Ukraine invasion: We should consider internet sanctions, says ICANN ex-CEO The former head of ICANN, two EU parliamentarians, and a handful of technical, security, and legal experts on Thursday plan to publish an open letter to the internet governance community arguing that the time has come to develop a targeted internet sanctions system. The letter [PDF], provided in draft form to The Register, …
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And if they change the focus, we can deal with that then. First, they came for murderers and locked them in jail, but unless you're planning to eliminate jails, that's a first you're willing to accept. For the same reason, I'm willing for many things to happen to a country that has started an illegitimate war.
So why isn't China cut of from the internet for its general naughtiness? The UK and USA for their ironically internet dossier enabled invasion of Iraq ? Saudi Arabia for its invasion of Yemen etc etc.
If ICANN is just another US government power then cutting off Russia is fine, as is ignoring activities of its allies. But it's then no longer AN internet. China will have their own separate system, Russia will join that along with any 3rd world countries that what Chinese investment.
So we'll gave 2 Internets and which site Google.com will resolve to will depend on who the provider you connect to buys their chips from.
AND?
You're seriously suggesting that the conceit of a single world wide internet trumps the ability to hobble war mongers from war mongering?
Your argument doesn't hold water. There are multiple worldwide financial transfer networks. They work just fine.
I'm not sure the "architectural purity" of the current Internet is a valid argument tbh.
"trumps the ability to hobble war mongers from war mongering"
We've been effectively slaughtering each other since long before silicon was even known about.
I don't see it's useful to break one of the things humanity almost got right in a misguided attempt to "stop a war mongerer mongering", because, you know, they'll just find a different way. So instead of one big problem, we'll have two.
How much does an open internet allow warmongers more than before? Warmongers have been existing for quite a long time. The global internet has many benefits and downsides, but one major benefit of it is in deterring war. Free communication allows information to get to the people on both sides of a border, people to become closer to one another in spite of geographic or even linguistic barriers, and citizens to know what's being done in their name. Those things might end up hurting the warmongers more. Yeah, if I was always this idealistic, it would be silly, but it does sometimes work. Meanwhile, if you cut off Russia's military website from outside countries, it will do nothing to prevent them relaying orders to troops or wanting to cause damage. If you cut off the entire internet, you're surrendering an advantage you still have.
“one major benefit of it is in deterring war. Free communication allows information to get to the people on both sides of a border, people to become closer to one another in spite of geographic or even linguistic barriers”
Jeezus, the internet doesn’t even make people in the same household become closer together despite the *lack of* of geographic and even linguistic barriers.
Just watch any teenager with a phone.
So? I didn't say it would miraculously make everyone friends. I just pointed out that it provides the opportunity for people to know about and, if they're willing, befriend people. The teenagers in your example may be ignoring you, but they're probably interacting with someone else who they like.
China and Russia have been striving to achieve their own separate systems for years
There's an old trope that "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routs around it" - which is pretty much true. It really does take concensus action to remove bad actors (and as we constantly see, bad actors seldom stay off for long)
@Ian Johnston
Well, that counts the U.S.A. out. Oppression of Black people, Murder? Collateral damage? Going to war? Where do I even start...
But what happens when, let's say, the U.K.government decides to invent a case stating that some opposition party are really fascists?
Start of a slippery slope, don't you think? Think it can't happen? Look how what I laughingly refer to as our "government". They are using every trick ion the book to get encryption outlawed. Hell, we already fave a possible jail sentence for refusing to give "the authorities" our passwords, because criminal, drugs and, of course, paedos.
There hasn't been a free internet for a couple of decades now. You think tracking cookies for mere adverts are bad? They will be as nothing once the government starts using their own tracking cookie in earnest..
cancel culture CERTAINLY is NOT "the solution"
You either have an internet or you do not. (and only the little guy, "the people", get hurt by this kind of arrogant "political/ruling class" BULLSHIT)
The moment politics drives CANCEL CULTURE as "a solution", it's over.
I have a better idea: The USA produces oil SO FAST and SO CHEAP that Russia loses money and China loses economic power. Russia's economy centers around the production of fossil fuels, and the USA has MORE of it, as I understand.
