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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."'"
Strange name for a bill thats made for limiting and controlling the flow of information in case of, well just about anything. War on drugs, immigrants, terrorists, citizens?
If there was any real concern about cyber security, Windows would be outright banned on the spot.
HTTP/1.1 400
If this passes. (and it will, in some form) I bet we will have a 'threat' within 5 years.
And they just won't give back control of the net.
Hope i'm wrong. but... that doesn't happen often.
If you can give me ONE example, where a set of laws were introduced (like the Patriot Act) with the promise they wouldn't go down slippery slope, AND THEY KEPT THAT PROMISE, then I'll shut up about the slippery slope.
Okay?
And the "there is no slippery slope" argument implies that everyone in the room shares your opinions on everything that matters.
Note that we're talking about government here. The government's objectives at any given time are not necessarily the same as your objectives. They're not even necessarily similar to your objectives.
Do remember all the screaming about the PATRIOT Act. And then look back over the last eight years and see how much of that has actually happened...
As to the question of legalizing Gay Marriage...personally, I'm pretty much indifferent to the question, but I hate to break it to you, but the arguments used to justify gay marriage work quite well to justify polygamy/polyandry/polygyny. If I were a Mormon, I'd already be planning my ad campaign for the 2020 election season....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I don't have a problem with this. This is worded in such a way that they can't just quietly come in and take control of the infrastructure. It would require a presidential declaration to start this in motion. Hardly something you can hide. It will also protect the rest of the internet that we control in the event of a cyberattack. I agree with the parent. This is a logical step to secure critical infrastructure in the event of an attack. Not some paranoid bill that will allow big brother to sneak in unaware and monitor/control every aspect of the internet. It is very specific in it's target and implementation trigger.
ts the same argument used by those who stand against gay's right to marry: "if we let gays marry, then people will be marrying sheep! polygamy will be legal too!" bullshit. people understand that homosexual marriage is not bestiality or multiple wives
I had no problem with folks wanting to marry a sheep, cat, goat, or whatever - what they do behind closed doesn't affect me or my liberties.
the slippery slope implies that there is no rational thinking people in the room
It's no the people in the room I'm concerned about. It's the people making policy.
Border patrol. They are there to secure our borders from illegal immigrants and protect the borders from invaders, but yet, they're searching citizen's laptops for child porn. What has child porn have to do with securing our borders? Or drugs for that matter. A citizen sniffing a line of coke won't jeopardize our security or our freedom, but yet, the increased powers of the border guards has limited some of our freedom - Fourth Amendment.
Gun laws are on this continuous pendulum of restriction and liberation but the net effect over time has been more restrictions on law abiding citizens and our Second Amendment right is withering away . In the meantime, the criminals are shooting away without restriction.
Tax laws - IRS - the Mother of all slipper slopes. The income tax was put in place to pay for a war that has long been over and paid off and yet, the laws become ever more complex and violate our rights more every year.
No. The slippery slope argument exists because it's true. Sure there is a bit a hyperbole occasionally but it doesn't make it not true.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I am a conservative who opposed (and still opposes) the PATRIOT act just for this reason. I am against giving the government ANY additional power or control over citizens. Especially ones with such huge possibility for misuse. I didn't want Bush to have the PATRIOT act because I knew that someday there'd be someone like Obama come along to also use it. What has this guy taken over so far? 2/3rds of the US auto industry, the entire banking industry, and now the healthcare system. Yeah, do we want to allow them to take over the private network infrastructure too?
They can't even get unemployment back under 9%.
History has proven that whenever you give government power that CAN be abused, it WILL be abused.
Corporatism != Free Market
Please consider that the bill comes from an anti-civil libertarian, a war 'hawk', and a post-9/11 buddy of the bunch in Congress that gave you the Patriot Act, and so on. Yeah, hurricanes, oil spills, and Internet threats-- perfect candidates for federal government emergency work.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You are pretty wrong about that.
First of all, they wouldn't be interested in internal/private networks. They would be interested in the public internet. To that end, nearly all of the pieces of the public internet are privately owned but are granted "right of way" by governing agencies. This "right of way" is how their cables and devices are protected under law. But in order to get this right of way, they have to agree to be governed under certain rules. This is no different from the FCC leasing radio band ranges and then controlling what can be done with them or how they are used. In fact, participation in the public internet comes with rules of its own. Which governing agency is a subject of controversy but you know all about that I'm sure.
