Bill would give President emergency control of Internet in his dreams

August 28, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

340x_barack_obama_robert_scoble_cto-1West Virginia Senator John Davidson “Jay” Rockefeller IV — the Democratic great-grandson of oil mogul John D. Rockefeller — has been said to be working for months on a draft of S. 773, a bill whose stated goal is “to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption.”

Translation: It means the White House can order companies to disclose information, and possibly take control of their networks and computers, if the President declares them “critical” to an emergency involving the Internet.

CNET reporter Declan McCullagh has obtained a copy of a 55-page working draft that’s newer than the version online at thomas.loc.gov. He’s excerpted the part that allows the President to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks. Here’s the exact wording:

The President … (A) may declare a cybersecurity emergency; and (B) may, if the President finds it necessary for the national defense and security, and in co-ordination with relevant industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network.”

The president of the Internet Security Alliance, which includes Verizon, Verisign, Nortel and Carnegie Mellon University on its board, told McCullagh the bill is “troubling due to its vagueness.” Especially the part where it says that in a cyber-emergency, companies whose private networks are deemed critical will be required to share information requested by the government, but doesn’t set limits on what that information can be.

Fred Tien, an attorney with online rights advocates the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also told CNET that the bill’s language has become “more ambiguous” over time, empowering the President — currently a guy who has already had one cyber-czar quit on him — to declare a private network “critical” and effectively take control of it.

McCullagh is personally critical of the bill’s requirement that the White House implement a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy in six months, because the mandatory legal review of the strategy to decide what is or isn’t legal in the strategy will take at least a year to complete. Hey, it’s just like Twitter’s business model.

[Image: Valleywag]

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Great photo!
  • This is certainly a good idea. While they're at it, they should pass a law giving the President the power to control gravity in a national emergency, or perhaps the power to declare new prime numbers in a mathematical emergency.
  • okpulot_taha
    This bill is idiocy. I cannot wrap my mind around such a display of stupidity.

    I day trade stocks. I have a live stock market feed. This is how I earn extra money for our family during retirement. This Obama takeover would shut down my stock market feed, would shut down my financial efforts.

    Mine is one example of zillions. Shutting down the internet would cut off banking, cut off many emergency services, cut off a lot of critical medical services and would cut off ability to communicate across America during a time communication is critical.

    Obama and his boys are so very stupid. Best security for critical "national security interest" systems is "air gap" security. This is simply unplugging sensitive systems from our public internet. Such stupidity on the part of our government! This stupidity is reflected in this bill.

    Our government, our energy infrastructure, our military systems, all and more have an ability to establish private secure intranet systems through cable, microwave and satellite services. Many of our sensitive services are already on private intranet systems. Our nation is already crisscrossed with private secured data transmission methods.

    Ability to shut down our public internet is simply stupid. Not only stupid, this is reactive rather than proactive. A need to shut down our internet is direct evidence of our internet already being compromised; much too late. Once compromised, upon turning our internet "back on" those problems still exist and will spread. This turning off our internet does nothing to cure "infection" in the system.

    A proactive method is to create private and secured intranet systems for sensitive services, an intranet "unplugged" from the public internet. A secured unique system, strengthening security, this is the right approach.

    This bill is not only idiotic, this bill is dangerous; creates complacency and a false sense of security.

    Okpulot Taha
    Choctaw Nation
    Puma Politics
  • Geoff H
    @okpulot: This is just a continuation of the policy of a strong executive branch. It's been going on a long time. Obama is just the latest person pushing the same agenda, in this case Jay Rockefeller on his behalf, handing more power than should be given to a branch of government, in this case over an area that should not be under their control at all.

    The government released control in 1995, via the NSF, and after the explosion of use and information it has become critical to everyone, for their own reasons. It has also stood very well on it's own under constant hacking/DDoS attacks and private ISPs arguing with each other, with a few very brief exceptions that were solved without government intervention. This pretty much proves it's doing well on it's own so far, and until that changes, the model isn't broken and shouldn't be drastically altered.

