvincing hero-splaining of the privacy commitments espoused by Google, Yahoo! Et al. in the wake of revelations of “MUSCULAR” NSA intrusions into their data backbones:

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the [notorious smiley face] drawing [showing the NSA’s penetration of the Google data backbone]. “I hope you publish this,” one of them said. 

Publish what?  Evidence that Google's security is cracked?  Or document Google's hyperbolic anger at NSA transgressions to reassure Google Cloud customers?

If you’re searching for privacy heroes, I think you’d better scratch Google off your list.  Per Gellman:

Last month, long before The Post approached Google to discuss the penetration of its cloud, vice president for security engineering Eric Grosse announced that the company is racing to encrypt the links between its data centers. “It’s an arms race,” he said then. “We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.”

Google knew, kids.  Get used to it.

Then the Guardian reported:

Yahoo, Microsoft and Google deny they co-operate voluntarily with the intelligence agencies, and say they hand over data only after being forced to do so when served with warrants. The NSA told the Guardian that the companies' co-operation was "legally compelled".

But this week the Washington Post reported that the NSA and its UK equivalent GCHQ has been secretly intercepting the main communication links carrying Google and Yahoo users' data around the world, and could collect information "at will" from among hundreds of millions of user accounts.

The NSA's ability to collect vast quantities of data from the fibre-optic cables relies on relationships with the companies, the document published on Friday shows.

The presentation, titled "Corporate Partner Access" was prepared by the agency's Special Source Operations division, which is responsible for running those programs. 

In an opening section that deals primarily with the telecom companies, the SSO baldly sets out its mission: "Leverage unique key corporate partnerships to gain access to high-capacity international fiber-optic cables, switches and/or routes throughout the world."

This piece hasn't received a lot of play.  Wonder why.  On the other hand, the Guardian treats us to a column from its digital beat guy, Dann Gillmour, with the title slug:

Google, Yahoo et al have the power (and money) to fight back against the NSA

The tech billionaires should create the anti-surveillance, pro-security equivalent of the National Rifle Association

In my humble opinion, asking Google, Yahoo! et al. to lobby on behalf of Internet privacy is like expecting the gun manufacturers who provide a lot of the NRA’s juice to endorse gun control.

A little perspective might be useful.

Back in the day (when Bill Clinton was president and the highest ambition of today’s high tech moguls was a prompt diaper change), the Internet was a text-based government utility enabling the efficient sharing of computer resources.  The killer app—basically a side-benefit of networking all those computers: e-mail.

Then came the Netscape browser, which enabled image-based services and freed millions of males from the inconvenience of masturbating to large blocks of letters and numbers or, alternatively, decoding pornography through an awkward off-line utility.  The dot com domain was busted wide open and allowed buyers and sellers of goods and services and disseminators and consumers of news and views to find each other in cyberspace.  Search engines were in their infancy and the hottest item was the “portal”, a single web address that aggregated and organized valuable content on behalf of the user.  There was advertising, but there were also subscription services.  Does anybody remember “push” publishing, where you bought a piece of software that delivered and updated proprietary content from newspapers like the New York Times to your desktop?  I do.  The killer app: AOL.

Internet 3.0 is driven by Google and its business model: give away a full suite of services (search engine, browser, e-mail, Youtube, voice), then slice and dice the data and sell the eyeballs.  That happens to be exactly the same thing the NSA does, the only difference being that the NSA delivers its product to security agencies, not corporations.   Not coincidentally, both Google and the NSA have an undisguised interest in “having it all”, “indexing” or “collecting” all the pages. This is the Internet that’s been terminally bollixed up by the NSA and the big IT companies in their efforts—which seem to have been joint efforts on some level—to break down resistance to their quest for data monopolies in the national security and private sectors.

By my reading, Internet 3.0 is extensively compromised, both by the anti-privacy mindset of its main champions, and their destructive ad hoc fiddling with the Internet’s privacy and security infrastructure.  The “open to everybody” architecture of the Internet that Google and the NSA have leveraged doesn’t look like an unalloyed advantage anymore and countries like Brazil and Germany are considering following the lead of authoritarian baddies like China and Russia and setting up national Internets.

At the same time, many original content providers such as newspapers are giving up on the “free stuff + eyeballs = advertising $” model and are retreating behind paywalls.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a trend.  If left unchecked, it might lead to (in the words of anxious IT entrepreneurs dreading the evaporation of cherished projections of burgeoning traffic and stock valuations) the “Balkanization” of the Internet…

…or, maybe Internet 4.0, a constellation of independent data leagues, each with their own hardware, software, protocols, and policies for interacting with outside services.  In other words, instead of accepting whatever communications network that the NSA and Google are willing to give us, users would choose a transparently designed and managed, accountable networking solution that offers the best combination of services and security.