As for the CCP Communists, they need to lose as MUCH power as possible, or say GOODBYE to Taiwan. NOT having a new iPhone will be the LEAST of anyone's problems.
(China and Russia - they ARE an alliance, you know)
What, you did not realize the precarious nature of dealing with COMMUNISTS and SOCIALISTS?
I'd laugh but it's no longer funny.
(see icon)
Net neutrality is a pipe dream. The rubicon has been crossed. The world is infected by an insufferable woke cancel culture disease and there isn't a line they won't cross.
Cogent pulling the plug was just the start. Never mind the fact it reduces the ability for innocent citizens of an oppressed regime to access an alternative view point. Just cancel them all.
In the current climate, perhaps something akin to: This is something that I disagree with and I'm going to shout loudly until everybody else agrees with me ?
Get enough people with that mentality making noise and any chance of a valid discussion about controversial subjects vanishes into a puff of melted keyboards.
People that actually care about things like social injustice (of which there is a lot) tend to get sidelined between the shouty mob and the virtue signallers. So while good people may be woke according to the dictionary definition, I'm not sure I'd call them woke as the word is often used nowadays (as a weapon).
No, Doublethink. Think Ministry of Truth. Intentional corruption of good-meaning terms so they lose their effectiveness. Worse, due to shamelessness, turnabout doesn't work on them anymore. There is already a growing contingent of people who see M.A.D. as a winning scenario. The fear is either Putin or Xi joining that group.
"There is already a growing contingent of people who see M.A.D. as a winning scenario."
Didn't Trump suggest painting Chinese markings on US aircraft and bombing Moscow? Scary, if true. Or was that an out of context quote from the red-top/scandal sheet press? The problem with that sort of news is it's believable, whether "fake" or not :-(
"There should be nothing controversial in saying fascists/nazis/war is bad."
Basically true and I doubt anyone would diagree, but no one, until now, has mentioned fascists/nazis/war. This part of the discussion is about social injustice, cancel culture and "woke" and the "weaponising" of words by changing their meaning.
"Don't actually see what so bad about "woke" from the definition"
Not defending the original comment as I feel it's not "cancel culture" but pure unchecked capitalism that runs the internet, however, the _new_ 1st definition of "woke" is the general problem I have with anything "woke", not the intent behind it.
According to Merriam-Webster, the 1st definition of "woke" is _no_longer_: past tense and past participle of wake (that's now definition 2).
Then new one is see above, which has now stepped on, replaced or cancelled the old 1st implied meaning. This isn't new though as language evolves and any trend that lasts long enough births new words or meanings. Still, I don't believe this exact evolution of a word is a fitting example of how the intent of a word should evolve, the old 1st definition seems more appropriate in English and is undeniably easier to understand, especially if you're just learning English. 2nd definition, sure, but it shouldn't of become the new 1st.
No, def. 1, primary, has changed.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke
Definition of woke (Entry 1 of 2)
chiefly US slang
: aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
Definition of woke (Entry 2 of 2)
past tense and past participle of wake
"https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke"
Yeah, but that's not an English dictionary, it's American. A language almost but not entirely unlike English :-)
(Thank you Mr Adams for such a wonderfully versatile phrase!)
On a slightly more serious note, it really is worth remembering that "english", as spoken in various parts of the world, is not all the same. Sometimes it's different words used for the same meaning, or the same words used for a different meaning. Because of the Internet and worldwide releases of TV shows and films (movies!!), it's a bit more homogenous nowadays, or at least people in different parts of the world are more likely to understand other peoples different usages.
The thing is, once ICANN sets the precedent that it has a role in imposing sanctions on naughty people, how exactly does it resist doing it in future?
Myanmar slaughtered the Rohingya and nobody said ICANN should do anything about it. China is "cleansing" Xinjiang and I haven't heard anyone say ICANN should cut them off. India is fostering hatred and suspicion of all non-Hindus, and nobody argues ICANN should be the ones to do anything about that either. In the modern era we've seen generally-agreed genocides in Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia, and nobody has ever suggested ICANN should have anything to say about any of them.
