Octopus Overlords

Rip wrote:

Kraken wrote:"The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

That sounds nice but it is rather ignorant of how it really works. BGP protocol routes around it. Give me control of BGP routes and I can turn whatever IP ranges I want on and off. It is just a protocol and where there is protocol there is the ability to manipulate whatever the protocol controls.

But whats to prevent a proxy being used to give people a different IP?

Defiant wrote:

GreenGoo wrote: How is removing Syria from the internet any different from removing internet access for Syrians?

I must be missing something because his original suggestion was gibberish, and you're clarification doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. If you (or anyone) can explain to me what Trump means when he clarifies that he would "remove internet access" from part/all of Syria/Iraq. Defiant suggests getting buy-in from all the necessary countries, but that list seems like it would be extremely unwieldy in size and contain countries not particularly likely to do as they're told by the US.

I'm not trying to be a dick here, I really don't get what he's suggesting (or if I do, how he thinks it will work).

Something like this.

Apparently, it would take four well placed cuts to block the internet.

"Syria has 4 physical cables that connect it to the rest of the Internet," wrote Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, in a blog on tech site Gizmodo. "Three are undersea cables that land in the city of Tartous, Syria. The fourth is an over-land cable through Turkey. In order for a whole-country outage, all four of these cables would have had to been cut simultaneously. That is unlikely to have happened."

Of course, satellite access would still be available, and that would need buy in to prevent people from accessing it. I would imagine the equipment isn't easily available, though.

Sat access could easily be blocked by airborne jamming.

Communication denial is a basic tenant of war. It can be done with the desire and willingness to provide the resources.

Rip wrote:
Sat access could easily be blocked by airborne jamming.

Communication denial is a basic tenant of war. It can be done with the desire and willingness to provide the resources.

Uh...you're talking about jamming an entire country. Indefinitely. The internet says its only 186,475 km², but that's still a lot of space.

If that's the solution, just go in and kill all the terrorists already...

Defiant wrote:

Rip wrote:

Kraken wrote:"The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

That sounds nice but it is rather ignorant of how it really works. BGP protocol routes around it. Give me control of BGP routes and I can turn whatever IP ranges I want on and off. It is just a protocol and where there is protocol there is the ability to manipulate whatever the protocol controls.

But whats to prevent a proxy being used to give people a different IP?

You have to be able to reach a proxy, meaning you have a working IP address and route to it.

BGP allows you to advertise routes but it is up to others uplink to advertise them. If they don't, bang you have an IP but it won't take you anywhere outside the local AS.

http://tommakau.com/2012/12/09/how-do-c ... -internet/

There are many other numerous ways to block Internet access or access to certain websites by a country, some legitimate and some illegitimate like example 2 above. All in all, it is very easy to block entire countries from the Internet should the need arise.

Defiant wrote: But whats to prevent a proxy being used to give people a different IP?

We're starting to get suggestions, questions and answers going in a nice web here.

I'll give you my impression.

You still need a way to talk to a proxy, so you still need to be "on the internet" to get your new ip. You need some way to communicate with the proxy, and that typically ain't happening remotely without already being on the internet.

So if you remove my ability to get an address at all, I can't ask a proxy for a new one.

And that's about as far as I understand things. There are other protocols and whatnot that might allow it but I don't know about them or understand them. I have only the vaguest understanding of how the backbones talk to each other.

Wiki

Internet connectivity between Syria and the outside world shut down in late November 2011,[2] and again in early May 2013.[3] Syria's Internet was cut off more than ten times in 2013, and again in March 2014.[4][5] The Syrian government blamed terrorists for the cut off.

Some of those are deliberate, some weren't.

Rip wrote:
You have to be able to reach a proxy, meaning you have a working IP address and route to it.

BGP allows you to advertise routes but it is up to others uplink to advertise them. If they don't, bang you have an IP but it won't take you anywhere outside the local AS.

http://tommakau.com/2012/12/09/how-do-c ... -internet/

There are many other numerous ways to block Internet access or access to certain websites by a country, some legitimate and some illegitimate like example 2 above. All in all, it is very easy to block entire countries from the Internet should the need arise.