Which, of course, is what the private sector used to do with stuff like “token passing networks” (remember that?) back in the day before Internet economies of scale swamped competing alternatives.

You could also call it “AOL on steroids”.  Hey, I’m sure I have one of those installation disks around here somewhere…

In the Valley of the Clueless

America’s Problematic Internet Strategy

I have an article up at Asia Times, US Internet Declaration Bugs China, about Secretary Clinton’s “freedom to connect” speech and its implications for China.

In this context, it is interesting to recall how middle class priorities can get repackaged as legal rights and essential human freedoms.

Back in 1996, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, AOL rolled out its $19.95 per month “all you can eat” dial-up service. It was quickly overwhelmed by users who dialed up and never hung up, tying up AOL’s modems and exposing other AOL customers to the dreaded busy signal for hours on end. For newbs out there, I feel compelled to point out that in 1996 there was no broadband; virtually all connectivity relied on copper phone lines, and connections were made at 56Kbaud by “modems”—analog chirp machine on the user's and AOL's end of the line.

America felt the agony of AOL’s 8 million subscribers (less than 4% of the population, skewed toward the better-off computer owners, for those keeping score), and lawsuits were filed in New York, Wisconsin, and other states, not only by customers but by state attorney generals, bringing the wrath down on AOL (then yclept “Always Off Line”; now “Arianna’s Overpriced Lemon”).

I wonder if state AGs were equally swift in filing lawsuits on behalf of poor neighborhoods that couldn’t get a patrol car on site an hour after a 911 call. For that matter, I wonder how quickly “freedom to connect” will translate into the provision of universal broadband to America’s poorest neighborhoods today.

Anyway, “freedom to connect” is now a universal right to be extended to Chinese citizens through the efforts of the United States.

Funding of Internet circumvention technology has turned into a political football. The Republicans apparently feel Psiphon and Tor (proxy networks that allow Chinese users to surf blocked sites and access forbidden keyword searches) are key to knocking down the evil empire(s), and they blame the State Department for excess timidity in funding and deploying the servers that enable them.

In this context, I was interested to learn that the U.S. Internet censorship circumvention portfolio is in the reliable hands of the spiritual sect i.e. religious cult Falun Gong, which received $1.5 million dollars from the State Department last year to fund its open Internet initiatives.

The Clinton speech actually had little to do with China or even Iran and a lot to do with US “freedom to connect” conundrum i.e. that it’s knocking down U.S. authoritarian allies instead of U.S. authoritarian enemies (Iran and China).

I draw on Evgeny Mozorov’s The Net Delusion to argue that the U.S. strategy is essentially flawed: it is too heavily skewed toward censorship circumvention and doesn’t pay enough attention to a major focus of authoritarian regimes in their sophisticated Internet strategies: using the Internet for surveillance, and flooding it with pro-government propaganda.

[I put a buy button for The Net Delusion at the end of the post.  The best deal is to load the free Kindle application onto your PC and buy the e-book for $9.99, instead of spending $18.45 and cluttering up your bookshelf with the hardcover of a book that, though excellent, is already teetering on the brink of events-driven obsolescence.]

Mozorov also argues that the Internet is perfectly equipped to implement a key authoritarian countermeasure—distraction through mass media.

He tells us that the seductive, corrosive effects of Western culture on the communist ethic (what Chinese communists call the West’s “sugar coated bullets”) may be overrated.

Mozorov cites the interesting case of East Germany. Under communism, most of the GDR was exposed to an incessant barrage of Dallas and Dynasty and other subversive US programming via West German TV. However, there was one part of East Germany, out by the Polish border, that was out of range of the broadcasts. It was mockingly called “Tal der Ahnunglosen”: the Valley of the Clueless.

Mozorov cites a study by two German academics that studied East German youth and concluded:

...those East German youth who could receive Western television were, overall, more satisfied and content with the regime; the ones who could not...-those in the Valley of the Clueless—were much more politicized, more critical of the regime, and, interestingly, more likely to apply for exit visas...Western television made life in the East more bearable...it was in the Valley of the Clueless that dissent began brewing; its residents were clearly more dissatisfied with life in the country than those who found a refuge in the exciting world of The Denver Clan [as Dynasty was known in Germany].

Apparently the Russian government has studied the lessons of East Germany and is big on supporting the rollout of Internet sites that offer largely apolitical entertainment for young people to keep their minds off Color Revolution-style hijinks.

The Kremlin’s youth wing is heavily involved in a well-financed media site russia.ru. According to Mozorov, it has some light political content, but its signature video offerings are gun/military/video game/movie/car guyfotainment and something called “The Tits Show” a.k.a. Сиськи Шоу.

