Is Martial Law a possibility?

[BOfH]

Originally Posted by Dusty

You hit it with the MSM-main problem for the Country.

Martial Law goes from "possible" to "certain" if the internet goes down.

Completely shutting down the internet in this country would be very difficult, if not impossible; local or regional shutdown are definitely possible though. Aside from the fact that the protocols which are responsible for connection and routing of traffic are/were designed for resiliency, there are many ingress and egress points for traffic in this country. Check out http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ to get an idea of the submarine cable landing points here in the US; bear in mind that this doesn't even include domestic backbone circuits belonging to a multitude of carriers. Some recent incident's of note which prove this point were the strong storms(derechos) that passed through central/eastern US during the summer and Hurricane Sandy. During the summer storms, datacenter's in Ashburn, VA which provide peering for many of major backbones on the east coast were knocked offline; while there was some connection issues and traffic degradation, overall, routing protocols designed for this scenario rerouted traffic through other circuits, avoiding the downed links.

My .02

[Dusty]

Originally Posted by BOfH

Completely shutting down the internet in this country would be very difficult, if not impossible; local or regional shutdown are definitely possible though. Aside from the fact that the protocols which are responsible for connection and routing of traffic are/were designed for resiliency, there are many ingress and egress points for traffic in this country. Check out http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ to get an idea of the submarine cable landing points here in the US; bear in mind that this doesn't even include domestic backbone circuits belonging to a multitude of carriers. Some recent incident's of note which prove this point were the strong storms(derechos) that passed through central/eastern US during the summer and Hurricane Sandy. During the summer storms, datacenter's in Ashburn, VA which provide peering for many of major backbones on the east coast were knocked offline; while there was some connection issues and traffic degradation, overall, routing protocols designed for this scenario rerouted traffic through other circuits, avoiding the downed links.

My .02

EMP

[Knight]

Originally Posted by BOfH

Completely shutting down the internet in this country would be very difficult, if not impossible; local or regional shutdown are definitely possible though. Aside from the fact that the protocols which are responsible for connection and routing of traffic are/were designed for resiliency, there are many ingress and egress points for traffic in this country. Check out http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ to get an idea of the submarine cable landing points here in the US; bear in mind that this doesn't even include domestic backbone circuits belonging to a multitude of carriers. Some recent incident's of note which prove this point were the strong storms(derechos) that passed through central/eastern US during the summer and Hurricane Sandy. During the summer storms, datacenter's in Ashburn, VA which provide peering for many of major backbones on the east coast were knocked offline; while there was some connection issues and traffic degradation, overall, routing protocols designed for this scenario rerouted traffic through other circuits, avoiding the downed links.

My .02

I beg to differ that it is impossible; I'm certain the shut off was established before all the high technology was released to the public. They have given the public a tool that they could become dependent on and shutting down the net would cause mass panic and allow more control to be imposed almost instantly. We as a society have become so dependent upon this technology, (computers, cell phones, etc.), that most would sit in their houses and wonder what the hell to do rather than walk down the street to make contact with a friend or relative. I do agree that it will only happen locally at first, just as martial law will.

[BOfH]

Originally Posted by Dusty

EMP

That would do it, however, it would also be self-defeating as the government leans pretty heavily on private infrastructure and COTS hardware/software. Additionally many datacenters have Faraday cages.

My .02

[Dusty]

Originally Posted by BOfH

That would do it, however, it would also be self-defeating as the government leans pretty heavily on private infrastructure and COTS hardware/software. Additionally many datacenters have Faraday cages.

My .02

I'm not implying that our government will use an EMP device on itself; I doubt we're the only power capable of that tactic.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Knight

I'm certain the shut off was established before all the high technology was released to the public.

Precisely what is your evidence for this sense of certainty?

[BOfH]

Originally Posted by Dusty

I'm not implying that our government will use an EMP device on itself; I doubt we're the only power capable of that tactic.

Agreed. I framed by post around the original thread topic of martial law as imposed by local and/or federal government, with the internet as a point of control. If a foreign entity were to deploy and EMP weapon against the US, then yes, you could say bye bye to most of our infrastructure.

[BOfH]

Originally Posted by Knight

I beg to differ that it is impossible; I'm certain the shut off was established before all the high technology was released to the public. They have given the public a tool that they could become dependent on and shutting down the net would cause mass panic and allow more control to be imposed almost instantly. We as a society have become so dependent upon this technology, (computers, cell phones, etc.), that most would sit in their houses and wonder what the hell to do rather than walk down the street to make contact with a friend or relative. I do agree that it will only happen locally at first, just as martial law will.

