Court: Homeland Security Must Disclose 'Internet Kill Switch'

An anonymous reader writes "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must disclose its plans for a so-called Internet 'kill switch,' a federal court ruled on Tuesday. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the agency's arguments that its protocols surrounding an Internet kill switch were exempt from public disclosure and ordered the agency to release the records in 30 days. However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling."

Comments

First po

[Anonymous Coward]

First po

Re:First po

[Anonymous Coward]

it was almost clever but the title should have been complete

Re:First po

[Qzukk]

Go back to your arithmetic tables, you thinking machine.

Why always a back door

[Bucc5062]

"However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling.""

I never understand this thinking. I am under the impression that when a judgement goes against you, you can appeal the decision. The court is set up already for that thinking so what or how does this court do something different. When I read that I get the feeling that the "Court" felt ugly for their ruling and really really hopes that aggrieved party will appeal.

I do hope they don't or if they do, they fail for I would love to know about a switch that can "kill" the internet. A system designed to route around such devices.

 

Re:Why always a back door

[bob_super]

It depends whether you just kill DNS and wait for most users to give up, or want to kill everything at once and have to reach into the many central nodes that would bring the internet to its knees if they were off.

You don't need to take down that many major nodes for everybody else to become suddenly over-congested and fundamentally useless.

Re:Why always a back door

[Tango42]

I think prejudice refers to whether or not you can make the claims again. If a claim is dismissed because it is without merit, it will usually be with prejudice, meaning any future claim on that point will be consisted pre-judged and dismissed. If a claim is dismissed due to some procedural issue, it may be without prejudice so you can try again later.

Whether or not you have leave to appeal is separate.

Re:Why always a back door

[sl4shd0rk]

I never understand this thinking.

In the US, it seems to usually work like this:

politician: "I just got a shit ton of cash from KKK and Bros. to push for a new law so they can add raw sewage to their energy drink as a filler"
Judge:"Wtf? The FDA would never approve that!"
(Enter Bob. Head of FDA. Previous Monsanto lobbyist)
politician:"Hey bob, I'll vote for that new GMO corn thing to ride on the coattails of HSF.32 if you approve this thing for KKK Bros."
Bob:"It's a deal!"
Judge:"I'll never allow this. It's inhumane!"
Politician:"Fine, we'll go get a judge who will"
(Enter Bill, new judge. Previously a lawyer for large soft drink company)
Politician:"Here, sign this. The FDA approved it. We also worked out a deal to get more corn syrup in cola drinks"
Bill: *scribble scribble* -- "There you go."

Re:Why always a back door

[Captain_Chaos]

The court is set up already for that thinking so what or how does this court do something different.

What they mean is that the court stayed their decision (postponed the time at which it would come into force) to give the DHS time to appeal.

When I read that I get the feeling that the "Court" felt ugly for their ruling and really really hopes that aggrieved party will appeal.

No, it's pretty standard in cases where a) the court thinks the party who lost might appeal, b) there is at least an outside chance such an appeal might succeed and c) if they didn't stay their decision the appeal would become moot since in the mean time the losing party would have to (in this case) hand over the information and there would be no point in appealing. It's to protect the integrity of the judiciary system. Otherwise, what would be the point of having appeals?

Re:Why always a back door

[DexterIsADog]

In your scenario, a politician is arguing with a judge about a law the politician is supposedly *going to* introduce as a bill, and the judge is objecting that he, personally, will never allow that? Then the politician finds a judge to sign off on this bill approved by the head of the FDA (not even submitted to the legislature at that point), and boom, it's a law?

You've made a total hash of how the U.S. political and legal system work, and your scenario makes no sense at all. How in the world did this get modded insightful?

Just to clarify;
Politician writes bill.
Politician may look for co-sponsors to strengthen the bill's chances.
Politician proposes bill, or attaches it as an amendment to some other bill.
Legislature debates bill and passes it or not.
Bill becomes law.
FDA, private citizens, or other interested parties may choose to sue to overturn the law.
THEN the judiciary gets involved.

Re:Why always a back door

[orgelspieler]

First step is wrong. Everybody knows it's ALEC who writes all the bills.

