Broadband Advisor

Elections aren't the only things in chaos in Pakistan these days. The country recently decided to censor YouTube. Unfortunately, Pakistan botched the technology: It issued BGP routes that leaked, causing a worldwide reroute of all YouTube requests to a black hole in Pakistan -- taking YouTube off the global Internet for a couple of hours.

Recently a retired AT&T employee named Mark Klein announced at a Capitol Hill press conference that he had evidence that "An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables ... was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room."

I've written several pieces pointing out that the issue of net neutrality is more nuanced than either proponents or opponents want you to believe. But with their characteristic cluelessness, providers have pretty much succeeded in reducing the debate right back down to a sound bite -- and positioning themselves on the wrong side.