Is Your Internet Safe?

Some points to ponder from this guy

Whatever you think of WikiLeaks, the actions by both Amazon Web Services and Tableau Software have revealed that they are willing to withdraw service from a customer without receiving a legal challenge and without investigation or recourse, and to spin it as a "terms of service" issue. It informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.

As our business activities (hosted on our behalf) and our software freedoms (mediated through hosted communities) increasingly become dependent on the unassailable business judgement of unseen others, we do well to consider whether we need to take those capabilities away from their single points of failure and instead use peer-to-peer services instead of relying on a centralised provider.

Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay similarly stress the uncomfortable weaknesses in our various democracies. We see legislators denounce the medium, attack the messenger and attempt to legislate against both rather than engaging in the root-and-branch reform necessary for the meshed society of the Internet age. We will doubtless see new laws proposed which, in the name of stopping leaks, remove the freedoms of citizens to engage in the meshed Internet.