Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Rockefeller's revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a "cybersecurity workforce plan" from every federal agency, a "dashboard" pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a "comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy" in six months--even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," he says.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

news.cnet.com...

The Rockefeller again!
WTH!?
So in the event of an emergency (flu anyone?) the web will be controlled.
They can block sites, deny access, monitor everything...



Read the excerpt of the bill here
www.politechbot.com...

[edit on 28-8-2009 by warrenb]

This would be disastrous!! To control the internet would be to totally control all information as well as financial transactions. More than any other single issue I think this may well be the most important. Thanks warrenb! S&F

This is from Stumason on a duplicate thread, but I thought it was worth stating again...

"But, the "Internet", as a single entity, does not exist so how can someone take complete control over it? What this bill does it give the President power to take over individual networks within the United States, which is no where near the same thing."

Stu, your correct in that the internet is de-centralized, but the carrier networks are not. Shut off the carrier networks (AT&T, Sprint, UUNet, Telecom, etc) and you have effectively shut off the internet.

as a WAN engineer, this does give me pause for concern.

edit for emphasis (italics)

[edit on 28-8-2009 by deadbang]

Given how Obama is so quick to attack those that are slightly critical of him, this surely comes as no surprise.
If another Obama/Joker Photoshop masterpiece hits the internet, he just may deem this a national emergency and pull the plug on the internet.

Edit to add: WHAT ARE WE, FREAKIN' CHINA?

[edit on 28-8-2009 by Alxandro]

reply to post by deadbang


Yes, that is exactly what I meant. "The Internet" would still function, whether AT&T and Verizon were shut down or not.

Granted, consumers in the US and people trying to access US hosted websites might have a hard time surfing for porn or the latest conspiracy, but the rest of the world would carry on quite merrily, so in effect "the internet" couldn't be shut down, taken control of or otherwise interferred with unless every carrier in every country was under the jackboot.

I too work in SDH/SONET for a telco in the UK, so I am somewhat familier with the workings of such.

EDIT: I realise that the US has control of the mythical "root DNS servers", but it would be no technological feat to have these up and running in another country in short order.

Also, some countries may regard any attempt at shutting down "the internet" as an Act of War.

[edit on 28/8/09 by stumason]

reply to post by stumason

Point taken, were in agreement...and most big carriers use BGP in their core routing so there would be multiple routes to destination servers, as long as they were not US based they would still be accessible, although response times would be diminished.

reply to post by deadbang


Indeed

I'd hate to think the Prez would ever act on this, it would make my job a royal pain in the arse if we lost all connectivity to the US! I might actually have to do some work instead of surfing the web on ATS all day...

Having emergency control over critical corporate networks is so far from "controlling the internet" it's not even funny. I swear half the damn threads here are tabloid journalism at its best.

Someone big on ATS said "Screw the country, Obama must fail" to disparage people that oppose Obama.

This is just another example why Obama must fail, for the sake of the country.

reply to post by RRconservative


Hmm, not trying to politicise the thread at all down your part lines...

This bill was proposed by a Democrat AND a Republican Senator... Seems that taking the oh so familiar partisan line that you do isn't going to work on this one. I know it must be difficult for you to swallow that a black, democrat is the President, but the people voted him in, live with it.

If one were to believe Steve Quayle, and sometimes i do, only because i am seeing what he's been preaching, he says that his sources tell him that the Internet is scheduled to go very very soon.
It will totally be shut down.

I can refer you to his website for you to listen to some of his stuff, its nothing i can cut and paste here.

Also, preparations are all set to cut down all communication, including land phones, cell phones, beepers, it is ALL being done away with.

This asshat should just stop goose-stepping around and have a Bill introduced that does EXACTLY what he wants - grants him a full dictatorship! Does he honestly think that giving himself total control over this in one bill and then total control over that in a different bill is fooling anyone? WE SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING!!! Rest assured, there is gonna be HELL to pay! The Tree of Liberty is dying of thirst!!!

reply to post by quackers

I disagree, having control over a networks such as AT&T & Verizon (both US based), which not only span the U.S. but just about every country of consequence would seriously change the landscape of what is generally termed the "internet".

