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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."
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 cell phone towers all have gensets. Even the ones with the antennas mounted on the roof of an apartment building. They'll either mount it on the roof, or as part of the leasing for the roof space, also lease a small apartment, completely soundproof it, and leave it very anonymous. Found this out while on jury duty listening to the cell company's expert witness explain the set-up of each antenna as they were able to track several user's locations while they were driving around.
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.
Unfortunately it is sometimes the only way to get something done. At times it is the only way to get certain legislation passed when powerful individuals or committees are opposed to it. Senators cannot openly vote on the item if it stood alone, but they can feel free to vote for a combined bill that includes the item and retain plausible deniability that they ever supported it.
It is undemocratic and foul. But then, so is our Congress. Senators can't simply vote for the things their constituents want. They need to trade support like currency in the hope of growing their own individual influence. The idea is that in the end the constituents receive fair representation, but if anyone actually believes that then I think they might be interested in some lakefront property for sale in Pakistan. (too soon?)
In theory we have procedures in place to determine which items get applied to which bill. IMO it is these parliamentary procedures that are abused, not the concept of riders itself. Instead of openly drafting meaningful legislation, parliamentary tricks are played to poison bills or to sneak items through into law. Our recent passing of our Healthcare bills sickened me. I'm not going to comment on where I stand on the concept, but the process and manipulations we went through before it passed was embarrasing.
I most definitely want an Internet kill switch, and I would love it if the USG did this for us. This kind of project is too big and too costly to get done any other way...it requires government to get involved, and if we're going to be able to shut down the entire web with a single event, it has to be done this way because of the distributed nature of the web and it's inherent design to route around damage. My only fear is that if the USG were to take this on as a task, they might not succeed on time and within budget, and we need it to succeed.
(By the way, just to be clear, I'm a terrorist...as are all of us here, right? Think how awesome it would be to get control of a single point of failure created for the web! Key step to turning converting North America into a caliphate am I right guys?)
:-)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.