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Senate Trying To Slip Internet Kill Switch Past Us
sanermind writes "Sensing Senators don't have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support."
CNN a few years ago ran a special were they told the story of a possible an IT attack and had former government officials try to figure out how to save the day.
The story was that people had downloaded a March Madness smartphone app that delivered scores and such in March, but now its April and it's sending out large amounts data, and making useless calls, that's overwhelming the cellular networks and running up people's bills. Round two was that this unknown data was actually waking up a bot net, and now the Internet's overloaded. Round 3... an explosion at a power station has downed power on the East Coast. However, nobody knows where the problem is to fix it, because their smartphones are dead and so is the Internet and phone systems.
The governmental instinctive reaction is to shut it all down... but you don't need to shut down the Internet, this could have been solved in round one by asking Apple, Google, even Cydia and the other responsible app stores to kill the app. What is needed is a granular control (that the app stores already have) to say when an app is causing trouble, we'll pull it off the smartphones that have it. If there's a server running a botnet, kill it, not the entire Internet.
The panel lost the game, and was punished with a postgame interview by Wolf Blitzer.
This is why we need to switch to a one thing per bill way of doing things. So many things are added to bills to try and hide stuff. Why does the government need to hide information from it's citizens. We need to get everybody in Washington out, and start fresh, but lets do it right, and not use "second ammendment rights" like the crazy tea-party wants.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Government filters will never come between me and my first post! Only the two people before me will!
The internet is the only thread uniting mankind to the point where a conventional war won't happen easily. Of course, this isn't going to stop nukes or wars in third world countries, but the internet allows people of the country that "we're" bombing to communicate back to us so people push pressure on the government.
Imagine if Iraq or Afghanistan had common internet access, something tells me we wouldn't invade because public opinion would be very much against it. The internet lets you break down all the previous things that held countries in conflict, language, culture, and reporting hindrances no longer exist to countries with internet access.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
inexact, overrated, and exploiting people's fears as much as the alleged senate bill would be.
This is basically covered under martial law anyway, which would presumably be imposed in the event of an attack. The government already has the power to do anything it wants in such an event, so specifically enumerating an "internet kill switch" is basically moot.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
How much of this is related to how wikileaks is making governments around the world look bad. At this rate they'd be shutting down the Internet at least once a week.
Clearly this bill is meant to stop Skynet.
Seriously, if you can take out the power for the entire East coast ... why not just do it? Why worry about the Internet?
... that the nation that provided the infrastructure for the twitter based reports during the Iran uprisings now wants to make absolutely sure that sort of news can't get out, should things go truly bad here.
Check your premises.
What exactly is this "killswitch" designed to be able to protect us as citizens from? Attackers coming through my internet pipe?
It seems like it would be prudent to not have any critical public infrastructure to be reliant on the internet in the first place. It is by nature a global entity.
Seems more like a political weapon...
Embarrassing documents leaked?
This seems like a classic reactionary response to the wikileaks incident... they get mad that they cant stop it, so they bring back the killswitch idea.
Bipartisan support? What's that?
attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider
It's also possible that certain Senators are pretending to like this provision because they know its inclusion could kill the entire bill, a bill they despise secretly but cannot dislike openly. It's called a poison pill in parliamentary terms; an addition which, by design, makes a bill less attractive to its original supporters and may not be favored even of the person submitting it.
The internet is the only thing that will keep communications up and SAVE us in the event of a national emergency. When the fuck would we EVER need to shut it down?
Reminds me of the BBC TV show "The IT Crowd"....
"Here Mr. President, this is the Internet!" snickers
Hands President a suspiciously shoebox sized box with a flashing light on the top and a big red button.
"Just don't press the button, unless you have dire need, as this will shutdown the Internet!" more repressed snickers...
I'm organizing a network of individuals with backbone access who will provid.... $&/%/())==(/&/8(NO CARRIER)
Set your phasers on "funky"!
My 911 service runs over the internet
Rick B.
We take a staples easy button change it to say "kill internet."
Can somebody from the USA please explain why riders are legal?
It's such an obviously malevolent concept that it surprises me every time. It serves no other purpose than to sneak in bills (regardless of whether you consider them good or evil) which would have no chance on their own. Well, I guess it can also be used to torpedo bills which would have made it through otherwise. It just completely undermines the democratic process.
