EDIT: CRAP! The title should say "shut down the internet". ISAP.

Should the president be allowed to shut down the internet for whatever reason he/she feels? Would you trust Obama with this power? What about George Bush?

Such a bill is moving through Congress. They are trying to pass it in the night, as they did with the UIGEA. It is S. 773 The Cybersecurity Act of 2009. Section 18 allows the president to shut down the internet for an "emergency". What's an emergency? It doesn't say, we're just supposed to trust them.

The bill also mandates that, even when it's not an emergency, all networks must be run by government-licensed "cybersecurity professionals". That's right, the government wants to take over the internet so that you use it properly.

Contact your representatives and ask them to stop this bill:

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

But maybe if the government takes over the internet, then we will be able to use our ATM cards to deposit online and plays us some pokkkerrrr!

I just skimmed the Bill which was introduced in April of this year. Not in the dark of the night.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s773/text

As far as I can tell this is a bill to develop and disseminate Security Protocols.

There does not seem to be any powers granted to the President nor anyone else regarding implementation nor enforcement of the Standards and nothing about shutting down anything in emergencies.

My bigger concern is the assumption that the Government seems to feel the to step up and develop standards for private business security. They are proposing things like "national compliance standards for all software". This is a serious intrusion into the Private Sector and likely impossible.

Also, "licensing of cybersecurity professionals" is likely going to be another bureaucratic mess.

Having a "National Cybersecurity Advisor" sounds like forming a whole new Agency - aka: "Expanding Government"

One can't "shut down the internet." It's a giant web of networks, servers, hosts, proxies, and such. There's no "off" switch.

Whoever wrote this bill is an idiot (full disclosure: I haven't heard of this before nor have I done any research on it, I'm simply responding to the hypothetical concept of a bill allowing one to shut down the internet").

just another example of more government...nothing is enough for these people(liberals). They ned to control everything because they are superior to everyone...lucky for us it won't. they are so incompetent they will never get it off the ground.

Rmeber these are the same people can't pass legislation when they have nothing stopping them...cept themselves.

Never underestimate 2 things.

1. How dumb the American voters can be.
2. How worthless a Democrat in charge is.

One turn of this valve and the whole interweb goes down.

It was all built into a backdoor system masterminded by Algore back in the 80s

Or they can just give Gladys a couple months off with pay




Thought you went to college and stuff?

I think the part in question is this, from Sec 18:

The President--

(2) may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;

(6) may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security;


(my bolding)

So it isn't about "shutting down the internet", but rather say disconnecting the WhiteHouse's network from the internet at large in the event of a cyberattack.

The wording could be better (what constitutes US-critical infrastructure?) , but as LLY says, no law is going to grant the president a power than he cannot physically achieve.

OHHH LOOK AT ME!!!

I'M VBNOTVERYSMARTALIS

I TRUST THE GOVERNMENT

THEY WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING TO ABUSE ANY POWER WE GIVE THEM!





Wake up man

I've asked you very nicely not to put real pictures of me up on the forums.

Please take that down immediately.

Thought you would be proud of your new frosted tips...I guess you weren't happy. Who knew?

I agree, the federal government does not have the technological capability to "shut down the internet". But they want to try to achieve that ability. How much damage will they do in the process? And how much politically motivated nonsense will occur in the meantime?

Ask yourself: would you trust George W. Bush with the power to unilaterally shut down sections of the internet?

As for the bad wording....lol. Really? We should ignore what the bill says and trust them to do what you think it meant?

No, we should improve the wording of the bill to better serve its original purpose -- to improve internet security -- rather than discard the bill. I think the computer networks used by federal agencies which perform critical tasks should be able to be "shut down", i.e. disconnected from the global internet in the event of a massive cyber attack.

HOF

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For the people saying "The internet has no off switch," are you considering the possibility that the government could pressure ISP's to comply?

Even in it's current form the bill does not grant authority to do this.

But whether it could be done is an interesting question. You'd really have to shut down almost all of the ISPs. The internet is built to re-route traffic around dead parts of the network.

Yea I wasn't suggesting that this bill would actually attempt it. Just thinking it through for fun.

I think that if high level bandwidth providers complied, it could cause pretty serious disruption. Even if you didn't shut down service to every single individual, there is a point where enough of an outage would cause saturation of the areas of the network that remained connected, which would function as a sort of inadvertent denial-of-service attack.

Also interesting is the fact that telecoms generally seem to be quick to bow to government pressure, rather than defend access/openness/freedom.

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Well before the whole ATT wiretapping thing the reason was that they could face prosecution for violating the law, even though the government asked them to do it. However, with congress immunizing AT&T in this whole thing there is no longer any rational reason for them to refuse to comply.

Of course the problem with the notion that they could 'face prosecution' is that there must be a loss for there to be a lawsuit.

And what value is there to say: "but my privacy was lost?" to the individual, even a class action?

The government says:"This guy is a bad, give us all his emails etc"

AOL says: "Sure here you go"

Guy sues AOL?

No, Guy tries to make the evidence inadmissible, but his lawsuit wqith AOL would in essence place the emails in teh public domain and therby make them admissible evidecne for a trial.

Government is sitting pretty.

The preceding has no basis in any legal truth but is strictly the same legal understanding that a pot smoker has of search and seizure laws...meaning almost zero. As such this admission releases said poster from being responsible for what he just posted

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That was a fun meeting I can tell you.

We also decided some things about fast food that you can expect to come down the pike in a couple months.


It must suck not to be in the ruling class.

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Haha, we are delaying the comeback of the McRib by a full month.

HAHAHA..we love to flex our powers

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You don't even have In-n-Out so you have no idea how much you are missing a double double animal style.

It's like you are totally ignorant!

Totally



Do you have Carl's Jr?

If not than include the new Big Carl to the above. And the pastrami burger that they canceled, which is something I will bring up at our next meeting.

Oh and Del Taco just brough back the shredded beef burritos, so add that as well.

.

The only fast food I have ever had that isn't in California that I really enjoyed was Checkers in Miami. Their burgers were really good.


And Hardy's for some reason isn't the same thing.

and most of the rest of the fast food chains not in CA are grease traps that leave me amazed that they are making money.

.

I didn't read it completely, but to me it does appear to give the government this power by forcing ISPs to be run by federally licensed security people. You don't think one of the conditions of keeping a license would be to obey the Benevolent Overlords?

Not unless you would describe ISPs as "Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks," which I guess is sort of ambiguous phrasing.

That's right, they violated their contract with the customers by failing to protect their privacy. There were several class action lawsuits to that effect before the FISA law, and I think there is currently a bill in congress to repeal the immunity. AT&T does not have the right to let anyone listen to my phone sex with male prostitutes sentimental conversations with my mother.

But really they should have faced criminal prosecution.



No, the bill does not do this as far as I can tell. It requires that federally contracted computer services meet certain security standards. It does not do anything to private ISPs. If you think it does, please show us the relevant section.

It appears they mean "all information systems in the US and federal government."

I think it is worded that way for plausible deniability, so later, when the takeover happens, the people who voted for it said "oh, we just meant government systems, the [alphabet bureaucracy] that implemented overreached."