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Senate Panel Approves Cybersecurity Bill
GovTechGuy writes "A Senate Committee approved a bill that would give the president an emergency 'kill switch' over the Internet, but added some restrictions to the bill. The president may no longer simply assert that the threat remains indefinitely, he must now seek Congressional approval after 120 days. Still, privacy advocates are concerned about the government's ability to shut down private networks. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) 'said she was disappointed to read reports that the bill gives the White House a "kill switch" for the Internet, an authority she says the president already has under a little-known clause in the Communications Act passed one month after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. ... Collins [argued] the new bill actually circumscribes the president's existing authority and puts controls on its use.'"
Damn you Americans and your self-important exceptionalism.
The President also has the power to suspend the Constitution, something that has never happened though several wars. Things would have to get very dire before either of these events would be triggered.
Wait a minute, is this the USA or North Korea I'm living in?
And that's saying something. It won't even kill the internet anyway, just a large chunk of it (ie some backbone stuff, not all). It will be an inconveniance, but life will go on. God damn it, fucking america.
Could someone please explain how this would actually work in practice? There isn't a single point that all internet traffic goes through, so how exactly would they achieve this? What about dial up and such?
Joe Lieberman is a republican mole in the Democratic party. This much should be obvious from everything that he has done so far, his stance on the health insurance is a good example.
Remember, he is the guy who wants to spend about 187 million to upgrade the Secret Service systems/hardware (pork belly spending obviously), and now he is the guy who came up with this 'Cybersecurity Bill'.
Obviously this has nothing to do with any cybersecurity, the politicians will approve it, whether republicans or democrats, so that they have a way to kill dissenting opinions and news that the Internet allows to spread around. One of the arguments Lieberman gave for this is that China can do it so USA should also be able to. Does USA want to follow China in terms of treating the dissent, the freedom of press, the freedom in general? I guess now, that everything else is made in China this is just the next logical step - import their governing principles as well (at this point it doesn't seem that much needs to be imported anyway).
You can't handle the truth.
I hope to god they install another big button in his desks - right next to the nuke button and the strippers button.
The president does not have the power to suspend the constitution , the president does have the power to suspend habeus corpus during rebellion or invasion where public safety may require it. In ex parte milligan supreme court said
that civilians could not be tried by military courts when civilian courts were functioning
I have the Internet on my computer, have had since 1995.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
The president may no longer simply assert that the threat remains indefinitely, he must now seek Congressional approval after 120 days
President to Congress: "Look I sent you guys an email asking to extend the Internet being turned off, and nobody responded!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Joe Lieberman is a republican mole in the Democratic party.
Progressive blogs and forums have a word for him: DINOSAUR. It stands for "Democrat in name only, sorry-ass undercover Republican".
I'm probably crusin' for a brusin' by saying this, but there probably should be some form of last defense for computer systems throughout the nation. In the event of a highly-destructive fast-spreading virus, being able to shut off all connection at the ISP level would buy enough time for security researchers to find a way to negate the threat.
That said, I have qualms about the implementation. Some proposals:
1) The killswitch needs to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Either all ISPs are mandated to shut down or none. The economic magnitude of such a decision would force any internet shutdown to be only used in the face of an even worse threat.
2) The requirements for activating the shutdown need to be more specific than "an emergency." Japan was able to spend itself into debt by repeated use of "emergency" spending. The requirements for a shutdown of the internet should be a clear and widespread danger to computer systems.
3) 120 days is far too long of a time to have before the decision should come up for review. Four months without computer-to-computer communication that has become integral to the economy is far to long to be granted without oversight.
I have not yet had a chance to read the PROPOSED bill. Note that this story is about the bill making it out of committee, not becoming law. Does anyone have a link to the text of the proposed bill?
Yeap, this means it's time to get a hard copy of the entire internet so we can just keep surfing in offline mode.
-=JML=-
Obviously the simplest way to implement such a 'feature' is to go after the ISPs, set some sort of a coordination framework among the ISPs, mandate that those ISPs set up a bunch of new hardware/software/whatever it takes to cut out subnets/IP addresses/entire cables from the rest of the Internet. This is not going to improve the democracy of the country of-course, but that's the point, remove the dissenting voices, and of-course the motives are as always 'pure' - there is a cyberwar going, didn't you know? USA was always in this cyberwar. Just like it was always in the drug war and what seems like a never ending war in Afghanistan.
As always a bunch of people stand to make a bunch of money from such endeavors, and in this case there is also the nice side-effect of making it easier for politicians to lie and to get away with the lies, why with all the power over the networks it would be very easy to declare a state of emergency.
