Proposed Bill Gives Obama Power to Shut Down Internet

[mcswift]

...Do you people not understand American political separation of power? So far, this bill has nothing to do with Obama because it is being debated by Congress.

It really has nothing to do with him unless they pass it and even so, if he so wanted, he could veto it.

Also, to people who espouse this so-called right of national internet 'sovereignty', if the ISPs and other internet resources are located in the United States or supported by American industry, they are under the jurisdiction of those bodies.

Any domain that is housed by American networks is subject to American legislation. The internet isn't exactly the most tangible legal being and traditional roles of territorial independence have little or no precedent.

Sorry to sound like a troll.

 

[colonelslime]

...Do you people not understand American political separation of power? So far, this bill has nothing to do with Obama because it is being debated by Congress.

It really has nothing to do with him unless they pass it and even so, if he so wanted, he could veto it.

Also, to people who espouse this so-called right of national internet 'sovereignty', if the ISPs and other internet resources are located in the United States or supported by American industry, they are under the jurisdiction of those bodies.

Any domain that is housed by American networks is subject to American legislation. The internet isn't exactly the most tangible legal being and traditional roles of territorial independence have little or no precedent.

Sorry to sound like a troll.

It's not trolling if what you say is correct.

And again, the bill is only for security threat to government controlled networks. This is to prevent, say, the voting registry or census data from falling into the wrong hands,and to prevent damage to national infrastructure from cyberterrorism. It has nothing ot do with "shutting down the internet" as some form of censorship. The DCMA is more destructive of personal freedoms than this, so why aren't you ranting about that? This kind of knee-jerk, reactionarry screaming is really quite stupid.

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

...Do you people not understand American political separation of power? So far, this bill has nothing to do with Obama because it is being debated by Congress.

It really has nothing to do with him unless they pass it and even so, if he so wanted, he could veto it.

Also, to people who espouse this so-called right of national internet 'sovereignty', if the ISPs and other internet resources are located in the United States or supported by American industry, they are under the jurisdiction of those bodies.

Any domain that is housed by American networks is subject to American legislation. The internet isn't exactly the most tangible legal being and traditional roles of territorial independence have little or no precedent.

Sorry to sound like a troll.

It's not trolling if what you say is correct.

And again, the bill is only for security threat to government controlled networks. This is to prevent, say, the voting registry or census data from falling into the wrong hands,and to prevent damage to national infrastructure from cyberterrorism. It has nothing ot do with "shutting down the internet" as some form of censorship. The DCMA is more destructive of personal freedoms than this, so why aren't you ranting about that? This kind of knee-jerk, reactionarry screaming is really quite stupid.

All we ask that you stop calling people names. Your hostility is making people tune you out.

 

[mcswift]

If my Prime Minister was considering such a motion, I would be a lot more worried than what the American Congress is.

Unlike those American-style democracies, Canadian Prime Minister (read: sometimes baby-eater) Stephen Harper can, in a majority government (which is usually the case in British style parliamentary politics), basically do whatever he pleases by ramming whatever legislation he wants down his party dominated legislature.

Luckily, we have staved off the possibility of a 'religious right' conservative majority but in the process have barely survived a proroguement of Parliament (for those of you less aware of Parliamentary tradition, a proroguement of Parliament is essentially request granted by the Queen's representative in Canada, the Governor General, to prematurely end a parliamentary sitting. The last time I am aware of this happening resulted in King Charles getting his head lobbed off).

Oops, political science rant...much apologies.

In any case, be grateful for your separation of powers!

 

[colonelslime]

...Do you people not understand American political separation of power? So far, this bill has nothing to do with Obama because it is being debated by Congress.

It really has nothing to do with him unless they pass it and even so, if he so wanted, he could veto it.

Also, to people who espouse this so-called right of national internet 'sovereignty', if the ISPs and other internet resources are located in the United States or supported by American industry, they are under the jurisdiction of those bodies.

Any domain that is housed by American networks is subject to American legislation. The internet isn't exactly the most tangible legal being and traditional roles of territorial independence have little or no precedent.

Sorry to sound like a troll.

It's not trolling if what you say is correct.

And again, the bill is only for security threat to government controlled networks. This is to prevent, say, the voting registry or census data from falling into the wrong hands,and to prevent damage to national infrastructure from cyberterrorism. It has nothing ot do with "shutting down the internet" as some form of censorship. The DCMA is more destructive of personal freedoms than this, so why aren't you ranting about that? This kind of knee-jerk, reactionarry screaming is really quite stupid.