Would it kill it?..as discussed with Stu...NO, but it would change it at a fundamental level. With the gang of 13 (DNS root servers) and most major routing tables based in the US...alot would go away, and what was left would be klugy.



[edit on 28-8-2009 by deadbang]

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by RRconservative

 

Hmm, not trying to politicise the thread at all down your part lines...

This bill was proposed by a Democrat AND a Republican Senator... Seems that taking the oh so familiar partisan line that you do isn't going to work on this one. I know it must be difficult for you to swallow that a black, democrat is the President, but the people voted him in, live with it.

Olympia Snowe may call herself a Republican, but so did Arlen Spector at one time. Snowe votes with Democrats more than Republicans so this is nothing special.

Ah the old "if you disagree with Obama, you must be a racist" That crap won him the election, but it won't get him re-elected. His actions as President will prevent that.

Originally posted by stumason
This bill was proposed by a Democrat AND a Republican Senator... Seems that taking the oh so familiar partisan line that you do isn't going to work on this one. I know it must be difficult for you to swallow that a black, democrat is the President, but the people voted him in, live with it.

Oh so, instead of one traitor, it was introduced by two traitors! I honestly doubt too many people give a rat's ass if they have an "R" or a "D" next to their names!

Now, I realize this must be hard for to you to swallow - as we Americans have a history of kicking our oppressor's asses and sending them packing - I think you know what I'm talking about, don't you? - but this has nothing to do with race. See, here in America we don't take crap sitting down. We don't easily allow our politicans to set laws governing our "Wheelie bins", taking pictures in public, having CCTV on every corner - or even in our homes, disarming us, determining our medical care, selling out our sovereignty to a foreign entity like a continental "Union" and so on and so forth. Whereas I recognize that all of that may perhaps be a very "European" thing, we are NOT European, we are AMERICAN! And when our politicians start doing very "European" things, the general public will begin doing very "American" things - like taking our country back by force if necessary. Make sense, mate?

reply to post by dgtempe


Cellphones, land phones, beepers, WiFi, you name all gets carried over the same backbone networks. The "internet" is really just a set of protocols for a certain type of traffic. Shutting down the carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon, would cripple all communications. It would be very hard and time consuming to selectively shut off certain services.

Deadbang, AT&T and the like do have presence in other countries but (at least in the UK) they tend to be international carriers, not really dealing in the lower order stuff within the country.

The telco I work for is one the largest Global carriers and is a UK based company, so there would be bandwidth available even if the US carriers went offline.

Granted though, it would be a big kick in the nuts and would hamper traffic of all types for some time before workarounds were in place.

I'm not surprised by this.

Obama said in a 2001 radio interview that the Constitution was flawed because it restrains Government and doesn't talk about redistribution of wealth.

Obama has over 33 Czars, he wants a heavily armed civilian force, he wants control of healthcare system, energy and how you use it, banks, car companies and more.

Obama doesn't think government should be restrained and this is right up the alley of Chavez, Jong-Il and Castro. This is what a Dictator wants.

The whole idea behind the Constitution is to restrain government so that no man or government can control people's lives.

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by RRconservative

 

Hmm, not trying to politicise the thread at all down your part lines...

This bill was proposed by a Democrat AND a Republican Senator... Seems that taking the oh so familiar partisan line that you do isn't going to work on this one. I know it must be difficult for you to swallow that a black, democrat is the President, but the people voted him in, live with it.

Yawn.

The "you must be a racist if you disagree with obama" line again.

So, to deal with that once and for all, here's a public notice from me:

Since obama is 50% white, all future criticism by me of anything obama does will be solely directed towards the 50% of obama that is white.

That should take care of that ...

Anyways, back on topic....

I am surprised we have not seen the Government trying to pass a bill that allows them to take over the internet.

I see it working similar to how the Emergency Broadcast System works.

They would require programming to be written in (not sure exactly how they would implement it I'm not an IT expert) that would allow them to take over the internet for emergency purposes sort of how they can hijack your TV

Every link you clicked, every page you tried to bring up would forward you to a "Emergency Broadcast" page.

Of course this would be labeled as something good for citizens and for our own protection.


[edit on 28-8-2009 by lucentenigma]

double post

[edit on 28-8-2009 by lucentenigma]