And so what that the bill will limit the amount of time that the President would be able to shut portions of the Internet down? Once this bill passes, it would be easy to amend it or simply to use Presidential order/signature/whatever it takes to continue the portions of the Internet from ever being activated back again.
The cyberwar is like the war on drugs, like the war with terrorism, war on obesity, whatever never-ending war that the government likes to be in. It will never end and you cannot see it and cannot even prove that there is or there isn't a war and if you say anything otherwise you are a terrorist.
Just you wait until they combine the cybersecurity bill with some patriot act/anti-terrorism bill. Ever wondered how do politicians tolerate all of those dissenting opinions, all of those facts to come out through the Internet? Well, they've been thinking and it's a multi-step approach and it's being implemented right now. Soon enough anybody could go to Gitmo on some terrorism charge related to the cybersecurity charge and multiply that by the patriot act and add rendition to it and soon enough you'll be wondering, where is that guy, named Cenk Uygur, where did Rachel Maddow go and what the heck happened to that dude from comedy central, what was his name, Jon Stewart was it?
Maybe it's still a bit far-fetched, but they are moving in this direction.
I guess the actual way to fight it could be learned from those Russian operated bot-nets, once the information is outlawed, only the outlaws will have the information? That's what it's coming to and at the hands of people like Joe Lieberman, don't forget it, but just wait and see who ends up voting for it and how the White House stands on the issue.
You can't handle the truth.
What ever happened to that wireless mesh network we were all supposed to be a part of by now? I think it is about time we all get back to participating. Hey Google, set up some fat wifi antennas and let us start connecting directly!!!
is neccessary it will never happen if this passses fuck this country im leaving first my health care then thi eventually they everyone will hit a breaking poin this is mine internet is the only honest no agenda press it instantnews and is the last thing keeping the government in any kind of check. if they can turn off there enemy it becomes 1984....where they control all outlets and just feed you lies call me paranoid but the reason orwell commentated on it is because its what governments do so ya fail us govt healthcare passes maybe the democrts will do this as they go down in flames.
Senator Lieberman again, find out which lobbyist he is working for now and expose this guy for the corrupt shill he is.
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8781
I thought that the whole point of the internet was that it would continue after a significant part was switched off or bombed away. So this will not stop any foreign groups from communicating and the USA is effectively plugging its fingers in its ears when this law is used.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
It seems to me that 120 days before needing approval from Congress is about 113 days too long. Maybe 118 days too long. Assuming the President had a valid reason to use this power, it's reasonable to think that Congress would approve similarly. The internet is pretty fricking important, and it's hard to imagine it going away for four months.
Also, of course, shutting down the major pipes won't make the internet disappear, it will just send it back to the Dark Ages of the early 1990s, when people manually connected their computers together and the routing software took care of the rest. Maybe IRC would see a comeback.
A new Disney flick leaked - if not stopped immediately that could cause irreparable hard to the entertainment economy.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Your sort has always been just about to leave, and you always will be.
Out of interest, where do you imagine would have you?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is the change Obama promised us ? As usual, the American government does what it can do to preserve the status quo at the expense of the population at large. "You suckers get out of line and we'll stop (or spy on) your communications". I hope this works as well as it did in Iran when they tried to shut them down during a near revolution.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.3480 -- really though, there should be a law, or at least a "best practice" requiring that bill numbers be reported in print and links to Thomas be report in on-line journalism. They stupid article linked in the /. summary didn't even give the name of the bill. I had to find it searching for the 3 co-sponsors, plus the Senate committee name. And then, it was one of 11 results. This is why people are uninformed, even when they're not lazy.
C'mon Republicans! It's time to act as an opposition party and stand up for conservative values like small government, de-regulation in the business sector, civil liberties (party of Lincoln, remember?) and... bwhahahahahahahahaha! Yeah, we're fucked.
Michelle: Are you coming to bed?
Barrak: I can't. This is important.
Michelle: What?
Barrak: Someone is wrong on the Internet.
Michelle: Oh, for the love of-- {pushes button}
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I'll be putting a satellite dish (hidden) in my garden, where Google maps can't see it, and subscribe to my Indian, Chinese, or Iranian internet provider.
Ok, enough censorship already. I'm just saying we need to start an underground project, that's all.. someting that the Man can't shutdown or censor.
Well, no, actually. If you'd RTFA -- or even the summary -- you'd see that this bill reduces a power that the POTUS has had since the early 1940s.
So it was a long time ago this, then recently health care.