Yes it does. If a man is bleeding to death outside a bandage store, I am perfectly entitled to get the bandages and save the mans life even if he cannot pay or the store is closed.
That is not true. At least from a legal standpoint. If such a thing were true, if a homeless person is starving to death, is he "perfectly entitled" to breaking into a grocery store, even if the store is closed? FUCK NO. Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to come off as a cold hearted ass, but when you start applying entitlement to situations involving unauthorized acquisition of private goods, drawing the line just cannot be done without legal precedent, so please cite a case in which a person was entitled to another persons goods based on need, and was given right to take those goods without the other persons consent, regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Entitlement will be the death if America. Look at Greece. They felt entitled to everything, were given everything, and it broke them. Look at California. Look anywhere where large amounts of entitlement ran the country for years.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It is very specific in it's target and implementation trigger.
You forgot one thing: there's always an "imminent cyberattack", for the same reasons we still have spam.
Basically this gives the president the power to declare computing martial law whenever he feels like it.
Do you remember Katrina? Do you really want the feds fucking with your network? It is far more plausible to believe that civilian networks will rebound faster from a cyber attack without federal interference because most civilian networks are run by people who do that sort of thing for a living, with their networks, configured properly for their use. Do you really think some random fed network guy is going to be able to reconfigure your network from afar without prior knowledge of how you have it configured? How will they know your user names? How will they access your backups? How will they know which entries on your administrator list are valid administrators and which ones are planted by cyber attackers?
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
You're not factoring in the irrational hate some people have for Obama.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It is very specific in it's target and implementation trigger.
Unfortunately, that's not enough to reassure me. How many times have we seen laws "creatively interpreted" to allow someone to do something that might otherwise be considered illegal?
I don't have a problem with this. This is worded in such a way that they can't just quietly come in and take control of the infrastructure. It would require a presidential declaration to start this in motion. Hardly something you can hide.
Whether or not the takeover is hidden is not the point. Whether or not they'll give it back is the point.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
It is far more plausible to believe that civilian networks will rebound faster from a cyber attack without federal interference because most civilian networks are run by people who do that sort of thing for a living,
Agreed. Just look at what a great job the civilian oil industry has done in stopping the flow of oil from the broken well in the Gulf by the people who do that sort of thing for a living when the government hasn't interfered.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just giving a counter-example to the mantra that private companies are better at doing things than the government. Government, on the whole, can martial resources more quickly and get them to where they are needed faster than can civilian institutions. However, that requires that both parties not be at each other's throats during the process. The process should be:
1) Government gets the resources and delivers them to pre-position points
2) Civilian organizations then distribute/use those resources as they know what needs to be done
To use Haiti as an example, it should have been the government, in the form of the military, who got to the airport first, then using engineers, cleared a path from the airport to the city. During that time, basic resources should have been collected and prepared for delivery with civilian organizations working with the government on what aid was really needed.
Once a path was cleared, the resources were delivered along with the civilians who would be distributing the resources, using the paths cleared by the engineers.
This is a very basic overview of what needed to be done, but you get the point. A partnership of government and civilian organizations is what is needed in emergencies. Not one or the other.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
And even though the USA is almost totally made their once respected police officers into para-military goons
Blame the War on Drugs for this. Two generations ago the local police were rarely armed with anything heavier than a revolver and the occasional shotgun. Now they have armored vehicles, fully automatic weapons, flashbangs, etc. Mind you, that's because the criminals got more firepower too, but that's also attributable to the War on Drugs. The last time we tried prohibition it started an arms race between the criminals and the police. Too bad we didn't learn any lessons from that experience.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I applaud the efforts of Terry Childs and, yes, he did stop the authorities. It cost him his freedom but he sent a clear message. A law can only be enforced when it is feasible to do so. If everyone en masse stopped paying taxes, the government would be absolutely hamstrung so they count on their populace being divided and thus easily conquered. You cannot have 3/4 of the population in prison! If everyone united against the government in civil (as in non-violent) protest, stopped paying taxes, stopped going to work you would have your force for change. The government is just good at instilling fear in weaker minds. If everyone stopped paying taxes and peacefully demanded the repeal of the Patriot Act, the government would have no choice but to do so like a whipped puppy. India gained independence from Britain because its populace was united. We may never see this again. It is unfortunate because it is non-violent and extremely effective. By being non-violent, Indians gained the support of the world at large making the pressure so intense the British government had no choice but to relinquish a piece of its empire. A scenario like this is terrifying to the US Government.
There is if you are a civil libertarian.
No - we're talking about rational people here.