But you're talking about blocking internet access from a second country to a proxy in any other third country (that you're not blocking). In the above, the only method that would possibly be applicable would be using the root name servers (which would still mean the cooperation of other countries. )

Defiant wrote:

Rip wrote:
You have to be able to reach a proxy, meaning you have a working IP address and route to it.

BGP allows you to advertise routes but it is up to others uplink to advertise them. If they don't, bang you have an IP but it won't take you anywhere outside the local AS.

http://tommakau.com/2012/12/09/how-do-c ... -internet/

There are many other numerous ways to block Internet access or access to certain websites by a country, some legitimate and some illegitimate like example 2 above. All in all, it is very easy to block entire countries from the Internet should the need arise.

But you're talking about blocking internet access from a second country to a proxy in any other third country (that you're not blocking). In the above, the only method that would possibly be applicable would be using the root name servers (which would still mean the cooperation of other countries. )

You are worrying about domain names. I am talking about sending the traffic itself into a hole. For any ISP in Syria to provide access they have to advertise BGP routes. It is up to the neighbors of those systems to accept and propagate those routes. If every direct neighbor rejected BGP advertisements for them the IPs would not be able to leave/enter that ISP. It is up to those direct neighbors whether to allow ip packets or not.

It can also be disrupted by someone upstream advertising those routes to a null interface.

At some point any IP you want to reach has to be advertised and that advertising is dependent on your peers. If they don't cooperate you are screwed.

A more detailed discussion can be found here.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011 ... -internet/

However, it seems unlikely that the Egyptian ISPs removed 3,500 prefixes, if only because that means removing 3,500 lines from router configurations. Usually, two or three routers advertise a prefix—more is overkill, but less is dangerous because if the advertising routers go down, the addresses fall off of the 'Net. An easier way would be to make a filter that simply doesn't allow any outgoing BGP advertisements.

It could also be that the big "border" routers that the Egyptian ISPs use to connect to ISPs in Italy and elsewhere were disconnected or turned off. This works well in a relatively small country with only a few ISPs.

Couldn't ISIS simply offshore their YouTube stars and start uploading their content from other countries? It would be less efficient and perhaps less frequent, but the "pirate radio" factor might just add interest.

They can move oil, trucks, money, bullets, and RPG's over numerous borders. I'm sure they can move words and video.

Holman wrote:Couldn't ISIS simply offshore their YouTube stars and start uploading their content from other countries? It would be less efficient and perhaps less frequent, but the "pirate radio" factor might just add interest.

They can move oil, trucks, money, bullets, and RPG's over numerous borders. I'm sure they can move words and video.

Absolutely.

I certainly don't think the approach would be all that effective but blocking internet access to a vast majority of Syria is technically feasible.

Don't the "good guys" (or at least less-bad-guys) use the net too?

Kraken wrote:Don't the "good guys" (or at least less-bad-guys) use the net too?

Was about to post exactly this. Man, it would suck for basically everyone else in the country to suddenly be thrown into an information blackout because ISIS is there. Now, instead of being mostly screwed because they suddenly have some incredibly crummy people in the country, they're completely screwed because it gets way harder to figure a way to get out of the situation when your communication is completely cut off.

But hey, it's cool. I'm sure everyone in Syria is a sekrit terrorist anyway.

Meanwhile, in the birds-of-a-feather department...........

Warning: If you so much as even think about posting a picture of a shirtless Trump, I will hunt you down and you will be the second sorriest OO member on Earth.

Err what tgb said

tru1cy wrote:Trump has Putin support

Look up. Right above you.

Kraken wrote:Don't the "good guys" (or at least less-bad-guys) use the net too?

I'm not even gonna touch on the ethics of killing communication into or out of an entire country, especially not one that you aren't currently in a state of war with.