Сиськи Шоу is an interesting window on that mysterious commodity, the Russian soul. It follows fitness-challenged host, Dennis Ch., on an alcohol-soaked stumble through Moscow’s skank-rich nightclubs in search of girls who will show him their Сиськи. It plays more like a Dostoevskian howl into the existential void of sweaty desperation, self-loathing, and exhaustion than sexy romp.

Unlike the Kremlin, China’s Internet masters are still loath to unleash the unimaginable power of the female nipple through state-approved media. However, they have done the next best thing—lax and uneven blocking of overseas porn websites. Chinese in search of the full range of distracting content can also turn to Falun Gong’s proxy servers.

Given that the vast majority of Chinese users are getting the vast majority of content they want, scaling up “freedom to connect” or “all you can eat” initiatives may not be the best use of our tax dollars.

On the “freedom to connect” issue, beyond the hypocrisy of the US government on the issue (see Wikileaks) and the overall trend toward Internet monitoring and control by democratic as well as authoritarian regimes, I’m not a big fan of the U.S. habit of clothing its foreign policy priorities in the dazzling raiment of universal values, core principles, and global norms.

The Chinese have been trying without success to switch the terms of US-China debate away from unilaterally declared “universal core principles” to potentially conflicting but practically sustainable “national core interests” (a framing that allows for compromise in consideration of Chinese priorities).

However, US rollout of “freedom to connect” reinforces the “US arbiter of orthodoxy vs. Chinese pariah” narrative that makes negotiation unnecessarily difficult (unless you feel that “freedom to connect” is a magic bullet for regime change that renders engagement irrelevant, which Mozorov argues is unrealistic).

One topic I didn’t go into in the Asia Times article was the slippery slope from “freedom to connect” to US government funding of Internet circumvention technology to cyberwar.

On a range of cyberissues from employing Stuxnet to sabotage the Iranian centrifuge array at Natanz to using Falun Gong to pierce the Great Firewall, the U.S. attitude seems to be Fair Game: it’s “good guys vs. bad guys”, “freedom vs. oppression”, “core principles trumping core interests” and a studied obliviousness to the issues of sovereignty, international law, national interest, and blowback.

I don’t think it’s prudent to in effect establish unrestricted cyberwar against China’s Internet infrastructure as an American right, instead of trying to establish some mutually-agreed ground rules.

Laura Rozen linked to an interesting article at Financial Times by Roula Khalaf and James Blitz , The Sabotaging of Iran, that addresses the same concern in the context of the Western campaign against the Iranian nuclear program.

It’s a good article, though it includes some rather asinine speculation that the Iranian govenment might have murdered its own top nuclear scientists (using bombs delivered by motorcycle riders!) in order to remove security threats. I’m assuming this charade is meant to innoculate the Financial Times from the dangerous charge of humanizing the Iranian bogeyman.

Indeed, when you read about scientists being blow up in their cars next to their wives, or a country’s infrastructure being subjected to an undeclared, extralegal sabotage, one might feel a twinge of sympathy.

Also, the FT article raises an issue I’ve thought about: cyberwar blowback.

I would think there is a good possibility that Iran is allowing Chinese scientists to participate in the Stuxnet forensics, which means that China is familiarizing itself with the characteristics and capabilities of this kind of weapon for offensive as well as defensive purposes.

The article concludes:



For some experts, moreover, the sabotage campaign comes at a cost. Stuxnet may have concentrated its efforts on Natanz but it has also proved expensive for many industrial companies. And should Iran choose to respond, it could prove just the beginning of a dangerous cyberwar, to which neither the US nor Israel are immune. US civilian and military officials have noted that America’s key infrastructure – such as power and water plants – is frighteningly vulnerable to cyberattack. “It’s a dangerous technology,” says Frantz, the expert on the CIA’s sabotage efforts, referring to Stuxnet. “Releasing it does two things: it spreads the danger but it also opens the door for retaliation. And I think that cyberwarfare is the next big front.”


The new type of covert war that has ensnared scientists, unleashed dangerous viruses and sought novel ways of exporting faulty equipment takes the nuclear stand-off into uncharted territory. If effective, it buys the US and its partners time, postponing the day when they might have to decide between a conventional strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, with all the risks that it engenders for the Middle East, or acceptance of Iran becoming a nuclear-capable state. But every war has a cost, and in this mysterious world of intrigue and sabotage, no one knows yet what the real price will be. “There’s too much happening behind the scenes with black programmes, assassinations, sabotage of equipment, cyberattacks,” says Albright of Isis. “There’s a loss of accountability … There’s a sense that a green light has been given on hitting the Iranian nuclear programme. But who is going to take the lead on establishing ground rules on what is too much? Where does it end?”

Picture of Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriyari's car after he was assassinated in November 2010.  Photograph by Morteza Yarahmady.