So calm down and take your meds; they may improve your ability to put together something resembling coherent written English.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Skynet's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness.
Shit, this is a bad time for something like this. Republicans have circle jerks at the thought of extending presidential power and the Democrats are currently in power so at least some of them will be short-sighted enough to vote for this shit.
They always say they love freedom and liberties. "Freedom is what makes America great so we try to liberate countries under tyranny" hahahaha yeah sure, stop killing our freedoms then!. America is starting to look more and more like nazi Germany. History repeats itself.
How much of the voice network goes across the internet now?
How many companies most if not all their business on the internet?
How much do the airlines depend on the internet? The ticketing counters have terminals that access some database housed in some data center. If you are traveling you could be stuck where ever you are at. Hell, how is all the flight information shared between the airports? I doubt that the FAA has a separate isolated network.
How much of the trading on the stock markets are done on the internet?
Go to the store and try to buy something with a credit or debit card. Your cards are verified across the internet.
Go to the bank and try to get your money out. Does the local branch of your bank have your account information? Or is that information stored in some data center that is accessed via the internet?
I could go on and on with examples. It is amazing how within the past 10 years the internet has become such an integral part of our daily lives. Just the other day, I tried to explain to my daughter that when I was growing up, most people had not even heard of the internet and you were lucking if your school had a computer. She just could not understand how we did things with out computers and access to the internet.
I would be interested in hearing from an economist on what the economic impact(both US & Global) would be if the internet was shut down for a day, a week, a month, etc.
Woah. Take a breath. The Shift key is to the left and there's another one to the right. Punctuation improves communication.
Otherwise, I agree with the title. I can find no situation where shutting down interns is acceptable.
Let's say this was used, wouldn't it cause such an economic loss that pretty much every country would consider the US a terrorist state and guarantee a war against the US? Unless of course it simply isolates the US and leaves everyone else all happy...
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
The passing of this bill will be the end of the internet and the end of all free speech on the internet. The US government will be able to determine what is or isn't dangerous enough to shut off the internet. In my honest opinion it's just ridiculous to give something as important as the internet BACK to the government. They had the internet and gave it to corporations and this is what lead to the internet as we know it, and now they want to go back to how it was?
No virus, no worm, is so much of a threat that we'd have to shut off the internet. And to shut off the internet is probably even worse than any of the danger any worm could cause. I suppose they want to rush this bill through because of the wikileaks situation because I don't understand why it's being rushed without any debate or obvious need for it. What is the reason for this?
I wonder whether they have studies showing the economic impact of doing something like that to justify a "kill switch". How much money is lost killing an entire network versus actively fighting an infection? I am sure there are a lot of ISPs with botnet farms, which may need to be shutdown regardless. However, how will this impact content caching services such as Akamai etc?
When you talk about destructive viruses this could be a way to stop destructive memes (mind viruses) from spreading. This seems to be about information control and I'm definitely against that and all forms of censorship. If something is so dangerous and so much of a secret that we'd have to shut down the entire internet to keep it from spreading, or if an idea really is so destructive that its better to shut the internet off, the kill switch in all likelyhood is going to cause more harm than any possible website, worm, virus or whatever the excuse is.
If they want to shut off the internet they should shut off THEIR internet, not OUR internet. This is like shutting off our lights, or shutting off the TV and radio, or shutting off all communications in the country to prevent a terrorist attack. If the government is going to jam civilian communications it's essentially terrorizing the country to protect the country from terrorism.
So no it's a horrible idea. Whether you are a nazi or not, banning their websites is wrong. Banning books is wrong. Are we going to go back to the dark ages?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why would they only shut down the internet? They aren't talking about shutting off radio, telephone, or TV. It's only the internet because the internet is the last free speech zone left in this world. To shut down the internet for any reason is to kill free speech, I cannot think of any logical reason where shutting down the internet makes sense.
A civil war situation? even if there were a civil war we'd need open communication just to know whats going on and whos winning. Who exactly benefits if theres no communication? The citizens certainly wont. And I'm talking the ordinary citizens here not the slashdot types who are sophisticated enough to figure out how to communicate by radio or other devices. Shutting down the internet hurts individuals who get all their news, all their information and do all their communications on the internet.
Honestly most of us would rather take a virus than shut down our computer.
This is like the talk of martial law and plans to build camps. Shutting down the internet will trigger so much chaos that there would be riots in the streets. To shut off the internet for MONTHS would create more chaos than 911, more chaos than Katrina, it would be like a blackout that lasts for a month where the majority of young people wont know how to communicate with their friends and family. They wont know how to get their news. They'll be confused and will accept news from random sources.