Why should Ukraine be defined as the Rubicon that finally makes them abandon their apolitical stance and take a side? That looks like a very slippery slope to step onto.
All the whataboutism you've brought up is happening within the borders of the countries in question and international policy has tended towards "not messing with internal affairs"
This is pretty much the first invasion of another country in modern (internet) times where civilians are being explicitly targeted by the invader
Those of us with longer memories will remember the amount of Internet fuckery that was launched out of Greek networks when a former Yugoslavian area attempted to register a "Macedonia" top level country domain. It pretty much only stopped when those Greek networks were threatened with being cut off the net if it continued...
Similarly, Ukraine was a major home for kiddie porn spammers in the early 2000s. Most of that found itself looking for new homes when the backbones made it clear the hosting networks had a choice between connectivity or hosting such activities
Apparently I was born "woke" 52 years ago.
They may have only invented the term recently but if you think being non-judgemental, nice, considerate, kind and compassionate to people of all cultures, genders, religions, etc (I.e. Woke) is a bad thing then I think you are a bad thing :-D
“It is a part of a man's civil rights that he be at liberty to refuse business relations with any person whomsoever, whether the refusal rests upon reason, or is the result of whim, caprice, prejudice or malice. With his reasons, neither the public nor third persons have any legal concern.”
Some companies and individuals are choosing of their own free will not to do business with Russia, as it is their right to. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is a much more peaceful solution towards ending a war, when compared to the old-fashioned alternative (of sending trained killers to go and kill people).
When it becomes effectively impossible for any given country to openly subjugate another country without going bankrupt (through boycotts), we may one day see the end of the military-industrial complex. That will also be the day when freedom truly prevails.
> Some companies and individuals are choosing of their own free will not to do business with Russia, as it is their right to.
And there are a lot who are being pressured by fear of the mob turning against them if they dont.
Lovely business you've got there. It would be a shame if you didnt do what the rabble with pitchforks and torches insist you must.
I would agree that there is something to like there. On the other hand, who elected the internet governance bodies to be world rulers? If they would really go on with it, it would open the door to internet sanctions for other reasons, too, without democratic legitimacy. And there is the potential to provoke counter-attacks whose targets need not be limited to copper or fibre lines. Not to say that actual governments would necessarily act more wisely, but shouldn't such actions at least be democratically legitimised?
Nobody elected SWIFT to be a world ruler either. It isn't. (OK, there's an argument the banks are.) But they're following the actual elected leaders of many world governments.
There's no reason why internet governance bodies shouldn't do the same without being accused of usurping power. In fact, it could be argued that declining to follow suit is such a usurpation.
SWIFT, the tech company in Belgium, is not deciding on its own who deserves sanctions. It complies with the sanctions set by governments. If it started deciding on its own, it could be replaced. There are lots of organizations that have the power to use their own stuff for voluntary sanctions, but when they start using something they don't own for that purpose, it may be time to limit their power.
This case appears to be a group that lists stuff they believe is worthy of sanctions and makes a public feed of it. Everything after that is voluntary. I'm fine with that because if they go crazy some day and start putting innocent people on the list, we just start ignoring them. I would not be fine if they started trying to make that mandatory, including using ICANN's powers. The reason is that, if they did, it wouldn't take long to depower the independent entities that control key parts of the internet and give those powers to someone else, a body that will have more control by governments of all kinds especially including dictatorships.
"shouldn't such actions at least be democratically legitimised"
Putin isn't a democrat. He is violently denying democratic self-determination to a neighbouring nation.
Democratic considerations don't apply to the enemies of democracy. As soon as the Kremlin is denazified then these measures can be reversed.
Actions against a Putin become just as undemocratic as a Putin's own actions if they're not based on democratic forms of consensus-building where they originate, and such undemocratic actions open the door for similar actions being turned on anyone, not just a Putin, including ourselves.