Mesh Networks

[RandomUsername99]

Not ever really having considered this scenario before, I may be missing some pitfalls that are obvious to other people, but it seems like a consumer-level mesh network might be a good solution to a scenario where they are actually able to develop an internet kill switch, especially in cities, where the space between nodes would (hopefully) be small. I know, at least at the beginning, the OLPC project was using something. Would that be viable? What other technologies are worth pursuing in this vein, that are available right now?

DHS Kill Switch?

[krept]

Can someone explain to me the benefit of an internet kill switch? And how DHS is the appropriate department for its implementation?

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[SuricouRaven]

Real reason: So they can shut down the internet in the vicinity of major protests, and thus keep people from tweeting and streaming video when the police start firing tear gas into the crowd and breaking a few bones.

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[CanHasDIY]

Real reason: So they can shut down the internet in the vicinity of major protests, and thus keep people from tweeting and streaming video when the police start firing chemical weapons into the crowd and breaking a few bones.

FTFY.

Getting tired of society trying to wrap a nice, pretty bow on that particularly ugly duck.

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[g0bshiTe]

"Can someone explain to me the benefit of an internet kill switch?"

Media blackout. A populace ignorant of goings on is easier to control.

"And how DHS is the appropriate department for its implementation?"

Fact is there should be zero reason for an internet kill switch in the first place. There should be zero critical systems internet facing, which makes the argument to protect against terrorist attack to our infrastructure and critical systems moot. Which leads me to believe the only reason for one is to control the population, or rather control the data the population has access to, read media black out.

DHS nor any department should have need for it's implementation, nor should any department control it should one actually exist.

This right here is the best reason I can come up with to remove US control over any portion of the net, this includes hosting and services located in the US.

And yes I am an ashamed American, ashamed of what my country has become.

DHS SUCK IT BITCHES!

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[MysteriousPreacher]

Fortunately CS gas, among other chemical weapons, was banned from use in war. There's plenty left for civilian pacification!

http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/articles/article-ii-definitions-and-criteria/

It's great! Spray this stuff on an enemy army and you end up in the Hague. Lob it at your citizens and everything is just fine.

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Media blackout. A populace ignorant of goings on is easier to control.

Alternate media black-out. I can guarantee you CNN will be on the air saying what they're told[paid] to say.

And yes I am an ashamed American, ashamed of what my country has become.

You should be a proud American, but realize that the US Government has become an enemy of the idea the is America. There's a reason why the Founders spoke of "Enemies Foreign and Domestic".

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[gstoddart]

It's great! Spray this stuff on an enemy army and you end up in the Hague. Lob it at your citizens and everything is just fine.

Except, the US is explicitly NOT a signatory to anything which would make them subject to the International Criminal Court.

In other words, short of military action against the US to bring someone to justice ... nothing can happen. The US has specifically set themselves up to not be under the jurisdiction of anything like this.

So, if they decide to actually do gas their people, stern letters and hand wringing is pretty much all that will happen.

Re:DHS Kill Switch?

[SonicSpike]

Egypt tried this, and it only made things worse for the government because people left their computers and actually went outside to join the protest instead of watching it on the Net.

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[CanHasDIY]

If you were the US Government, how would you go about completely (or functionally completely) shutting off the Internet? Could it be done?

Considering that the US government has nigh exclusive control over the core DNS servers (not to mention countless backdoors in every ISP's terminal room), yea, it could totally be done.

What's the fuss?

[arcite]

The Internet Kill switch is located on the twentieth sub-floor of the White House, in a small room right beside the cot Dick Cheney hid under in 2001 for three weeks. The switch is enclosed in a nondescript beige controller box with a large round red button that blinks with the pulse of the internet. A sign above reads, only switch off in case of emergency, or alien invasion.

Re:What's the fuss?

[bob_super]

At last check, you can kill 50% of the internet by turning off Youtube and Netflix.
Your fancy kill switch is just a phone with two CEO numbers.

Re:What's the fuss?

[PReDiToR]

No, it says "More Magic".

Re:Good luck with that

[g0bshiTe]

Let's just hope Jen doesn't drop the internet box.

Re:I doubt it

[Phreakiture]

Who owns the satellites? Where are they (the owners, not the satellites) located? Can the US Government successfully pressure the owners to cause the satellites to be shut down? If so, then no, no raids will be necessary.

