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Emergency Government Control of the Internet?
TheZid writes "A newly proposed bill would give Uncle Sam the power to disconnect private sector computers from the internet in the event of a 'cyber security emergency.' As usual, our government is trying to take away our privacy by citing security. What actually counts as a 'Cyber-Security Emergency?' Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? How about disconnecting bloggers that criticize his health care reform? What counts as an emergency? Can political opponents be deemed a cyber-security emergency?"
Someone needs emergency control to disconnect Uncle Sam from the internet.
not only of our basic freedoms that we FOUGHT and DIED for, but also to our country as a whole. Look back in history and see how 'Empires' in their death throes squeeze more and more, tighten controls more and more to hold onto what is obviously disintegrating.
It's like a fistful of sand, the harder you squeeze, the more that slips through your fingers.
Pax Vobiscum
Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? Disconnect bloggers that criticize his health-reform? What counts as an emergency, can political opponents be deemed a cyber security emergency?"
Jesus christ man, leave something for the comments!
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies?
Perhaps he could have a big red button on his desk labelled "BAN", and could amuse himself by disconnecting people that make fun of him? The summary seems a little alarmist...
Meet the new boss...same as the old boss.
What actually counts as a 'Cyber-Security Emergency?' Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? Disconnect bloggers that criticize his health-reform? What counts as an emergency, can political opponents be deemed a cyber security emergency?
Politicians in this country are all PR/marketing super-talents. Do you think they will or need to do something this unpolished?
I'd be willing to bet that there isn't a single industry left that doesn't rely heavily on the Internet. Shutting down the Internet is the same as shutting down the economy.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Comment removed based on user account deletion
2. From the actual Bill:
(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;
(5) shall direct the periodic mapping of Federal Government and United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks, and shall develop metrics to measure the effectiveness of the mapping process;
(6) may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security"....
This meaning that basically any government related network such as national power grids, water plants. (Things that don't need to be accessible from the internet to begin with) will be under the control of the president during a time of an emergency.
This doesn't affect the (Internet) as a whole. The internet is not a central computer that sits in a government warehouse with an On/Off button. The internet is a protocol, not an object. Basically it is the collection of various servers and networking devices from all over the world.
You simple can't just "Turn it off" which is what many people are fearing.
So in short, if we the united states was under some kind of Cyber attack, the President could not turn off (Slashdot.org, digg.com, weather.com) but they could control the networks of those that are government related.
I still haven't read through the entire bill yet, but that seems to be the basic summary.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Well, I can't think of anything better than the UN, but I'm still not entirely happy with it.
No, they are pretty much everywhere. Not that it does us much good since a security camera won't stop you getting stabbed.
I've seen the future, stock up on alien-zombie repellent, I kid you not
Disconnect bloggers that criticize his health-reform?
I think people who believe this level of stupidity deserve to be disconnected from the Internet. They are fucking damage, and I'm getting tired of routing around them.
How did this make it to the front page of /.?
Look, there are a TON of legitimate complaints about this bill.
Abuse of government powers in violation of free speech for political gain, etc, shouldn't be included. Those issues have already been addressed... the federal government already has the ability to step in and limit free speech in private channels if there is clear and present danger. The potential for abuse is already there, and has been there all along. This bill in no way affects that.
Your ridiculous leading questions detract from the real issues, which are outlined in TFA (for people that oppose a bill like this).
IMO, instead of "ZOMGWTF Totalitarian State Abusing Government Powers for Political Gain!", the real issue here is that critical infrastructure is in the hands of private for-profit corporations. These companies have the ability to hamstring the US economically through unilateral action (or even by accident). Critical infrastructure should be nationalized, in my opinion, or at the very least very closely supervised to ensure it is secure.
But I imagine that my views are contrary to the majority of slashdotters, and I expect to be modded into oblivion. No one wants the goobermint in their internets, even when oversight is necessary to maintain the integrity of our economy (such as it is), especially in the face of a directed and concerted attack on that infrastructure.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The UK, as we all know, has a great reputation for complete freedom and non-big-brother-government behavior.
I don't think this is really that outlandish. Considering that the Obama administration has recently appointed new chairs for the Internet or the number of posts, on Slashdot alone, that talk about how internet security is the new method for waging wars, what about this is surprising people?
No one likes the idea of losing freedoms during peace times, but the second something terrible happens, people will throw it away for a blanket.
