The 61 Countries a Mad Despot Could Instantly Unplug From the Internet | Hacker News Reader

The 61 Countries a Mad Despot Could Instantly Unplug From the Internet

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37 pointscyphersanctus29 comments

Shouldn't having a "Mad Despot" also be a requirement? Both Island and Greenland are on the list, but are both democratic.

They probably have few internet providers because they are so small.

Greenland has a population of 56K. Iceland 320K and almost all live in the same city.

In this case the article seems to be taking the approach (for fun I suspect) of "If you wanted to be a Mad Despot, and part of your plan was to cut off the Internet to achieve this, which countries should you target". While Ireland and Greenland are on the list, I thin there are better options for your "average" mad despot. On the other hand, you have to start somewhere...

Just to point out it isn't "Island" or Ireland on the list but Iceland.

Iceland is "Island" in Icelandic and most other Scandinavian languages, and the OP appears to be Norwegian.

Agreed. It seems odd that the countries author chose to highlight are not special for much of anything but their size. If you are going to go for small countries, might well talk about individual states, prefectures, counties, etc. I bet if the Governor of Hawaii was a "Mad Despot" he could turn off the internet just as well as President of Iceland.

PS. Greenland is really odd, because it is part of Denmark. Why did they break it out separately?

Greenland is .gl, Denmark is .dk. On the internet they are different. :)

Because it is an extreme case: small population, almost no diversity, and on an isolated island. There aren't many internet connections to Greenland and there isn't much demand for different ISPs either. So cutting a cable or an ISP off of the Internet cuts off the whole country (it's an autonomous country).

So, a mad despot or a sloppy construction worker could cut Greenland off of the internet.

Another interesting case mentioned in the Article is The Netherlands: a small country, a small population, but a enormous amount of ISPs and connections to other countries. Good luck cutting that off as a whole, you mad despot!

I don't think the map relates to the "Mad Despot", and I think it's only about risk of disconnection (including accidental disconnection). I was shocked to see Portugal there at first, but I guess they have transatlantic cables to USA or maybe to UK and not much to mainland / Spain, and that's why they are low risk.

Original's Renesys (the map creator) here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-your-... (I don't have time to parse it now, my first paragraph is just an idea)

Portuguese here.

I had a quick look at the link you provided, it has to do with the amount of national communication providers really route the traffic across borders.

Since most of the traffic goes over Portugal Telecom, switching them off, would already cut most of the traffic I imagine. Specially because they also own most of the internal cabling, even when the service is offered by other companies.

An other interesting question is: who is at the other end of those single cables? Those parties can switch of the Internet in a neighboring country or, (worse) eavesdrop on all unencrypted traffic or (worst) silently change data (imagine modifying the contens of cnn.com or bbc.co.uk) going into and out of that country.

For example, I would hope for Cuba that their connection is to Venezuela, and not to Miami.

Glad I am not living in one of those countries :))

Surprising that china is low risk in their map. Their metric is clearly flawed, for china already "blocks" off the whole Internet.

I would argue the exact contrary. China tried and failed to control their internet. The famous virtual wall of china is very easily surmounted.

The metric isn't about who is more or less likely to try to isolate the country from the internet but rather how hard is it to actually accomplish such a feat?

Only very few websites are blocked in China, not the whole Internet.

Same flaw for Russia.

what they need to be looking at are underwater cable landings [1] and not "greater than 40 ISPs".

http://www.cablemap.info/

Do they even have the internet in N. Korea? I guess senegal in white means 'no information available' rather than 100% safe from despots

Apparently they have internet in North Korea. Even have a single Internet cafe in Pyongyang according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea .

However they could have a hundred internet providers there, but if Kim wanted to collectively log off it wouldn't help much I suppose.

It's probably not the number of service providers that matters. It's the power of the Mad Despot.

My understanding is that only the government and military elite have access from North Korea.

They have an intranet in N.Korea. They have some websites (e.g wikipedia) in it as local copies from the internet

How are India, Estonia and Latvia on the same rung as highly suppression-ist China?

This is clearly facetious.

It's about being technically feasible, not about having the political will. New Zealand is on there for example, I believe it has a single pipe therefore easily cut, but it would be highly surprising to see it happen by government cause (more likely an undersea accident). I thought Australia would be the same but I guess it has a lot more infrastructure going across the pacific and also north.

The same India that has been charging people with crimes for voicing criticism of politicians on the internet?

I presume you are talking about the recent "facebook related arrests". Just so you know, not every country outside the U.S., is a single monolithic block where just because some asswipe cop(s) decides to hassle kids, it means that the entire country has decided as an official policy to hassle people on that charge. Some other examples of similar specious arguments:

1. Austria is bad because a tor exit operator got raided.

2. The MPAA/RIAA decides to sue a bunch of kids for music torrenting. Ergo America is bad.

Also, presuming from the comment to the OP, I assume you are somehow leaping from "Charge people for criticism" to "unplug the internet": I would really love to hear your reasoning for this.

(FYI, this is not a defense of the Indian justice system or me "taking offense" or even an attempt to assert that India is not at low risk of being disconnected: I personally give 0 fucks. I just find these specious arguments silly and have no idea why intelligent people make these arguments when it comes to foreign countries. )

And you've gotten my exact point. It may also surprise you how local China's suppression is.

I'm well aware that India isn't one monolithic government (nor any other country) - I'm pointing out the exact point in OP.

For example, the many human rights abuses related to enforcing the one-child policy - forced abortions, confiscation of property, etc. If you actually look at them you will realize that the bulk of it originates in local government. Much of China's most galling, shocking abuses come from the minds of local politicians, rather than by central dictat.

The rampant nepotism and corruption in the Chinese government is largely an expression of just how little control its central authorities have over their localized branches.

Moral comparisons between countries is usually ill-advised for this exact reason. This sort of baseless moral superiority bugs me - India is not nearly as far from China as OP seems to think it is, at least when it comes to online freedoms.

> Moral comparisons between countries is usually ill-advised for this exact reason. This sort of baseless moral superiority bugs me - India is not nearly as far from China as OP seems to think it is, at least when it comes to online freedoms.

Completely agreed on making moral comparisons. I have noticed this in a few threads involving developing countries where people emerge out of the woodwork to rant about either A) How everyone is victimizing aforesaid developing country and they should just stop. or B) Make a completely irrelevant argument about how the developing country in question making progress in X is irrelevant because of abuses or oppressions or whatever. Both of these are from opposing camps but are founded on bad logic.

India has a strong judiciary that such acts will not be left unquestioned by the court - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20551955

Not sure if you're taking offense on India, Estonia, or Latvia's behalf, or you believe that China is totally monolithic.

Either way if you look at the legend, the color coding indicates that India, Estonia, Latvia, and China are at "low risk" to a "mad despot" being able to unplug the whole country.

That indicates that each nation has quite a few connections to the outside world.

Did you read the article? This is about the resilience of the internet in these countries based on the number of connections they have to the outside world.

This article wasn't about politics, it was about technical feasibility.

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