
Senate Bill gives Obama 'kill switch' on web‎  - newacc
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/senate-president-emergency-control-internet/
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GiraffeNecktie
The HN submission is a wee bit inflamatory (the bill gives "Obama" the kill
switch) The actual title of the article is "Senate Bill Would Give President
Emergency Control of Internet".

Aside from that, surely there's a more appropriate (i.e. technically credible)
source for the HN readership than Fox News.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Can we just let the whole Fox News vendetta go for a bit? Please? The web is
full of all kinds of sources -- that's why we double and triple-source
interesting news tidbits we see.

Continuing to trash one or the other sources that don't fit your ideals is
just so much noise to everybody else who don't share your views. Hell -- for
controversial articles I check sources on _everything_. So it's not germane to
the nature of the story, which should stand (along with the title) on it's own
merit.

~~~
jcromartie
They are known for being inflammatory and wildly inaccurate. Fox News has a
tendency (or some of their pundits) to take an incorrect technical view and
run with it in a totally insane direction. Example: Glenn Beck and a guest
going on at great length about how the "Cash For Clunkers" program's website
allowed the gov't to tap into your computer and seize all of your computer
files, and install a "tracking cookie" that let them "tap into your system at
any time in the future." They failed to mention that the scary EULA this
nonsense was based on was only for participating dealer employees to access,
and not something that the general public could even find if they wanted to.

~~~
cema
Yes, Fox is known for being inflammatory. However, all mainstream general-
purpose media sources are known to be very inaccurate. (I say "general"
because reports by subject-oriented media are usually done with a higher
degree of accuracy and by people who understand the subject matter better than
an average person, or an average journalist.)

So, take them all with a grain of salt. And do not let your political,
religious and other biases affect your judgment. Okay? :-)

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jacquesm
I wonder how much of the worlds commerce would shut down if the American
government decided to see how well this works.

The internet may have been a DARPA project in the long lost past to keep
communications open in the face of a nuclear war, the fact is that with a 'US
sized hole' in the routing tables plenty of traffic will have trouble making
it to its destination.

[http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/com_test/img\dsnl\internet15jan06....](http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/com_test/img\\dsnl\\internet15jan06.png)

Shows a pretty picture on what the rough topology of the net looked like in
2006, the legend of the graph is here:

<http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/com_test/dsnl.aspx>

I can't imagine Canada would be very happy either.

If the US would _ever_ even for a test try this trick I'm fairly sure there
would be worldwide calls for a boycott.

~~~
electromagnetic
With the amount of commerce at least somewhat reliant on the internet, I think
it would be far more than calls for a boycott. It would be a near worldwide
call for economic sanctions.

Crippling another countries economy is easily justifiable as a military
attack, or at least a very prominent precursor. It will never be used, because
the results would likely be dire.

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tptacek
No, it doesn't. See comments here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791586>

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eli
Uh, what percentage of the Internet backbone is running on government
infrastructure? The President hardly needs a new law if he wanted to shut
things down.

~~~
nailer
Assuming you meant US government: since most internet traffic is outside the
US, not as much as you'd think.

