Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Internet 'Kill Switch' Bill Reintroduced

On the same day that Egypt's Internet went dark, senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins re-introduced a bill granting President Obama the authority to shut down the Internet within the United States in the event of a cyberattack, reports NetworkWorld.

Meanwhile, NextGov is reporting that:
A recent internal test by a federally-funded broadcaster shows that the U.S. government has the power to bypass foreign Internet censors by feeding news over a special e-mail system.

4 comments:

  1. I read the bill last June and wrote about it here:

    http://english.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/06/internet-police-are-coming-introducing.html

    Major points.--the US gov't will:

    * Decide what constitutes critical infrastructure and appropriate/regulate it under jurisdiction of new "National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications" (NCCC).

    * Monitor status of private sector internet websites and infrastructure. Able to issue orders if determined to be security non-compliant.

    * Indemnify private companies from civil lawsuits arising as a result of compliance.

    * $millions in new spending and contracts.

    * Cyber snitching program

    * Coordinate with National Institute of Standards and Technology, to encourage the development of, and recommend changes to, the standards and guidelines described in paragraph (1) for securing the national information infrastructure.

    This last one is the most onerous, as it involves rewriting the structure of the internet to allow content filtering in the middle, as opposed to at the nodes (ends) of the network.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shut down the internet!?
    Oh, no. No,no,no,no, nooooooooo.
    That would mean the people would no longer be able to masterbate, and those who stopped attending their local church be able go back without feeling guilty.
    It would force the public to really ponder who the enemy is. The very same system that demo's buildings, trains patsy terrorists and pays puppet dictators to kill its citizens for the military pyramid ponzi.

    if they shut down the internet, then all hell will break loose, and they will hightail it to the UAE the same way the US government gave the Bin Ladden family free passage under US airforce escort. We are dealing with people so evil, induldgently satanic, they will kill the highest ranking members of government. We are dealing with a mafia, not a government.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The boundless hypocrisy of our government. Obama and the others don't make their pro-democracy announcements before live audiences because even here in America a growing proportion would laugh out loud.

    In Egypt, Suleiman is poised to replace Mubarak. He is head of Egypt's Intelligence. You know, the global, unelected ruthless CIA-Mossad that overthrows any potentially democratic government to replace it with a suitably pliant, pro new world order tyrant. In Jordan, Marouf Bakhit, also a national security chief, and ambassador to Israel is appointed PM to oversee the "reform". The new world order relies on a fraternity of intelligence agencies not loyal to their own people's national government, but instead to a global elite.

    From the creation of the CIA in '47 and the state of Israel in '48, it has been a steady downward trend for people's rights and prosperity, with politicians like Lieberman, acting against the principles he swore to protect and uphold, with the Patriot Act, the rise of the security state and the use of American prosperity for privatized global warfare, war waged to install the new world order, not to protect us.

    The unelected Kissinger brought real politik to respectability. It is loosely defined as politics without ethics. Hard to believe that so many otherwise intelligent people could fall prey to such an absurdity, as if power didn't corrupt, they threw out the one restraint: ethics. Now all their speeches are empty lies told for raw, corrupt power, and no one will stand by either the US or Israel should history at long last trade them for the next set of tin pots.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jct: We can always count on Joe Lieberman to be in favor of reducing civil rights. He's a man who always makes me want to puke.

    ReplyDelete