There has been speculation that changes to the way the internet is implemented will be rolled out to allow access only to authorized sites.

Some think this is impossible

I'm here to tell you it is not, and very likely.

Allowing access only to white listed IP addresses is easy.

The vast majority access the internet via their Internet Service Provider, and ISP's can easily block client access to any IP address they choose.

China has been doing this for years.

This is how firewalls work, and is much lower level than DNS blocking.
I would imagine this will be rolled out to 'Combat the ever growing threat of Cyber Attacks'.

Most people only use a few thousand services like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit etc, Walmart, Costco, Tesco, Morrisons etc. as it is.
It will be easy over time to require 'legal registration' for any and all other services and sites.

We already took a step toward this years ago anyway, so this is just the logical next step.
As 5G technology is rolled out in your city, more and more control is being introduced at the street level, using what are known as 'Edge Servers'.

While making services faster to access, it also allows an additional layer of security and access control at the local level.
This provides ISP's, Municipalities and Government opportunities to mandate and control exactly what traffic is allowed at the hyper-local level.

Someone at 54 Church Street may have a very different view of the internet than someone at 19 Oxford Place.

Crazy huh!
How do I know this?

Because I have attended meetings at US Government level on doing exactly this.

Don't worry, there will be a 'Citizens Charter' for freedom of speech

But that speech will only be allowed in authorized, monitored venues.

This is for anti-terrorism purposes.
That's it for now, but I'll probably chime in with more stuff now and again.

Have a good day.
@threadreaderapp please unroll

More from Internet

You May Also Like

So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.