FeedBack: Birth of The Internet From: Russel Hoffman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Hi Rob! This tidbit is very little, but somewhat relevant: Last time I was in Europe (1997) a Dutch acquaintance asked me if it were true, as is apparently assumed over in Europe, that our (America's) DoD could shut the 'net down any time they wanted. I replied that I thought that was in all likelihood true, for at least three reasons: First, since probably (these are guesses-- ) at least 10% and maybe still as much as 30% of all traffic still goes through military machines as it travels from point A to point B, they could shut a lot down just by dead-ending all traffic that comes their way. Second, they could, alternatively, flood the system with their own traffic, real or not, to crowd out virtually everything else. And third, they probably know how to write viruses to immobilize it as well. After all, if Robert Tappen Morris, the jerk who shut it down several years ago, could do it and everyone who looked at his code said he wasn't even a very good programmer, imagine what a more intimate knowledge of the system and better programmers could do! There is also the possibility that they have a special bit somewhere that assigns all their traffic a higher priority than everyone else's. I'm not familiar with the actual code or protocols involved, so I wouldn't know if that's so. Of course, in theory they need the Internet to communicate just as much as we do, so the third possibility seems more remote in terms of what they would actually be willing to do, but if they thought it was the source of their troubles, I'm sure they would have no moral objections to destroying this great tool for social change in the time it takes to split an atom. Come to think about it, that's the way they could really kill it. Just set of a nuke in the upper atmosphere or in outer space near Earth, and the Electromagnetic Pulse will fry the whole thing for thousands of miles around, except for the "hardened" computers -- which are all the military's, of course, and no one else's!!! (The EMP, as it's known, would also fry just about every other piece of electronic gadgetry at the same time, whether it's plugged in or not, or even whether it's on or not.) Best Regards, Russell D. Hoffman Owner and Chief Programmer The Animated Software Co. ************************************************* ** THE ANIMATED SOFTWARE COMPANY ** Russell D. Hoffman, Owner and Chief Programmer ** P.O. Box 1936 ** Carlsbad CA 92018-1936 ** (800) 551-2726 ** (760) 720-7261 ** Fax: (760) 720-7394 ** Visit the world's most eclectic web site: ** http://www.animatedsoftware.com ************************************************* Robalini's response: The idea of a "shut-off switch" to the internet is a popular theory, and far be it from me to dismiss it out of hand. However, please note (provided, of course, Wes doesn't email me back with yet another glaring error by myself) that if that was the case, it would directly contradict the original purpose of the internet. >From "Hasta La Vista, Baby: Judgement Day Is Here!!!": Fast forward to the kold war, and you have, in place of the Vatican and the Templars, the evil kommunists, led by the devious Soviets, and the "free" world, with the good ol' USA in charge, as the world's central powers. And the Pentagon, in full kold war paranoia, are obsessed with the security of their "command center". Namely, how do you protect the war machine from destruction due to a well targeted attack on the information center? After mulling that mind bender over for many years, one man (who, alas, remains nameless) came up with a brilliant answer: you protect the command center by not having one. Rather than having information stored in one centralized location, it was suggested that it be held at multiple decentralized spots. All these spots would then be linked together by an international network. Internet for short. And so began the second great revolution in information distribution in history, one that you are participating in at this moment. How ironic that, like the printing press before, it was an unintended byproduct of the battle for world supremacy, and those who created it weren't even aware of the full implications of the project. As John Lennon said (in his last Playboy interview, before the CIA murdered him) about the development of LSD: "We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. They invented it to control people, but they gave us freedom instead." So you see, the whole idea of having no command center requires there to be no shut-off switch. It would be like, as Dr. Strangelove puts it in Kubrick's masterpiece, having a shut-off switch on a doomsday device. The switch defeats the whole purpose of the project. Still, maybe we're talking about apples and oranges here: perhaps the DOD's section of the net has no command center, whereas the public access area is rigidly controlled. This may explain the power of the Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego. To quote some Klassic Konformist: Through a complex chain of licensing arrangements and corporate acquisitions detailed in Pizzo's article, this crucial control over Internet domain names has passed from the non-profit National Science Foundation to Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) of Herndon, Virginia. Last May, amid growing public disbelief of Establishment media reports about the Oklahoma City bombing provocation, NSI was purchased by Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego. [note -- CIA Front] SAIC is a $2 billion defense and FBI contractor with a board of directors that reads like a Who's Who of the intelligence community. Board members include Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, the former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and deputy director of the CIA; Melvin Laird, defense secretary under Richard Nixon; Donald Hicks, former head of research & development for the Pentagon; Donald Kerr, former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Gen. Maxwell Thurman (ret.), the commander of the U.S. invasion of Panama. Former members of SAIC's board include Robert Gates, the former CIA director under George Bush; current CIA director John Deutch; Anita Jones, Deutch's former Pentagon procurement officer; and William Perry, the previous secretary of defense. The corporation also has a legion of computer network specialists and an entire division of computer consultants. SAIC currently holds contracts for re-engineering the Pentagon's information systems, automating the FBI's computerized fingerprint identification system, and building a national criminal history information system. Control of Internet "domain name registration" has passed into private hands -- with the potential for serious mischief or worse. "Domain names" are the odd-looking identifying names that are assigned to individual computer systems that compose the Internet (logoplex.com, for example). SAIC is rumored by some to be involved in the Heavan's Gate "suicides". But that's another conspiracy.
