Posted on 10/28/2010 7:30:52 AM PDT by MissTed
This is why many major policy decisions should not be made by a populace which, while well-meaning, is ignorant of the basic issues, or by the publicity-seeking politicians who pander to them.
Sixty-one percent of Americans said the President should have the ability to shut down portions of the Internet in the event of a coordinated malicious cyber attack, according to research by Unisys.
…
“A majority of the American population is willing to grant the President the authority to cut short their Internet access to protect both U.S. assets and citizens, suggesting that the public is taking cyber warfare very seriously,” said Patricia Titus, VP and CISO, Unisys. “Our survey shows that the American public recognizes the danger of a cyber attack and wants the federal government to take an active role in extending the nation’s cyber defense. It will be up to officials in all branches of the federal government to respond to this call to action in a way that is measured and well planned.”
Now, Unisys is in the business of helping “governments around the world” “solve their business problems through systems that optimize the organization and secure the enterprise,” so it’s probably not too surprising that they’d interpret their own poll in a way so conveniently helpful to their core business. The way Unisys phrased the question makes it appear that there was at least some mild push polling at work; however, the “Internet kill switch” is a policy proposal that we have to take and address seriously, if only because many U.S. politicians continue to seriously consider it.
As we’ve written in the past: While proposed in the name of national security, an Internet kill switch would make the Internet more vulnerable, not less, in addition to raising major questions about potential government abuse. In the words of Robert Schneier:
Computer and network security is hard, and every Internet system we’ve ever created has security vulnerabilities. It would be folly to think this one wouldn’t as well. And given how unlikely the risk is, any actual shutdown would be far more likely to be a result of an unfortunate error or a malicious hacker than of a presidential order.
But the main problem with an Internet kill switch is that it’s too coarse a hammer.
Yes, the bad guys use the Internet to communicate, and they can use it to attack us. But the good guys use it, too, and the good guys far outnumber the bad guys.
Shutting the Internet down, either the whole thing or just a part of it, even in the face of a foreign military attack would do far more damage than it could possibly prevent. And it would hurt others whom we don’t want to hurt.
Has Julian Asange of Wikileaks weighed in on this?
In a real world, our president would be a natural-born American of American parents, proud of all legal citizens of the 57 United States of America, and with American interests at heart.
Sadly, he isn’t. He ISN’T a natural-born citizen, he ISN’T proud of ALL our LEGAL citizens, and he DOESN’T have our country’s best interest at heart. He’d use the ‘kill switch’ to destroy freedom of speech and shut down patriotic American’s voices through sites LIKE FREE REPUBLIC .
Oh...and there are only 50 states, no matter we he says.
Have they been testing the kill switch on FReeRepublic last week????
I’d say these are the same Americans who aren’t opposed to net neutrality.
Let’s re-phrrase that question
Would the majority of liberals be OK with President Sarah Palin having an internet kill switch?
Rule 2: In order for Rule 1 to kick in, I would have to KNOW, not simply be assured by the government, that it was in fact necessary and not simply a power play by a government bent on dominating their erstwhile masters and taking away any means they might have to defend themselves against that domination.
I can't imagine the circumstances under which rule 2 could EVER be satisfied.
Foreign nukes falling from the sky would satisfy me for rule #2, but I can't imagine it mattering after that.
/johnny
My crystal ball says that there will be a devastating cyber attack on the US october 2012, that will cause the internet to be closed down, except for financial institutions and military for a 2 month period.
The first sentence says it all.
too many ignorant people
No. Probably just testing out their election-day denial of service attacks against FR.
I’ll bet the poll results would be different AFTER peoples’ online apps and social networks and email “freeze” for a couple of days.
This’d be the kill switch for the Internet that has been built out of a design that owes its existence to a DARPA project that was set up to create redundant paths of communication between sites, so that even in the event of global thermonuclear war taking out 40% of the continental United States infastructure, telecoms traffic would just route its way around the missing bits.
And now with over 135,000 routers on the American internet backbone, not all of them under government control, AND failover / load balanced systems, and multilayered hardware (not to mention bespoke firmware stripping out default admin accounts and so on, on-demand manual dialup connections, redundant microwave links, fiber-optic links through Faraday cages to mitigate EMP damage, and so on), people actually think that such a thing as a kill switch is even viable?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Sounds like something Gene Roddenberry might’ve jotted down on his “Things to get Commander Data to do” list. But I guess he must’ve crossed it out on account of the Holodeck being more believable.
Mockery aside, even if you could script something to bomb out all those routers, it’d take time for the signal to propagate. Long enough for any sensible geek to pull the plug out and figure out a way round the problem.
I’ve read the legislation, and I still can’t find the “kill switch” part of it. If someone can, please tell me where it is.
When nukes are falling, how do you know if they're foreign?
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