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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
One word:
China.
And if China could close up its digital borders, the U.S., say, could do it as well, and rid the country of traffic from Russia, Korea, Nigeria, etc, etc, as they wished.
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The US theoretically
could, though not as simply as you appear to imagine.
Take China as an example. Consider the billions of dollars being invested there by western interests, and the amount of business being done. Do you think the US would close that digital border entirely? Dream on.
"Oh", you might say. "We'll only close it to the undesirable traffic!" And you will identify and block that how, exactly, while letting the other stuff through?
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Any and every country could put up its own digital borders.
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And various countries have, for reasons I doubt either of us would agree with. Consider the controls imposed by some of the Islamic states.
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And as I said, it might not be 100% effective, but for all practical purposes, it would do the job of isolating a country to only the traffic they permitted.
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I think my larger issue is simply the nature of bureaucracies. A bureaucracy exists for the benefit of the bureaucrats. In business, you win by showing more revenue and profit and a better bottom line this year than you did last year. In government bureaucracies, you will by being able to justify a bigger budget and more staff next year.
There are all sorts of controls that might be imposed as "emergency measures" or "temporary controls". How likely are those controls to be lifted when the situation they were brought about to deal with no longer exists? Police agencies always want more power to fight crime. Think hard before you grant it, because you'll find it hard to take away again.
Botnets, phishes, spam, DDOS attacks -- yep, they're all problems. But none of them have affected
me enough to have me calling for putting out the barricades, without carefully vetting what the barricades are and who controls them.
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Dennis