Most civilized countries would (and already have) prohibited riders by law after it happened a few times, but it seems in the USA it happens all the time.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Many of them in the EU, so this will be hard to enforce. Or they may just try to bully backbone tier1 operators to implement this switch.
Internet is worldwide now, is a network of networks, is not your thing to have a killswitch. A killswich for internet is like mining all buildings on all countrys in the world "just in case", In case what? In case a real terrorist get his hands on the killswitch? is moronic.
-Woof woof woof!
points and laughs. (Sec. 706)
Did we learn nothing from Ken Basin's $475,000 mistake on Millionaire? LBJ installed four buttons to order soft drinks in his desk. (And despite using the same desk, Bush wasn't sure what they were for.)
Get serious. How often does that happen?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The ability to attach unrelated rider bills to other bills is nonsense and should not be allowed.
I would vote for anyone who would fight to end that nonsense. Unfortunately, I have no voice as I am a legal alien in America and therefore cannot vote. It seems that politicians only want to listen to voters: US citizens and undocumented aliens, apparently.
I was thinking of having protest signs printed with the words "No taxation without representation" at the last election but I doubt if anyone would get the reference.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
"... this is a matter of national security. A cyber attack on America can do as much or more damage today by incapacitating our banks, our communications, our finance, our transportation as a conventional war attack and the president in catastrophic cases, he's not going to do it every day, not going to take it over, so I say to my friends in the internet relax, take a look at the bill, and this is something we need to protect our country. Right now China — the government — can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have the ability to do that, too."
Wh.. w.... wha... what!? Are you fucking kidding me? NO. "Cyber war" is wholly driven by bullshit and FUD in news agencies, these people have NO IDEA what they're talking about when they talk about cyber security. Further, in that CNN interview, check this out:
1. Most of these systems are HIGHLY ISOLATED and secured already by way of private networks, firewalls, DMZs, etc. In this way, an attack as described would be incredibly difficult if not impossible. We have no evidence to show that this is even a slight concern. None.
2. An internet attack can be fixed. It doesn't DESTROY equipment, it doesn't level a building, it doesn't kill people, and IT people CAN SHUT OFF EXTERNAL ACCESS TO A SYSTEM if it's being targeted by an attack. I trust the judgement of these professional IT persons that know their own systems intimately far above that of our technilogically incompetent and ignorant president.
3. I've looked at the bill -- nothing in it is even remotely "good." We're good in the IT world. You might not understand that our IT departments are like little units of a larger army. If we get attacked, we can defend ourselves. We don't need you shutting down essential access to patches, communication, support lines, just because you think something might be happening.
4. In China this capability is reserved to kill the movement of information to restrict communication and the spread of anti-government "propaganda" via the internet. I argue that shutting off our networks for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER is a very blatant violation of constitutional rights. Power like this can only be abused, and as I've pointed out, there is NO well-intentioned or well-informed use case where this wouldn't be much more damaging than an actual cyber attack.
This sounds like the squaking of a moron with no clue on national TV. He speaks of how damaging shutting down these systems would be.. and that a cyber attack could easily do that (it can't, not easily), but then proposes we give the president the ability to shut them down forcefully here? Really? Killing our networks to stop our networks from being attacked. Do you not see how downtime is downtime no matter what causes it? At least with our current setups, we can mitigate an attack, if the ISP is forced to SHUT OFF the network, we can't, we're fucked, we're down and we just have to go home and hope the all powerful almighty president decides in his infinite wisdom that it's OK to turn it back on later.
It's simple. This level of micro-management is best left to the ISPs and the companies. Stay the fuck out.
Looks like they've already used it against the article host! That's government efficiency!
bend like the reed
If they want to "tie up" the internet without actually shutting it down, just set up a bunch of servers, and when it's time to swing into action, release all that gubbiment pr0n that the employees have been collecting on your dime.
Nothing clogs up the inner00bs like free porn.
...provided that the national emergency in question is that the machines have become self-aware and have decided to kill all humans. Under those conditions, a kill switch would be very, very useful.
On the other hand, if the "national emergency" is defined by the same people who define "breaking news" on 24-hour cable newsertainment networks, then this could be a problem.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Even if the government has an internet kill switch I can still use my HAM radio to talk to my friends and even email each other using HAM radios.
