US No Longer the World's Internet Hub 433
museumpeace brings us a New York Times story about how internet traffic is increasingly flowing around the US as web-based industries catch up in other parts of the world. Other issues, such as the Patriot Act, have made foreign companies wary about having their data on US servers. From the NYTimes:
"Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications. Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States."
Good Riddance (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet isn't supposed to have a "hub". It's supposed to be completely distributed and decentralized.
Besides, why should the US carry all the rest of the world's traffic? The world is a globe, which doesn't have a center. Why should Europe / East Asia connections pass through the US? Let them build their share of the interconnects. They've got way more people, and we need all our bandwidth for ourselves, just like anyone else.
The US invented the Internet. We should be exporting equipment and expertise, so the rest of the world can do business with us (and with each other our way), and get paid right to do it.
Thanks, washington (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, Washington. Between the patriot act and the DMCA, you've managed to legislate one of the few booming industries we had out of the country.
Used to be, there were four things we did better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery
You're really trying to cross things off that list as fast as you can, aren't you?
general trend (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only is the data traffic going around the USA, the flow of passengers in airplanes should also follow that trend because of those interesting "hand over the laptop" policies.
It seems ironic to me that the USA government is moving towards a more controlled (shall we say police state?) environment while focusing everyone's attention on other countries (i.e. China) while claiming that those guys are in fact way worse in terms of privacy issues.
Re:Logical conclusion of this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The fallen pinnacle of freedom (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pick your favorite intelligence agency (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, because American intelligence agencies have morals!
No, but they are under some sort of civillian political control. In Russia and China intelligence agencies control YOU (If YOU=the civillian politicians). US intelligence agencies are actually controlled by the law whereas in Russia or China they operate completely outside it.
But I'm sure loads of Americans will now tell me that the US is as bad or worse than countries that do this
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1834474,00.html [time.com]
70 something Beijing residents get their house taken away by politically well connected developers. They apply for a permit to protest and are punished by being sent to a reeducation through labour camp without any trial.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Interesting)
Might be, but still there are bound to be hubs, peer points, data exchanges in places where traffic is centralized, e.g. at points where transcontinental cables go through the sea, etc.
I think the protocol is decentralized, but the fysical connections cannot be.
You can hardly connect each and every computer on the globe directly, can you?
I know, for example, that one of the longest or maybe the longest direct connection goes from somewhere in Germany straight through to Japan, some 40.000 kilometres.
US not being the "hub" isn't bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free Market (Score:2, Interesting)
So you prefer that your government will spy in secret and not after due democratic process?
Nevermind that in today's USA it's mostly the first, but I think you'd agree the second is better
Re:I'm glad! (Score:1, Interesting)
As a Brit-loving US citizen, I can tell you I'm happy too. Frankly I am sick of being in the world's spotlight. Most "Americans" are simple, hard-working people who just want to live our lives. Our government does not reflect or perform the will of the people, but we somehow get blamed for it, as if there was something we could do to change the constant growth of government and policing of the US, and around the world. I welcome a shrinking market for the powermongers.
Re:Just a marketing problem (Score:3, Interesting)
"The 'net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
And fifteen years later, we're seeing it in action. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Aly.
Excellent post ! (Score:5, Interesting)
US export regulations have a way of being over-broad, just for the ease of legislating. As the Rather than protecting one or two key components, the export regulations tend to protect an entire assembly.
To quote from the article referenced by the parent post (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11965352): "IN THE spring of 2006 Robert Bigelow needed to take a stand on a trip to Russia to keep a satellite off the floor. The stand was made of aluminium. It had a circular base and legs. It was, says the entrepreneur and head of Bigelow Aerospace in Nevada, "indistinguishable from a common coffee table". Nonetheless, the American authorities told Mr Bigelow that this coffee table was part of a satellite assembly and so counted as a munition. During the trip it would have to be guarded by two security officers at all times."
If that sounds a bit off-center, then perhaps I might add a personal anecdote. In the 1980's I corresponded with someone in a Dutch consultancy. Their company had just won a contract from some Dutch ministry to move a lot of data and Fortran software from a mainframe to a PC environment. They had figured to dump the lot on tape, get the tape to their offices, and then read the tape using a 9-track tape drive connected to a PC on their LAN, recompile the Fortran code on PC, and process the data on PC.
They had (accurately) budgeted for the purchase of a 9-track tape drive and needed one in a hurry. I was asked for a name of good a US manufacturer (they didn't even consider any other source) of 9-track tapes, which I found in 10 minutes and gave to them. So far so good.
That's when the trouble started.