Also theres no talk about shutting off the TV, or the phone or government censored access points for information. This idea seems political and I doubt Google, Microsoft or any internet company thinks this is a good idea. This is going to lead to something bad.
If you care about information continuing to flow if/when the TCP/IP networks are shut down, maybe you should look into setting yourself up as a UUCP node and making peering arrangements? Remember how UUCP mail and news worked? It was a bit like telephone-based bit torrent. It was completely decentralized. As long as you could set up a phone connection with your nearest peers, the data would flow.
I've been on the internet for a long time and I've seen all sorts of hackers. I've never met any of these E-Terrorists. Everybody who is anybody knows how to function in the real world. Cyberspace is only used as a communication tool and if the USA were to shut down the internet the criminals and terrorists, along with the majority of hackers and smart people would just go to another network and on top of that it would be something decentralized and it would be something spontaneous.
Shutting down the internet would trigger immediate chaos for everyone else. If you don't know what packet radio, or about communication technology in general, and if you think that facebook and twitter is how to get your news, when the internet is shut off you'll have no way to communicate for months at a time. You wont be able to talk to your friends, you won't be able to talk to some of your family members, you wont be able to access the news, you won't be able to do any of that for an entire month.
Individuals who know how to use radio will set up an antenna in their backyard or buy a shortwave radio and will be fine, but you'll be confused as hell. And sure the government can jam the radio and everything else along with shutting off the internet and smart people will use pigeons, lasers, and other more unorthodox methods to communicate. This sort of situation would really separate the men from the boys on a technical level but it would put the majority in chaos because the majority has no technical understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum and no understanding of how the internet works.
Terrible idea. I'm not surprised Lieberman thought it up.
My BBS doesn't care!
You are saying they could pass a law to close off the electromagnetic spectrum and shut down all communication in this country? That would put us back into the dark ages, and I can't see how anything the terrorists could do could be worse than that.
Give a situation where shutting off the internet would improve national security? I cannot think of any situation where it would influence national security. All the essential functions should be kept off the internet. All the functions on the internet shouldn't be essential for national security. As far as I know mission critical networks are not accessible from the normal internet. Anybody telling you it is, is using that as an excuse to pass ridiculous laws.
It's not in the public interest to shut off the internet just like it's not in the public interest to ban books. It promotes ignorance. When people are ignorant they cannot make wise decisions and don't know how to act. If they get their news and form their opinions on the internet, shutting off the internet is one of the worst things you can do.
Imagine if you had a month where you cannot access the internet. How would you get your news? How would you contact your friends? How would you do your research and form your opinions?
If they want to put a "kill switch" on the main connections; then I :-) Like the
thinks it's time that all these home wireless ROUTERS were reprogrammed
to interconnect and route around the "killed" connections.
old quote "Censorship is just another routing problem".
They do, for the most part, and for most of the agencies (DOD, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc...). They have redundant network capabilities served both by wired and wireless means (micro-wave and satellite transmission capabilities). The "business" apps at those agencies do not necessarily have a private network. The terminals that serve you the internet at a great many of these agencies also have access to these other applications that interact with the "shadow" networks. Also, the same network providers that provide you and me with our "pipe" (AT&T, Verizon, Quest, etc...) also provide the "pipes" to the other, "shadow" networks. Should the systems at those installations become targets for malicious assault, then it could shut down entire sectors of the economy. The NASDAQ is one such "highly available" system that could be harmed, even though they have their own network. The financial networks that carry SWIFT, Cirrus, Visa, and ATM transactions would be susceptible even though they are on private networks. I'm not sure how turning "off" the internet will help. Wouldn't removing access to the internet have the same effect as a DDOS attack? The outcomes are the same aren't they (i.e. loss of connectivity)? The real goal of cyber attack is either one or both of the following:
Gain Access
Deny Access
If I were a cyber-assassin bent on disabling large networks for the purpose of disrupting an economy, I now would have two tactics available to me. I could launch my DDOS against a financial network or sufficiently large commercial target and hope to disrupt their capabilities. The other tactic would be to launch the assault and wait for the "kill" switch to be engaged. The outcome in both of those scenarios is favorable to the attacker.
There is a higher probability of terrorists robbing Fort Knox than the probability of terrorists hacking the shadow networks and NASDAQ. The amount of security is so ridiculous that most terrorists would be killed or arrested before they can even attempt it. The idea of terrorists targeting NASDAQ is completely ridiculous but even if somehow they managed to gain physical access to these computers they'd still have a very difficult time. It's not going to be as simple as writing a script, or worm, it's going to have to be a hell of a lot more sophisticated than that.