GreenGoo wrote:
I'm not even gonna touch on the ethics of killing communication into or out of an entire country, especially not one that you aren't currently in a state of war with.

Give it time.

Rip wrote:
At some point any IP you want to reach has to be advertised and that advertising is dependent on your peers. If they don't cooperate you are screwed.

Yeah, I get that, it's just that I thought getting the peers to agree to it because you don't like ISIS might be a problem. I don't know how many countries would need to buy-in. I've been assuming it's "a lot" but I could (probably?) be wrong. I'm also under the impression that when Syria's peers decide to stop listening to them, Syria could get new peers. It's unclear to me how much depends on physical location and how much is purely logical in nature. The amount of data in a twitter post (Terrorist communication/planning) or youtube video (Terrorist propaganda) ranges from minuscule to tiny. You don't need a fat pipe.

If the US decided to stop handling traffic from Canada, can I route around the US to get to Mexico? I think the answer is yes, but I'm not 100% sure. And that's with water on 2 sides and big empty space on the 3rd side.

I just spoke to one of the "brilliant minds" Trump was referring to, and he mentioned something that had a surge of popularity a few years ago, which was a weave network, which (as far as I can tell) is not that different from the internet except one of the goals is to have a network that is not easily controlled by central authorities. Any device that can transmit wirelessly (although wires work too, you can cut wires more easily) would join as both a client and part of the backbone of the network. Conceptually it's not that different from bit torrent, if that helps anyone. So anyone with a handheld device would/could join and help transmit data around. No ISP is involved. It's more complicated and cooler than it sounds, but the bottom line is that unless Trump can stop signals between cell phones, data is coming out of Syria.

There is also the possibility of clandestine border devices being stood up. Each of those would have to be stomped on a daily basis and it would become a cat and mouse, whack-a-mole situation. Black vans versus white vans. Doable in the short term but long term viability is questionable, not to mention that until you whack a specific mole data is coming out of and going into Syria. So it would be like a colander where America and American allies run around plugging holes while anyone (including Terrorists, but really, anyone interested in information) runs around poking holes in it. It is literally impossible to stop them before they poke the holes, so the best you can hope for is to plug them as fast as possible.

tgb wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:
I'm not even gonna touch on the ethics of killing communication into or out of an entire country, especially not one that you aren't currently in a state of war with.

Give it time.

You haven't been in a formal "state of war" with an entire nation since...when was the last declaration of war made, anyway? Korea? Did the US declare war on Iraq over Kuwait?

Isgrimnur wrote:WWII

So the US wasn't are war with anyone for vietnam or Korea.

Nice.

GreenGoo wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:WWII

So the US wasn't are war with anyone for vietnam or Korea.

Nice.

They were just military engagements. However, the list conspicuously omits Drugs, Terror, and Obesity.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:WWII

So the US wasn't are war with anyone for vietnam or Korea.

Nice.

They were just military engagements. However, the list conspicuously omits Drugs, Terror, and Obesity.

Went there but then pulled back. Glad someone took up the reins anyway.

For the record I'm not overly critical of the whole situation because geo-politics are hard and not something I've spent a lot of time on. it does seems absurd that engagements that lasted years, involved near constant fighting and have war beside their name in the history books were not actually formal states of war.

GreenGoo wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:WWII

So the US wasn't are war with anyone for vietnam or Korea.

Nice.

In Korea there was at least a UN military authorization. Though not apparently an actual U.S. declaration of war.

GreenGoo wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:WWII

So the US wasn't are war with anyone for vietnam or Korea.

Nice.

They were just military engagements. However, the list conspicuously omits Drugs, Terror, and Obesity.

Went there but then pulled back. Glad someone took up the reins anyway.

For the record I'm not overly critical of the whole situation because geo-politics are hard and not something I've spent a lot of time on. it does seems absurd that engagements that lasted years, involved near constant fighting and have war beside their name in the history books were not actually formal states of war.