It might be the only thing that can stop a DDOS attack!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Welcome, Comrades!
Welcome to the Glorious Union of Soviet Corporatist Republics!
just about every administration since Grover Cleveland. A while ago I looked up how many states of emergency were currently active and ISTR some had been ongoing since before the Korean War.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work"
-Kent Brockman
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Senator McCain has indicated that he will do anything he can to block and obstruct the Defense Authorization bill with other republicans since it also contains the repeal of DADT and they just can't stand to see gay people being treated equally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuWrMaLFdao
I don't see how terrorist or whatever else could pose a bigger threat to the Internet than getting it all shut down.
We are all God's parents.
Given the internet in the US isn't exactly centralized how would you shut it down? Build a remote kill command into all routers? Sounds like something a hacker would love to find. You could start pulling backbone routers but that won't work if you route around... sure you've caused me to take the long way to Google but I'll just be irritated by 50ms vs 200ms latency. Anything that could be implemented to do so ether won't work or would expose everyone to some unauthorized person pulling the plug just for fun.
The November Congressional Elections are just around the corner. If you are tired of the collective douchebaggery and antics of our elected politicians, then campaign, vigorously, in your local community to vote for anyone other than interest-sponsored Democrats and Republicans. Every time politics come up for discussion around my community, I flame both parties equally. Until we convince the rest of the voter base the both party's candidates are corrupt, pandering, unhelpful morons, these kinds of disingenuous shenanigans will continue to run our country.
We, the citizens of the United States, can't take back control of our government until we collectively declare, in a very clear manner, "Enough is enough!"
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Isn't a "national emergency" when we (including the government) will need the Internet the most? Intentionally shutting it down will cripple the organizations (government and otherwise) who are trying to handle the emergency.
We had an example of this back during the Katrina and Haiti disasters, when trucks full of electronics were used to provide wireless phone and internet access to the affected areas.
There was a funnier example back during Gulf Way I, when the military still had the "feature" in the GPS system that would introduce errors into the satellites' data, so that civilian GPS gadgets wouldn't know where they were. But they couldn't use it. The reason was that the US military wasn't able to get their hands on GPS equipment they needed, so the soldiers in the field had been buying civilian-grade equipment. Ordering military GPS equipment, as usual, required mounds of paperwork started months ahead of time, while they could get civilian equipment by walking into electronics stores anywhere in the world. For this and other reasons, they eventually abandoned the induced-error idea, and admitted that the military would need the "civilian" part during at times.
There was an earlier precedent of this in the us, back in the 1950s, when the first Interstate Highways were funded. If you dig up the original papers, you'll find that this was a purely military project, so that defense forces could easily move around during a "national emergency". Civilian traffic wasn't to be allowed. Of course, this struck everyone as a silly waste of good highways, and within a very few years, the new super-highways were opened to civilian traffic. This was so successful that we got funding for a lot more than the handful of highways originally envisioned, and the system has grown into our major high-speed highway system. But the law still says that the military can order all traffic off the highways during a "national emergency". This has actually been used occasionally, during major disasters, when area Interstate highways have been closed to civilian traffic, and restricted to military, emergency and highway maintenance vehicles, etc.
A more sensible approach would be to add it into the "Net Neutrality" issue, by decreeing priority to military and other emergency IP addresses during emergencies. But shutting the Internet down is as stupid as shutting down the cell-phone or interstate-highway systems would be. Anyone supporting this idea should be accused of trying to make disasters worse by blocking facilities needed by emergency personnel.
And a special-purpose "emergency use only" comm system is a stupid idea, because it would just fail when it's most needed. What makes the most sense is priority access to the civilian system that has been developed and tested for decades, and can handle the load of an emergency by moving in a few trucks or boats stuffed with electronics.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The official title of the rider is the "Ted Stevens Memorial Rider".
It allows the President to unplug the Internet any time 4chan and friends starts making fun of a federal elected official.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The internet lets you break down all the previous things that held countries in conflict, language, culture,
...provided they speak English and love jeebus.
I think language segments the Internet more than you imagine. Sure, those who can speak English can have access to a much larger world, but there are a lot of people who don't. And i don't see record numbers of Americans and Europeans trying to learn say, Arabic.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This is an opportunity to let our elected representatives know that we are watching. /. their email boxes with your opinion on this matter. I have.
