Internet ‘Kill Switch’ Proposed for U.S.
June 16th, 2010Oh sure.
Via: ZDnet:
A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.
The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.
That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to “preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people,” Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.
Due to there being few limits on the US President’s emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.
TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group, said it was concerned about “unintended consequences that would result from the legislation’s regulatory approach” and “the potential for absolute power”. And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman Bill’s emergency powers “include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems.”
The idea of an internet “kill switch” that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia’s sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to “declare a cybersecurity emergency”, and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to “order the disconnection” of certain networks or websites.
On Thursday, both senators lauded Lieberman’s Bill, which is formally titled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. Rockefeller said “I commend” the drafters of the PCNAA. Collins went further, signing up at a co-sponsor and saying at a press conference that “we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realises the importance of protecting our cyber resources”.
Under PCNAA, the Federal Government’s power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also “relies on” the internet, the telephone system or any other component of the US “information infrastructure” would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.
If Joe Lieberman doesn’t owe his existence as a Senator to Fox “News” then the sun doesn’t rise in the east and set in the west.
What a joke. The Kill Switch would kill intelligent human’s ability to “spread false rumor and innuendo” here on the net. As if that’s what we do here.
My lower self would like to say some really mean things to and about Joe. Put simply, cleanely, and without creating additional bad karma for myself, I distrust his methods, means and motives. Seems to me, nothing GOOD for mankind has come out of this man since his constituents wanted to vote him out of office as Democrat.
Is fair to say he is manipulator, has his interests other than U.S. citizens in the forefront of his agenda, and maybe should just resign before he becomes the second Ronald Reagan. Or George Bush I or II. Whatever. Shut him down. I don’t want to dwell on his motives for a killswitch for the Internet because he is so very dark. People of the world attempting to survive the years to come that will need all of our strong forces to bear the changes don’t need this kind of sycophant taking up our psychic bandwith.