Sure it could be done, but theres no organizations or individuals around today who can do it. Maybe if NASDAQ where hacked a few times then we could talk about the need for this.
If they have basic knowledge of information security it wouldn't be possible to do all that. Sure they might get physical access to the machine, but to actually manipulate data on it, corrupt it, trace sources and gain access to bank accounts? Now you are getting ridiculous, as ridiculous as expecting hackers to steal the nuclear codes and launch nukes.
Have any of you actually done your research to find out what the laws are if theres no Constitution? Or is it the law of the gun?
You have alternatives to the internet which involve the use of radio. You can communicate very well over the radio. You can send email, you can browse websites, you can do all of that. It's not necessarily going to be as fast but it depends on the power of your antennas.
You can communicate via laser, via microwave, and theres probably other ways I don't know about.
If the internet goes down a spontaneous network will replace it probably overnight.
If a patient is undergoing telesurgery, that "kill switch" could turn out to be aptly named.
I'm tired of, "Well, it could be worse," being the norm for the US government.
From the summary "he must now seek Congressional approval after 120 days" So it's ok! It'll be just like the War Powers Resolution of 1973, where the President has to notify congress of any military action within 48 hours and can't leave troops in theater for more than 90 days(60 days up front, 30 to withdraw) without Congressional Authorization(a declaration of war). That's worked out pretty well so far...
Let see, we want the president to have more power and control? Why? Did the people on the left trust Bush so much that they think he would make great decisions concerning their `protection'? Has the current president earned the respect of the right for serving their needs instead of his own desires? Let him control the military networks. That's enough. We face $136 billion a year in losses due to the unsecured boarder, he has proven that he doesn't intend to protect us.
I say let's test it. Throw the switch and lets see some real mayhem, no more of this slow ocean being destroyed nonsense. Let's destroy the economy in 24 hours, lets nullify all ebay auctions, bring shipping to a stand still, let's deny folks access to their banks. Let's unplug all those "magic jacks" an piddly skype phones.
The internet only exists because of TCP/IP. TCP/IP was created by the DoD. Makes sense the government would have a kill switch.
it seems like voice communications would be shut down for a number of people as well. My home phone is VOIP through my ISP...
All-in-one form to email your Senators and Rep. http://www.congress.org/soapbox/alert/15184531
No, I am not saying that Congress has the authority to close off the electromagnetic spectrum. Even if Congress has that authority, it would not have the capacity. The laws of physics don't subscribe to the Congressional Record.
So imagine what would happen to the debate when the internet is shut off? We'll have to go back to church to get our discussion on.
If you give me physical access to a machine, there is absolutely nothing that's going to prevent me from having absolute control of all data on the machine if I want it. Period. All I need is about 15 minutes and that time is only based on needing to get through the padlock on the case/rack. I'm guessing you didn't intend to suggest actually gaining physical access though.
Securing a system properly just means you've used security best practices, and you've defended against all known forms of attack. That doesn't mean attackers stop developing new intrusions. If an attacker is able to breach the system and gain root, then they have full access. If you've done things right they still don't have access to the network, and are limited to just that one machine. But there are no gaurantees. That's why there are thousands upon thousands of people whose whole job is watching monitoring tools to detect intrusion attempts.
That being said, consider this: Lets pretend that 100% security at NASDAQ is possible. Now consider the millions of computers all around the globe that are connecting to NASDAQ all day every day from podunk little investment offices in places like Sterling Nebraska. Places that have uneducated or lazy IT staff, or the IT staff is also the accountants and financial advisors. It's not a stretch to build a botnet from those poorly secured machines and coordinate a massive influx of bad transactions all at once. Billions of dollars could change hands in micro-seconds and it wouldn't have a damn thing to do with NASDAQ's security. You'd also have any banking/transaction information from that branch at your disposal.
The nuke codes argument is a straw man. Nukes and the computers with the codes are not connected to open networks. There arent any data paths to them from the outside specifically for the suggested reason. NASDAQ, conversely, inherently requires access to brokerage firms and banks globally at all times.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
The USA turning off all their access points seems to fall under "significant part switched off," and the rest of the world still being able to use the Internet would be proof that even such an event doesn't 'kill' the entire Internet.
Individuals always got information from each other. They would go to church and discuss the current events at church each week. They would do it through music. They would write papers and mail it to peoples doorsteps by mailing list. There were radio stations and all sorts of other systems.