Most bills spawn from the greasy keyboard of a lobbyist. So the question is, which one? My guess: the one hired by the company that sells the "switch".
Hurricane Earl became sentient, called, and would like Thursday back!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So instead of actually taking down the Internet, you say that you will and they do it for you.
I just can see the conversation: .....
Hello, this is Mr. terrorist. I am going to take down the Internet
-Ha. How do you think you are going to do that?
With a phonecall
- OMG. I saw that movie WarGames yesterday so I know it is possible.
- (Hand over mouthpiece) Shut it down.
- You can't take it down anymore.
Is it down?
-
- (Hand over mouthpiece) Sigh, turn it back up.
Hahaha
- Stop calling us. It is not funny anymore. After 5 times. Today.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Senator McCain has indicated that he will do anything he can to block and obstruct the Defense Authorization bill with other republicans since it also contains the repeal of DADT and they just can't stand to see gay people being treated equally.
Yeah, because it couldn't possibly have anything to do with something like one of a group of soldiers in combat on a recon op hiding from an enemy patrol giving away their position to the enemy because one of them just saw his recently-discovered life-mate a short distance away killed and gasped/cried out/screamed involuntarily at the gruesome sight.
Love is a strange and powerful emotion, and one not always under complete voluntary control in every situation, which adds unknown variables to an already extremely dangerous, unpredictable, critical, fast-moving situation, and can get someone (or many someones) killed in combat.
Sure, it won't happen often...but how do you tell someones' mom & dad that their son died because forcing the military to be politically correct was more important than their sons' life?
Internet kills you!
Wasn't the internet built so that it doesn't have a single point of failure? By the US government/military? I'm sure they can shut down the "tubes" within and linking to the US, but there's DNS, hosts and switches outside of their control.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I honestly fail to see how any kind of "cyberwar" could do more damage than "shutting down" the Internet. Exactly how do these morons in Washington think most business is conducted these days? Do they really believe that we could all easily go back to doing business solely by phone, catalog order and the USPS?
You might as well label the kill switch with "Subtract 90% from GDP!".
Sheesh....
Necron69
In Soviet Russia, internet shuts down you!
And that's why they don't let women serve in the military, right?
There needs to be a bill where they can't ride them on top of each other. Then shorten the terms for the senate and the rest of representatives....
Since so much news and political speech happens over the Internet, would not an order to shut it down be a violation of the first amendment?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is possibly the dumbest and most dangerous thing ever thought up. If used, a kill switch would cause catastrophic damage to our businesses, jobs, infrastructure, economy, etc. Many business will be beyond recovery. This is like a terrorist threatening to throw a hand grenade near the US and we set off a thousand nukes on our self to prevent it.
Your post makes absolutely no sense. As is typical with right wing bigots.
No bills have bipartisan support nowadays.
Don't worry, I'm sure that giving the government the power to filter and regulate internet traffic through "net neutrality" will work out a-okay. I love being told the government just wants to protect our freedom of speech while they try to slip in a kill switch. I'm sure governments are always trustworthy with that kind of power and that a glance at history would support that claim.
Please hurry up, November...
If that bill passed it would be the start of a very slippery slope leading to where China is. My suggestion, get a HAM Radio. IP over radio or Data over radio is fourty years old, eh? And there are some Ham Radio bands that can handle serious Bandwidth... Look into getting a USRP2 if you can afford it, people.
/me mocks Peter Griffin.
A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a...
A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
Bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody's talking about the bird!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird...
Surfin' bird
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb... [retching noises]... aaah!
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-oom-oom-oom
Oom-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-a-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Papa-oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Well don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
A libertarian website runs an old rehash of a story which was already been discussed here on Jun 27, where everyone agreed that Liberman is an idiot.
Nothing new happened since then, but the midterms on the horizon and the libertarians need to show that the government(Democrats) is bad and everyone needs to vote for them(Republicans, tea party, whatever).
Slashdot editors, of course, posted this story without giving it so as much as a single thought, I mean is it that hard to google 'internet kill switch site:slashdot.org" ? I'm not new here, still, can I blame slashdot editors for everything, can I?
The Senate is controlled by Democrats, and they are *different*. We have CHANGE. There is no way this is happening by these nice folks.
