U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators

[DaemonSeid]

When Hosni Mubarak shut down Egypt’s internet and cellphone communications, it seemed that all U.S. officials could do was ask him politely to change his mind. But the American military does have a second set of options, if it ever wants to force connectivity on a country against its ruler’s wishes.

There’s just one wrinkle. “It could be considered an act of war,” says John Arquilla, a leading military futurist.

The U.S. military has no shortage of devices — many of them classified — that could restore connectivity to a restive populace cut off from the outside world by its rulers. It’s an attractive option for policymakers who want an option for future Egypts, between doing nothing and sending in the Marines. And it might give teeth to the Obama administration’s demand that foreign governments consider internet access an inviolable human right.

Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, spent years urging the military to logic-bomb adversary websites, disrupt hostile online presences, and even cause communications blackouts to separate warring factions before they go nuclear. What the military can turn off, he says, it can also turn on — or at least fill dead airspace.

Consider the Commando Solo, the Air Force’s airborne broadcasting center. A revamped cargo plane, the Commando Solo beams out psychological operations in AM and FM for radio, and UHF and VHF for TV. Arquilla doesn’t want to go into detail how the classified plane could get a denied internet up and running again, but if it flies over a bandwidth-denied area, suddenly your Wi-Fi bars will go back up to full strength.


“We have both satellite- and nonsatellite-based assets that can come in and provide access points to get people back online,” Arquilla says. “Some of it is done from ships. You could have a cyber version of pirate radio.”

Then there are cell towers in the sky. The military already uses its aircraft as communications relays in places like Afghanistan. Some companies are figuring out upgrades: FastCom, an effort led by the defense firm Textron, is a project that hooks up cellular pods to the belly of a drone, the better to keep cellular and data connections in the air without pilot fatigue. Underneath the drones, a radius of a few kilometers on the ground would have 3G coverage.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...ols-force-net/

Thinking about how Egypt lost access made me really think about what would have to happen for the US to attempt to do the same thing. I always had an idea that these tools existed but to what extent or what state would our country have to be in for someone to make a decision to deny or grant access?

[Drolefille]

As much as they've been talking about kill switches here, it's not possible in the US without a crazy amount of martial law and even then, you can't stop the signal. Too many ISPs, too many people who know how to set up their own ISPs, too many wireless devices and smartphones that can generate a wireless signal. Too large of a country with too much redundancy built into the internet.

It takes a backbone going down to significantly affect the speed of the internet for us now, but the shutdown of those wouldn't shut US down, we'd just have to reconnect. Hell we could create a mass intranet if we had to with a computer in every house.

[DaemonSeid]

With businesses dependent on the 'net, it would do more harm than good.

Still thinking about the bill that Lieberman proposed last year that would essentially make cyberspace a national asset.

On one hand it would make a lot of businesses follow stricter measures to secure their IT systems, but on the other hand it does place a lot of IT infrastructure in the president's hands....to shut down major portions if an admin decides to do so.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3480/show

[Drolefille]

Right, that was the kill switch they keep talking about. It recently got brought up again. Obviously it would hurt businesses, but my point is it couldn't be done to shut up 'the people' which is why Iran/Egypt/etc did it.

The fact that it would hurt businesses means any administration would require a pretty extreme emergency to do it. Skynet going online or something perhaps.


To elaborate more, what Iran did was first filter sites, hence the use of proxies to access social media sites. Then it shut down ISPs. In Egypt they cut the switch at the four ISPs that handle all traffic in and out of Egypt, even though internally there was still some connectivity, it wasn't much.

One article I read put it this way, if you cut our internet off from the rest of the world, it's arguable about who would actually be worse off, us or them.

[DaemonSeid]

Or...us then everyone else!

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Or...us then everyone else!

What?

[DaemonSeid]

Us as in the US and then the rest of the world.

...maybe China.

[Drolefille]

No, the point was that the rest of the world would suffer more from the US being cut off from the "world wide web" than we necessarily would.

[DaemonSeid]

How so?

[AlphaFrog]

As much as I feel like the Internet has become more of a right than a privilege, I don't think I want us forcing it on other countries. Main reason being that there are things that other countries feel are more "right" than "privilege" (like beating/killing women) that I certainly wouldn't want forced on us. Yes, I know the internet and wife-beating are hardly compatible, but concept over actual example in this case.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

How so?

Because so much of the internet is physically here. The point is mostly that if you cut off the external connections, we'd still have the internet and be able to communicate with each other. We'd also probably hack a way to connect international.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

As much as I feel like the Internet has become more of a right than a privilege, I don't think I want us forcing it on other countries. Main reason being that there are things that other countries feel are more "right" than "privilege" (like beating/killing women) that I certainly wouldn't want forced on us. Yes, I know the internet and wife-beating are hardly compatible, but concept over actual example in this case.

As they said, it would be an act of war. Also that was a really terrible comparison.

Generally us getting involved directly turns the tides in the opposite direction that we want it to go anyway. Because people don't like being manipulated and the dictators use that to their advantage.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Because so much of the internet is physically here. The point is mostly that if you cut off the external connections, we'd still have the internet and be able to communicate with each other. We'd also probably hack a way to connect international.

Problem is, someone would have to know what they are doing. The average person wouldn't know how. Can you imagine what kind of anarchy could erupt if you shut down a small city?


Hmmm Ft Lauderdale....LOL

@AF I understand what you are saying. That's why it's becoming more and more important as to how much attention we pay to companies that are starting to charge more for lesser data usage and also companies that enact polices that throttle bandwidth.

Over the years, there have been many proposals where companies want to reinstitute metering bandwidth to limit how much data we use.

[Drolefille]

You can't shut down the internet in a small city. Not without physically cutting power lines and blocking satellite feeds and tearing down cell phone towers.

It's just not possible.

And enough people here know what they're doing, just as people in Iran found proxies, people here would find a way. To do it nationally would be impossible, and as noted would not prohibit communications amongst Americans.

The day something like happens will be preceded by some really obvious actions: martial law, American military used on its own citizens, hell it'd require a government willing to shut down business which sure as shit ain't happening any time soon.