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[SecurityGuy]

If I were the US Government, I wouldn't bother about shutting off the Internet, I'd bother about getting people to stop attaching critical infrastructure to it. The internet is not and was never designed to be a secure network. It's a lot more like a common sewer.

The bigger issue is the DHS itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that this is being discussed shows that the real problem is that an agency as secretive and powerful as the DHS even exists. Remember: J. Stalin was a minor figure in the Russian revolution, but once he gained control of the consolidated bureaucracy of the early USSR, he used that bureaucracy to exile, murder, imprison or otherwise neutralize his political opposition and made himself dictator for life. It is almost impossible for a single individual to defend himself from a large bureaucracy.

Until recently, the best defense that a US citizen had against attack from govt bureaucracy was the competitive turf guarding behavior of the different agencies which limited the power of any single agency. The consolidation of bureaucratic power under the single authority of the DHS has eroded that defense. An additional danger is the, thanks to Snowden, now widely publicized adoption of big database and analytics techniques by the US govt. Mark my words, if the DHS is not disbanded, then eventually the head of the DHS will become the most powerful person in the country, able to determine who gets elected to every office or even cancel elections and with a virtually unlimited ability to coerce any US citizen to do anything.

Freedoms vanish...one switch ON/OFF

[ElitistWhiner]

At that instant, US citizen's protected rights are constitutionally violated by a deliberate government action.

Turning off the Internet kills your microphone, news print and mail in one swift blow. That silences voice.

Re:Freedoms vanish...one switch ON/OFF

[east coast]

At that instant, US citizen's protected rights are constitutionally violated again by a deliberate government action.

FTFY.

Re:I doubt it

[Runaway1956]

" a governemt has the authority to make it so."

Perhaps you are confusing power with authority. My government has the power to prevent me having any contact with the outside world. My government has no such authority.

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[Runaway1956]

You obviously have an Intelligence Quotient higher than your shoe size. To bad the top echelons of "management" in this country can't say the same. Our cyber security looks like an episode of Keystone Cops, updated with technological gadgets.

Court granted 30 days to appeal before releasing

[raymorris]

DHS was granted 30 days before they have to release the document, to allow time for an appeal.

You can always appeal, but it sometimes an appeal would be pointless because it would be too late.
In this case, plaintiff wants a document released. Normally, that would mean the document would be released immediately.
How do you appeal a decision to release a document AFTER it's been released, though? Plaintiff is going to publish the information.
If DHS wins the appeal, would plaintiff be ordered to unpublish it?

In such cases, a court will grant a "stay", meaning everything stays as it is until the appeals court gets the case or time runs out.

Re:I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares, its only alabama

Re:I doubt it

[DexterIsADog]

Sure, they can get away with it in Alabama, but they don't dare try that in a region with some teeth... so to speak.

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[heypete]

There's plenty of DNS servers (both root servers, gTLD servers, and ccTLD servers) located outside of US jurisdiction.

While an unexpected shutdown could certainly cause some disruption both inside and outside the US, I'm not sure how effective a global DNS shutdown would be -- there's been significant fractions of the root DNS infrastructure that's been taken offline due to attacks in the past and the system continued to work without interruption. Even if there was a disruption, it's likely that non-US operators of root/gTLD/ccTLD servers would setup workarounds fairly quickly and the rest of the world would go about its business.

Anyway, it's something the government could ever do *once*. The instant they do it, the world changes and would highly unlikely to depend on a system managed by a single country.

Shutting down something like Google, for example, would likely be far more disruptive.

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[rock_climbing_guy]

Dude, the US Government was able to get malware planted in Iranian centrifuge controllers that were supposed to be air-gapped. I wouldn't be surprised in Windows 8 is pre-programmed to cut itself off the internet when the spooks say so.

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[duke_cheetah2003]

If you were the US Government, how would you go about completely (or functionally completely) shutting off the Internet? Could it be done?

Considering that the US government has nigh exclusive control over the core DNS servers (not to mention countless backdoors in every ISP's terminal room), yea, it could totally be done.