No, that's not what they were saying. You read their comment. You know what they said. I'll paraphrase in case you didn't, but you did. A retaliatory action should have democratic legitimacy. That means, if our country sanctions Russia, it should be because the people agree with it. That's usually done because the people elected the representatives in the government who are taking the actions. Since the people did not elect the people in the article, they do not have the same authority to use others' resources in an action, even if it's an action with which we agree. We can give them that authority if we think it is warranted, but if they act to take it without us doing so, there is a legitimacy problem.
No for two reasons. First, ICANN doesn't provide services to those people ICANN turns on .ru, and Russia manages it. The allocations of .ru domains are up to Russia, and they're not going to sanction themselves. ICANN could either turn off the entire registry (actually, they don't have a switch but they could manage it eventually) or not, but they can't deallocate only those .ru domains owned by the individuals.
Second, ICANN is not a government and is not under the sway of a single one. ICANN could theoretically be forced to comply with American instructions because their headquarters is there, but if the U.S. decided to flex those muscles, there would be a new good argument to move it into a place that supports its independence. The administrators understand this and know that, if it were moved because some government was being dictatorial, it would likely be put under the control of the ITU. The ITU not only couldn't implement sanctions at all but would end up giving more authority to those countries that want to use the internet for their own purposes. For example, one of the countries that has argued most often for exactly that to happen is... Russia itself.
> something ought to be done.
Some of the most dangerous words in the english language. Those words are why politicians, and any one with a modicum of power, end up doing stupid things just to be seen to be doing something.
We know there are controls that could be used, but we also know that Russia (and China for that matter) have both suggested and supported the idea that each country should have it's own little internet instead of a global one.
Enacting measures like those described will hasten the balkanisation of the internet, that these two already want (and realistically, there are other nations too). It doesn't matter that the measures try to only target military/dual-use, the eventual consequences will impact civillian usage too.
Hitting Russia with economic sanctions is the right thing to do, but politicising network connectivity (no matter how just the cause) is a bad idea. We need to be using it to get more information *in* to places like Russia, not doing things that make little difference (they spread a good chunk of disinformation via social media anyway), but help them justify reducing their citizens access to sources of truth.
We also need to get information into the West, encourage critical thinking, and unbiased reporting. What we don't need is an updated UDP (Usenet Death Penalty) or new ways to implement 1984. That wasn't an RFC.
But the devil is in the detail. If this is to be democratic and neutral, then obviously Internet governance should be transferred to the UN. Members can then appoint their own delegates. Staff working for UN-ICANN or UN-IETF could enjoy being tax free, along with other perks that go with being a UN citizen. Of course there's the issue of vetoes, but could be democratic. Lobbying & influencing UN votes is just the way it works.
Or we could leave it to governments. Most already have the power to sanction, or order ISPs and telcos to take action.
But as others have said, it'd be one way to balkanise the 'net. Personally, I'm not a fan of censorship, or cancel culture. I disagree with stuff like cancelling RT because restricting the media is something we generally consider bad. I know both RT and the Bbc are biased, and knowing that, it can provide context.
But bias extends to what isn't reported. So Glen Greenwald wrote an interesting article about a Q&A session where Victoria Nuland may have Psaki'd herself answering a question from Mark Rubio. Nuland was concerned that Russia may be threatening Ukrainian biolabs. Nuland's answer seemed to imply a CBW risk, and possible threat to joint projects the US and Ukraine had been working on.
Which raise questions, especially after sponsored gain-of-function research into corona viruses that happened in Wuhan a while ago. Like what is in thoses Ukrainian labs, and how did it get there. Especially given treaties that are meant to restrict bioweapon development and proliferation.
Then again, risks could be reasonable, eg the West's shared classified intelligence to help counter Russian agents, and doesn't want Russia getting that.
There really is no technical difference between blocking a government-sponsored generator of attacks and a criminal sponsored generator of attack. Likewise for government-sponsored fake news outlets.
The only difference is in the political dimension and gaining a political consensus sanctioning such enforcement.
So provided ICAAN keeps out of the politics and simply follows recognised political decisions (eg. UN resolutions), I suggest there is little to fear; well until such time as the UN gets poisoned...
