Slashdot Mirror
The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 Passes Senate Panel
An anonymous reader writes "The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 passed a Senate panel, giving the president unprecedented power to issue a nation-wide blackout or restriction on websites without congressional approval. The bill, written by Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D-WV] and revised by Sen. Olympia Snow [R-ME], was drafted in an attempt to thwart internet-based terrorist threats, and gives the president this 'kill switch' without oversight or explanation. The bill is up for Senate vote."
Well, you can't contr[Connection dropped by USA Presidential request].
Why do I have a funny feeling that The Pirate Bay will suddenly be labeled a terrorist organization?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's not as bad as the Patriot act, so therefore it's ok for this to pass. At least they're not as bad as the last administration, right?
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Is this Kill Switch just for the internet or the all the people who use the internet?
Like most emergency powers, it requires the President to report to Congress within 48 hours.
It doesn't seem, though, to give Congress power to stop the emergency action if it feels that it's not really an emergency.
We'll see what the House does with it.
Can anyone think of a single example where throwing the kill switch would be better than not throwing the kill switch? You're talking about shutting down or heavily impacting > 90% of the economy, making communication difficult or impossible for a large number of people, and permanently damaging the trust that people have in a connected society. The damage would be severe and significant and I just can't imagine a situation where it would do more harm than good.
Our freedom in the US is quickly diminishing under the guise of "Terrorism". It makes me sick watching it happen and knowing there is nothing we can do about it.
Kickass Cheap Web Hosting
A page must be created right now to prepare the bets and polls on which page will be blocked first.
...and how low can you go ? What and how much more will the security hype have Americans undergo silently ? How much does it f*cking take ??
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I know you're joking, but seriously, how would something like this even work?
As far as I know, there's no Great Firewall of China style ISP-level filter here in America. So how would they even enforce a blackout of a website?
So the president can make and put into action such a plan but this is not an expansion of existing authorities? Since when did the president have authority to censor speech?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I really thoughts the democrats would be different.
What's that?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't have a problem with this, there should be a way that the system can be quickly shut down if necessary. Waiting for congressional approval would take months probably, even weeks if there was a really pressing emergency. I don't think this law is about approval (I'm sure there would be a huge investigation by congress if he ever used it), it's about timing - stuff on the internet happens quickly and needs to be responded to quickly.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
I voted for Hillary.
How's that hope and change workin' out for ya?
is parroting Caribou Barbie really the most effective way of doing it?
He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing
Lots of comments but not one that is technically based...
Ok, I'll ask. Exactly how would a kill switch for the intrawebs work? Specifically, how would the president hit one button and "shut down" all telecom infrastructure in the country (including wireless). What about the various mesh networks that sprung up?
I am trying to envision how this would work on any technical level and I just can't get there. Yes, you could pretty easily cripple our telecom system here and there but to shut the whole thing down and make it unusable is quite a different scenario.
Not to mention the hacking opportunity this presents. Yes, I am sure there will be many many layers of security....but still.....if the president can do it, then someone else can also do it.
This actually raises (many) more questions than it answers.
This is akin to putting people on the no-fly list for no reason. IMHO, this is a blatant abuse of power and violates the 1st amendment in a big way. Can anyone remember when shutting down the opposition in the name of security was done last? Oh, yeah, Hugo Chavez. Oh yeah. the Chinese government. Oh yeah, the Iranian government. Oh yeah, the Burmese government (scuse me Miranmar). If people being pissed about the Patriot Act contributed to a change of power, this will do the same in the other direction. "Oh, but our beloved president Obama would never do that do me only to those evil right-wing militias (that nobody ever heard of until now)." Yeah, keep thinking that. Would you want a president with an opposing ideology to have this power?
You know, drugs, pirated content, and discussion groups all contribute to terrorism!
Goodbye erowid, bittorrent, and slashdot! Extreme and unlikely, but it can happen now and that's the awful thing. This is ridiculous.
In this age of information, there should be some sort of amendment added to the rules where the people themselves can weigh in on bills like this and kill them before they get anywhere.
-
So the president can make and put into action such a plan but this is not an expansion of existing authorities? Since when did the president have authority to censor speech?
