Dev.SN ♥ developers
Sections
Dev.SN
(Reuters) Brazil and the European Union agreed on Monday to lay an undersea communications cable from Lisbon to Fortaleza to reduce Brazil's reliance on the United States after Washington spied on Brasilia.
At a summit in Brussels, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said the $185 million cable project was central to "guarantee the neutrality" of the Internet, signaling her desire to shield Brazil's Internet traffic from U.S. surveillance. According to other sources, the construction is scheduled to begin in July.
A joint venture between Brazilian telecoms provider Telebras and Spain's IslaLink Submarine Cables would lay the communications link. Telebras would have a 35 percent stake, IslaLink would have a 45 percent interest and European and Brazilian pension funds could put up the remainder.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Konomi on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:31AM
If we're lucky we might get a bunch of new undersea cables that we can later incorporate into the world network. If we're unlucky we might end up with two Internet networks, thanks USA! I'm sure the USA or insert bad country scary people who are going to come around to your house and personally remove your freedoms, could easily find a nice spot in the cable and monitor what's going through it.
I'm really hoping this just leads to more encrypted network traffic in the first place which would be one of many useful steps to actually protecting users privacy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:43AM
FTFY.
My advice (and, possibly, your self-correcting effort in the future): stop blanket blaming entire countries for the errors of their government. I'm sure many of the US contributors to soylentnews aren't happy themselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by basicbasicbasic on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:40AM
The word "country" has more than one meaning.
There are certain contexts where "country" can mean the citizens of that country, but in a political context "country" means the government of that country, and he was obviously laying blame on the government of the USA not the citizens of the USA. If another country wants to deal with your country they don't meet with Joe Sixpack from Kickapoo, they meet with the government. The government makes the laws, controls the police and the army and the Three Letter Agencies. As an outsider I do not blame the citizens of the USA for what the NSA is doing, but I will blame the USA - meaning the government.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:44AM
While there are more contexts in which if you utter USA Joe Sixpack from Kickapoo will automatically think That's my country. Patriot/nationalist or not, I have some affinity to it (well, the last part sounds unlikely coming from Joe Sixpack, but never mind... you get my point).
A matter of perception and it's not your perception or intended meaning, don't you think?
I (an outsider to US myself) mean: how would you explain a defensive attitude in replies/comments on the line of "Spying? What's the big deal, everybody is doing it; whoever's not doing it, it's a pussy"?
To me, it sounds an awful lot as an ex post facto justification to alleviate some lost face in a dirty game (I'm pretty sure the very great majority of these posters aren't cold-fjord type of characters)
(Score: 0) by Cold Fjord on Wednesday February 26 2014, @12:07AM
Spying is a means of gaining a clearer view of a situation in what are naturally muddy waters. We don't do it because everyone else does it; we do it because it allows us to set more effective policy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @04:53PM
You've already said that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hatta on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:18AM
Until the people of those countries are prepared to take to the streets to get their governments under control, they are complicit in the errors of that government.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:47AM
I cannot agree with you. You are entitled to your opinion, but if you really think so... beware, that's quite a dangerous path you are stepping on.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hatta on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:59AM
Not nearly as dangerous as continued mass apathy.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:58AM
I don't think it's apathy so much as a feeling of helplessness. After all, PATRIOT, DMCA, Bono Act, etc -- all the things corporations want and voters don't, got passed with overwhelming majorities from both parties. Meanwhile, there isn't a single person I know of in the House or Senate who wants pot legalized, even though more than half of all voters want it legal.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:46PM
You probably just don't know of them, its not that they don't want it legalized.
http://rt.com/usa/lawmakers-demand-reclassify-mari juana-legal-926/ [rt.com]g alization-california-congress-obama/ [time.com]l egalization-goes-federal/ [go.com]
http://swampland.time.com/2014/02/12/marijuana-le
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/02/pot-
Probably at least half of them have at one time, or currently use it, in the privacy of their own home, because no one is going to arrest a Congressman or Senator when they can just hold that over their heads for small favors. (You just about can't arrest a member of congress while congress is in session. Its a big deal if you try).
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:42PM
Probably at least half of them have at one time, or currently use it, in the privacy of their own home
Almost certainly, since almost every boomer I've ever met has at least tried pot, and most of the government guys are boomers. But hypocricy abounds in congress, how many anti-gay legislators were cought sucking off some guy? How many bible thumpers were caught in adultery? Look at Seven of Nine's husband, Illinois politician Jack Ryan, bible-thumping tea partier who got caught lying to Republican hacks about his wanting to take his Borg wife to sex parties and watch other guys bang her (which is why she divorced him)?
How can you tell if a politician is lying? His lips move. A politician will vote against his own (other) wishes as well as his constituents' wishes if he thinks it will get him reelected.
Hypocrites.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:30PM
"Until the people of those countries are prepared to take to the streets to get their governments under control, they are complicit in the errors of that government."
I'm American and I fully support such activities. Unfortunately, I've stopped trying to explain the reasoning and logic for my opinion because any contrarian opinions on this subject get savagely modded down to -1 troll. I only post anonymously on these stories now. It's just too dangerous to post contrarian opinions that go against the groupthink on Slashdot and here.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:55PM
That attitude might make you feel good and righteous, but it doesn't accomplish anything else.
People react strongly against things that affect them strongly. Weakly against things that affect them weakly. And unless it is extremely detrimental to them, they, in mass, tend to go along with the accepted authorities. (Of course, different groups select different authorities, and I don't quite understand the basis for that selection, but it's clearly not wisdom.)
Also people's social structures tend to be hierarchical. This is probably a bad choice, particularly when so many accepted authorities are malign, but to counterbalance this they also usually have multiple hierarchies that they accept.
You are asking mass rejection of multiple levels of hierarchical authority on multiple different hierarchies for matters that don't strongly affect them. You aren't going to get any large response to this, except possibly among the age groups of 15-23, and mainly males. And small responses aren't going to be effective. (There have been protests, but they've been largely ignored.)
A part of the problem is that the bulge of the population is no longer in the late-teens through early-adult age group, it's mainly older now. Another problem is that there has been corporate buy-outs of most channels of media. And things that are not acceptable to the owners are strongly downplayed...or even just not mentioned. So even among those likely to respond, the news just doesn't get out in a synchronized manner, as it did in the 1960's-1980's.
Put not your faith in princes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:02AM
Redundancy is a good thing. A second Internet could also be a good thing. Even multiple incompatible internets can be beneficial in the long run. People building completely new networks in novel ways sometimes come up with better ways of doing things.
(Score: 1) by Aiwendil on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:26PM
Which always made me wonder why communication-cables lacks point-to-point encryption.
Since both endpoints are controlled by the same entities one could even have extra fun and use different cryptos (be it keys of algos) on the different "channels" in the cable, I mean, how often are the packages of data-stream all sent over the same modulation in the same fibre?