Bill Gives Feds "Emergency" Powers To Secure Civilian Nets

ziani writes "Joe Lieberman wants to give the federal government the power to take over civilian networks' security if there's an 'imminent cyber threat.' From the article: 'Lieberman and Collins' solution is one of the more far-reaching proposals. In the Senators' draft bill, "the President may issue a declaration of an imminent cyber threat to covered critical infrastructure." Once such a declaration is made, the director of a DHS National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications is supposed to "develop and coordinate emergency measures or actions necessary to preserve the reliable operation, and mitigate or remediate the consequences of the potential disruption, of covered critical infrastructure."'"

Comments

Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network

[Pojut]

Obama can have my root passwords only from my cold, dead, brain.

Read the freakin' summary, at the very least. It's Lieberman the Toad that wants to do this, not Obama. (Although, given the chance, Obama likely would...but still, this is about Lieberman.)

polygamy degrades society

[circletimessquare]

a bunch of rich men (its about money, not love) taking up a bunch of women represents an equal sized population of poorer men who are now without a mate, through no fault of their own

so now you have a bunch of angry rootless loveless men in your society without any hopes for their future and nothing to lose. use your boundless imagination as to the effects of that

This is not about the power to "turn off the net"

[jonwil]

From reading TFA, this is about the government needing the power to take over critical infrastructure in the advent of a threat to Americas national security. So for example this allows them to take over control of (and security of) electronic control networks running things like the electricity grid if the spooks get wind of an immanent cyber attack.

Just like the feds used their power to shut down US airspace after 9/11, the feds need the power to take over, disconnect, shut down, secure or control computer systems and networks controlling critical infrastructure in the advent of a "Cyber 9/11" attack (a threat that is not just the stuff of movies like Die Hard 4.0)

Per the proposal, "Critical Infrastructure" does NOT mean Google or Facebook or Slashdot or whatever, it means things like power grids, gas plants, water systems, hospitals, emergency services, oil refineries etc.

Re:i'm sick of the fallacy of the slippery slope

[Overzeetop]

You do realize that propping up those industries likely prevented a 1930s style collapse? And that the safeguards which were removed (and safeguards which were not put into place) occurred during the 14 years that the Republicans controlled both houses of congress? And that it was President Bush who bought out the banking industry?

The problem with this particular law is that we don't need it. The president has this power in the event of an immanent attack or war anyway. IMHO, this is posturing - and counterproductive.

Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network

[sconeu]

Parent isn't kidding. Please see Kelo v. City of New London.

Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network

[DragonWriter]

The trigger for this bill is also very specific.

That's not at all clear. An actual bill number would let us check the text, all we have in TFA is two characterizations by staffers which disagree, and you've pulled the one favorable to your position and ignored the other:

As to the trigger in this bill, from TFA:

"In order for the President to declare such an emergency, there would have to be knowledge both of a massive network flaw — and information that someone was about to leverage that hole to do massive harm. For example, the recent “Aurora” hack to steal source code from Google, Adobe and other companies wouldn’t have qualified, one Senate staffer noted: “It’d have to be Aurora 2, plus the intel that country X is going to take us down using that vulnerability.”

See, that sounds somewhat narrowly applicable. But if you keep reading the following paragraph in TFA, you'd see another staffer suggesting that something like the Conficker worm might have triggered based on unspecific evidence that "hackers" were looking to "leverage" it in some way (not the kind of specific "country X" kind of requirement the first staffer suggested):

A second staffer suggested that evidence of hackers looking to leverage something like the massive Conficker worm — which infected millions of machines and was seemingly poised in April 2009 to unleash something nefarious — might trigger the bill’s emergency provisions. “You could argue there’s some threat information built in there,” the staffer said.

So, given that the staffers quoted in TFA don't agree -- and, frankly, even if they did -- maybe we shouldn't take the most inoffensive characterization in TFA as being an accurate reflection of the bill.

People complain that politicians lie too much, but you know -- if people didn't just accept the most comforting thing they or their staffers said on faith, maybe they wouldn't keep lying.