> There really is no technical difference between blocking a government-sponsored generator of attacks and a criminal sponsored generator of attack. Likewise for government-sponsored fake news outlets.
But these decisions aren't purely technical.
You're right, at a technical level they're basically identical. The difference lies in the aftermath.
A criminal group cannot use that blocking as "justification" for moving their entire country over to using - in effect - a giant intranet and balkanising their citizens away from inconvenient news sources.
But, it's also not purely a political decision. If you view things as purely political, you get things like politicians trying to hand-wave away things like how encryption works.
You need the input of both, and that's where things tend to be lacking.
Politicians want the war to end, and recognise that one of the ways that happens, is for the truth to spread within Russia. What they may not be so versed on is ways in which that information can be spread. ICANN and the regional registries are in a position to talk authoritatively about the feasibility of a course of action (can we cut them off?) but are not well placed to talk about what it'd impact - a registry doesn't tend to be that involved in trying to infiltrate information.
So now you're looking at a much broader swathe of expertise needed - even before you start to ask the really difficult questions (
- do we have people on the inside?
- how are they exfiltrating information?
- Is any action likely to hamper their ability, or put them in danger?
- How do we even begin to gauge that, given the intelligence services aren't going to tell us?
If the aim is to try and stop the war, then fucking with connectivity is the wrong answer. If the aim, in the longer term, is to try and reduce Russia's ability to attack others then that doesn't need to be rushed, and things can be properly considered.
Governments have access to a whole swathe of information, some of which will never be made public (for obvious reasons), so they can assess some of the impacts. Private bodies do not, and should not, have access to the same level of detail - so they're poorly placed to be making this kind of scale of decision.
There's a huge problem with this kind of thinking with the internet. If you start down this path, other non-western/less than democratic countries will start questioning the value of being connected to "the internet" at all - is it too high risk for them? So, they'll develop their own splintered systems. Before we know it we'll not have a single internet any more, but a tangled mess of different networks disconnected from each other. It isn't just about Russia when talking about this kind of thing.
Is that what we want?
This is exactly correct. I'm thinking it won't be splintered though, but controlled in a way that toll bridges control traffic... everything's still connected, but there will be a forced price to pay in privacy and currency. It's kind of like this already, but there's a think tank out there somewhere that knows how to make everything worse.
It's also a nice cash grab. You have to pay the UK registrar for a .co.uk address why shouldn't they also charge you for your .com address for UK users? Especially when it's advertised as "sovereignty" and "protecting children online"
A future Trump might threaten to cut Europe from ICANN over some trade dispute so the EU is going to need its own system and force all companies doing business there to pay for a .eu address.
It's going to be like back in the 80/90s when 3rd world countries made $$ from connection charges for telephone calls from rich countries and you had all those callback services. You're going to need VPN to email home to India or Philippines.
Agreed that rightous indignation is itself contagious.
What I woukd worry about is further Balkanization of DNS. I find it hard to believe that Russia does not have the programming capability to isolate the country's internal DNS system and filter what outside DNS changes are propagated inward. And while they are at it block lookups to external undesirable ( to the government) websites.
Or they can just buy a copy of the Great Firewall on Alibaba.
My money is on Russia having a fully functioning Great Firewall by mid-year.
This is not far from just shutting off the electricity. It hurts Russian military forces, but it also hurts Ukrainian civilians who need all the help they can get, I'm sure cell service is gone, and the internet is probably about the only way to talk to family. There's a story on the BBC front page on how people are using emojis as a uncensored side channel to communicate.
" it also hurts Ukrainian civilians"
And it hurts Russian citizens, many thousands of whom have already risked 15 year prison sentences by protesting against the invasion. This is not Russia's war - it's Putin's war. The purposes of him and his small clique of ex-KGBeshniks are entirely divorced from those of (probably the majority of) the general public, but only the exceptionally brave dare protest visibly due to his moves at home to recreate Stalin's purge era.
>And it hurts Russian citizens, many thousands of whom have already risked 15 year prison sentences by protesting against the invasion.
