In the aftermath of the riots a very dangerous, and very silly, idea, has been endorsed from all sorts of people who should (or perhaps should not) know better: namely that we should “switch off” parts of the internet in moments of such social crisis.
How this is to be achieved, short of a nuclear strike on US data centres and a new anti-satellite weapons system is not clear: in fact the obvious conclusion is that those who have dreamt up this policy either are short of clues as to how networks work, companies make money or people use the internet. Either that or they are proposing to shut down all wired and wireless communications and are willing to live with the leaks to those with access to satellites.
I don’t know. And the point is I don’t think they do either. But what I do know is that this all sounds deeply worrying. Or at least it would be if I really thought the government were likely to act on it.
It is, of course, the way of British policy makers to float radical ideas such as this and then back-off when they start to consider the practicalities – I do not think we are on the slippery slope to dictatorship, rather in the “Something Must Be Done” phase.
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 