So it was NEVER easily controlled or managed. That world never existed. It might have existed under Stalin and Hitler but it never existed before in the USA.
guerrilla.net was active some years ago, then after a sellout to l0pht, it went dark. It really is time to resurrect the idea of an "underground Internet," consisting of radio links and mesh networks. If you don't believe it's possible that the gov't will ever invoke the "kill switch," think again: Right after 9/11, the gov't did something that was considered both improbable and impossible: It effectively banned all air traffic across the nation. And it did so without asking the public for its input. Does anyone think the gov't will ask the public for its input when (and if) it decides to kill the Internet to ensure "national security"?
I keep seeing this tidbit tossed out there, but I haven't seen a link to the text of the Acts to support it. Has anyone dug through it to find this alleged clause?
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
Your sort has always been just about to leave, and you always will be.
Then when 'his sort' do actually leave the left start whining about how evil they are to leave and stop paying the taxes to fund welfare programs and how they must have new laws to prevent 'his sort' from taking their money with them when they go.
Britain, for example, has been having a mass exodus of 'his sort' over the last decade; America just hasn't degraded quite so far yet.
There is no "The Internet". And the government will pry my routers from my cold, dead hands.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
They want to claim they shut it off when the solar storm hits, rather than letting us all know it was the solar storms.
And second they want to shut it off when alien communications to the public begin to happen.... go figure why.
S3538 appears to be the bill in question. It would be nice if we could read it, but the text currently isn't public.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:1:./temp/~bdgRx1:@@@L&summ2
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3538/show
Seems to me that such a "feature" would kill a significant amount of political contributions to candidates in the process (those made thru websites). And these are likely to grow in the future. What brilliance...
If you give me physical access to a machine, there is absolutely nothing that's going to prevent me from having absolute control of all data on the machine if I want it.
So you have physical access to the machine. You want to execute a command but the machine does not give you the authority to execute that command without proof of identity. So you bypass the retina scan, fingerprint, or other biological verification mechanism and you still can't execute the command without bypassing a bunch of other security features which might require a hardware based security token or ID card. It's not impossible but just getting physical access to the machine doesn't guarantee that you'll have the privileges to do anything.
Period. All I need is about 15 minutes and that time is only based on needing to get through the padlock on the case/rack. I'm guessing you didn't intend to suggest actually gaining physical access though.
And when you open the case it self destructs or shuts off. Now you can't execute any command. Physical access does not mean physical control. You can have physical access to a device and still not be able to control the device due to how the device is constructed. A device can be constructed in such a way that the device itself knows when it's being tampered with.
Securing a system properly just means you've used security best practices, and you've defended against all known forms of attack. That doesn't mean attackers stop developing new intrusions. If an attacker is able to breach the system and gain root, then they have full access.
So you make it physically or technically impossible to gain root without biological verification. You have a password which changes every 60 seconds so it's uncrackable, and you put the timing device in the ID card. The ID card along with biological identity verification is extremely difficult to crack. It's not impossible but you won't be able to do it with any kind of ease.
If you've done things right they still don't have access to the network, and are limited to just that one machine. But there are no gaurantees. That's why there are thousands upon thousands of people whose whole job is watching monitoring tools to detect intrusion attempts.
If you've done things right the commands they can execute on that machine will be limited and password protected. You want to write to the machine? Now you have to enter in your key and identity and if someone writes under your name, you'll be the one going to jail.
That being said, consider this: Lets pretend that 100% security at NASDAQ is possible. Now consider the millions of computers all around the globe that are connecting to NASDAQ all day every day from podunk little investment offices in places like Sterling Nebraska. Places that have uneducated or lazy IT staff, or the IT staff is also the accountants and financial advisors.
It's not a stretch to build a botnet from those poorly secured machines and coordinate a massive influx of bad transactions all at once. Billions of dollars could change hands in micro-seconds and it wouldn't have a damn thing to do with NASDAQ's security. You'd also have any banking/transaction information from that branch at your disposal.
Possible but unlikely. It's possible to hack anything if you have military level precision in your operation. But if you need the precision of a military operation to achieve the hack then it limits the kind of adversaries. Al Qaeda would not have that level of precision but a foreign government like China might. Once again if something like this were to happen it would require first that the random number generator or password generator which syncs all the security tokens be hacked. You hack that and you might be able to figure out what the randomly generated string of numbers will be on each token every 60 seconds. But this is mission impossible type of operation and most
Whether one chooses to acknowledge this fact or not, The spoken and written languages are equations. When misused, they create different results. To say that using pronoun "your" is clear enough to substitute when conjunction "you're" is implied is exactly the same as saying a^2 + b^2 = C^2 is no different than the same equation ending with c^3. But wait! The 3 is next to the 2 so people should know what i mean! Or better, nine when spelled in English has two of the same letters as "one" so you knew what I meant! The use of language is a set of values which correlate with one another. "I went to the store" does not equate "The store went to I". If you choose to ignore those values then you deserve to be misunderstood, or worse, scammed. For everyone who thinks "your stupid" is completely legitimate and expressed concretely, I'd like to write a contract to sell products or services to you.