They were careful people and actually phoned the US embassy in The Netherlands to see if they could just order that tape drive, and what the import/export formalities would be. It's well that they did, because, yes, there were some difficulties. Just the formality of an export license. Asked how to obtain one, the embassy responded that not they, but the manufacturer would have to get the license. And that it would take anywhere between 3-4 months to process the paperwork.
Yes, that's right. In order to export a 9-track tape drive to The Netherlands in the nineteen eighties (NATO partner and all) there would be a 3-4 month wait while the paperwork cleared!
Well ... that wasn't an option for them, since the deadline on their contract was only 6 months away. So they went and bought another make. I believe it was Japanese. Or French. Which was duly bought and installed in their offices two weeks later. They successfully completed the move too and delighted the ministry they were working for by much quicker turnaround times (on high-end PCs; the software being CPU-bound) at a fraction of the cost they would incur on the mainframe.
But in the mean time the US Inc. lost an order for a rather ordinary and fairly innocuous 9-track tape drive, which could be second-sourced on the open market within a week or so, while starting off as the *only* name on the shortlist. And all because of some well-intentioned but rather inept export regulations.
Re:And other intelligence agencies in other countr (Score:1, Interesting)
They don't have laws against it that the break in order to do it. It's the lack of order that causes problems. The USA claimes to be rule-driven, but then breaks its own rules. Other countries, like China are easier to operate in. They have no real rules, and if you fall on the wrong side of one, you pay someone off and everything is ok. The US has some twisted concerns about bribery (it's legal if you call it a "contribution" but not if you fail to report it, and we outlaw a non-US citizen bribing someone in a foreign country as a regular necessary part of operating in that country). So we just don't get it sometimes. But even China can be easier to operate aa business in than the USA.
There are rules in play when you work at any of the intelligence agencies they are called USSID's United States Signals Intelligence Directives. many of them outline such activies as eavesdropping and wiretapping and who and what we can collect on. USSID 18, for example, deals with collection of information on US Citizens, Businesses, and Our Allies. Violation of such rules and guidelines can get your clearance suspended or in some cases completely revoked, and never to be re-instated. If you get it revoked, you are promptly escorted out of the building by security guards with personal effects in a box. In worst of cases you are also read your miranda rights. Not many people understand that portion, yet claim the IC can do what they want because they are the Government and are above the laws, which totally ass backwards.
Re:No surprising (Score:2, Interesting)
The Canadian research network carries a considerable amount of research traffic to/from Europe and Asia. These moves were done specifically to bypass the US Patriot Act. [canarie.ca]
Just A thought. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They think the same things China thinks. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not ruin. It's opportunity. Lots of market for free and open bandwidth, and lots of jurisdictions who don't care how you kibble your bits. Offshore hosting looks like a chance for the banana republics to build their online economies. It will happen there as well as here, not instead, so everybody benefits.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not surprising - Cisco delivers probably (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh hey (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's an example of why it's bad for the US:
In a previous company I worked for, based in Canada, an auditor noticed that we were using an offsite backup system based out of the US (a big one, you'd know it if I typed, it but since none of this is their fault, they'll remain anonymous) and informed us that we may be violating Canadian law in sending our traffic into the US given the Patriot act and similar moves by US lawmakers.
So we took our (fairly lucrative) offsite backup contract and rolled our own solution based at a Canadian data center.
The transition sucked, and we probably wouldn't have bothered if the auditor bring it up, but the end result was that a few dollars got removed from the US GDP and added to the Canadian one. Now that's one case, there are undoubtedly more. I would not at this point recommend to an employer that we should make use of any service that requires our data to land in the US.
What does this mean? Most 'Cloud' services that are US based will be given a pass. Even if they have Canadian storage facilities, the keys are still owned by a US firm and subject to the Patriot act.
Min
Re:You missed the important point. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because of "intelligence" agency surveillance in the U.S., commerce in the U.S. is no longer safe. So companies are taking their business elsewhere.
I think it's even more basic than that. If you act like a dick, your friends start to avoid you. Claim the right to snoop any data you want without due process and organizations will route around you or encrypt their traffic.
In the old days other countries could count on the US to do the right thing and play by the rules. Since we've thrown the rule book away we've started losing friends and other countries don't trust us to do the right thing anymore. It's really pretty simple.
I keep coming back to the fact that we didn't need all this mass espionage. We knew about the 9/11 hijackers, we just didn't act on what we knew. We knew without spying on Americans, we knew without the Patriot Act, without DHS, NSL's or any number of the dickish, thugish institutions and practices we've wasted billions on since then. And those laws aren't being used for terrorism investigations, they're being for any investigation. I listened to a DHS spokesmen on TV claim that any criminal activity can be used to support terrorism, so they're using those tools even for fairly minor crimes.