I was under the impression the internet by its very design would route around 'problems.' Can the US Government really shut down every pipe? DNS is irrelevant, in my opinion. It's important, no doubt, but shutting DNS does not shut the internet. Just makes it substantially harder to use.

Re:I doubt it

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I'm not sure how they'd do it physically. If we look at the internet for what it actually is by definition - a network is a bunch of computers connected to other computes, the internet is a bunch of networks connected to other networks - the internet is actually privately owned, even at the peering level of tier 1 ISP's.

I suppose you could bring it down by having the national guard (or whoever) commandeer a major NOC (network operations center) of a tier 1 ISP and then fudge the BGP tables of all of their major peering points worldwide (or nationwide if you prefer,) but the links wouldn't be physically broken. Other ISP's could compensate by just ignoring those peers. The customers of that ISP and its client ISPs would be down for sure, but not everybody.

I'm still trying to figure out why we even have a need for a kill switch. A terror attack on SCADA systems? Just require SCADA systems have a communications kill switch, then you don't need an internet kill switch.

Re:I doubt it

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Good thing that we still have the Moon!

Fractured Internet in 3...2...1...

[DigiShaman]

They will appeal the ruling because it's so patently obvious it involves the root DNS servers. Otherwise, the UN really will have something to to on with regards of taking away control from the US. Which BTW, sounds like a good idea until you realize what the alternatives would be. From bad to worse no doubt.

Oh well, it was an interesting experiment while it lasted. The single interconnected world wide web that is. A real shame it is!

Re:Let's talk about the more interesting thing her

[Immerman]

You're presuming that the point would be to protect critical infrastructure. It's not impossible that that is the actual intent and the congressional technology advisors are simply incompetent or ignored, but that seems a foolish way to bet. Look at what's been going on on the 'net in the last few years - the Occupy movement, damning information released by wikileaks and others, the Arab Spring. My bet is that there is at least a faction within the US government that wants some insurance against online-coordinated popular uprisings. That is the kill switch is not intended to protect the *country*, it's intended to protect the *government*, or a faction therein.

Re:Kill switch?

[ewieling]

It seems to me an easy way to kill the kill switch is for some patriot at the DHS (I'm sure there are a few) to flip the "internet kill switch" to the "on" position in the middle of a weekday. I suspect it would be dismantled shortly after that.

Re: Who woulda thunk it?

[molesdad]

We have more than one political elite?

Re:I doubt it

[akgooseman]

I'm still trying to figure out why we even have a need for a kill switch.

The answer to that seems fairly apparent: To prevent or stifle a popular uprising against those in charge. Our government no longer works for us. In many ways, it works against us.

What a ploy...

[Kazoo the Clown]

I can see it now. "We're going to have to install interrupting devices at key points on the internet.". And OBTW, when they're not interrupting the flow of data they're sending copies of it all to NSA Utah. And we're all paying for it. What a crock.

Re: Who woulda thunk it?

[realityimpaired]

And pretty much everywhere in the world other than the US.... Almost everywhere in the world with a democratic system has a multi-party system, and a minority government tends to be the most beneficial for the people (assuming you don't end up with a lame duck situation like the US has right now, though we have non-confidence votes to force an election at that point).

Wrong!

[DarthVain]

Only Captain Picard has that ability!

Re:I doubt it

[JWSmythe]

Yup, it's always been there.

Plenty of people know where all the international fiber endpoints are. I can think of a dozen buildings that if they were isolated, it would cripple Internet service in the US. They don't even have to shut down entire datacenters, only the power in the meet-me rooms. I think DHS can find 2 dozen agents in the US who would go to those buildings, shut down the rooms, and the Internet is gone.

As we've seen before, a problem with just one tier 1 provider can make Internet service crawl. Dropping a few major peering points would effectively shut the whole thing down. It's not even hard to find them, if you've been doing business with them. I've been to a few.

They could probably have it ready to shut down simultaneously with a 30 minute lead time to give enough time for the agents to drive to them. Internet and phones would be dead everywhere in the US, and severely interrupt international use. Any remaining links and private peerings would be saturated beyond use.

There are maps and lists readily available.

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points#North_America
http://www.bgp4.as/internet-exchanges
http://www.datacentermap.com/ixps.html