This news is a couple weeks old, but I thought I’d bring it up since no-one posted yet:
In a recent CNN interview, Senator Lieberman was asked about S.3480; he cited the need for “national security,” and also said this: “Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”
http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/ahamadeh/joe-lieberman-says-relax-over-internet-kill-switch
This certainly ranks among the stupid remarks of the year. I am suprised Liberman didn’t add that if the government of China adopts a second “Cultural Revolution” then we should too.
Yeah evidently China must be the new role model that we look up to now. Didn’t they light up some of the buildings around this country in anniversary of the Cultural Revolution not too long ago?
I think that the remarks taken out of context and without some knowledge of the actual bill can be somewhat misleading.
You can find the full text of the bill here: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3480/text
I think the question of whether or not the country needs to have a plan for dealing with cyberterrorism, cyber warfare, general cyber espionage is a good one, but execution is always tricky.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I’m not saying I support this, particularly not in its current rough draft form.
Perhaps there needs to be prepping for cyberterrorism. But we’re better served by the free market doing this than another government program.
Of course it is tricky. It is tricky to take the most significant system for enabling freedom ever created and turn it into something modeled on a similar program run by the Chinese Government. Think about how sensitive the internet is to top down control and what that would do to the sharing of information in society. And I think Liberman simply has government force envy. His gun he can use against his citizens is so much smaller than the one the Chinese can use that he feels he needs a bigger one.
But he like the media missed the core argument. That is there should not be government control of any of this because they are least competent group when it comes to securing these types of systems. They could not even secure the Predator Drones so the Afhans were monitoring the mounted cameras from their huts along with the people in Tampa.
“It is tricky to take the most significant system for enabling freedom ever created and turn it into something modeled on a similar program run by the Chinese Government. Think about how sensitive the internet is to top down control and what that would do to the sharing of information in society.”
I really don’t think that’s what this bill proposes to do. That’s what I mean by taking Lieberman’s statements too seriously without reading the bill. Outside of the emergency measures sections, this bill basically just amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to allow for the creation of a department that will be in charge of helping other federal agencies protect their information.
I don’t think that part bothers people very much.
The part that’s got everyone throwing a hissy fit is in the emergency measures section. This part would allow the President, in times of national emergency, to “order certain owners and operators of critical infrastructure to implement response plans.”
Perhaps this part needs to be reworked.
EDIT: After looking over the Homeland Security Act, it seems most of the groundwork (and indeed a lesser version of the organization itself) was laid down in Section 2 Subtitles A and B.
I don’t have a problem if the government does something to protect their own agencies’ information, but why would they need to protect companies’ and individuals’ information? Isn’t everyone supposed to protect their own property? I don’t know if this is part of the whole ‘net neutrality’ thing, but I hope not because I don’t like that either.
I am amazed that anyone would believe the reason for a bill like this is for its contents. It is simply a gateway to further regulate the internet. It is the old slippery slope strategey the Feds have used to take over entire industries, education, product safety, pharmaceutical safety, communications, etc. Congress is directly trying to control the private property of others where that property enables massive numbers of people to speak freely, the results of this regulation will be to have less freedom and more power in Washington.