Liberman wants the US to have an Internet 'kill' switch...

[Chris OFarrell]

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno ... -yln6.html

US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US "national asset".

Local lobby groups and academics have rounded on the plan, saying that, rather than combat terrorists, it would actually do them "the biggest favour ever" by terrorising the rest of the world, which is now heavily reliant on cyberspace.

The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by independent senator Joe Lieberman, who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.

Titled "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act", the bill stipulates any internet firms and providers must "immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by a new section of the US Department of Homeland Security, dubbed the "National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications".

Lobby group TechAmerica told ZDNet it worried that the bill would give the US "absolute power" over the internet and create "unintended consequences".

One of Australia's top communications experts, University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, railed against the idea, saying shutting down the internet would "inflict an enormous damage on the entire world".

He said it would be like giving a single country "the right to poison the atmosphere, or poison the ocean".

"All our financial systems, all our security systems ... we're so reliant on the internet that if you shut it down there's a question of whether society will continue to operate normally anywhere in the Western world," Landfeldt said in a phone interview.

"By doing this they would do the terrorists the biggest favour ever because they would terrorise the rest of the world".

Landfeldt said the US would be the only country in the world with the ability to shut down the internet. He said such a move would be extremely difficult for the US to justify to other nations.

"Unfortunately, too much of the core of the internet resides in the US - let's put it this way, they cannot shut down machines in Australia, but they can completely isolate us and shut down certain core functions like the DNS ... they can render the internet fairly useless for the rest of the world," he said.

Senator Susan Collins, co-sponsor of the bill, has said: "We cannot afford to wait for a cyber-9/11."

Lieberman argued the bill was necessary to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people".

He said that, for all its allure, the internet could also be a "dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets".

US economic security, national security and public safety were now all at risk from new kinds of enemies, including "cyber warriors, cyber spies, cyber terrorists and cyber criminals".

Geordie Guy, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said governments around the world seemed terrified of some unidentified risk that they believe the internet poses.

"The proposal is from Joe Lieberman, a repeat offender on rights versus regulation, in a bill called Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010," he said.

"One wonders which nation Senator Lieberman considers the internet an asset of, and how proposing its destruction by presidential or homeland security order protects it.

"The internet is not a national asset of the United States, nor is it a media regulation problem of Australia. It is an international network used by millions upon millions of citizens and it needs to remain free and available."

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy did not respond to calls requesting comment.

Google, one of the world's biggest internet companies, declined to comment as it was not yet official US government policy.

Posted without comment...

[atg]

"Unfortunately, too much of the core of the internet resides in the US - let's put it this way, they cannot shut down machines in Australia, but they can completely isolate us and shut down certain core functions like the DNS ... they can render the internet fairly useless for the rest of the world," he said.

Isn't one of the root DNS servers located inside Australia (Sydney IIRC)? Appart from a few minor cases (New Zealands main fibre link goes through the US for instance) I don't see how the US could 'shut down' the internet withou the rest of the world implementing measures to route around it. Certainly talk of being able to do so would encourage the creation of emergency plans to implement if that situation ever arose.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Typical; probably just pandering but it would hardly be unprecedented that the United States explicitly claim unmatched, hegemonic authority in the world on no other pretext than "we're us".

[The Spartan]

Great. Let's just keep feeding my idiot, paranoid brother's fantasies of Barrack HUSSEIN Obama taking over the country and our freedoms.

[Aaron]

"Cyber 9/11"? WTF is that supposed to mean, the terrorists are going to remotely explode our HDDs?

[CJvR]

Is it even possible to shut down the internet from just the US? There is alot of hardware in the US but hardly all of it.

Besides what could the terrorists possibly do on the internet that would be worse than shutting it down?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Shutdown the Internet? Congratulations, you've caused an economic catastrophe.

I have met the terrorists, and they are us.

[Oskuro]

Indeed, but these ramblings are a good thing. Any motivation for alternative systems being put in place "just in case" is a good thing, that way when Korea launches its EMP satellites we won't be kicked out of WoW.

Actually, I'm serious about it being a good thing, having Internet's infrastructure become more globalized with increasing redundancy and back-ups would be very possitive.

[Vympel]

Yeah, if this stupid bill ever became law, I'd imagine that measures would be taken to ensure that the US couldn't simply assert control over the entire internet.

[Knife]

Probably has more to do with Lieberman just not knowing what the fuck the internet is. Most of these fellows seem rather isolated and pampered. He probably has an aide shop at Walmart for him, while another surfs the net when he needs something from it.

[Dalton]

Isn't the Internet too decentralized to be able to shut it down entirely?

[Vendetta]

Isn't the Internet too decentralized to be able to shut it down entirely?

A lot of the root DNS infrastructure is in the US, and shutting that down would take time and effort to redirect around, but in principle, yes.

[Uraniun235]

In a sea of shit, Joe Lieberman is a festering bolus of rat semen.



I really don't think the idea is to hit a red button and instantly shut down every data center in the US; check the article again and you'll notice the bit where it says "firms and providers must immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed". I think they're going for a way to eavesdrop on connections or search through servers without having to get a warrant first, or even possibly without having to document what they've done.

[Oskuro]

In the case of an actual emergency, aren't private entities already expected to comply with government orders? Because if so, this sounds as yet another attempt at redefining what "emergency" means.

[Uraniun235]

As an addendum, this could also be used to silence specific servers or connections. I can't help but wonder if this act is partly in response to Wikileaks.