We're witnessing nothing less than the sad unwinding of a great nation.
If legally required to guarantee privacy, no USA (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody's mentioned "FOIP" yet. The "Freedom of Information and Privacy" Act in Canada is both an FOI act when it comes to forcing the government (and some private companies) to reveal all non-classified information upon request, and a privacy-enforcement act that requires government and private business alike to safeguard any personal information for which they are custodian.
I work for a municipal government in Canada, and I have explicitly heard, from IT management in meetings, that we cannot give any contracts for data entry, data storage, data reduction and analysis, etc, to American firms, since the Patriot Act. This only applies to data classified a "private" under the FOIP rules, but here's the rub: the really simple way to handle some large data sets is to just duplicate the whole thing, all the tables. Going over them all to determine the FOIP status of every column and carefully remove, say, any column for "phone number" of your own staff or your customers, is a pain.
What's not a pain is going to a Canadian firm, having them sign a boilerplate FOIP-compliant privacy protection agreement. Various other countries with privacy legislation can be dealt with as well. Americans, alas, must hand over any and all data that the justice system asks for under the Patriot Act, so we can't give them the work.
I haven't heard of us going so far as to avoid transmission of FOIP-covered data through any network that will go through the USA, but after the FISA bill, I would say it's merely a matter of time.
Re:Pick your favorite intelligence agency (Score:3, Interesting)
My brother lived in China for two years. It was fairly simple for him to get around the censorship, so there was nothing he couldn't access on the net. Hell, he even showed me where you could see the Tiananmen square videos on Chinese Youtube. The censorship is no deterrent to a determined person.
The fact is that most Chinese do not really care. Like most people around the world, they use the internet to for mindless crap. The fact that some politically sensitive material is harder for them to get to doesn't affect most of them at all, because most of them don't care.
Although people in democratic societies rant on about how their internet is not censored, it wouldn't make much difference to most people if it was, because the kind of stuff that would be censored is interesting only to a minority.
And the AC needs to accept that most people in the world no longer like or trust the US. Get over it.
not to be redundant, but ... (Score:2, Interesting)
It does not do that on its own and history has shown more than once that routing around damage takes a while.
Re:not to be redundant, but ... (Score:2, Interesting)
We have a while. We have the rest of forever. It'll get done.
Another Loss..... (Score:3, Interesting)
I woder why:
No company wants to have to deal with:
1) The Patriot Act
2) Ass-rape happy ISPs
3) ADA laws
4) Liability
5) And those slimy bastard who think they should have every right to snoop through our private business and keep the rest of us out of theirs
Jesus Christ! Does it really take a genius to realize that brainless legislators and greedy proviser have cost us in the U.S. *ANOTHER* #1 spot?!?!?!
Re:They think the same things China thinks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong kind of offshore hosting. A "host" is a PC or reasonable simulation thereof. If you lease an offshore host, you can remote to it through SSL using various tools, and use it for things you would ordinarily use the PC on your desk for. Except that since it's in a different jurisdiction, different rules apply. And there's no chance your significant other, kids, or the prying eyes of your local law enforcement will ever come across it without your explicit permission and consent. As long as you don't violate the local rules where the server is, auto-remember your access code or save stuff to your local machine, you're fine.
You have no control over what FEMA, BATF, RIAA or Homeland Security will make illegal retroactively. You can't control what extraneous websites might be preloaded by your browser, nor if you're using Windows, what content is served by your local rootkit. You don't know what they're monitoring, but the safe money is on "everything". 1984 is here. What you can do is avoid exposure to these risks by running a less "malware friendly OS" to connect to your host in a less tyrannical jurisdiction. It may be informative here to point out that members of the judiciary, Congress, and the executive branch of our government never use a computer directly for their own sake. It's too risky. They have digests of their important email read to them over the phone for denyability purposes, and even then the readers are carefully trained to avoid controversial issues and truly important information is passed person-to-person just like Al-Quaida. It's a wonder they can even grasp what the Internet is often enough to fund their share of it.
You can, but don't have to, also use it for serving blogs and data over the Internet but that's not pertinent to my point.
Apparently you know something I don't. AFAIK the incumbent providers have pretty much nixed the Moore's Law model of communications development with their political contributions. Fixing this is far more expensive than running a few fibers to Tijuana or Nogales where persuading the necessary government officials is more of a retail operation.