Vietnam is at least defensible in that it was at least nominally a civil war conflict, not an interstate conflict. The mission was essentially defending the government of South Vietnam against a communist insurgency (albeit one aided materially and militarily by North Vietnam), and (notwithstanding the GWOT rhetoric) a state can't literally declare war against a non-state actor.

There's no real defense of not declaring war against Afghanistan and Iraq seeing as how we invaded states in both cases. For what it's worth we legally rested that on the fiction that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) necessarily involved (implicit!) declarations of war against any state involved in 9/11 (which of course Iraq wasn't, but you know, shrug).

GreenGoo wrote:Yeah, I get that, it's just that I thought getting the peers to agree to it because you don't like ISIS might be a problem. I don't know how many countries would need to buy-in. I've been assuming it's "a lot" but I could (probably?) be wrong. I'm also under the impression that when Syria's peers decide to stop listening to them, Syria could get new peers. It's unclear to me how much depends on physical location and how much is purely logical in nature. The amount of data in a twitter post (Terrorist communication/planning) or youtube video (Terrorist propaganda) ranges from minuscule to tiny. You don't need a fat pipe.

Depending on how it's done though - let's say you set up a new peering agreement with Iraq or Turkey - the main question will be can it handle the volume of traffic that suddenly appears. There would need to be a fair amount of monkeying (via trial and error mostly) to clean up the pipe enough to be usable potentially.

If the US decided to stop handling traffic from Canada, can I route around the US to get to Mexico? I think the answer is yes, but I'm not 100% sure. And that's with water on 2 sides and big empty space on the 3rd side.

I'd say yes to this because there are many carriers involved. Cutting off a western country is pretty much impossible. You could think of creative ways to cause a lot of trouble though. Shut down the big circuits and congestion will become an insurmountable problem very quickly.

I just spoke to one of the "brilliant minds" Trump was referring to, and he mentioned something that had a surge of popularity a few years ago, which was a weave network, which (as far as I can tell) is not that different from the internet except one of the goals is to have a network that is not easily controlled by central authorities. Any device that can transmit wirelessly (although wires work too, you can cut wires more easily) would join as both a client and part of the backbone of the network. Conceptually it's not that different from bit torrent, if that helps anyone. So anyone with a handheld device would/could join and help transmit data around. No ISP is involved. It's more complicated and cooler than it sounds, but the bottom line is that unless Trump can stop signals between cell phones, data is coming out of Syria.

Get something high enough to have line of sight and with enough power (which isn't much in relative terms) and you can jam anything. A country the size of Syria probably can be handled with a single plane / maybe two and they don't even have to be in-country.

There is also the possibility of clandestine border devices being stood up. Each of those would have to be stomped on a daily basis and it would become a cat and mouse, whack-a-mole situation. Black vans versus white vans. Doable in the short term but long term viability is questionable, not to mention that until you whack a specific mole data is coming out of and going into Syria. So it would be like a colander where America and American allies run around plugging holes while anyone (including Terrorists, but really, anyone interested in information) runs around poking holes in it. It is literally impossible to stop them before they poke the holes, so the best you can hope for is to plug them as fast as possible.

It isn't this simple. Yes you wouldn't stop every single packet coming out of the country but for a country like Syria which had more direct control over communications - blocking 99+% of the traffic is an easy task. It's actually a price to be paid for authoritarianism - you open yourself up to more communication risks. Even if you could stand up this border router you still need to connect to infrastructure to get from that border to somewhere that needs it. The same infrastructure that was probably compromised in the first place.

malchior wrote:Get something high enough to have line of sight and with enough power (which isn't much in relative terms) and you can jam anything. A country the size of Syria probably can be handled with a single plane / maybe two and they don't even have to be in-country.

Um....ok. I admit that radio waves are magic to me, but that doesn't sound right. And the topics being discussed require different levels of jamming, depending on what we're talking about.