When he got the right to round up innocent Americans and inter them.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
then the power any president has had with everything else.
It's like martial law. Ever stop to notice we have never had martial law?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is no different then the presidents power to issue martial law.
Even during the most oppressive moments of our government, martial law has never been declared.
NO one s on the no fly lists for 'no reason'. Some people are mistakenly put on it. HOWEVER no fly lists are far worse then this; they assume guilt and punish innocent people.
2 different things.
And no, this doesn't have anything to do with Obama. Nice try.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Pretty good. It's just hope for change now.
Snideness aside. You give the Prez too much "power credit". Yes, he has power, but only if he does what is backed by the rest of the political clout. Think of it as groupthink, a group of bullies that have a head honcho that leads them. He could easily incite them to steal your pocket money and jacket, but you don't think his buddies would follow him if he suddenly suggested they start doing community work, do you?
Politics isn't much different.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Change you can beli-- 404 ERROR...
Proverbs 21:19
I remember that it was more about restricting internet access to infrastructure targets like power plants. That's not to say that the actual law isn't vaguely enough worded to allow for gross breaches of civil rights. I didn't see anything in the blurb about what the changes were to the kill switch legislation.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
and gives the president this 'kill switch' without oversight or explanation.
... except by the courts, years after the fact.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've read the bill. It honestly isn't that bad. First off, the "kill switch" doesn't apply to arbitrary web sites or anything like that. It specifically targets 1) government computer networks and 2) computer networks connected to "critical infrastructure". By "critical infrastructure", they mean things like the power grid, water and sewer systems, natural gas systems, stuff like that. Some people who have read this bill have made the assumption that "infrastructure networks" is synonymous with "network infrastructure", i.e. internet backbones, but it's pretty obvious from the context that this is not what the bill is meant to cover. There's nothing in the bill which allows the president to turn off your internet or disconnect you unless you are a utility company.
Now, that said, they really could have more precisely defined "critical infrastructure networks" in order to make that clearer. There is still a little weasel-room in the bill where it is possible that someone could try to justify ridiculous actions using it. They could have eliminated this with a more specific definition of what comprises "critical infrastructure". So I wouldn't say that I support it 100% in its current form, but honestly, I don't think that the bill is all that terrible.
The bigger problem to me is that I don't see any reason to believe that the measures in this bill will do anything significant to address the problem which they are purporting to address. Although I'm not convinced that a "cyber attack" is a real threat, if it is, by the time the president declares a state of "cyber emergency", it will probably already be too late. If there really is a serious on-line threat then the way to fight that is not to give more power to people at the top to respond, it is to give people at the bottom more authority to make decisions and respond quickly to a developing security situation.
I think that this bill points out the need for all of us to know a little bit about the electronics involved with digital communication. We basically need to know enough to connect our computers together into small nets that can be independently linked to the world internet.
Our political masters in Washington have the idea that internet is a giant centrally-controlled utility that can be completely shutdown when some political leader orders it done.
It is quite possible that it is true for the web in its present form. All our computer links actually are based on centralized fiber lines. Whether the politicians/generals/CEOs could order the internet shutdown and the technological community would actually comply is a conspiratorial question.
I think that if the order came down from DC to 'turn off' the internet, it would be delayed and partially ignored. There is no centralized 'internet switch' to turn off. A mandated shut-down would at best be only partial because (the politicians forget) the internet was designed to be not be able to be shut-down by force or dictatorial order.
It would still be a good idea to have a basic understanding of electronics, short-wave ham radio communication, and fundamental internet protocols in order to patch together a link back to web if your local ISP shut off for any reason.
No no, if the Republicans had carried the 2008 elections, this legislation would be substantially different, and it would support the freedoms that real Americans love, not define actions that the president must take when he chooses to exercise powers he is already presumed to have.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Having been born and raised in Maine, I am very disappointed Olympia Snow (I think I voted for her...) helped draft this. Good thing I moved to California!!!! Wait, what?
The problem is not there, not with the Prez. It is with A) Congress and Senate seeming to consider this as normal legislative practice B) the American people silently undergoing this. Both A) and B) are major problems in a so-called democracy.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Did you read it off your palm?
