Cybersecurity Expert On China Net Hijacking

"A new security report says China hijacked 15 percent of global Internet traffic this past April — for 18 minutes. Melissa Block talks with Dmitri Alperovitch, a cybersecurity expert with McAfee Inc., about the implications of such a high profile router hijacking case. The report, released this week by the U.S.-China and Security Review Commission, claims China hijacked U.S. government and military sites, as well as commercial web sites. China denies the claims."

For the whole story, visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131423973

This story ensures me that the Internet is not nearly as secure as it should be. The Internet does what it is told to do no matter who gives the commands. China may not have intentially routed traffic through its servers, but it did. It could have been innocent, but it could have been done with malicious intent to impede progress of commercial organizations such as Microsoft and IBM or maybe even the government. This reminds me a question posed in Web Technologies on multiple occasions, "Should the government be allowed to intervene is internet usage?" Usually, I would say no. We have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. Why shouldn't we have freedom of internet usage? We shouldn't because at times our internet usage may compromise our safety. The civil agreement between the government and the people is that we follo their laws and they protect our life, liberty, and property. For all we know, during those eighteen minutes, our life, liberty, and property were all stake. It is the government's job to protect us. It is the government's job to do something about it. For safety purposes, the internet should have been shut down, put to a complete halt for those eighteen minuted. The Simultania Project has revealed to us that a lot of things can happen in one minute. Think about what could happen in eighteen of them.