The internet is made up of millions, if not billions, of interconnected autonomous networks, each with it's individual owner. Aside from compelling the major backbones to shutdown, which would severely impact .gov as well, nothing short of a national power outage could really bring the whole network down.

As for kill switches: In the beginning there were mainframes that couldn't talk to each other because each vendor used a different protocol in order to ensure victim...er...I mean customer lock-in. Around that same time the DoD through DARPA was looking for a resilient, standards based data communications network, and put the challenge out. Between the DoD and academic individuals who decided that "sneaker net" was exhausting and expensive, the protocols that make up the internet as we know it were born. Eventually it(the internet) broke out of the lab and rapidly caught on in the business world. Nothing about kill switches.

If you really want to impose internet martial law, just shutdown Facebook, Twitter and Myspace for a day.

My .02

[Knight]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

Precisely what is your evidence for this sense of certainty?

Wrong choice of words: My opinion is....

[Knight]

Originally Posted by BOfH

The internet is made up of millions, if not billions, of interconnected autonomous networks, each with it's individual owner. Aside from compelling the major backbones to shutdown, which would severely impact .gov as well, nothing short of a national power outage could really bring the whole network down.

As for kill switches: In the beginning there were mainframes that couldn't talk to each other because each vendor used a different protocol in order to ensure victim...er...I mean customer lock-in. Around that same time the DoD through DARPA was looking for a resilient, standards based data communications network, and put the challenge out. Between the DoD and academic individuals who decided that "sneaker net" was exhausting and expensive, the protocols that make up the internet as we know it were born. Eventually it(the internet) broke out of the lab and rapidly caught on in the business world. Nothing about kill switches.

If you really want to impose internet martial law, just shutdown Facebook, Twitter and Myspace for a day.

My .02

Very interesting. So it would be possible for a city or a community to lose the net, and just not, say, a country?

[GratefulCitizen]

I fail to see how unplugging everyone from the Matrix would enhance government control.
The government would have less ability to monitor, track, and direct the masses.

It might temporarily disrupt organized opposition.
In exchange they would get mass chaos which is a bigger problem and it would provide camouflage for organized opposition.

The attacks on Internet discourse will come through intimidation and legal harassment.

[tonyz]

Originally Posted by GratefulCitizen

I fail to see how unplugging everyone from the Matrix would enhance government control.

It might temporarily disrupt organized opposition.
In exchange they would get mass chaos...

Good points but...

That mass chaos thing works both ways.

There are undoubtably scenarios where the element of surprise and initiative could create some particular advantage - if only temporary.

It does seem more useful that cyberspace might be "managed" and used for advantage as opposed to "shut" down.

http://www.defense.gov/news/d20110714cyber.pdf

http://nationalinterest.org/commenta...-cyberwar-8030

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

[GratefulCitizen]

Originally Posted by tonyz

Good points but...

That mass chaos thing works both ways.

I suspect the various local levels of chaos would be highly dependent on local cultures.
Most likely, it would enhance the influence of local law enforcement.

Local law enforcement inclined to cooperate with the central government would increase centralization of power.
Those with different inclinations would increase decentralization of power.

What are the local cultures like where the food is grown?

[tonyz]

Originally Posted by GratefulCitizen

I suspect the various local levels of chaos would be highly dependent on local cultures.

What are the local cultures like where the food is grown?

Quite different than where the supply chains and global finances are managed. Both elements of our society being important for the obvious.

For a variety of reasons it does not seem so far fetched these days that our civilian governments will, for whatever reason, fail to maintain order. I do believe that the Internet would or could play a critical role during the suspension of civil law, if that day ever occurs. IMO, the free flow of information is critical in a free society - will information continue to flow freely if martial law is ever imposed? IMO...it depends.

[BOfH]

Originally Posted by tonyz

Quite different than where the supply chains and global finances are managed. Both elements of our society being important for the obvious.

For a variety of reasons it does not seem so far fetched these days that our civilian governments will, for whatever reason, fail to maintain order. I do believe that the Internet would or could play a critical role during the suspension of civil law, if that day ever occurs. IMO, the free flow of information is critical in a free society - will information continue to flow freely if martial law is ever imposed? IMO...it depends.

The key isn't shutting down the flow of information, but controlling it. This has been debated to death in many cyberwarfare exercises. The real question is, what are your goals and how much noise do you need to generate to protect the disinformation from being drowned out by real information.

My semi-SME .02