While US did create ARPA in the 50's for military use, most of how Internet is used now a day has been actually created in Europe. US got the ball rolling, Europe polished and finished it.
On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
Same goes for almost every other major protocol and technology.
The Internet is an invention of the USA, so why shouldn't we have control over it, you eurotrash piece of shit?
DARPA created the Internet, so why shouldn't they have control over it?
More to the point, a very small number of individuals at DARPA created the Internet, so why shouldn't they have control over it?
In fact, only some PARTS of those individuals created the Internet, so why shouldn't those parts have control over it?
But wait, HUMANS created the Internet, so why shouldn't we all have control over it?
Why exactly are you picking one particular level of abstraction out of the infinite multitude of possible ones and declaring that it is the only one that we should all pay attention to? What makes the nation-state your entity-of-choice with regard to causal efficacy and moral supremacy? It seems pretty arbitrary to me.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
What Irony. The internet was build to be a robust system in case of emergency....
Al Gore created the Internet, so why shouldn't they have control over it?
More to the point, a very small number of individuals at Al Gore created the Internet, so why shouldn't they have control over it?
In fact, only some PARTS of those Al Gore created the Internet, so why shouldn't those parts have control over it?
But wait, Al Gore created the Internet, so why shouldn't Al Gore all have control over it?
Why exactly are you picking one particular level of abstraction out of the infinite multitude of possible ones and declaring that it is the only one that we should all pay attention to? What makes the nation-state your entity-of-choice with regard to causal efficacy and moral supremacy? It seems pretty arbitrary to me.
I read that the 'kill switch' was removed from the bill a few weeks ago... Even Fox says it was.
they're not as bad as the last administration, right?
Do as I say, not as I do. Bush BAD, BO GOOD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
And I believe he already has a button...
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
A property this post has in spades.
The 1913 US Tax law was a tax on only the top 1% of the population, the "wealthy". Now, the wealthy have tax dodges that allow them to pay less taxes than their maids, who often work at minimum wages. The resulting enforcement agency, the IRS, has been repeatedly used over the years as a political weapon, even more so than the Census Act. The use of the Census Act as a political weapon is rapidly gaining ground.
The RICO Act was created to fight organized crime, and a "promise" was made that it would "never" be used on ordinary citizens. Now, it is used over 10,000 times a year against ordinary citizens as a way to steal "guilty" property and as a supplemental funding source when law enforcement budgets are frozen or cut. The RICO Act provides that the law enforcement agencies can keep the property they stole even if it turns out that the "target" supplied by a jail house snitch seeking a "deal" was innocent.
The MOST UNPATRIOTIC law ever passed, the PATRIOT ACT, effectively destroys the Bill of Rights. The accused cannot tell anyone, including their spouse, that they've been accused, or of what they have been accused. They cannot face their accuser, nor can they see the "evidence" against them. They are tried in special courts. In fact, the PATRIOT Act RE-ESTABLISHES the conditions that were created in America by King George, prior to the Declaration of Independence. It's a slam-dunk convection when you cancel the Bill of Rights, especially when you add the infamous "perp walk" and the leaked "fact" news, all deliberately used to create an air of guilt for which there is often little or no real evidence. Toss in the self-appointed TV pundits, who act as judge, jury and executioner, and the accused is forever tainted. Fear of terrorist attacks have resulted in a law which cannot guarantee safety and has destroyed the Constitution. Like the Tax law and the RICO act, it is only a matter of time before future politicians use it for political purposes. So now, the US citizen has neither safety nor freedom and bribed Congressmen steadfastly refuse to identify or accept the power base of Jihadist threats in America, and persist in wasting American blood and treasure in Mid-East energy wars while Oil Companies continue to make record profits on oil and lobby to suppress alternate energy development in order to sustain their profit margins.
