The Marubo people live in one of the most isolated spots on the planet and although they have contact with the outside world, the tribe has preserved a traditional way of life for centuries.

They sleep in communal huts along the Ituí River, hunt and grow their own food, talk their own language and until recently have not had access to the internet.

But Elon Musk’s satellite-internet service, Starlink, which he launched in Brazil in 2022, has changed this.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/06/03/arrival-internet-impacted-a-remote-amazon-tribe-20962811/

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Lawmakers in the House and Senate on Tuesday welcomed the Justice Department’s (DOJ’s) move to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google that claims the tech behemoth used its power to preserve its monopoly via its search engine.

“Today’s lawsuit is the most important antitrust case in a generation,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said in a statement. “Google and its fellow Big Tech monopolists exercise unprecedented power over the lives of ordinary Americans, controlling everything from the news we read to the security of our most personal information. And Google in particular has gathered and maintained that power through illegal means.”

STOCKS RISE ON STIMULUS HOPES, GOOGLE SHRUGS OFF DOJ ANTITRUST ACTION 

The DOJ suit alleges that Google has used its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and boost profits. The suit could be an opening shot in a battle against a number of Big Tech companies in the coming months.

A Google spokesperson told Fox News: “Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to — not because they’re forced to or because they can’t find alternatives. We will have a fuller statement this morning.”

According to the lawsuit, “For years, Google has entered into exclusionary agreements, including tying arrangements, and engaged in anticompetitive conduct to lock up distribution channels and block rivals.”

“American consumers are forced to accept Google’s policies, privacy practices, and use of personal data; and new companies with innovative business models cannot emerge from Google’s long shadow. For the sake of American consumers, advertisers, and all companies now reliant on the internet economy, the time has come to stop Google’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition,” it says.

The DOJ claims the action was brought to stop Google from “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices, and to remedy the effects of this conduct.”

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WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Dave Eggers’ new novel, The Circle, also has three short, Orwellian slogans, and while I have no special insight into whether he consciously modeled The Circleon 1984, I do know that his book could wind up being every bit as prophetic.

Eggers’ subject is what the loss of privacy would look like if taken to its logical extreme. His focus is not on government but on the technology companies who invade our privacy on a daily basis. The Circle, you see, is a Silicon Valley company, an evil hybrid of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, whose cultures – the freebies, the workaholism, the faux friendliness – Eggers captures with only slight exaggeration.

The Circle has enormous power because it has become the primary gateway to the Internet. Thanks to its near-monopoly, it is able to collect reams of data about everyone who uses its services – and many who don’t – data that allows The Circle to track anyone down in a matter of minutes. It has begun planting small, hidden cameras in various places – to reduce crime, its leaders insist.

The Circle wants to place chips in children to prevent abductions, it says. It has called on governments to be “transparent,” by which it means that legislators should wear a tiny camera that allows the world to watch their every move. Eventually, legislators who refuse find themselves under suspicion – after all, they must be hiding something. This is where The Circle’s logic leads.

Of course, nobody who works for The Circle thinks what he or she is doing is evil. On the contrary, like many a real Silicon Valley executive, they view themselves as visionaries, whose only goal is benign: to make the world a better place.

“We’re at the dawn of the Second Enlightenment,” says one of The Circle’s founders in a speech to the staff. “I’m talking about an era where we don’t allow the majority of human thought and action and achievement and learning to escape as if from a leaky bucket.”

It believes if it can eliminate secrecy people will be forced to be their best selves all the time. It even toys with the idea of getting the government to require voters to use The Circle – to force them to vote on Election Day. And, of course, it has found multiple ways to monetize the data it collects. As for the potential downside of this loss of privacy, it is waved away by Circle executives as if too trifling to even consider.

Is this vision of the future far-fetched? Of course, it is – though no more than 1984 was. The Circle imagines where we could end up if we don’t begin paying attention. Indeed, what is striking is how far down this road we have already gone. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that the National Security Agency has the ability to read our emails and listen to our phone calls. Google shows us ads based on words we use in our Gmail accounts.

Last week, Facebook – which has, in shades of Orwell, a chief privacy officer – removed a privacy setting so that any Facebook user can search for any other Facebook user. The next day, Google unveiled a plan that would make it possible for the company to use its customers’ words and likeness in ads for products they like – information that Google knows because, well, Google knows everything.