[Lord MJ]

The whole idea of an Internet kill switch is borne more out of the idea of the Internet as an infrastructure that supports other infrastructures, rather than an the notion of controlling content. Not that there are people in the government that would eagerly use such power for that purpose. But we have become so accustomed to the notion of the Internet as an equivalent to the press or television, we forget it is really the equivalent to highways or waterways.

That said a total Internet kill switch is the most retarded idea ever and I can't see how it would accomplish anything in a massive cyberwar since an enemy waging cyber warfare against us is doing it to disable our infrastructure. Well if our infrastructures are dependent on the Internet and you shut off the Internet, haven't you just disabled the infrastructure? Am I missing something?

[Covenant]

Seems like Joe was watching TV last week when 60 minutes did a story on hackers blow up our power plants. I mean, he's just repeating it verbatim, it's hilarious. I literally think he watched the TV show, said "This is terrible!", and called up someone to ask if we can pull the plug if need be. I think the assumption is that if we kill the internet here we'll have time to avoid catastrophic damage to our infrastructure, notably the power grid, and be able to get back up and running in a matter of hours to days rather than months. This idea isn't as moronic as it sounds at first, but Senator Joe is so bad at understanding the actual scope of the issue that he might as well actually say we should have someone standing at the plug to pull it.

There's a lot of solutions to the Chinese Hacker Menace but I think a huge and dangerous kill switch is a bad idea. I mean, hell, okay. So we have a problem with Chinese Hackers getting into our systems because everything's interlinked... but it doesn't have to be. The internet's not a Zerg Swarm latching onto things. I mean, he calls it a "dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets." Yeah, as if the internet itself drove it's little mandibles into our infrastructure and burrowed electrionic pipelines through it.

Anything on the internet can be taken off the internet. Don't want your infrastructure assailable by cyber terrorists? Make sure you aren't connected to the outside world! I'm not sure why that's such a hard thing to imagine. If you're talking about a huge infrastructure development to protect us from dangerous cyber-nonense, a "SCRAM IT ALL!" button is nowhere near as useful as lot of smaller, simpler security measures.

Hackers steal data every day. Are you going to shut down the entire internet every time you detect an attack on our servers? It happens non-stop. This is a terrified old man wanting to shut down the machine he doesn't understand, and apparently nobody near him knows how to tell him otherwise, even though the realistic, actually valuable solutions are easier.

[kouchpotato]

Yet another dated politician who knows dick all about the internet.

[Edi]

The whole idea of an Internet kill switch is borne more out of the idea of the Internet as an infrastructure that supports other infrastructures, rather than an the notion of controlling content. Not that there are people in the government that would eagerly use such power for that purpose. But we have become so accustomed to the notion of the Internet as an equivalent to the press or television, we forget it is really the equivalent to highways or waterways.

That said a total Internet kill switch is the most retarded idea ever and I can't see how it would accomplish anything in a massive cyberwar since an enemy waging cyber warfare against us is doing it to disable our infrastructure. Well if our infrastructures are dependent on the Internet and you shut off the Internet, haven't you just disabled the infrastructure? Am I missing something?

No, you're not missing anything. You just hit the nail right on the head.

Lieberman doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about.

[Nephtys]

Yet another dated politician who knows dick all about the internet.

Who knows dick-all about electronic security. Nothing sensitive period is ever connected to the internet. Because that's the most basic possible form of security, and one of the most foolproof. To get around a complete lack of physical electronic contact, you're forced to commit any mischief with more exotic and extremely unreliable methods.

Killing the Internet for a day meanwhile would cause untold economic havoc given how integrated things are these days.

[The Romulan Republic]

No, you're not missing anything. You just hit the nail right on the head.

Lieberman doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about.

That or, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, the main purpose of this is not to protect against an attack, but to expand the government's ability to censor/control the media.

In any case, Lieberman is scum. Utter, disgusting scum. I think I'll write Obama a letter right now demanding that if this bill is passed, or anything similar, he automatically vetoes it.

Anyone more knowledgeable about the US Congress care to speculate on how likely this abomination is to pass?

[Sarevok]

Has there been an actual cyber terror attack on a scale large enough to justify this level of paranoia ? By terror I mean actual stereotypical terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda not skilled hackers with the resources of Chinese government at their beck and call.

[Temujin]

Killing the Internet for a day meanwhile would cause untold economic havoc given how integrated things are these days.

Hell one only needs to look at how ape shit people go when Gmail was down or they can't log in to their social networking site due to their own stupidity.

I wish when idiot politicians cross the line into this level of stupidity we could just get the men in white coats with big fucking nets to come and take them away.

Has there been an actual cyber terror attack on a scale large enough to justify this level of paranoia ? By terror I mean actual stereotypical terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda not skilled hackers with the resources of Chinese government at their beck and call.

Given what we've seen from the average Al-Qaeda style terrorist, I don't we're going to see too many 'hackers for Allah' doing anything more then the kind of nuisance attacks we see regularly anyway from bored college students. As for the Chinese, and other groups, other than probing and other low level stuff, I don't see them risking doing anything more damaging. It wouldn't be worth risking an escalation of hostilities.

[LadyTevar]

Most computers recovered from AlQaeda-like terrorists have been connected to the Internet -- and full of PORN. Honestly, its sad, these 'valiant fighters for Allah' watching woman doing dirty deeds. I wonder if they think their 72 virgins would know how to do that...

Either way, Lieberman opens his mouth, says something stupid. Same shit, different day.

[Temujin]

I forgot about that! And we just had a thread discussing that.

I guess you have to be a real good hacker to be able to do it with one hand!