The FAIRNESS Doctrine was never about fairness. It was created as a political weapon. The political center and Right has always had a larger base in the US and, as Sen Franken found out, the Left cannot sustain a sufficiently large enough audience or advertiser base to support a national radio talk show preaching Socialist/Communist/Marxist values. When businesses failed to purchase sufficient ad time and devoted listeners failed to donate enough money, Air America failed. Not to worry! The Left has been successful in getting its message out by hijacking public radio and TV and subverting tax payer funds to sponsor "independent" films and guests, which focus on Marxist themes. The kinds of themes championed by ACORN or other Left Wing alphabet groups. Combine the always Leftists Indie films with mindless, talentless "Create" themes, and constant public service announcements against "hate speech" (which is any speech against Leftist ideology), and you have the complete brain washing paradigm. The stories about America's National Parks, etc., although inspirational, are mainly fillers, to maintain an air of neutrality.
Now we are going to be "protected" by selectively shutting down the only source of free public discourse remaining in this country, the Internet. The Internet bypassed the magazine and newspaper editors and their management of the "news". What was true in the USSR (there is no news in the Truth and no Truth in the news) had become true in America. The Internet bypassed single points of focus of government control or of editorial agendas. Now, the EXACT same method used in China by the Chinese Communist Party to control thei
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
I'm not quite sure about that, remember Internet != World Wide Web.
The web is a subsection of the internet.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No no, if the Republicans had carried the 2008 elections, this legislation would be substantially different, and it would support the freedoms that real Americans love, not define actions that the president must take when he chooses to exercise powers he is already presumed to have.
I had a double-take there. What makes you think 8 years of neoconservative abuses of executive power, increasing influence of giant corporations, and a widening gap between rich and poor would be followed by "increasing freedoms" of the people?
That question can't be answered for at least 10 years, which is when the effects of all the stuff Obama's been pushing will become apparent.
Your brain is not a computer.
Sarcasm.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The post you replied is a stupid troll, but your argument is pretty weak. If having "created" the Internet had any bearing on getting to control it (it doesn't), and if DARPA "created" the Internet (true only in some senses of the word) then DARPA should control it. DARPA is controlled by the US government, so metaphorically speaking "the USA" is controlling DARPA and should be able to control the net.
The individuals at DARPA were in fact working for DARPA, and gave up the rights to their work for money. Parts of individuals are therefore irrelevant. Humans, as an abstract group, did not create the Internet, even though the people who did were part of the group (or set) of humans. In the same vein, humans are not my father even though my father is part of the group of all humans.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
After competing in several Cybersecurity competitions, this seems to be an analog to the idea that the best way to keep someone from owning your system is to just unplug the system from the outside world until you can confidently defend the attack.
You are aware that the FCC, the grantor of that amateur radio license is another government organization, right?
Coincidentally, you are supposed to also have a license to use GMRS bands for walkie-talkies, but that has given rise to "bubble-pack pirates" who buy them and don't lawfully register. I would suspect if said situation occurs, more people would be more like "bubble-pack pirates" in their use of packet radio for internet communications.
I agree with the rest of your intent.
Well said! There are two problems here.
First, as you point out, the bill is very vague. As we know all too well, that means it will be interpreted to mean whatever the president wants it to mean, regardless of the original intent.
Second, the bill won't do anything particularly useful. If they are really worried about cyber attacks, the answer is to connect critical installations to a hardened, private network. Any connection to the public internet could be restricted to non-critical systems, that could be shut down if necessary.
In the end, this is a bill written by people who know little or nothing about technical realities. But it sounds good and is printed in a fancy font, so it will probably pass...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
remember subsection != application
In what is being described as "a good idea whose time has come" (by me), this bill will require all American citizens to buy Internet Insurance from me. Failure to buy this insurance from me will simply cause the IRS to penalize you $750 on your taxes and give the money to me. In a press release, a spokesperson for me said "Internet security and freedom from terroristic thoughts is a basic human right that will be protected by the implementation of this bill. Anyone who opposes this bill is a right-wing kookwad who should be first ridiculed on The Daily Show and then killed."
Keep in mind, though, that this bill, in its present form, is just the beginning. Other basic human rights will be covered in later additions to this plan that will require all American citizens to buy more things from me. I will build a Great Society where the trains run on time whether you like it or not.
At least with them we wouldn't have had any hope to begin with...
Should be easy enough to include such function inside the snooping machines that NSA has at tier 1 providers and ISP's.