So, yes, while we’re not in Eggers territory yet, we are getting closer. I don’t have either a Facebook or a Twitter account, yet every few days I get an email from one of the two companies saying that so-and-so is waiting for me to join them in social media land. The people it picks as my potential “friends” are very often people with whom I’ve never been a true colleague, but I’ve briefly met at some point in my life. It is creepy to me that the companies know that I know these particular people.

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know,” Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, once said, “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” That line could easily have been uttered by one of Dave Eggers’ characters. That is the thought process that could someday cost us our last shred of privacy. The Circle is a warning.

(And in case you’re wondering, here are The Circle’s three slogans:

SHARING IS CARING.

SECRETS ARE LIES.

PRIVACY IS THEFT.)

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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. – The Panama-Buena Vista school district sent a warning about internet connections being spotty starting this week due to distance learning.

Distance learning begins full force on Monday, Panama-Buena Vista wanted parents to be aware all local internet service providers will experience an increase in network-use with the start of school.

The increase may affect household internet service speeds for both cable and wireless connected systems.

The Kern County Superintendent of Schools has been working with different internet providers to minimize any problems.

The school district is asking residents to continue to try and connect and they understand if you have difficulties.

Source: https://www.turnto23.com/lifestyle/education/distance-learning-starting-in-full-force-internet-may-be-slow

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A Russian law has taken effect that, in theory, would allow the Russian government to cut off the country’s Internet from the rest of the world.

The “sovereign Internet law,” as the government calls it, greatly enhances the Kremlin’s control over the Web. It was passed earlier this year and allows Russia’s government to cut off the Internet completely or from traffic outside Russia “in an emergency,” as the BBC reported. But some of the applications could be more subtle, like the ability to block a single post.

It requires Internet service providers to install software that can “track, filter, and reroute internet traffic,” as Human Rights Watch stated. Such technology allows the state telecommunications watchdog “to independently and extrajudicially block access to content that the government deems a threat.”

The equipment would conduct what’s known as “deep packet inspection,” an advanced way to filter network traffic.

Such widespread control is alarming to human rights groups, which fear it could be used to silence dissent.

“Now the government can directly censor content or even turn Russia’s Internet into a closed system without telling the public what they are doing or why,” Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement. “This jeopardizes the right of people in Russia to free speech and freedom of information online.”

The Russian government has justified the law by saying it is needed to prevent U.S. cyberattacks. And, as the BBC reported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected the idea the law could be used to cut off Russia from the rest of the world: “No-one is suggesting cutting the Internet.”

Regardless of what the government intends, some experts think it would be technically difficult for Russia to actually close its network if it wanted to, because of the sheer number of its international connections.

“What I found was that there were dozens of existing Internet exchange points in Russia, some of which have hundreds of participants — so hundreds of networks coming together there to exchange traffic,” says David Belson, senior director of Internet Research & Analysis at Internet Society. Many of them are international network providers, he says, so “basically it’s challenging — if not impossible, I think — to completely isolate the Russian Internet.”

Belson says that the requirement for Internet service providers to install tracking software will very likely also be challenging in practice. He adds that it will be difficult to get hundreds of providers to deploy it and hard to coordinate that they’re all filtering the same content. And blocking certain content could have “collateral damage” — effects that the government hasn’t foreseen.

And how will this law ultimately change how Russians use the Internet? “It’s not clear,” Belson says. “There could be no change.” Or, Russians may begin having difficulty accessing certain sites or be redirected to other sites when they request ones that are blocked.

Internet freedom has been on the decline in Russia for at least six years, according to Freedom House. Last year the government tried to block the messaging app Telegram and cracked down on virtual private networks, which encrypt Internet traffic.

Correction
In a previous version of this story, we misquoted David Belson of the Internet Society as saying that he found hundreds of Internet exchange points in Russia. Belson actually said he has found dozens of exchange points.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775366588/russian-law-takes-effect-that-gives-government-sweeping-power-over-internet

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The post Russia wants to unplug its internet from the rest of the world. Is that even possible? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Illustration by Koren Shadmi

An internet “kill switch” has been in Russia’s legislative plans for some time — though it’s not entirely about defense. Russia sees this drastic move as a means to solve the dual issues of defending itself from cyberwar attacks and more tightly controlling its citizens’ access to information.

As news of the impending shutdown test came originally from Russian-language newswire RBK (and was sloppily reported), it was easy to get the impression that this was a complete, countrywide internet shutdown.