Well following the findings from long-term academic research on social networks, it would seem the best way to topple Putin is not to get overly focused on Putin and his direct inner circle (his level-1 'friends') but to hit his level 3 and level 4 contacts...
I thus believe for example we shouldn't be focused on the oligarchs but on any Russian national holding more than a few million of assets in overseas banks, property etc.
And even that may not work, as Putin rose to power on an anti-corruption agenda. His top-tier people are handpicked sycophants in it up to their necks; they live and die with Putin and help keep the lower oligarchs in line. That's why there's been very little back talk.
"This is not Russia's war - it's Putin's war."
While I agree with you, there was an interesting piece on BBC radio the other day. The demographics of who supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine and who doesn't, in Russia, seems to be divided by age to a noticeable extent. Whether that relates to who trusts their government or not, or how they get their information might be part of it. Older Russians are more likely to use only radio and TV, where they only get the state side of the story. Or maybe they still feel the state is all encompassing and like it that way. Or maybe they are far more cognoscenti of who might be listening when being polled on their feelings by phone or even interviewed in the street.
Younger Russians may be more likely to have wider world view and use more international sources of information over the Internet. Or maybe they are less aware of just how pervasive state surveillance is and will speak out more. They didn't grow up under the USSR.
It's complex, and difficult to get a true feel of the ordinary Russians opinions.
"This is not far from just shutting off the electricity. It hurts Russian military forces, but it also hurts Ukrainian civilians who need all the help they can get"
Were we reading the same article? Or even the same sub-title? I actually went back to check what I'd read before. ASFAICS it says exactly the opposite.
"The former head of ICANN, two EU parliamentarians, and a handful of technical, security, and legal experts on Thursday plan to publish an open letter to the internet governance community arguing that the time has come to develop a targeted internet sanctions system."
Anyone who claims to be a technical expert who backs these measures should never be given a position where they have any authority what so ever. I am just glad that its the ex head of ICANT who is proposing this, and no someone who is currently in charge. As doing that is the fast way to break up the internet for everyone.
This sounds like an opportunity to hand back the sanctions controls to the end user, rather than centrally impose controls for everyone.
We already have block lists for adverts, through a variety of tools, and these tools often allow the end user to select which lists to use.
So if you want to impose a very coarse block, you might stop *.ru and *.su. Or, if a trusted person or organisation provides it, you could select a targetted list of military domains.
For a client, as a result of an attack over a year ago, their Internet firewall/routers already drop many blocks of IP addresses associated with .ru et al.
However, whilst this was helpful, it naturally didn't block those very small allocations (ie. ISP's with a /24 allocation), I discovered that when faced with a botnet, it was better (longer-term) to block an ISP's entire address allocation than focus on the individual IP addresses appearing in the logs. It took nearly a year for them to stop knocking...
That's probably the best way to do it. Block from the most specific to least. Can sometimes depend on client though, so if they don't do business in/with Russia, block the allocation used by the ISP for DHCP. It can still end up playing whack a mole though. Bigger challenge can be from compromised accounts behind load balancers. Sometimes that can be used in DoS attacks though, where a site is compromised to trigger route dropping, and blocking other sites behind those balancers.
But lobbying and pressure to do this has been happening for years, eg expanding on 'clean feed' systems developed for blocking child pornography 'should' be expanded to block political content.
Then again, Netflix has a documentary about how LEO's caught killers. In Toronto, officers discovered a website catering for cannibals and their victims. Arguably a site the 'net neither needs, nor wants.
If you can't rely on the internet, you'd have to build your own infrastructure.
Which may not be a bad thing. It would certainly curb some of the aggression from poorer countries. Although I can imagine China happily "donating" infrastructure ...
Or you use a VPN. Tunnel into Russia, then route to the military network.
In Russia's case, most of that is moot because they do have separate military networks. Russia wastes a ton of money on military junk they don't need. They didn't decide to go all in on nuclear weapons and skimp on communications, figuring that they'd just use the internet for it.
You're probably right for how smaller countries communicate with their military. I'm not sure how expensive it is to rent satellite uplink for military purposes, so some countries might not bother.