Why would they even bother with such tech? The president gets pissed off at a website. He calls the director of the NSA up. That guy sends a couple of NSA agents to the ISP hosting the site. They tell whoever is there to pull the plug on the server/connection or they get thrown in a windowless hole for five years for treason or whatever. Done deal.
Why would the NSA bother building some complex tech hack when two guys with guns and hand cuffs 'just plain work'?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The Web (not "the internet") was primarily a US-based enterprise at first, and there is no doubt that the US was the driving force behind growing and developing it. And that's why ICANN and the like basically originated here.
It was ours to control. Why should we give that away? Altruism? Yeah right.
Ahem... the other way around...
The problem with paraphrasing is that the original meaning can be distorted. Franklin referred to essential liberty, not liberty in general. The implication that compromising non-essential liberties in the face of serious threats may be OK. In other words it is a gross distortion to quote Franklin in a black-and-white manner, he was a very complicated and insightful man that operated in shades of gray.
Look at the actual quote: ""Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Liberty is qualified as essential, safety is qualified as both little and temporary. Keep in mind that Franklin wrote in a day when each word was carefully considered. There is a lot nuance in there, some wiggle room.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
"We have the Tax law, the Census Act, the RICO Act and the PATRIOT Act as history lessons." You could go on way further than just those four!
I urge everyone in the IT community to download and read S.773 - The Cybersecurity Act of 2009. This bill contains a number of troubling provisions beyond the most obvious one, which is Presidential ability to control the Internet by preventing its use when he deems it necessary to do so. It would require the President to establish a Cybersecurity Advisory Panel without requiring any approval of the members of such panel by Congress. It also requires the Secretary of Commerce to assist the panel with the creation of Regional Cybersecurity Centers that must be affiliated with a non-profit organization or consortium, funded by the panel. Per my reading of the bill, all of this is to be done by people who not been vetted or approved by Congress in any way. It places all of that power in the hands of the President and certainly creates an opportunity to politicize the entire process. Within one year, the Secretary of Commerce must develop a national licensing, certification and recertification program for cybersecurity professionals. Beginning three years after the bill is passed, "it shall be unlawful for any individual to engage in business in the United States, or to be employed in the United States, as a provider of cybersecurity services to any Federal agency or an information system or network designated by the President, or the President's designee, as a critical infrastructure information system or network, who is not licensed and certified under the program." Ask yourselves, please, who gets to define what is or isn't a critical infrastructure information system or network. That's correct. It's the President (or his designee). But wait ... there's more. Within one year after the bill is passed, the President (or his designee) gets to tell Congress if he wants to require cybersecurity to be a factor in all bond ratings (presumably only for private-sector companies and not federal bonds), Here's where it really gets good. "The term "cyber" means - (A) any process, program, or protocol relating to the use of the Internet or an intranet, automatic data processing or transmission, or telecommunication via the Internet or an intranet; and (B) any matter relating to, or involving the use of, computers or computer networks." Let's see if they left any possible use of computers out of that definition. Nope, they even seem to have VOIP covered. The President can control every computer in the country under that definition, irrespective of whether or not it is part of critical security infrastructure. The point here is that this bill is seemingly titled to make people think that it is a well-intended way to protect our country. When you dig deeper into the bill it clearly spells out command and control of potentially every computer in the country by ... the President. Forget about the person who is in office now. This is a dangerous consolidation of power in the hands of whomever is in the office of President. Read the bill and decide for yourself if this is the path the United States should continue going down - consolidating more and more power in the hands of one man (or woman). Then make your feelings know to your U.S. senators ASAP.
Well, isn't this just like saying "If you use a screwdriver made by Bosch then they should have control/ownership over everything you create with that tool"?
More to the point, the Internet is a date communication layer, everything else I leave to science.
Just the Programmer P.O.V.
oh yes, this is going to turn out good.
"Millions Americans hit the streets last night when apparently the President got pissed at being pwnd in Counter Strike Source, decides to take internet down. With nothing to do, apparently Americans decided to play a live version of Grand Theft Auto..."
More at 11.
Be seeing you...
but your argument is pretty weak. If having "created" the Internet had any bearing on getting to control it (it doesn't), and if DARPA "created" the Internet (true only in some senses of the word) then DARPA should control it. DARPA is controlled by the US government, so metaphorically speaking "the USA" is controlling DARPA and should be able to control the net.
