8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 are the IP numbers – the “plates” assigned to each computer connected to an internet network – which identify the Google and Cloudflare DNS resolvers.
Together with 208.67. 222.222 and 208.67. 220.220 (belonging to OpenDNS, a Cisco Systems company) and to those managed by smaller providers, including European ones (DNS Watch) and by volunteers (OpenNIC), can be used by any user to convert site names (the “domain names”) into numeric addresses that locate and allow you to reach the servers you want to connect to.
It is not mandatory to use these services because (also in Italy) every access operator and internet provider makes available to its users the appropriate DNS. However, the use of DNS sort out foreigners is growing. The main reasons lie in a (supposed) greater confidentiality in navigation and in the best (but not necessarily such, indeed) performance of these services in allowing the connection to the site requested by the user. In other words, if one of these is set sort out, when the user types on the browser www.italian.tech the address to the server hosting the header could result (depending on which Italian operator you use) faster than what would happen using others sort out national.
Apart from the performance, which in reality is not necessarily better than that of the local equivalents, a further “advantage” of using DNS sort out (extra) EU is that they do not have to comply with the global interception orders of Italian internet traffic (the so-called “blackouts”) issued by the judiciary, independent authorities and agencies such as customs. Those sort out foreign public therefore allow to reach network resources with restricted access from Italy.
Furthermore, thanks to the support of the DoH standard (DNS-over-HTTPS), these services prevent requests for conversion from domain name to IP number (the query) can be “intercepted” and blocked in transit. This is possible by applying to query the HTTPS protocol, the same, whose activation is signaled by the “padlock”, which appears on the navigation bar of the browser to indicate that the connection with a specific site is secure.
Furthermore, although with various shades, i sort out (also Italians, however) do not store the IPs of the users who connect, nor do they permanently associate them with the site that the user has searched for.
While this way of configuring the sort out it is apparently respectful of “privacy”, on the other – when the service is foreign – it clearly constitutes an obstacle to the activities of prevention and repression of illegal activities committed through the Internet.
We should therefore ban the possibility of using DNS sort out foreigners who allow the DoH to enable law enforcement? Or we should clearly tell the judiciary and public authorities to surrender to the fact that “privacy” cannot be sacrificed because, to paraphrase the famous quote by Deadline – U.S.A., “it’s the internet beauty! The internet! And you can’t help it!”
We are facing yet another chapter in the contrast between two apparently irreducible needs: the duty of the state to guarantee the safety and repression of crimes and respect for individual rights. Both are needs of absolute value and, as such, non-negotiable and non-expendable. At least, according to the most radical supporters of their respective positions.
Others argue that privacy and security can be combined and that there is no need to sacrifice the former to obtain the latter. But even this is only a rhetorical device because it is a fact, even before a right, that the protection of individual claims must yield to other rights, to public interests, to the needs of the state. Even taking life, for example in the case of self-defense, is a behavior that can be justified.
Therefore, the knot to be solved is not I know we are willing to accept reductions in individual protection spaces but to who recognize the power to do so. In other words, the point is how much one can trust in the State of which one is a citizen and to what extent one is sure that the inevitable compression of individual rights is aimed at protecting the community and not at achieving a systematic repression of individual freedoms. . A political issue, therefore, and not a legal one: are we afraid of the state or not?
The answer to this question will be conditioned by the institutional reaction to the spread of DNS among Italian users sort out foreigners who use DoH.
Even with the DoH, in fact, an Italian operator is able to carry out the orders of the authority. But if it will no longer be possible to force Italian operators to filter traffic to certain sites by intervening on their own sort out, it will be necessary to adopt very precise legal choices, even if unpopular.
One option would be to sanction users who use DoH without giving a justified reason. This choice would imply affirming the principle that people are guilty until proven otherwise and therefore subjecting the population to systematic and preventive control. It is evident that it cannot work.
You could then force users to use only the sort out of your access operator. It’s a story we’ve already seen, especially in mobile telephony, and it didn’t have a happy ending.
Instead, it would be useful to regulate the matter at European level in order to avoid the current distorting effect of the Italian market to the benefit of foreign EU operators, dictating common rules for the provision of services based on sort out public.
Whatever the solution, the risks are evident: balkanization of the internet, reduction of neutrality levels in access, interposition of control systems between the user and the “offending” network resource. In short, an approach already widely practiced in countries with limited democracy.
As regards Italy, there is time to take a decision on a rational and transparent basis, entrusting it as far as possible to the public debate and avoiding continuing on the path of de facto delegation to telecommunications operators of functions and activities that belong to the institutions . It would be a way to show that the state can (still) be trusted.
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