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Science & Technology
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet
2009-08-29
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.
Posted by:Fred

#17  I think Bambi may be overreaching here. Imagine what businesses would do if they lost the internet on which so many depend. What about the banking system? The stock market?

Many federal courts now REQUIRE that pleadings be filed electronically; that requires the internet. What happens if Bambi cuts off access to a good portion of the internet and plaintiffs/defendants miss an important deadline because of it?

How about medicine? A lot gets done over the internet; who pays if people get sicker or die because of no internet access?

And what the hell is a "cybersecurity emergency" anyway?

Tar. Feathers. Pitchfork. Some assembly required. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2009-08-29 21:52  

#16  The government wants the power to pull the plug on the internet to protect critical infrastructure. Here's an idea for them: Don't put critical infrastructure on a global public network!
Posted by: Snuger Prince of the Welsh4131   2009-08-29 20:19  

#15  crosspatch: Interesting analysis.

One point I would make is in networks. Although Yahoo, google et al have private networks that are routable to the internet, if you can connect to them, they are not private, they are public. They may strictly control traffic at the router level, but they are considered private.

So my reading of this bill is that in an emergency the government would get unfettered access to large private networks which are ordinarily not connected to the internet for its own purposes. Similar to comandeering airliners to transport materiel in time of war.

It is actually a reasonable proposal but for the current leftist government to make use of unaffected private computing power in the event of an attack.
Posted by: badanov   2009-08-29 19:12  

#14  You mean the old bulletin board system. What would you need to set that up using today's systems? Maybe put together a toolbox of needed items and post it just in case.
Posted by: Steve   2009-08-29 18:49  

#13  Worth noting that back in the Jurassic era, before the days of always-on DSL, we built ad-hoc networks over dial-up phone lines with tools like Point-to-Point Protocol and used UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program) to route mail and files. It depended on friendly sysadmins and people willing to share a little server space, but it could be done again if the need arises.
Posted by: SteveS   2009-08-29 16:18  

#12  "3 There are only a few carriers who own the fiber trunks that carry comms and data traffic. Shut down their data traffic and the internet shuts down."

Not exactly true. I can connect my network to Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Google without ever leaving the building. That is over private fiber strung directly. No, going outside the building there are many carriers what will lease "dark" fiber to you. Some you may have never heard of (remember MFS? They are AboveNet now). In order to shut that traffic down they would need to basically break the cable which would disrupt more than just Internet traffic as telephone, video and lots of other services uses those paths as well.

"The Internet" architecture is one of cooperative communications between private entities. There is no government ownership or public entity through which the traffic flows. And the "problem" gets more interesting as more foreign carriers own infrastructure here. Want to connect to China Telecom? No problem, they appear in San Jose, California. British Telecom? Telecom Italia? No problem, they appear in several places in the US over their own infrastructure.

It would be a massive exercise in futility to "shut down the Internet". You could overload popular destinations like google, msn, yohoo, and aol but taking down ALL networks would be practically impossible as most are interconnected at several points.
Posted by: crosspatch   2009-08-29 15:07  

#11  Krystal Nacht is coming. What the Acorn SS.

Posted by: 3dc   2009-08-29 14:22  

#10  All your base are belong to us.
Posted by: eltoroverde   2009-08-29 13:25  

#9  He wants control of everything. Doing the things tyrants do.
Posted by: newc   2009-08-29 12:45  

#8  We will have to go back to faxes like dissidents did in the ex Soviet Union. If we are lucky, we can vote out some of these scoundrels in 2010, if an election is held.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2009-08-29 11:59  

#7  Rahm Emanuel and his cronies can "manufacture" any crisis they deem necessary.
Posted by: WolfDog   2009-08-29 11:26  

#6  So be sure to write down the IP address of Rantburg and the rest of your favorite Blogs.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2009-08-29 10:14  

#5  Shut down the DNS servers and you'll shut down enough of the 'internet' that the rest won't matter.
Posted by: Steve White   2009-08-29 10:10  

#4  Immediately following 9/11 all flight operations across the country were shut down in a matter of minutes. If you don't think Barry could direct a series Computer Network Offensive (CNO) measures be taken against domestic networks and systems you are sadly mistaken.
Posted by: Besoeker   2009-08-29 08:06  

#3  There are only a few carriers who own the fiber trunks that carry comms and data traffic. Shut down their data traffic and the internet shuts down.
Posted by: ed   2009-08-29 07:56  

#2  First of all, there is no such thing as "the internet" as any kind of physical entity.

But the courts and lawyers are already establishing its legal entity through precedent case law.

And many of the root name servers are outside of the US and not under the authority of the US President.

For which the UN bureaucrats have already started to demand control over. Yep, that's the key, let the UN regulate it.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2009-08-29 07:27  

#1  This is one of those issues that is so highly technical that not even the people writing the laws understand it.

First of all, there is no such thing as "the internet" as any kind of physical entity. "The Internet" is thousands of networks exchanging traffic privately. Lets say you are on AT&T or Comcast or Verizon. If ou are on one of those networks and want to go to yahoo.com, for example, chances are that your provider directly connects to Yahoo. In order to shut down "the internet", thousands of networks would have to turn off their border routers they use for traffic peering with other networks.

If you are on a smaller network, your traffic might need to go through a third party (transit) in order to reach Yahoo.

Take Rantburg. Rantburg's IP addresses are apparently owned by someone called "Datapoint". Traffic from my network at work reaches Rantburg by first going to the Equinix facility at 11 Great Oaks in San Jose. From there it goes to a network owned by Level3 communications where it is hauled over Level3's network to an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia and handed to a network called e-xpedient.com who then gives the data to datapoint. At no time did my traffic touch anything called "The Internet". It went over private networks.

In order to shut down "the ineternet" the President would need to order all networks not to communicate with any other network over their own private connections.

Now, having done that, what is there stopping people from loading Quagga on a linux box for routing and stringing cables between neighbors and creating their own "internet"?

Maybe the government could shut down the root nameservers, but people would create new ones. And many of the root name servers are outside of the US and not under the authority of the US President. The only way to shut down "the internet" is to physically shut off the links between private networks.

I don't believe the network operators would follow such an order even if given.
Posted by: crosspatch   2009-08-29 02:46  

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