

Proposed Bill Gives President Emergency Authority To Halt Web Traffic; Access Private Data - mdasen
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should-obama-control-internet

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ajju
Can you imagine Mother Jones publishing an article titled "Should Bush Control
the Internet?" ? Why is this even a question?

Two things:

1) Good luck trying to "shut the Internet down" after declaring an "Internet
emergency".

2) Any sufficiently motivated law enforcement agent can probably already read
your mail.

~~~
Tangurena
The point of this proposed bill is to retroactively legalize the unlawful
wiretapping that had been going on. It legalizes the things we know about, as
well as the things that the media hasn't told us about yet. And I phrase it
that way because they knew about the NSA taps and hushed them up for more than
a year.

~~~
jhancock
That may be part of the point. I'm not privy to what the insiders on "on the
hill" are thinking.

Another possibility is that folks in D.C. are scared that something worse than
9/11 is in the horizon. What could be worse?...global economic collapse. Is it
real, is it FUD? Hard to say. But the "PIC" (people in charge) seem to be
hedging their bets.

My apologies for sounding like a post from some other forum. Fear does seem to
be a primary motivator these days.

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MaysonL
This reminds me of a quote from Vernor Vinge's novel _A Deepness in the Sky_ :
"The worst tyrannies are those where a government requires its own logic on
every embedded node."

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riahi
Exactly how does this make us more secure, again? I can't imagine anything
"critical" that is currently funneled through the internet. At the very least,
there should be some examples where this would actually promote safety, rather
than be an extension of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1797.

~~~
silentOpen
Look, if we don't give them these powers now, we could risk a cyber-Katrina.
Do you want that? You know how bad Katrina was? Well, the internet is very
complex, connects everything, and is critical infrastructure -- just imagine
how bad it could be! Chinese hackers could launch US nukes against US cities
if we don't grant these powers!

In reality, the legalization and deployment of this sort of power and
technology would allow whoever is in charge at the time to divide the
citizenry. If there is no net, large scale organization becomes much harder.
If the net kills traditional informational channels and we give a single
entity the kill switch to the net, we give that entity the kill switch to
democracy.

I still have hope that the USA hasn't become this misguided and corrupt. I
don't think anything remotely like this will pass. If it does, though, we are
well and truly fucked.

~~~
jerf
Don't worry, I'm sure the internet-savvy, power-to-the-people, save-us-after-
years-of-Bush-darkness President Obama would veto the bill.

~~~
jobeirne
Either that's wonderful sarcasm or I live in a miserable world.

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buugs
> Snowe echoed her colleague, saying, "if we fail to take swift action, we,
> regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."

What is a cyber katrina, can you have a disaster of magnitude on the internet?
I'd much rather they be worried about tangible things like bridges and roads.
I really don't understand this quote at all.

And I would really like to see internet companies turn off their connections
in order to aid in prevent such an emergency that would be an interesting day.

~~~
cmars232
It's a hurriance in the tubes! You have to close the tube to stop the
hurricane!

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gills
More Change You Can Believe In.

But seriously...don't they get it? It's too late. We can get around any
centralized controls with ad-hoc and mesh wireless networks. Freedom will win
in the end, and watching these tards struggle against that reality is so sad
(yet strangely amusing).

~~~
robotrout
It's never amusing to have somebody continuing to remove your freedom, one
bill at at time, year in, year out, decade after decade. Sometimes they
succeed, sometimes they fail, but they always move the ball a little closer to
the end-zone. The ball never travels in the direction of more-freedom, only
less. You're probably too young to get that, but after a few decades, the
amusement begins to pall.

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mindslight
Could someone tell me what a "cyber katrina" is? Would that be like someone
crashing Digg and HN would have to temporarily house all of the refugees? That
could be pretty terrible.

I know politicians are ignorant and really do think the same kind of
catastrophic event could happen to any area "on their watch", but how exactly
would the internet kill people and destroy homes? The worst thing that could
happen to the internet is for it to crash (say, widespread router bug), and
this bill would only make this possibility _more likely_.

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drinian
The reasoning offered for this law is that communications infrastructure is
too important to let go, and therefore the President should be allowed to
ignore privacy laws in "emergencies." Does a similar law exist for the postal
service, suddenly allowing them to open everyone's mail if they feel like it?

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khafra
I truly hope that the technical problem of actually using that authority to
halt the internet is as intractable as it seems--perhaps pulling the plugs on
the root DNS servers would do it for the web and some other services, but many
P2P networks would still be up and running.

~~~
chaosmachine
I imagine they've already had plans drawn up for multiple scenarios. How many
squads would they need to dispatch to how many server rooms before things went
black? And don't forget, the NSA has hardware in high places.

<http://www.google.com/q=nsa+att+server+rooms>

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raintrees
First, I am trying to envision the reactions of all the companies that live
and die by internet access (myself included)...

Second, I am trying to envision Russia's, China's, et. al. response to the
United States of America flaunting this ability...

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ams6110
Anyone doing anything remotely private or personal on the internet is (or
should be) encrypting anyway.

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zandorg
Maybe it's not in anticipation, but to say "Behave, or else! :-P"

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gojomo
It's the new "button" carried around in the "nuclear football" -- the
"internet off switch"!