...He who can destroy a thing, controls that thing.
Coldmoon over Dark water...
Most of the journalism that I've seen surrounding this kill-switch issue mentions the name "Obama".
Has anyone here seen any reference supporting a claim that Obama has sought such a measure? I ask because from my distant (non-US) viewpoint, this seems out of character for the man.
Just asking...
So you have physical access to the machine. You want to execute a command but the machine does not give you the authority to execute that command without proof of identity. So you bypass the retina scan, fingerprint, or other biological verification mechanism and you still can't execute the command without bypassing a bunch of other security features which might require a hardware based security token or ID card. It's not impossible but just getting physical access to the machine doesn't guarantee that you'll have the privileges to do anything.
Physical access to the machine means the ability to use machine level communication, circumventing OS security measures.
And when you open the case it self destructs or shuts off. Now you can't execute any command. Physical access does not mean physical control. You can have physical access to a device and still not be able to control the device due to how the device is constructed. A device can be constructed in such a way that the device itself knows when it's being tampered with.
Ok, it shuts down. I'm standing there staring at the power, which means I can power it on and force it into a machine setup to change boot orders, etc. If it self-destructs the data, that sucks if I wanted to steal the data. But it doesn't help much if my intent was to destroy it...
So you make it physically or technically impossible to gain root without biological verification. You have a password which changes every 60 seconds so it's uncrackable, and you put the timing device in the ID card. The ID card along with biological identity verification is extremely difficult to crack. It's not impossible but you won't be able to do it with any kind of ease.
Absolutely correct. You can lock it down with biometrics. Which is great... unless of course you hired me to monitor and maintain your environment and gave me those accesses... Realistically I'm not going to be walking into the NASDAQ datacenter on a whim. If I'm there, it's because you opened the door and/or handed me the keys. Which is why I suggested you probably didnt intend to bring up physical access.
If you've done things right the commands they can execute on that machine will be limited and password protected. You want to write to the machine? Now you have to enter in your key and identity and if someone writes under your name, you'll be the one going to jail.
If it's password protected, it's possible to obtain the passwords. Social engineering, phishing, etc. I can probably walk around at lunch today and obtain 20 passwords from sticky notes on people's desks or in drawers. And I pretty much promise you that better than 20% of the passwords people use at work are the same ones they use for systems like gmail, their bank accounts, their storage unit... People recycle because they don't want to remember multiple passwords. I don't have to crack your work computer. I just have to crack the account system at your gym and there's a notable possibility I'll be able to use it for everything you access. Computers can be secured well. People are still stupid and lazy.
Possible but unlikely. It's possible to hack anything if you have military level precision in your operation.
It's possible to hack anything... That's all I was saying. I never suggested it was a no brainer, or even that there are more than maybe 5 people in the world that could pull it off. But the point is that it's possible, particularly with funding and cover. You can't secure all the people that access NASDAQ either. That kind of attack is wholly outside your control. You could mitigate it by having an automatic scram code built into financial markets, but that would be an artificial mechanism that would interfere in an organic and legit mass correction of the markets too.
You can never say you are 100% secure, and if you do you're ignorant or flat out lying. Even al
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Lincoln was actually quite a racist personally.
If anyone doubts it (blue staters or various Europeons of similar ilk) or demands some citation, JFGI yourself.
He was a nasty bit of work and used the slavery issue just for furtherance of his own power and to appease some northern industrialists and get some votes. He didn't let a good crisis go to waste....
And the civil war was so unpopular in the north in the beginning (with regular people and also a lot of newspaper editors and writers) they had massive anti draft riots, and a lot of black people were killed just because they were black, and a lot of political opposition got arrested and thrown into not-nice "camps".