Jamming satellites would require jamming coverage of almost 200,000 square kms. That's a fairly large area. You're suggesting that you could jam that with a single plane from the side. I guess I don't believe you. I'll go educate myself and apologize if I'm wrong.

For the weave net, you need to be able to jam the signal between my phone and Fred's, who's sitting in a cubicle 10 feet away from me. And then between Fred's phone and Sally's, another 10 feet away. And all the other phones in range of Fred's, as it's a web, not linear. This signal never goes to a cell phone provider's tower, it just goes sideways 10 feet. Again, you're suggesting you can stop that with a single plane from thousands of miles away. I don't believe you.

malchior wrote: blocking 99+% of the traffic is an easy task. It's actually a price to be paid for authoritarianism - you open yourself up to more communication risks. Even if you could stand up this border router you still need to connect to infrastructure to get from that border to somewhere that needs it. The same infrastructure that was probably compromised in the first place.

No. You don't have access to the country's infrastructure. unless you believe your good friend Assad is going to willingly give up communication with the outside world, you don't have that level of access to the country's infrastructure. You can, at best get all it's neighbours to stop listening to it. And even that isn't going to work, because there are ways to bypass the neighbours.

Let's put it this way. Even if you were a full blown dictatorship with complete control over your country's infrastructure, you're not going to be able to stop people from getting their messages out. Sure you can reduce the total bandwidth (I mean this as a measure of data leaving the country, not a specific measurement on a specific data line) leaving the country to a trickle, but Terrorists are going to make sure that they are part of that trickle. And all they need is a trickle. They aren't Netflix. They could do their deal in flat text over a 1300 baud modem if they need to.

So if you're Assad and you decide to turn off your country, you can't stop ISIS from talking to the world. And in this case, you're NOT Assad, in fact Assad is probably going to fight any attempt to stop communication with his country. So you have to stop it from the outside. Even if you manage to shutdown all air born communication (I'm dubious, but also ignorant) you aren't going to shut down all data flow out of the country without the help of every neighbour, and even with the help of every neighbour, dudes are gonna run clandestine networks all over the place anyway. Whether they are physical (more difficult) or air born (easier, but easily jammed apparently) doesn't matter, because stopping them permanently is impossible.

It's easy, just use a tachyon network. Modulate the frequencies if you have to.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:WWII

So the US wasn't are war with anyone for vietnam or Korea.

Nice.

They were just military engagements. However, the list conspicuously omits Drugs, Terror, and Obesity.

You forgot the most vicious war of them all, The War on Christmas.

If radio jamming was this easy, how on EARTH are drones a viable technology that we are developing for the future of warfare?

I'm not being facetious or claiming this is evidence. I'm asking a sincere question.

Jamming takes a lot of energy to blanket the spectrum, and is indiscriminate. Also, we haven't been in the habit of bombing people on a technologically level playing field in quite a while. And if you're on the ground throwing out lots of EM, we have ways of shutting you down.

GreenGoo wrote:

malchior wrote:Get something high enough to have line of sight and with enough power (which isn't much in relative terms) and you can jam anything. A country the size of Syria probably can be handled with a single plane / maybe two and they don't even have to be in-country.

Um....ok. I admit that radio waves are magic to me, but that doesn't sound right. And the topics being discussed require different levels of jamming, depending on what we're talking about.

Jamming satellites would require jamming coverage of almost 200,000 square kms. That's a fairly large area. You're suggesting that you could jam that with a single plane from the side. I guess I don't believe you. I'll go educate myself and apologize if I'm wrong.

For the weave net, you need to be able to jam the signal between my phone and Fred's, who's sitting in a cubicle 10 feet away from me. And then between Fred's phone and Sally's, another 10 feet away. And all the other phones in range of Fred's, as it's a web, not linear. This signal never goes to a cell phone provider's tower, it just goes sideways 10 feet. Again, you're suggesting you can stop that with a single plane from thousands of miles away. I don't believe you.

malchior wrote: blocking 99+% of the traffic is an easy task. It's actually a price to be paid for authoritarianism - you open yourself up to more communication risks. Even if you could stand up this border router you still need to connect to infrastructure to get from that border to somewhere that needs it. The same infrastructure that was probably compromised in the first place.