Let's face it, the majority of people out there have no idea how a computer works. It is essentially magic to them. They don't know what a "Zombie" computer is or that they are possibly assisting in a DDOS attack. The government may need to act and unfortunately they won't be able to discern who is a good computer user and who is not, so everyone is going to get cut.
I gotta go start chiseling naked women into rocks as a backup solution!
Monstar L
While it's quite a lot of things, being disconnected from the Internet is NOT a breach of my privacy. I hadn't heard that Echelon was dismantled, so I'm pretty sure that anything I send out unencrypted is being parsed (and anything encrypted stored for future reference) even without this particular emergency order. My stuff on my computer is still on my computer.
And I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but frankly it's about time that this kind of thing was talked about and put into law. The bits of the Internet that are on sovereign US territory are most certainly vital national infrastructure by now, and the law needs to be updated. It's long past time that the US government, and the US population woke up to the threat vectors presented by the Internet, and deal with the hard questions surrounding what to do when the "cyber war" eventually happens, whether it's concerted non-state entities mounting an attack against Internet connected infrastructure or government/military Internet areas, or state entities. If we have finally decided, or are close to deciding, what level of "attack" through networks constitutes a declaration of war (and if we haven't, we damn well should be doing THAT too), then the POTUS as Commander In Chief needs to be able to do the kind of crap you do in an attack on your country. And putting into law is a LOT better than letting whomever is the President at the time make up his powers in that situation from the ether like the Bush Administration did. This particular bill may or may not be the correct answer, I haven't read it. Something like this, however, is going to and should be put in place. I'm all for using the political process to make it the best possible bill, but acting like the government shouldn't ever be able to do this kind of thing is fantasy.
otherwise I might see some posts with wildly hysterical hypotheses of what is for sure gonna happen that have nothing to do with the actual bill in the article.
Lawrence Lessig already warned us about this, though he predicted it would occur after whatever this 'cyber-security emergency' is. See the short video here.
Don't be absurd, it's completely within the realm of possibility to take those twelve pixels, enlarge them, and get a clear picture of a face. I saw it in the movies.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Judging from the appearance of some criminals, it doesn't seem likely that's always the camera's fault.
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I can not lay my hand on any part of the U.S. Constitution that allows a president or congress to declare martial law.
Nor should such a power ever exist. Time-and-time again the phrase "declared martial law" has prefaced the eventual takeover by dictators from the present-day, all the way back to the when Julius Caesar took-over Rome. The Declaration of War should be sufficient to indicate a state-of-heightened alertness. We don't need jackbooted thugs suspending the Constitution, and then quartering themselves in our homes, or other abuses of the citizens.
Just ask a japanese-American citizen circa 1944 how they felt.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
When some news comes out about Obama's administration and some are condemning it but others are defending it...
It's only a matter of time before you get the posters saying:
"If GWB did this, the liberals would be screaming!"
etc..
Similar to the "In Soviet Russia" meme. :)
Wow, you sir, just made me snort hot coffee from my nose, and onto my keyboard, damn you and your unexpected comedy. Can someone please mod this guy up to infinity, or as close as possible?
I've seen the future, stock up on alien-zombie repellent, I kid you not
But what I do want to know right now is where were you the past 8 years?
What the FUCK are you talking about? I would think you're a troll but your persistence makes that a little bit less likely.
Enlighten me on what sort of criticism free ride bush had during his 8 years? Excluding the few months after 9/11. And it's especially weird posting that on slashdot.
Where were you for 8 years? If you weren't submitting those stories or too busy stopping them to post, then go back under whatever rock you came from. The rest of us are trying to clean up that mess, and you're tracking it all over the floors.
You're trying to clean up the mess by giving the government more control or something? Because so far all I see is pretty much Bush 2.0, only Obama is better looking and charming and gives better speeches, which are pretty superficial reasons to like a guy, especially as our president. Let's go down a few points shall well?
- Iraq war policy? the same as Bush's
- Afghanistan? pretty identical to me. Wait, now we need more troops?
- Enemy combatants, can still be held indefinitely, but hey, we're closing down Gitmo!!! which changes nothing and is just a political maneuver.
- Money to big corporations? Well, I don't think this is hard to follow.
- Civil Liberties? The writing was on the wall before Obama was in office, he voted for that FISA bill or whatever the hell it was.