All we ask that you stop calling people names. Your hostility is making people tune you out.

Looking back, I can see that I came of much more hostile than I would have wanted to. My apologies. I just have problems with people making accusations without doing the reserach first.

Also, a Stephen Harper majority is one of my biggest nightmares.

 

[asinann]

Hold on, this means that Obama will just be able to halt the acess of Americans to the internet, right? He wouldn't be able to take it down on a global scale, right?

This is just another retarded example of America thinking it is the most important country in the world.

Many of the world's networks and most used sites come out of the US, so it may affect the average person's speed and the like, but it wouldn't shut the rest of the world off.

And as to the other part, what happened again when the US economy collapsed? The rest of the world followed.

No country is important enough to have any say in what happens outside it's own borders.

Way to ignore half the post. You know, the half that said that the internet wouldn't be shut off. Just slowed a ton as everything is routed around America. Maybe if nations outside the US weren't constantly trying to pass laws through the UN to curtail American freedoms or suing us for subsidizing agriculture (and the world court forcing us to pay billions to European nations every year on top of it) we wouldn't be sticking our fingers in everything.

Let he who is without sin throw the first stone. We ain't the only ones doing it.

 

[Ranooth]

That is too much power for any one man to have. If he gains such abilities, he, like any normal human being, would descend into madness.

MADNESS.

Madness? This is OBAMA!

(Sorry )

O you just didnt.

Think about it though, just because he has the "power" to do it doesnt mean hes actually gunna do it. If he did then i highly doubt he would be in power for much longer.

 

[colonelslime]

No one in the government would be stupid enough to shut down the internet. It would literally cause commerce and trade to grind to a halt. If you think the economic downturn is bad now, imagine what would happen if the central pipeline for all information, financial and otherwise, got blocked because of a security threat. As I've said before, this bill gives a cybersecurity adviser the option to pull a government network from the internet, if there is a serious concern about its vulnerability to a hacking attempt.

 

[Chaos Marine]

So long as it doesn't affect my internet browsing, I couldn't give a fuck. If it does. Then fuck the US administration.

 

[MoganFreeman]

How exactly did America come to be the sole owner of an international network?

 

[Aries_Split]

That's actually pretty funny. What kind of emergency would need the internet to be stopped.

 

[Kazturkey]

Not legal. There's no way ANY country would agree to obama having the power to kill the internet. Unless this is simply saying cut the USA's internet off?

 

[runedeadthA]

You canna do this! You do na have the power!

*sigh* I assume this will blot americas already OTT sense of power -_-

 

[Nova Tendril]

He's going to chop down the Internet.

 

[D_987]

Sounds like article 48 from Wiemar Germany except its based around the internet...(and look what happened there).

 

[3rd rung]

Proposed Bill Gives Obama Power to Shut Down Internet

A new cybersecurity bill being proposed would give the President emergency authority to halt web traffic and access private data, effectively declaring martial law on the web.

Last week, senators John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe proposed the Cybersecurity Act that would create the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor. Its powers are detailed in the The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) [http://cdt.org/security/CYBERSEC4.pdf], and this is where it gets very scary indeed.

If the President so chooses, he can call a "cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit any 'net traffic on a "critical" network "in the name of national security," though the bill fails to provide concrete definitions on what is "critical" or what constitutes an "emergency."

The Secretary of Commerce would also have the power to "access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."

"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs - from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records-the list goes on," said Senator Rockefeller in a statement. His colleague, Senator Snowe, took the metaphor further saying, "if we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-(hurricane) Katrina."

As you can imagine, the thought of such powers has put a number of internet advocacy groups on full alert. "The cybersecurity threat is real," said Leslie Harris, head of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), "but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy."

Source: Mother Jones [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should-obama-control-internet] via Slashdot [http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/03/1637203&art_pos=2]
(Image) [http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/3268871691/in/photostream/]

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I ahve to say weven if this did pass which I don't think it would I don't see this getting passed by the Superme court

 

[Jabbawocky]

Why don't you just get Bruce Willis to solve any cyber-security problems.

 

[mrpenguinismyhomeboy]

That's actually pretty funny. What kind of emergency would need the internet to be stopped.

Obama is getting pwned at WoW! Quick, shut down the Internet!!

Lol.

I was eating my chipotle burrito, I had just watched unskippable, and then I read this.