No. You don't have access to the country's infrastructure. unless you believe your good friend Assad is going to willingly give up communication with the outside world, you don't have that level of access to the country's infrastructure. You can, at best get all it's neighbours to stop listening to it. And even that isn't going to work, because there are ways to bypass the neighbours.

Let's put it this way. Even if you were a full blown dictatorship with complete control over your country's infrastructure, you're not going to be able to stop people from getting their messages out. Sure you can reduce the total bandwidth (I mean this as a measure of data leaving the country, not a specific measurement on a specific data line) leaving the country to a trickle, but Terrorists are going to make sure that they are part of that trickle. And all they need is a trickle. They aren't Netflix. They could do their deal in flat text over a 1300 baud modem if they need to.

So if you're Assad and you decide to turn off your country, you can't stop ISIS from talking to the world. And in this case, you're NOT Assad, in fact Assad is probably going to fight any attempt to stop communication with his country. So you have to stop it from the outside. Even if you manage to shutdown all air born communication (I'm dubious, but also ignorant) you aren't going to shut down all data flow out of the country without the help of every neighbour, and even with the help of every neighbour, dudes are gonna run clandestine networks all over the place anyway. Whether they are physical (more difficult) or air born (easier, but easily jammed apparently) doesn't matter, because stopping them permanently is impossible.

We know, since the incident of the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea on the 12th April 2014, that the Russian Air Force has at its disposition a weapon which enables it to jam all radars, all control circuits, all systems for the transmission of information, etc. [6]. Since the beginning of its military deployment, Russia had installed a jamming centre at Hmeymim, to the North of Latakia. Then, suddenly, the USS Donald Cook incident occurred, but this time within a perimeter of 300 kilometres – which includes the NATO base at Incirlik (Turkey). And this is still going on. Because the event happened during a sand-storm of historical proportions, the Pentagon first thought its measuring equipment had malfunctioned, but then discovered that it had been jammed. Completely.

http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2015/ ... 50696.html

Now of course that is Russia but I can assure you are jamming capabilities are every bit as effective as theirs.

As far as peering arrangements to route around blocks to IP traffic. To get anywhere of use you would need a tier one provider onboard.


Name Headquarters
AT&T United States
Cogent Communications (formerly PSINet) United States
CenturyLink(formerly Qwest) United States
Deutsche Telekom Germany
Telefónica Spain
Global Telecom & Technology (GTT) (formerly Tinet & nLayer) United States - Italy
Level 3 Communications (formerly Level 3 and Global Crossing) United States
NTT Communications (America) (formerly Verio) Japan
Orange(OpenTransit) France
Tata Communications (America) (Acquired Teleglobe) India
Telecom Italia Sparkle(Seabone) Italy
TeliaSonera International Carrier Sweden - Finland
Verizon Enterprise Solutions (formerly UUNET) United States
XO Communications United States
Zayo Group (formerly AboveNet) United States
Hurricane Electric United States

Which one of those guy do you think would side with Syria over the U.S./EU governments?

I'm actually struggling to find details on the subject. I fully admit it's my search that is the problem. Lots of articles on Jamming as a concept, but magnitude/range/capability have not been easy to find (in the 5 minutes I've spent so far.).

Thanks for the article Rip, I'll read it.

edit: My ability to do square roots in my head has suffered a devastating blow to it's confidence today. Syria is much smaller than I thought.

Jamming capabilities tend to be something that nations don't want to advertise. You might start with the RC-135U Combat Sent, but I imagine other variants have some capabilities as well.

GreenGoo wrote:I'm actually struggling to find details on the subject. I fully admit it's my search that is the problem. Lots of articles on Jamming as a concept, but magnitude/range/capability have not been easy to find (in the 5 minutes I've spent so far.).