Rather, the country would use Runet, a sovereign, government-run internal web that would keep citizens connected, but only within the country. Runet would run during internet blackouts in the event of “targeted large-scale external influence.” Access to the outside would be cut off, and vice versa, but they would still have email and other things (controlled by the government, obviously).

A national intranet is an IP-based walled garden used as a substitute for the real (global) Internet. Typically, its purpose is to control and monitor the communications of citizens while also restricting their access to outside media. Like in Iran.

After years of rumors, Iran rolled out its state-run intranet in January 2018. As the global intelligence company Stratfor explained, “To access [Iran’s intranet], users and website owners must sign up with the government, an arrangement that empowers Iranian officials to coerce internet service providers to comply with their demands.” This way, “Iran’s government can cut access to the global internet for prolonged periods, as it did during the [pro-democracy] Green Movement protests, without taking the entire country offline.”

Another country that controls its population via intranet is North Korea. Its Kwangmyong network is the oldest one we know of, believed to have been instituted in 2000.

Internet blackouts seldom go well for citizens. You may also remember when Egypt disappeared from the internet in 2011. This was during the Mubarak regime protests (including the events of Tahir Square), when citizens staged demonstrations calling out corruption, police brutality, free speech attacks, and various human rights violations. In response, Egypt’s government cut off the entire country’s access to the internet — 85 million people.

Syria disconnected its population from the internet as well, in 2011. The first time was for its largest pro-democracy protest. Syria shut off the internet and opened fire, killing more than 72 people, while government forces assaulted towns seen as key to the demonstrations, killing even more.

So, generally, internet blackouts seem to be the favored tool of totalitarian governments that do bad things to people behind closed doors.

Prior to 2012, a government-forced internet blackout could happen only under certain conditions. That was the year the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) rammed through global regulations that took control of the internet’s traffic and took citizen access away from orgs like ICANN and handed it to governments. At the time, Dr. Alexander Kushtuev, ITU deputy director general, worked for Russia’s largest national telecommunications operator, Rostelecom.

Not surprisingly, early authors of the regulatory changes — which the ITU attempted to keep secret — were from a state bloc composed of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

That meetings and proposals around the agreement were withheld from public view showed that something was rotten; we only found out about it when researchers at George Mason University created the website WCITLeaks, which solicited and shared copies of leaked draft documents. In fact, one leaked doc showed that the organizers had pre-prepared a public relations strategy and hired consultants to avoid public outcry.

Despite enormous opposition, the ITU set its legally binding agreement into place, making blackouts like the ones in Syria and Egypt a maneuver not impeded by treaties, agreements or any ICANN policies on human rights.

Anyway, Russia got what it wanted. It got all the goodies packed into the 2012 ITU regulations, plus what was needed to set in motion the events we’re seeing now. The country has a state-run intranet with a free pass to cut its citizens off from the global internet. And The Telegraph reminds us, “The Russian government has been tightening its grip over the internet since social media facilitated huge protests against Mr Putin in 2011–13.”

The purpose of the upcoming cutoff test is to work out the kinks before Russia implements a law introduced last year in its parliament mandating that Russian internet providers use Runet when the country disconnects its citizens from the rest of the world.

Interestingly, the upcoming disconnect experiment is run by Russia’s Information Security Working Group, whose member are telcos — and is presided over by Natalya Kaspersky. Yes, that Kaspersky. She co-founded the namesake security company, and her ex-husband is … Eugene Kaspersky. He still runs the security company they created together, which was banned by the US government in 2017 over its alleged ties to the Russian government.

The law (called “Digital Economy National Program”) dictates that Russian telcos must install technical means to funnel all internet traffic “to exchange points approved or managed by Roskomnazor, Russia’s telecom watchdog,” according to press. “Roskomnazor will inspect the traffic to block prohibited content and make sure traffic between Russian users stays inside the country and is not re-routed uselessly through servers abroad, where it could be intercepted.”

The point of all this is so Russia can enact an internet blackout. For security purposes, it claims.

But would an internet “kill switch” work in times of cyberwar?

Not really. Oracle did a deep dive on this exact scenario and concluded that countrywide internet blackouts (with intranet reliance) actually make a country harder to defend. What makes the internet strong as a system, they explain, is its decentralization. Namely, diversity in infrastructure.

If a country has only five companies with licenses to carry and monitor traffic, then sure, it’s a snap for authorities to make a phone call and send the country into a near-instant internet blackout. However, Oracle explains: “This level of centralization also makes it much harder for the government to defend the nation’s Internet infrastructure against a determined opponent … They can do a lot of damage by hitting just a few targets.”