- Torture? Obama has left enough loop holes for plenty of this.
My question is, why hasn't Obama received the kind of criticism Bush did? But, to be fair, I think he's starting to get it.
This post hereby claimed as evidence of the new "If GWB did this" meme
The real question is how is it possible for there to be a "cyber-security emergency"? Not being able to reach youtube or google or slashdot or microsoft via the internet for a day or two isn't an emergency. If the counter example is not being able to reach a nuclear power plant's cooling control system or some other utility, then I have to wonder who put such a critical systems on an unsecured, unreliable network and why aren't those people in jail for being a bunch of incompetent twats?
The current Administration is afraid of the Citizens. I Wonder why that is? Could it be out of control spending? Congressional leaders(?) calling concerned people a rabble? Those same Congresscritters doing what they want in spite of the wishes of their districts?
No wonder the far left are the ones who push for gun control, their policies are the ones that will cause armed insurrection.
I hate to interrupt while you're all frothing at the mouth at a nice steady pace there, but why not try reading the article first?
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
As long as they aren't disconnecting me from the internet then fine.
As long as they aren't telling me I can't smoke, then fine.
... they're one and the same, and if we don't take care of each other in this regard, we all suffer.
As long as they aren't telling me I can't drink, then fine.
As long as they aren't telling me I can't vote, then fine.
As long as they aren't telling me anything, then fine.
Problem is, with that attitude it's guaranteed that sooner or later they're going to tell you can't do something that isn't fine with you. That's the nature of government, and the "fuck you, Jack, I"m all right" approach just doesn't work in the long run. You see, your rights don't end where mine begin
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yeah. While the ship is going down, we can always count on Ron Paul to audit the ship's manifest. Someone might have stolen some cargo, after all.
Criticism of Obama makes you a racist, didn't you know?
Also, you're a racist if calling you a racist advances a leftist agenda. And if you defend yourself, you're just like a Klan member.
What I think would be scary is them abusing this for something non-digital (and in all honesty its impossible with sane security practices to have a "cyber-disaster") in order to cover up wrongdoings.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
PSH, they could technically already do it. About a month ago, my internet had gone down. It was constantly going down, and every time I called them up, it was "a server was down" auto message for 3 states. It normally got fixed within a couple hours, until one time it took more than 6 hours and I called up pissed asking how the hell can an internet company as big as mediacom be down in 3 entire states, when the entire philosophy of the internet (2nd paragraph) was to route around damage.
Obviously (or strangely) he yelled back that why would they put redundancy in a civilian network? That's right, apparently there's a kill switch for the "civilian internet" that allows you to take down at least 3 states with just 1 fiber cut. Seeing how they are a monopoly, I consider them the internet for these 3 states.
I'm still a bit pissed off by it, only because I hold the belief that the internet was made to prevent censorship and damage.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
was a bipartisan bill, as one of the co-sponsors, Sen Snowe, Olympia J. [ME], is a member of the GOP.
Olympia Snowe votes with Democrats more than Republicans. She was one of the only three Republicans in the Senate and House that voted on the $787 billion spending bill. One of those "Republicans," Arlen Specter, is now a Democrat.
Here is a visualization which performs an energy minimization mapping to group politicians by their voting record.
You can clearly see where Olympia Snowe votes in relation to the two parties. Saying this bill is bi-partisan is a more than a bit of a stretch.
Article I, Section 9, allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus "when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it." It's not exactly martial law, but it would allow Congress to grant a great deal of power to government agencies to undertake actions normally not allowed. It will depend on how the Supreme Court interprets the "Rebellion or Invasion" phrasing. If it's a group of Americans undertaking an action that puts significant lives at risk (messing with SCADA networks, targeting significant servers connected over the Internet, etc.), that could be interpreted as rebellion sufficient to warrant such action, even if it's by a small group of people. Similar action undertaken from outside of the country could be termed an invasion, even though no foreign hostile sets foot on US soil. But there may be significant hesitation to back this if there's evidence that it's a group of five to ten people in either case.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Q: Can the the province of Gaul secede from the Roman Empire?
A: No the Roman Senate and Emperor determined they cannot, but they did it anyway circa 460 A.D.
Q: Can the American colonies secede from the British Empire?
A: No the British Parliament determined they cannot, but they did it anyway.
Q: Can members states like the UK secede from the European Union?