Treating Lincoln as some sort of hero is prima facie evidence of having little to no knowledge of real US history. He was a pure fascist dictator who worked for the big industrialists, a typical corrupt politician. Ending slavery was a side issue with economics and maintaining northern economic power. (note: I was born a northerner and guaranteed hardly any real civil war history was taught to me in the public schools. It was later as an adult I did my own research and found out what a huge steaming pile most of the history "data" presented to me was)
Bitch, "his sort" never leave. They're only happy when they're bitching about "one more thing". Timid, frightened, angry people don't have the guts to put their zip code where their mouth is.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You seem to take for granted that all language is used formally, and that our usage of it is completely devoid of context. I can think of many situations where "your stupid" is fine in context (albeit not formally correct), and doesn't reflect anything about the user. I'm sure we all have mangled an apostrophe or used a bad homonym at some point in our lives as well.
When I'm at the pub with friends, or throwing off a quick text message, I'm sure an outside observer with a grammar nazi's strict rules would decide I'm a gibbering moron. But when I write a formal paper, or partake in discussions where linguistic unambiguity matter I quickly phase switch and use as proper of grammar and language as I am able. This is normal, pretty much all of humanity does it.
In many cases the use, or lack of use, of proper grammar is a reflection of the relative importance of the discussion. For example, I never use the "preview" function on Slashdot, it isn't worth my time to strive for the extra correctness for a frivolous and amusing waste of time. For things where there are consequences, I obviously use multiple drafts, and spend extra time making sure the paths of communication are very clear.
This doesn't reflect on my intelligence one bit. As a matter of fact "phase switching" could probably be correlated with intelligence, since it shows mental flexibility.
If a person is completely incapable of using proper language when the case requires it, then we might be able to use that to reflect (if only slightly) on their intellect. But using a single case, in a single circumstance, is fallacious.
The whole grammar nazi thing is generally nothing but some silly nerdy version of the internal attribution error.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
The President also has the power to suspend the Constitution, something that has never happened though several wars.
The President does NOT have the power to suspend the Constitution. The Constitution is the license to operate a government. If the President (or Congress, the Courts, or the Military) claims to suspend it, all they have suspended is their own claim to legitimacy. They are then no longer the government - just another pack of crooks with armed thugs on their payroll.
The President DOES have certain exceptional powers that are only available in wartime or certain emergency situations. Presidents have often (especially in wartime or during crises) claimed and used unauthorized powers - generally with those claims eventually struck down by courts (though this might take decades). Example: The internment of US citizens of Japanese ancestry during WWII.
Note that when a law or other claim to power is struck it is NOT like a repeal, with the law or doctrine active up to the decision to strike it. It is declared to NEVER HAVE been active. All actions taken only under its claimed authority are, and always were, void.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And it couldn't realistically exist today. When a person can hop into a car and travel 200 miles in a couple of hours to deliver literature or mail or whatever, there's really no method to prevent the passage of information without clamping down with totalitarian controls.
Especially when you consider that most developed areas are no longer self-sufficient. Food and water have to be shipped or transported over great distances, and at the very least the people transporting will talk.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
When would I possibly want to use a kill switch?
Today, if I wanted to shut down the internet, I would phone up all the ISPs and ask them to turn off all the routers because of a clear danger to the nation. A kill switch would only be useful in the case that the ISPs refuse to turn off the routers. Why would they refuse? Their refusal is probably a good indication that the danger isn't as bad as I think. But maybe it really is, so I chould explain it to them. Since it is a real danger, they will obviously agree to turn off the routers. But, they still refuse to turn off the routers, so maybe the danger isn't that clear. But it is, so let me explain it to them again. After all, I'm right and hundreds of experts are wrong. I feel like I'm running in circles. Aw fuck it, let's just hit the kill switch. Much easier than actually understanding the situation and trying to figure out why hundreds of experts don't agree with me.
tldr; the only use case for a kill switch is to force people to do your bidding. That's not smart when the people you are overriding are the knowledge domain experts.
Okay, say the President does how the power to kill the internet; that would be those parts of the internet that are located in US, right? I mean, he really doesn't have the power to kill those bits of it that are in, say, Japan, or England, or, dare I say, Australia. So, what would the impact be on the rest of us if the US went dark? I suspect we mostly wouldn't notice.
-- Newall
Four months without computer-to-computer communication that has become integral to the economy is far to long to be granted without oversight.
Forget 4 months. Our economy would be toast in a day or two. Most money transactions would be impossible. (Even paper checks are now processed electronically.) All those supply chains that are based on just-in-time ordering would go out of commission immediately. Supply chains that still use old warehouse models would survive a little longer, but when the warehouse is empty, how to you order more stuff?
I could add more items to the list, but that's gilding the lily. Any one item on the list would screw us over more thoroughly than the worst virus possibly could. "All-or-nothing" is crap.
So... how do I get diverse access to the internet if all the network providers are influenced by the same logical group?