Thanks for the article Rip, I'll read it.

edit: My ability to do square roots in my head has suffered a devastating blow to it's confidence today. Syria is much smaller than I thought.

The US has always been very protective of EW capabilities. The Russians have pretty much caught up with us as far as field equipment atm, but the next gen stuff is in the pipe, just a matter of funding.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/we- ... er-015217/

Don't expect much detail of capabilities, unless Hillary happened to send an e-mail about it.

Rip wrote:
Which one of those guy do you think would side with Syria over the U.S./EU governments?

This is well beyond my level of knowledge, but if we ignore the ability to slip onto the internet through other means, and I believe that those on your list are the sole gate keepers for the internet (Russia must shit it's pants every time the US looks at it sideways, for example. That doesn't seem intuitively obvious), I'd suggest that any one of those companies/countries that value the integrity of the internet or international "fairness". Which is my way of saying that the question is not choosing between ISIS and the US, but between the ideals behind freedom of information and the internet and the US trying to exert influence over it for political and/or military reasons.

So the short answer is, I don't know that any of them would agree automatically to the US's request, or that they could be bullied/cajoled/bought through diplomatic means or otherwise.

Everybody is an ally until you ask them to do something that they don't want to do. Suddenly everyone becomes their own sovereign nation, inconveniently.

But I get your point and if your list is accurate and your statements that no one gets any internet without at least one member of that list approving of it, things start to move toward the realm of possibility. That said, one hold out and you're screwed.

Rip wrote:

We know, since the incident of the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea on the 12th April 2014, that the Russian Air Force has at its disposition a weapon which enables it to jam all radars, all control circuits, all systems for the transmission of information, etc. [6]. Since the beginning of its military deployment, Russia had installed a jamming centre at Hmeymim, to the North of Latakia. Then, suddenly, the USS Donald Cook incident occurred, but this time within a perimeter of 300 kilometres – which includes the NATO base at Incirlik (Turkey). And this is still going on. Because the event happened during a sand-storm of historical proportions, the Pentagon first thought its measuring equipment had malfunctioned, but then discovered that it had been jammed. Completely.

http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2015/ ... 50696.html

You may want to consider providing sources that aren't conspiracy theorists. The author of that story is also the author of a book called "9/11: The Big Lie." Other current articles on Before It's News: "Adolf Hitler Lived to 95 with His Brazilian Bride" and (I am not kidding) "We Are All Being Set Up."

Isgrimnur wrote:Jamming capabilities tend to be something that nations don't want to advertise. You might start with the RC-135U Combat Sent, but I imagine other variants have some capabilities as well.

And that's fine. This is not an area of information that I typically visit. Several people have said it would be trivial. I'm struggling to believe it. In their argument's favour, 185,000 square kilometers is not as big as I thought it was.

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:
Which one of those guy do you think would side with Syria over the U.S./EU governments?

This is well beyond my level of knowledge, but if we ignore the ability to slip onto the internet through other means, and I believe that those on your list are the sole gate keepers for the internet (Russia must shit it's pants every time the US looks at it sideways, for example. That doesn't seem intuitively obvious), I'd suggest that any one of those companies/countries that value the integrity of the internet or international "fairness". Which is my way of saying that the question is not choosing between ISIS and the US, but between the ideals behind freedom of information and the internet and the US trying to exert influence over it for political and/or military reasons.

So the short answer is, I don't know that any of them would agree automatically to the US's request, or that they could be bullied/cajoled/bought through diplomatic means or otherwise.

Everybody is an ally until you ask them to do something that they don't want to do. Suddenly everyone becomes their own sovereign nation, inconveniently.

But I get your point and if your list is accurate and your statements that no one gets any internet without at least one member of that list approving of it, things start to move toward the realm of possibility. That said, one hold out and you're screwed.

Then you haven't seen how they throw open the doors and bite their tongues every time the NSA wants to tap into something. They already abandoned fairness and freedom of information long ago.