[LINK] 'kill switch' bill passes US Senate Committee

[Karl Auer]

On Sat, 2010-06-26 at 10:17 +1000, Stilgherrian wrote:
> On 26/06/2010, at 10:03 AM, Fred Pilcher wrote:
> > Can someone describe what would happen if the US turned off its Internet?
> > 
> > Are the root servers distributed enough for the old "treats it as damage 
> > and routes around it" thing to kick in? Or is it, in fact, a US national 
> > asset?
> 
> Well, here's a map of the root servers. Enough?
> 
>     http://www.root-servers.org/map/

Hm. Of the four nameservers in Oz, two are run by an American company,
(VeriSign), one by a Swedish company (Autonomica) and one by an American
non-profit (ISC). Odd that not one is run by an Australian entity.

So if we assume that in  time of crisis Verisign and ISC will follow
their leaders' wishes, we'd be left in the hands of the Swedes :-)

Not that it would take much effort to revert to off-shore nameservers
(or even set up a new root nameserver), but things would certainly get
confused for a bit.

That's just name service though. What other critical infrastructure is
there? Does Google count? Or do we all just switch over to using
Bing :-)?

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)

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