Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

This is a hilarious scaremongering article written for those who are clueless. No surprise as it turns out it is from the comically named neocon outfit Foundation for the Defense of Democracies which is the most bellicose warmongering think tank in DC. They never met a poor third world country that they didn’t want bombed.

As for 6G the reason we have no leadership is that Lucent was run into the ground by a mindset of constantly meeting Wall Street earnings expectations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucent

Huawei surpassed the Europeans (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens etc...) because they invested and innovated and bet the farm on the foundational technology invented by Erdal Arikan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdal_Arıkan

https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-5g-polar-codes-data-break...

> Huawei is proposing a fundamental internet redesign, which it calls “New IP,” designed to build “intrinsic security” into the web. Intrinsic security means that individuals must register to use the internet

We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet. You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID. You used to be able to get prepaid SIM cards in most countries till we put pressure on them.

> Instead, Huawei has worked through the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU), where Beijing holds more political sway.

The ITU is the right address that most countries accept as the standards bodies for telecommuncations interoperability. By the way we don’t have to abide by the ITU or the world as we routinely ignore the UN anyways.

In fact there is precedence of us going our own way. We adopted CDMA and majority of the world adopted GSM in the first phase of the digital mobile adoption. They only truly converged on a mass market level about 15-20 years later with 4G.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio...

We can create our own version of 6G and ignore other approaches.

> We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet. You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID. You used to be able to get prepaid SIM cards in most countries till we put pressure on them.

In the UK at least a pre paid sim is 99p if you buy it from a shop, you can pay with cash and there's no registration procedure. I doubt we're the only country in the world that works like this.

In the US, buying an anonymous SIM is as easy.

Go to any bestbuy, the "registration" procedure is a joke: you can basically tell them your name is Rosie O'Donnell and live on the moon.

You don't need to register at all for most prepaid SIMs in the U.S.

In countries where registration is required, you can simply ask a homeless person and they'll happily buy a sim for you for a small fee.

And the store staffs won’t be able to activate the SIM if his place of residence and driver’s license or national ID card together can’t be verified at the other end of the FAX machine.

Even when I signed up for DSL in the UK, they didn't ask for personal details that could be verified. Didn't need a credit check either. I'm sure somebody there could make the connection to me but it's not like I needed to show any kind of identification.

Although his case is somewhat overstated, he isn't wrong about the direction that the US (& it's IC partner countries) are heading.

> You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID.

Most free public Wi-Fi in the US (libraries, universities, airports, malls, hospitals) don't require ID to use, and usually only require accepting a ToS.

> We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet. You cannot get Internet anywhere without ID.

This is clearly false here in Canada. Open and free Wifi is everywhere, and you can purchase sims with cash and no id.

It's extremely easy to get anonymous Internet in the United States. Open wifi access points are everywhere and prepaid SIMs don't require any sort of ID or registration.

> We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet.

This is just wrong. Whenever I travel I just get a 30 day or so SIM card. They've available everywhere. Not to mention WIFI access points here and there, e.g. at hotels, coffee shops etc.

> We forced the world after 9/11 to block anonymous Internet

You didn’t, and it reeks of upmost arrogance to even assume that you could “force” the world to do such a thing.

American exceptionalism all too often seems to cut both ways.

Particularly in the US citizens who have grown up in the aftermath of 9/11 amid their hyper power at the height of its power having a decade long meltdown, I have noticed a near complete lack of perspective regarding the agency of other countries, especially allies.

Ex-Lucent and Bell Labs you'll find today at Nokia e.g. https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/12/07/noki...

You completely avoided the main point of the article which is people having their internet access revoked becoming equivalent to losing your drivers license. Right now you cannot be banned from the internet, the only way government can withhold internet access is through imprisonment, the internet should be open for all.

snippet from link to author link:

Theo Lebryk is an intern at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, where he is pursuing a Master’s in China Studies. His research focuses on media in China. He previously graduated from Harvard University with a joint concentration in Social Studies and East Asian Studies and a minor in Computer Science. After graduation, Theo was awarded a Michael C. Rockefeller Fellowship to explore homeless and food culture in Hong Kong.

Me: I’d say he did his homework well.

They are proposing New IP system that requires people to register with their real ID in order to use the internet anywhere, not just in China. That’s pretty dystopian in my book.

You have to verify your ID or drivers license to get a SIM in Switzerland

Same in Germany. Different in NL though, or at least last I checked two years ago.

Do you also have to put your ID in to go browse WiFi in a nearby coffee shop?

There’s plenty of ways to browse internet anonymously in Switzerland.

We have similar laws supposedly to stop people from using burner phones and engaging in crime.

> This is a hilarious scaremongering article

You're not addressing any of the dystopian points.

China is a tyranny that treats its people like cattle, and when they present a tool that would give them absolute control over their population, all you can do is attack the technical aspects?

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