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The Global Cyber Alliance has given the world a new free Domain Name Service resolver, and advanced it as offering unusually strong security and privacy features.
The Quad9 DNS service, at 9.9.9.9, not only turns URIs into IP addresses, but also checks them against IBM X-Force's threat intelligence database. Those checks protect agains landing on any of the 40 billion evil sites and images X-Force has found to be dangerous.
The Alliance (GCA) was co-founded by the City of London Police, the District Attorney of New York County and the Center for Internet Security and styled itself "an international, cross-sector effort designed to confront, address, and prevent malicious cyber activity."
[...] The organisation promised that records of user lookups would not be put out to pasture in data farms: "Information about the websites consumers visit, where they live and what device they use are often captured by some DNS services and used for marketing or other purposes", it said. Quad9 won't "store, correlate, or otherwise leverage" personal information.
[...] If you're one of the lucky few whose ISP offers IPv6, there's a Quad9 resolver for you at 2620:fe::fe (the PCH public resolver).
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/20/quad9_secure_private_dns_resolver/
takyon: Do you want to give the City of London Police control of your DNS?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 21 2017, @05:02PM (4 children)
This is obviously a Good Thing™ for everyone! We decide what is good, and what is bad, then you check with us to see if you're allowed to look at a page. If we give permission, you know that it's a Good Thing™, and if we don't give permission, you know that it's a Bad Thing™. While some try to claim that this is a form of censorship, you, a good upright Citizen, know that IBM is all about Good Thing™. Trust us, we'll keep you safe!! Best of all, this can all be done in the background, automagically, so that you never really know that you've been denied permission to view a page. Good Thing™ - configure once, then it's out of sight, and out of mind!!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 21 2017, @07:47PM (3 children)
How is that different from what DNS providers already do, except for being upfront about rejecting flagged domains?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 22 2017, @02:41AM (2 children)
There's probably not much difference, except that in this case, you're relying on a single commercial entity to do all of your censorship for you. Of course, if you use Google resolvers, you have the same thing. Of the two, Google may be a bit more lenient. I certainly don't trust IBM to handle this rather sensitive bit of work. IBM has a rather sordid human rights history, after all. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ [ibmandtheholocaust.com] and http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/index.php?page=70127 [ibmandtheholocaust.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 22 2017, @07:02AM (1 child)
In a country where most CEOs can't think past 8 quarters, it would be good to stop judging a company based on actions taken 75 years ago by people completely unrelated in any way, especially culture, to those currently in power.
Why would anyone do business with a country responsible of mass internal deportation of its citizens with yellow skin, and dropping atomic bombs on cities?
I'll agree with you if the nasty actions do have a continuity into the present, like the mass deportations leading to the current Apartheid mess in Israel.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:52AM
The sorry state of our CEO's is well known - but that doesn't mean they're all that way. IBM and Israel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Israel [wikipedia.org] Wait a second - how did I get Bing as a search engine? . . . Alright here's an IBM and apartheid link - https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/03/apartheid-in-the-shadows-the-usa-ibm-and-south-africas-digital-police-state/ [counterpunch.org] http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/ [stanford.edu]
This one may be more interesting - it is certainly current - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-03/hp-and-ibm-list-north-korea-as-a-supplier-in-conflict-mineral-reports.html [bloomberg.com]
I'll stand by my statement - IBM has a history of dark dealings with oppressive governments. Did I mention that corporate CEO's have poor ethics, and poor judgement? IBM epitomizes that fact. The "culture" at IBM is probably much different from the run-of-the-mill corporation. IBM is well known for being stable, and profitable. They seldom make the news for stupid shit, like sexual harassment, or openly polluting the environment. Their ethics are probably pretty sound, in a business sense. But, in a humanitarian sense, their ethics suck ass. IBM will comply with the law, but they care little about slave labor, apartheid, oppression of any form. If there is money in killing little brown children, you'll find IBM there, helping to categorize and round them up.
History. IBM hasn't changed in the past seventy or eighty years. People may come and go, but companies that last over 100 years aren't going to change an awful lot. They've got a winning formula, and they aren't going to give it up.
https://www.thoughtco.com/ibm-timeline-1992491 [thoughtco.com]