I didn't read the post myself, it's "beneath your current threshold". However in one form or another a network of networks, which is what the internet is, would have developed without ARPANET or DARPA. Neither had anything to do with CompuServe for instance. Compu-Serv Network, Inc was started in 1969 by an insurance company. It was spun off as a separate business in 1975 and it's name changed to CompuServe. Also during the 1970s BBSes or Bulletin board systems were springing up like mushrooms after a night's rain. FidoNet allowed communications between different BBSes. During the 1980s a number of other online service providers arose. AOL, GEnie, and Prodigy are some of the ones I recall.
It was only a matter of tyme before someone came along with the idea of a public square instead of just the walled gardens of most online services.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This is just another story of government over reaching in to the lives of the population. First health care now privacy.
Before health care there was, and still is, the War on Drugs. Two Republican, 2 not 1 and Republican not Democrat, presidents overreached with that. Republican President Nixon had The Shafer Commissionstudy whether hemp, marijuana, should be legalized. Of the 13 members Nixon appointed 9. Even then he said no matter what the commission concludes he would never agree to allow hemp to be legalized. And that is exactly what the commission concluded. After him Republican President Reagan then toughened law enforcement and sentencing for drug offices. Nancy Reagan was the one that started the Just Say No campaign. Neither Nixon nor Reagan, nor most Democrats for that matter, would agree to legalization.
Next they will tell you what to eat
Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, wants to say what people eat. He also advocated smoking bans as well as gun bans.
Big brother here we come.
That's true with both Republicans and Democrats.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I can foresee Obama declaring all electoral candidates facing off against democrats as being "terrorists", thus necessitating the immediate take-down of any site that supports them.
-Oz
Would you want your cops to stop an arson in progress, or should they be forced to go through the courts first? A DDoS could do far more damage than an arson.
Who's the greater threat, arsonists or governments? Arsonists kill less than terrorists and terrorists on 911 killed less than 4000 people however governments have killed millions.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
it's either really funny or really sad that such dissertations as yours still aren't enough to open some folks' eyes as to what's going on here. as long as there are those who think these acts of govt AGAINST us are ok, those of us who don't think they are ok will never have the power to fix it. please keep up the chatter. i still have a small shred of hope (thru information like this) that we will find a way.... thanks fer lis'nin' seekertom
You can try to change the world, and people should, but that does not mean you or they will be successful.
Sidney Poitier said something like that in the movie "To Sir With Love". In it he says it's the students' responsibility to try to change the world, but like the in the Beatles' song Revolution, they have to do it peacefully.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What's really needed is for elected officials to be accountable on the local scale. How many people does each House member represent? It used to be 30,000... now it's roughly 500,000. Even at the state level, legislators do not need to answer to their communities. NJ has approximately 8,000,000 people and 40 state senators -- that's one senator per 200,000 people. The ratio is high enough that mass media overpowers community accountability.
What's really needed is less government not more.
Federal Senators/Reps being required to spend 320 days a year in their home state
You know what I'd like to see? A new amendment that like the Texas Constitution does limits how long congress is in session. In Texas the legislature only spends 140 days every other year in session. In a post I made a few minutes ago I suggested 120 days for a regular session, now combining that with your proposal to use technology for remote sessions, then the citizen's congress could spend even less tyme in Washington. Say 60 days, then if they need or want to they can a full-time job doing something else. Say farming or running a business. If they are someone else's employee then require that employer to give them unpaid tyme off. Employers already are required to do this for those in the National Guard or Reserves so it shouldn't be a hardship for the employer.
Should there be a Law?
So the president can make and put into action such a plan but this is not an expansion of existing authorities? Since when did the president have authority to censor speech?
When he got the right to round up innocent Americans and inter them.
Yeap, that was Abe Lincoln.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Thanks for that. Strange that in a story about the importance of wikileaks, such an important part of the story would have been left deliberately vague.
Internet != World Wide Web
Which is not what the OP said. What he said was "most of how Internet is used now a day". That would be web, unless you can name one other application that's used by the overwhelming majority of users on the Internet? FTP? SSH? Gopher?
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com