Senate Proposal Could Put Heavy Restrictions on Internet Freedoms

[elts1956]

I don’t know any link as yet to go to to oppose this. Anyone else know?

foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/21/proposed-heavy-restrictions-internet-freedoms/

Senate Proposal Could Put Heavy Restrictions on Internet Freedoms

A proposed bill that would give the president widespread power to shut down the Internet in the event of a cyberattack could have sweeping implications on civil liberties
The days of an open, largely unregulated Internet may soon come to an end.
A bill making its way through Congress proposes to give the U.S. government authority over all networks considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. Under the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009, the president would have the authority to shut down Internet traffic to protect national security.
The government also would have access to digital data from a vast array of industries including banking, telecommunications and energy. A second bill, meanwhile, would create a national cybersecurity adviser – commonly referred to as the cybersecurity czar – within the White House to coordinate strategy with a wide range of federal agencies involved

 

[rpp]

Not good.

 

[JimG]

Cuba also finds the Internet an inconvience and does not allow Cuban citizens unregulated access to it.

 

[rwoehmke]

Would you rather have el-Quida shut the internet down?

 

[JimG]

Would you rather have el-Quida shut the internet down?

I’m not well versed on the structure of the Internet, but I recall that one of the reasons for its creation, first as Arpanet, was its decentralized nature. The military wanted to have a diverse network that didn’t rely on any center of operations, so that communications were wiped out in one location, messages would still be routed through other locations.

It seems that hackers don’t so much hack the internet as such, as they hack particular servers. There’s a lot of tech savy people out there who ought to be able to deal with such threats without resorting to government takeover of the internet.

 

[elts1956]

Individual freedoms are being quickly destroyed in the name of safety. If the internet is such a risk, why didn’t the past administration make a to do about it? I don’t trust bo nor do I trust his minions.

He is here to control the indiiduals and groups against his policies lock, stock and barrel.

 

[Wowbagger]

As a hacker type person myself (well, computer science major and part-time scripter nerd), I honestly can’t imagine what the benefit of this bill would be. In fact… it’s utterly insane.

Now, what it doesn’t do is give the President blanket authority to “shut down the Internet.” It would allow the President to disconnect government and crtical infrastructure networks from vast collection of networks we call “the Internet.” The government stuff is not at all untoward, and, though I can’t think of a possible application for it off the top of my head, it’s not strange that the President would be able to order all government traffic off the internet if some sort of very weird, very new model of virus attacked. Pointless rule, but harmless.

Much, much more disturbing is this idea that the President would be able to pull “critical infrastructure” off the network with a single command. That’s… really actually quite scary. “Critical infrastructure” in the bill is defined solely by the President. It’s expected to include banks, energy systems, and so forth, but it could be anyone the President wants to take off the network whom he can plausibly justify as a national security threat. In that sense, it does, in a way, give him total power to shut down the Net.

Again, like I said, the sort of attack where this power would be useful… will never happen. Even if it did, USBank isn’t stupid: if it sees terrorists are stealing all its money, and can’t be stopped, USBank is going to turn off its networks to stop the leak long before the President gets wind of it. Same with your local power company: “Oh spast! Al-Qaida’s taken over our power lines and is using them to feed energy into its world-destroying weapon!” “Well, I would say to turn the power off, but we don’t have a presidential order yet, so I guess we’ll have to wait and die.”

What’s really disturbing about the bill, though, is just that: there is no external attack–no attack that I can contemplate, at least–where this power is the slightest bit useful. The comment above about al-Qaeda shutting down the Internet is an example. Yes, it is actually a real possibility that al-Qaeda could shut down the Internet, a la the Slammer worm that nearly shut down the Internet ten minutes after launching back in 2003 (Slammer was the only worm in history to get anywhere close to actually compromising the Internet as a whole, and, even had it succeeded, the damage would have been fully repaired within twenty-four hours). But let’s say that those terrorist genius scamps actually manage to build a worm that does that. Oh! Better yet: let’s say they take over the Conficker botnet (or similar) and launch a distributed denial-of-service attack against the root DNS nameservers (this has been attempted twice before, in 2002 and 2007). Boom. Internet shutdown. Could take days to get it up and running again. Maybe weeks; I’ve never seriously contemplated a successful attack on the Backbone.

Now, how does it help us that we have a Presidential power to shut down the Internet himself? So he can beat al-Qaeda to the punch? If the Internet is going down, it’s not going to help. If you’re defending against a rapid-spreading worm, government networks are infected before the Presidential briefing even starts, and the only thing to do is clean the thing up. So, as a practical measure, useless.

Much more disturbing are these additional powers buried further down. One section gives the Secretary of Commerce to investigate, “regardless of any law, regulation, or policy” to the contrary, any and all network traffic on a “critical infrastructure” network. This bill–by my reading–Barack Obama the personal and unfettered power to read your bank statements. It also references something that looks very scary: a national Digital ID. No more anonymity, at least not for government, bank, and energy employees. And it’s a hop, skip, and a jump away from the universal death of online anonymity.

I am duly disturbed. Fox got the story wrong, but they may have missed the really worrisome parts.

Oh, and, of course, lots of bureacracy and certification stuff to make life for CS people hell. As if we needed more required certification. Cripes.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, nor an especially experienced computer guy. My analysis is my own.

 

[aspawloski4th]

I don’t know any link as yet to go to to oppose this. Anyone else know?

foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/21/proposed-heavy-restrictions-internet-freedoms/

Senate Proposal Could Put Heavy Restrictions on Internet Freedoms

A proposed bill that would give the president widespread power to shut down the Internet in the event of a cyberattack could have sweeping implications on civil liberties
The days of an open, largely unregulated Internet may soon come to an end.
A bill making its way through Congress proposes to give the U.S. government authority over all networks considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. Under the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009, the president would have the authority to shut down Internet traffic to protect national security.
The government also would have access to digital data from a vast array of industries including banking, telecommunications and energy. A second bill, meanwhile, would create a national cybersecurity adviser – commonly referred to as the cybersecurity czar – within the White House to coordinate strategy with a wide range of federal agencies involved

And the liberals and Democrats whine and snivel about the patriot act. Can you say double standard?!! Since when do Demcrats care about national security anyway!

 

[TwoDachshunds]

Would you rather have el-Quida shut the internet down?

Is that a serious question?

 

[spectrm]

As a hacker type person myself (well, computer science major and part-time scripter nerd), I honestly can’t imagine what the benefit of this bill would be. In fact… it’s utterly insane.

(snip)…

I am duly disturbed. Fox got the story wrong, but they may have missed the really worrisome parts.

Oh, and, of course, lots of bureacracy and certification stuff to make life for CS people hell. As if we needed more required certification. Cripes.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, nor an especially experienced computer guy. My analysis is my own.

Hit the nail on the head, my brother. A lot of this was pushed to the forefront with the “Net Neutrality” bill…this new bill is really just an ammendment to Net Neutrality laws that seek to expand the president’s power over enforcement of Net Neutrality in light of a security breach. It’s all garbage, none of it is truly necessary, and just like the Patriot Act, will take several administrations to get rid of it, if we ever can.

No good can come of these bills.

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

We lived for thousands of years without the internet. If it must come to being an environment so toxic as to be morally unsafe, I can live without it. I think The Church should ensure that that there are ways to continue without the internet.