"Russia wastes a ton of money on military junk they don't need."
Clearly they don't spend it what they really need. Now they are, in effect, hiring mercenaries.
It appears that your average Russian grunt is severely underpaid and under supplied. Considering many of them thought they were going on training exercises, I'd not be surprised if one of the reasons for the low fuel situation is because they were selling it off to the locals before the advance across the borders.
There's an argument that non-executive directors (who are there to provide oversight and advice independently of the executive parts of the board) are more important than execs. Often they have responsibilities for the important non-operational aspects of running a business; I'm thinking of Health and Safety, or Data Protection, for example, and holding the business to account.
Further reading: Non-Executive Director
Russian army communications don't rely on the Internet, do they? If they do what's the point of those military satellites?
Is propaganda coming from Russia to the world a real issue? Who outside Russia is buying it? does it make a difference if some people outside Russia believe in that BS? wouldn't Russia government find another way to get their propaganda out, perhaps through some "ally" country?
In the other hand, will those sanctions stop Russian propaganda within Russia? Probably not. I think Russian propaganda directed towards their own people is the real issue and all those sanctions do little to stop it, even more, broad sanctions that harm innocent civilians only fuels the government narrative based on resentment towards western world.
Letting people know the truth is the only way to fight propaganda. To get the truth through you need more communication rather than less. Isolating and punishing all Russians will escalate the crisis, rather than helping to reach a solution.
Will someone rid me of this turbulent commentard?
Oh, wait, that means I must be $something because $someone else said it before me.
I'm sure if you tried really, really hard, you could find a better example of something Putin once said other than "something must be done". It's hardly vile, fascist language.
Countries by their nature insist on their sovereignty and as we've all been reminded recently will fight to maintain that sovereignty. Whatever reason we've been told about the causes of this war the underlying cause is that Russia felt that her space -- her sovereignty -- was being violated. Whether this war was the correct course of action is unimportant.
What the sanctions regimes, both before and after the invasion, have done is underscore the rationale for Russia's actions. What we think of as "the world" is really a relatively small group of nations, mostly ex-imperial powers, who wield excessive power globally due to their stranglehold on much of the world's wealth. We're not 'good' -- ask any Iraqi -- we just have our national and supranational interests and anything that pushes back against them gets hit by us. If we acknowledge this then at least we're be able to achieve a much better global balance between the various peoples.
Anyway, the idea is silly. Internet addresses are just numbers. ICANN just provides an agreed method to divvy up the number space. That is not the same as 'controlling the Internet'.
"Russia felt that her space -- her sovereignty -- was being violated"
Sorry, but you should understand that the war was / is not supported by the Russian populace: it was a decision to invade a sovereign nation which posed NO threat to Russia. Basically the decision of a paranoid leader who holds the rest of the government in thrall.
The war is controversial in Russia - or it would be if people were allowed to discuss it - but there's certainly a fair level of support for it. That's why Putin went to all the trouble of faking a justification for it - he never expected to fool us, but he wasn't worried about us because he knew we wouldn't do much anyway.
Riding a "my little pony" has been a favourite for quite a while
It brings up a good point though: Narcissists like having hate thrown at them. It reinforces their "strong man" image
They don't like being laughed at - you can see it when Trump had the UN ridicule him, and when Johnson becomes the butt of a joke. The mask slips and they snarl
Don't make the internet a plaything of politicians to punish and penalize nations' actions. Once you start doing this there will be no end to the political debate on whom to punish and how.
For example, there are many Russian private companies that aren't directly linked to their military industrial complex but are linked to Putin and his cronies. It will become too tempting for politicians to legislate sanctions against these also.
Don't start on this road or we'll lose the internet and it'll become a political plaything.
Ever heard of the bridgehead concept?
All they need to do is to proxy via the still enabled connectivity and then set up bridgeheads outside Russia - which is something the local criminal fraternity is already well familiar with because that's why you get all these 404s in the network logs of my sites (and some of these are interesting indeed, which is why I review them every so often).
It is as if these people use the Internet for the first time in their lives. Incredible.
The Register 
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