A: The EU probably would say no, but the outcome depends if the UK has a bigger army or not.
POINT:
Secession is not a matter of law, but a matter of force. He who has the most force determines the outcome. If the Southern states had been better organized and won, the U.S. Supreme Court could have issued all the verdicts they wanted, but it would not have changed anything. I recall at one point the U.S. Supremes said it was illegal to deport the Indians living in Alabama to Oklahoma, due to existing U.S. treaties, but the sitting president said, "They made their ruling; now let's see them enforce it," and he did it anyway. In cases like this force rules, not men in robes.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Leave that up to the private sector. The private sector can react faster to an event than the government with all of it's bureaucratic mess.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
why hasn't Obama received the kind of criticism Bush did?
I assume this was mostly rhetorical
Because Obama hasn't actually done the same things that Bush did, and has tried to reverse most of the damage. Getting out of Iraq was really started before he took office and he saw no real reason to accelerate it more than was safe. Yeah you may be right about Afghanistan but time will tell. and you are actually right he is receiving criticism at an accelerating pace.
Why bother
This move is horribly transparent.
The evident reason is so that, in the event of social dissent or uprising, they can cut off the communication of those dissenting. See: Iran just a month ago.
"Oh, it's been legal for years. Why would anyone care when they started to do it now if they didn't care when the law was passed?"
Surely, though, the Democrats will not abuse this. Surely. We have nothing to worry about.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You can leave the EU freely.
The U.S. government is very, very corrupt. Someone plans to use emergency powers to make money, probably.
How the hell did that get rated troll?
If you're a Democrat moderator, think about Evil Bush and Evil Chaney and their ability to listen in on phone calls or start wars for Haliburton.
If you're a Republican moderator, think about Axelrod and having the White House give his advertising company money to make the healthcare commercials / propaganda--some of which ended up back in Axelrod's pockets.
If you're a Libertarian moderator, is it really wise to be moderating Slashdot while trying to sight in your scope?
There's no place like
There isn't. Because if it's important enough for you to need to reach it, only an idiot would think "gosh, let's make our <important whatever> only accessible via the internet, because the internet never goes down."
If it's important then internet connectivity shouldn't be part of your critical path. Any other approach is flat out incompetent.
At any given time about 10% of the internet is unreachable by the other 90%.
I'll let you and GP talk to each other. You:
Look at the bill. A cyber security emergency is when a piece of critical infrastructure gets owned. In times like that, you need to drop that shit off the network ASAP, and figure out what happened.
GP:
then I have to wonder who put such a critical systems on an unsecured, unreliable network
Parent==Flamebait??? Puhleez. Just because someone professes a non liberal-libertarian viewpoint doesn't mean they don't have a point worth hearing.
#1) How is this a "privacy" issue. I can see it as an information access and possibly a censorship issue (although I doubt it's intended for that purpose), but privacy isn't really on the table here. In fact, disconnecting computers from the internet will probably IMPROVE the security of your private information.
#2) How is this different from the government closing off roads into disaster areas like wildfires and hurricanes, not to mention the police line at crime scenes? There's a legitimate safety and security issue involved in letting the general public into systems infected with malware or that need to be analyzed as part of a criminal investigation.
As far as I can tell this is just an extension of existing real-world government authority into the cyber arena. Any government authority is vulnerable to abuse, but there's also a legitimate need for this type of authority when there actually IS an emergency.
Get a grip, people. Feed the watchdogs at EFF and ACLU with money to prevent the potential abuse, but don't deny the government a legitimate role in cyber-security.
We are the 198 proof..
Actually, it's the protocol set (TCP/IP) that's designed to route around damage, not the internet. If every route between two nodes has to go over a particular physical link, it doesn't matter how robust your re-routing algorithm is. Don't need a "kill-switch" at all. A stray back-hoe is usually sufficient.
Of course that doesn't make the CSR's response any less strange. Plenty of civilian networks have redundancy. There are plenty of different routes you can take from Dallas to Fort Worth. But the grain of truth is that civilian networks are rarely 100% redundant. Chop off all the bridges and tunnels leaving Manhattan and you can still get to Long Island from the mainland. But that doesn't do anything for the people actually IN Manhattan.
I suspect that the "kill switch" in this case is that your ISP isn't paying their due to their backbone provider, so they get cut off from time to time until they pay up.
We are the 198 proof..