"killing" the internet to prevent a cyber attack is like gassing a population to prevent them from getting shot dead.
The design of the internet simply doesn't allow for a 'kill switch' so it doesn't matter what legislation they pass, it won't work.
It's utter insanity to place a kill switch on a system designed to be fault resistant. It defeats the whole purpose of such a system. If anything, I can only imagine the internet will become vastly more important during an emergency. It isn't TV, but the government wants desperately to control this ever more relevant media source. I remember when we were asking if the government should regulate the internet. There was a resounding, "No! Of course not." and this is one of the reasons why. They do not understand it and will break it.
If someone wants to pick up a rifle and go defend my cowardly arse, why would I care who or what he boinks on his days off?
1940 - We can't have negros in the military, it will reduce unit effectiveness! (The units got over it)
1980 - We can't have women in the military, it will reduce unit effectiveness! (The units got over it)
2010 - We can't have gays in the military, it will reduce unit effectiveness! (The units will get over it)
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
When the US was bombing Serbia, I know a lot of US students were talking to Serbian students via IRC, chatrooms, etc. That contributed to the fervor of large anti-war demonstrations, which the US media dutifully reported didn't happen. (Which was really quite infuriating. One Bay Area TV station had a reporter broadcasting live from Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley on how there was no sign of any opposition to the war. There was a demonstration with tens of thousands the next day.)
So, yes, the Internet could facilitate international communication, increasing the popular resistance to war -- as it has already done. That isn't enough, in itself, to stop war.
It's worth remembering that many in Europe in the early 20th century believed that direct war between European powers was no longer possible, for a number of reasons, including the dramatic increase in communication and travel within Europe. And in fact, early in World War I, there were a number of incidents where French and German soldiers would refuse to fire on each other, out of a sense of collective opposition to the war.
Howsabout they take a break from wiping their asses with the flag and try to sneak sane healthcare past the insurance companies or sane copyright past the RIAA?
Sheesh. The President already has the power to shut down the internet. He is the commander in chief of a large army. That is just one tiny aspect of the vast power he has. He can launch nuclear weapons, for gosh sake.
If only there was some sort of government organization that could deploy skilled manpower in the event of a national emergency or attack that is highly mobile and has the ability to communicate over channels that do not rely on the local infrastructure, the same as if they were deployed in remote or hostile locations. Oh wait!!
Summaries website link has credibility issues, features a two month old Youtube video. Actual bill, National Asset Act of 2010 (S. 3480), does not seem to have gone anywhere yet.
The internet was designed to be de-centralized, self-healing, made of redundant parts and pathways, and so on. What, exactly, would you 'kill' to disable what? I guess you could power down large numbers of phone/data routing centers, which would reduce the US's data and voice connectivity to local islands. But this might have ... collateral effects
Why not just shoot Buckshot-binary across to a receptacle and count the IP bits in the bucket?
That's better than Sneakernet TCP and Avian IP, latency lower than Brownian Deflection allthough slighter slower than the speed of light (2k ft/second), TTL is undeniable when if ever Buckshot-binary IP
shorts across another carrier-line of communication.
I think the only thing better would be to have Weather Experimentation equipment to allow clouds to form over
a IP fog-collection array at the receiving station, and we would point a Dew-cannon at the cloud to control the exact precipitation levels
of how many bits of rain would drop into the Receiver; not the actual cloud, but how many bits we count to
fall from the cloud, and this is practical because Buckshot-binary IP or Avian IP can try to short our communication but only might cause them to waterlog back to the ground or pass through without causing any anomalies.
That'll do...
It then infects a critical system and you lose CPU cycles while it thrashes around trying to get out and time to cleanup the damage. Worst case is targeted espionage where there is a virus waiting to jump the air gap.
All of that can happen without any involvement of the internet. If there's a problem with a critical system there's a bigger problem than the net. Adding links to the net only adds more weak spots.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There was darkness on the throne of the beast. URL = You are El. El is god in hebrew.
Unencrypted radio for private communications is pretty much dead.
Tell that to CB or ham radio operators.
Frequencies are a use-or-lose situation...
No they're not. Even when not used those frequencies still are there, all that's been lost is the tyme use of those frequencies.
and power companies have moved to the public networks.