    All these calls for Cyber Terrorist Event prevention smacks of TSA style security. Lots of inconvenience and interruptions, not much more actual security. Hopefully this bill and it's doubtless next versions will be shot down again and again.

    A government that cant enforce network neutrality, an obvious win for everyone but the few last-mile natural monopoly controlling telcos/cable cos, has no business with a kill switch on any aspect of the internet. They just don't get it, and until that totally changes (probably never), they cannot properly wield this kind of power responsibly.
  • sylviasoraya
    Okpulot Taha offers a solution to the security problem.
    "A proactive method is to create private and secured intranet systems for sensitive services, an intranet "unplugged" from the public internet. A secured unique system, strengthening security, this is the right approach."

    I suspect this bill is more of a way for the government to expand and get fingers into another pot than a real concern for security.
    Can anybody say Orwellian?

    For those who were paying attention to Iran this spring we saw the effect of a government that can shut down internet.

    Yes Okpulot Taha this bill is idiocy, stupidity and dangerous.
  • okpulot_taha
    Geoff, this bill is absolutely senseless. I question if any technicians were consulted.

    I run our own servers right here at home, web server, email server and dns server. Our only outside need is a backbone server to provide connectivity to the internet. Over the years, I have witnessed all types of attacks. Only attack which I found to be problematic is the Denial of Service attack out of Russia a few months back. Did not slow us down, just a matter of firewall blocking those half dozen or so sources of attack. Our servers experience about a hundred attacks a day of different sorts. I keep an eye on this but do not worry much. Periodically I update or change security measures. Over the past decade, not a single successful hack of any of our servers. I rate our security at 99% and leave 1% unknown for real surprises.

    Security problems come about through not paying attention or simply being ignorant of security. Almost all security breaches are personal computers belong to individuals, not institutions. Second in line are commerce servers which store credit card information. Those commerce servers compromised results from poor security or inside jobs. This is crime not a national security threat.

    Internet security is only as good as the weakest link out there. This would be millions of computers.

    As to a master switch to turn off the internet, you and I know this is impossible. Our backbone server, alone, is all over America with zillions of wide area networks and twice as many zillions of local area networks. Those are systems impossible to turn off, least not for a week or so; not enough manpower to shut down those systems in a rush.

    National security interest systems should not be connected to the public internet. This would be sensitive government systems, energy grid servers, military servers and such. Banks and financial services, yes, those need to be available to the public. Those systems are typically highly secure and carefully watched. A bank, for example, has an ability to shut down in a flash. Same is true of our major stock market systems.

    I am not buying into this ruse of a need for presidential control over the internet. This smacks of censorship and smacks of a power grab by government. No matter, this approach of "turning off" the internet is completely backwards. This is a type of technology which cannot be turned on and off like flipping a light switch.

    Something ain't right about all this, stinks of an Orwellian power grab as Sylvia suggests.

    Okpulot Taha
    Choctaw Nation
    Puma Politics
  • smartalec44
    Big brother is already here.We will soon be subjected to a eye scan to take a wee-wee.The American dollar is already devalued 30% against the Euro dollar.The private Federal Reserve keeps printing money without gold or silver backing which is causing a massive devaluation of our purchasing power to buy imports.The leaders aren't satisfied with taking 40 to 60% of our incomes to run the country.They continue to spend money like a drunken sailor while Chinese & Japanese investors are sitting on bonds already devalued 30% against the dollar.Beware of the swine flu vaccination as the first step in culling the world population.
  • he he ...i like this photo! funniest thing i have seen for the day.....but maybe hes not staring like the way it seems
  • Dave
    The blogs are killing Obama's agenda. Obama is a demagogue.
  • Hope for Change in 2010/12.
  • Olive
    This is almost vaguer than parts of the Constitution. Can we get specifics as to what the bill considers an "emergency"? Big Brother's looming on the horizon- soon we'll have telescreens, so put a neutral face and get ready to celebrate the End of the Right to Privacy. Constitutions? Who needs them- we've got a war on terror to win here.