Packet Clearing House’s Bill Woodcock reminds us that the United States entertained the same idea, of a disconnection protocol, in the 2008–2009 era. The idea was abandoned. Mr. Woodcock told Engadget that a kill switch is “a pretty reasonable thing to test, and to prepare for, given how much the US is putting into cyber-offense, and how little regard the US has for nonproliferation efforts in this area.” He added, “Of course, the Russians do offense as well, but at least they have the sense to recognize that they’re also living in a glass house.”

Soberingly, Woodcock tells us that Russia may be taking cues from its own cyber-attack victims:

The apt comparison to make here would be with the Russian attacks on Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. Estonia was prepared (in much the same way that Russia is getting to be now) while Georgia was not. The Russian attack on Estonia went nearly unnoticed, from a network user’s perspective, while the one on Georgia was nearly totally effective, for a period of several months. The Georgian government had to migrate, entirely, to Google free business services.

I think the thing many outlets are dancing around as they report on the blackout system implementation is Russia’s intent to isolate its citizens and crack down on dissent. It’s especially heartbreaking in light of new reports of a refreshed purge of LGBT men and women in Chechnya, where at least two are dead and dozens are being held. “The new wave of persecution began in late December,” wrote The Guardian, “after an administrator for an online group for LGBT people on the social network VKontakte was detained. Police used the contacts in his phone to round up others.”

The Guardian confirmed the reports with a Russian newspaper, which in turn confirmed in messages via VKontakte (Russia’s state-run version of Facebook).

When blackouts begin in Russia, these horrors will develop further and the world may be none the wiser.

Images: Julie Dermansky/Corbis via Getty Images (Egypt, internet); Bill Hinton via Getty Images (Russia, computer)

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By Violet Blue@violetblue

Ms. Violet Blue (tinynibbles.com, @violetblue) is the author of the book How To Be A Digital Revolutionary. She is a freelance investigative reporter on hacking and cybercrime, as well as a noted columnist. She is an advisor to Without My Consent, and a member of the Internet Press Guild. Ms. Blue has made regular appearances on CNN and The Oprah Winfrey Show and is frequently interviewed, quoted, and featured in a variety of outlets including BBC, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal. She has authored and edited award-winning, best-selling books in eight translations and was the San Francisco Chronicle’s sex columnist. Her conference appearances include ETech, LeWeb, CCC, and the Forbes Brand Leadership Conference, plus two Google Tech Talks. The London Times named Blue one of “40 bloggers who really count.” Ms. Blue is the author of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy. Find out more about her work in writing, sexuality, security, and privacy on her Patreon.

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Source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/28/russia-putin-internet-kill-switch-cybersecurity/

[Disclaimer]

The post Russia is going to test an internet ‘kill switch,’ and its citizens will suffer first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Germany outlined measures designed to curb the increasing dominance of internet giants, including Google and Facebook, by boosting the powers of its competition regulator.

Reuters reported the initiative could see more restrictions placed on the bigger players from acquiring smaller rivals, following concerns in Germany that US internet companies are becoming too powerful.

The effort follows a study, commissioned by Germany’s economy minister Peter Altmaier, calling for antitrust regulators to have more power to stop companies from achieving a monopoly status.

The study said that companies can become monopolies on the internet because of the way the network functions, and this could be prevented, for example, by cracking down on companies sealing exclusive deals with business partners.

Altmaier also argued that antitrust regulators should be able to block mergers between big and small players, as it can sideline competitors.

“My goal is to make our competition law more effective,” he said. “In doing so we must find the right balance between the growth chances of German and European platforms and preventing the abuse of market power.”

Facebook deals
Reuters added that the planned measures could be implemented following a widely held view in Germany that European regulators should have blocked Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and instant messaging platform WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

Altmaier’s study noted that Facebook, through its various social networking platforms, has 2.5 billion users in total, while European powerhouse Germany has yet to produce a company of such a scale.

The study also outlined proposals requiring dominant internet companies to share data that it uses, allowing competitors to develop software to a similar standard to the market leader.

Based on the report’s recommendations, Altmaier will set up a commission to draft reforms to Germany’s competition law, added Reuters.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office is currently probing Facebook, and could take action against the company this year regarding its data gathering practices.

Source: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/top-three/germany-seeks-to-reduce-facebook-google-power/

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