So? Power company gets call from customer about the loss of power so it sends a repair truck out to find out why. The repairman sees tree fell on the power-line, radios it in, then repairs the line. Or say the person needs help, so he or she uses the radio saying another truck is needed then waits. That's how it used to be done and there's nothing to stop it from being done again.
Should there be a Law?
The senate wants their own BGP enabled backbone router?
to be sure...do you want it ON or OFF??
OFF? ok off then... what, no, you want it ON?
Ok I'll leave it ON.
OFF? what, make up your mind.
really is an aberration AFAIK - all of my Priority Mail stuff seems to hit in about the 2 to 3 days it's supposed to (and I send a lot, since the flatrate packaging is appropriate for much of my online product sales)
The Posse Comitatus Act (RTFWA) limits the ability to use the US military for law-enforcement purposes, that is, it prevent the US military form being used as a posse comitatus.
Step 1 -> Outlaw "rider" bills which are unrelated to the main bill.
Why are "rider bills" even tolerated?
Chairman: Today we'll be voting on "America is the most corrupt country in the world".
Voter 1: I'll be also including a rider bill that all federal politicans receive a 100% wage rise within 6 months of this bill passing.
Voter 2: I'll be amending a rider bill that countries WITHOUT Weapons of Mass Destruction have evidence of WMD's planted immediately, and that inspections of facilities begin following.
All Voters: Aye, Aye!
Section 706 starts on page 323 of the linked PDF
"SEC. 706. [47 U.S.C. 606] WAR EMERGENCY--POWERS OF
PRESIDENT."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
You'd think all that hype around how democratic activists all over Iran were using modern communications to organize and protest that are popular in the USA and run on the internet... would remind people as to WHY you need an internet that is not easily killed by government. Iran had strong controls but it still took them a long time to lock down their networks. Now they want to build-in what Iran wanted and ended up to some degree creating??
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Let me start by saying, boy I wish we could go with your option 1). The problem with your simple black and white solution is when you get down to the definition of what "putting it on the internet" means. If you mean an "air gap", well sorry; already gone. Most critical infrastructure sites will partition their networks between SCADA and outside (such as the business network), but even these are bridged in various places to get the data out of the system. Secure computers? You do realise that the vast majority of SCADA instillations are running on windows, and there is generally no security at the device level. (Hell if you can speak Modbus, DNP-3, and a couple of IEC standards, you can mess with half the devices on the planet). Add to this that control system engineers are losing the battle for control of their networks to IT departments how have no f-ing idea about the additional security needs of a SCADA system... Well you can see that were already in trouble. Yep, I reckon "switch off the internet" may be the only possible solution at this stage of the game.
Teh internet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
I was helping people make it through the big PDF, and figured the header alone might have indicated *something*.
Also, the text of the section eventually refers to national emergencies in general.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
do.
Storms don't mess with repair efforts? You have to be joking. Just ask anyone who's had to make repairs in bad weather. Hell bad weather can interfere with normal work, ask most any construction worker that works outdoors. When I worked in construction we sometimes stopped work because of rain.
As for terrorists, if dispatchers know the repairmen then there should not be a problem. If they don't then maybe there's a bigger problem.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There are numerous situations where a 3 hour wait can be lethal, or at least seriously debilitating
And that's one fit for telesurgery, when tyme is of the essence.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Did you not pay attention to what I said?
A smart grid that uses an isolated command and control network would be perfectly OK; It wouldnt use the public internet as it's backbone
No network is perfectly safe, not one. Go ask Kevin Mitnick.
The legislation wouldnt prevent you from having a home automation server; it would just make it illegal for it to be controllable/configurable across the internet.
In other words, the grid would be just as stupid as it is now. And you want to limit what I can be with my own equipment? This is supposed to be the Land of the Free, if you don't like it move, say to Cuba or Zimbabwe. Don't force others to live the way you want.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Outlaw lobbying? So goes the First Amendment.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
if you think I've no taste for violence, I'd be more than happy to school you on the truth. It's a myth that liberals are sissier than you throwbacks, we just don't need it to settle an argument.
If you think you're a liberal you're wrong. Liberals abhor government and want it limited, not want more of it. Rights are individual not collective.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I know, but as I said about 3 hour commutes: "Hell that sounds like some people's daily commute."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Which of the Internets would the prez shut down?
Hope it won't be the one I use.