back to article International effort to wrangle t'internet from NSA fizzles out in chaos

The launch of the ICANN-Brazil-led internet power grab dubbed NetMundial has been cancelled for a second time, raising questions over its continued existence. NetMundial was dreamed up in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations of blanket global surveillance by Uncle Sam's NSA and the Brits' GCHQ. The governments of Brazil …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What the internet needs isn't another committee...it's decent, reliable end-to-end encrypted software that's easy to use and is trusted and thoroughly reviewed.

  2. nematoad
    Happy

    The Greeks had a word for it.

    Hubris, followed by Nemesis.

    Good, this was a blatant power grab by certain parties and I'm glad that it has been rejected by those most involved with the running of the internet.

    As moiety says what we need is an internet we can trust, not a bunch of self-appointed commissars strutting around telling everyone what to do. It looks like they don't even know what the whole thing was for apart from self-aggrandisement.

  3. Chris Miller

    UK ruling the realm?

    I can see how the US has a disproportionate degree of influence over the running of the internet, what with ICANN, IANA etc, but I'm not so clear about the UK. Or did you just mean that GCHQ have made the second-greatest penetration of Internet services?

    [Genuine question, probably caused by my ignorance.]

    1. nematoad

      Re: UK ruling the realm?

      "Or did you just mean that GCHQ have made the second-greatest penetration of Internet services?"

      No, what GCHQ has done is to damage the trust in the internet, they have no influence apart from damaging Britain's standing in the world.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: UK ruling the realm?

        GCHQ can be criticised for many many things, but to suggest that they have no influence is very naive.

        Their influence might not be direct and in the open, but behind closed doors their work has a massive influence. (I'm not saying that's right or that it's a good thing!)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What problem was this supposed to solve?

    Yet another committee having meetings for ... what exactly? Stop NSA/GCHQ from snooping? Good luck with that. I am sure that everyone at NSA/GCHQ were shaking in their boots in fear of what NetMundial was going to do: have a meeting.

    They could always take a full-page ad in the New York Times protesting Internet surveillance. That always works.

    Get real, guys. This war is over and lost forever.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: What problem was this supposed to solve?

      err...yes... meetings (it exotic and expensive places of course) followed by directives and regulations. That always works to stop evil. Just look at the way it's stopped spammers, malware, and even people going over the speed limit on the roadways.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Idiots abound

    FYI - The U.S. and UK do not control the internet and never have. Monitoring international communication to deter crime is not control of the Net. Brazil and the other loony's can go to hell. Nobody really cares about those nut cases.

    1. Mike VandeVelde
  6. YARR

    Well it's hardly surprising they've not had much of a response as I don't suppose many people have even heard of them. For an upstart to obtain an international following will require persistence and either mass-media exposure (like WikiLeaks), a huge advertising budget or a genius social media campaign.

    Re. What problem was this supposed to solve?

    How about establishing an international consensus for a charter to protect both individual rights and rights of nations from spying and targeting? The present uncivilized order seems to be that some security agencies are a law unto themselves. Yet if an individual behaved that way they'd be classed as a criminal.

    Even if some governments ignore international law, there should at least be international laws restricting such activities so they are then seen to be in violation of those laws.

  7. Koconnor100

    wrong tactic

    The solution to the problem is not to try and take over the existing bug riddled spy laden world wide internet.

    The solution is to make your own for your nation, possibly kicking out any foriegn traffic out of certain area's (government servers and individuals) , and create a filter for , say private individuals who don't speak chinese to cancel all traffic from china , they're not interested.

    The current internet software might not be capable of this ,but it should be possible to invent new software. I can imagine a network where the source of all transmissions must be included , and if you fake a transmission , (ie: say it's from the local state) the gateways that let traffic in from the outside will automatically block it.

    Similarily , people usually complain "They'll just use a proxy" but any decent network administrator can track network traffic in the current network , never mind a new one designed with security from the ground up , and external traffic flowing to one computer and then going all over the inside of your national network will be quickly located.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: wrong tactic

      So you're suggesting that every country puts up a massive national firewall? Out of the frying pan and into the fire comes to mind.

      Bear in mind that governments across the world are pretty similar. They all want control and they all spy.

    2. Ole Juul

      Re: wrong tactic

      @ Koconnor100: "The solution is to make your own for your nation, possibly kicking out any foriegn traffic out of certain area's (government servers and individuals) , and create a filter for , say private individuals who don't speak chinese to cancel all traffic from china , they're not interested."

      So you want to get rid of the first two W's in WWW?

      1. Koconnor100

        Re: wrong tactic

        Yes. The world is sick of terrorists who know one person in 10 000 willl beleive them so they can make trouble on the other side of the world through the internet.

        The world is sick of guys in China hacking their Guild Wars account ,and they keep getting messages that someone in china tried to log into your account.

        The world is sick of denial of service attacks from russia shutting down their favorite games and demanding ransom money.

        It's time to move to national computer networks. Because I don't know about you , but I don't speak chinese , or russian , or japanese, or korean , and I see no reason to be connected to those networks.

  8. martinusher Silver badge

    They have a point....

    Its difficult to know exactly what they wanted to achieve. It could have been the creation of a meaningless bureaucracy -- that would be truly pointless. On the other hand, it could be the creation of a well engineered addressing mechanism that's free from political interference, a set of universal addresses that can't be messed with (e.g. a tidy version of IPv6) and an authentication and encryption regime that's robust, reliable and snoop-proof.

    There really is no magic to Internet protocols. They started out as a 'seemed like a good idea at the time', evolved somewhat but they're still rife with weaknesses and workarounds. A coordinated attempt to improve them would be welcome -- so long as it doesn't degenerate into something like "HellSpawn of OSI".

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon