TheRightToArmBears said:
Whaaaaaaaaaat?
This is insane. I cannot think of any event that is even remotely feasible that would require the entire internet to be turned off.
Yes, there is such an event. It's called "War", and we're getting very close to having one which is why we're seeing this.
Do a search for the keywords "Chinese, Military, and Hackers". Here is a sample link below:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2409865.ece
You'll find tons of stuff, but basically nations have been preparing to attack other nations via the internet to cripple or destroy their infrastructure via the Internet for a while now. China has been especially obvious in these areas, though like most aspects of China's rising war machine and plans for conquest, the by and large left wing press doesn't do much to promote this information even if they DO cover it. Articles like the above (and others you'll find), along with things like China's anti-satellite lasers (they blind the sats, not shoot them down) appear briefly and then tend to get buried because it doesn't fit within the anti-war political idealogy being practiced by a lot of people. Facts like this "confuse the issue" in their mind.
I'm on a massive free speech kick, but times of large scale crisis like wars are when I believe the goverment DOES have the right to control speech and the press. It's nessicary if your going to win. Wars are NEVER popular with the people, especially long ones, and if you allow anti-war voices and representation when your trying to fight it can hurt everyone.
People tend to forget how much information control and propaganda was involved in World War II. The war wasn't as popular as it's made out to be retroactively. Hitler was internationally popular, and the US had a lot of isolationist sentiments which continued even after Pearl Harbour. What's more US troops committed numerous atrocities, records of this exist though they are difficult to find, in general you can make some pretty accurate deductions if you ask yourself questions like "what happened to the Volkssturm and Hitler Youth?". The goverment specifically acted to prevent reporters and the news media from engaging in the kinds of coverage that we see with "The War On Terror". We experimented here to see if we could fight with that kind of thing in place, and really I think the experiment failed by creating what amounts to a political nightmare and one of the most incompetant, committee driven wars in history, with anti-war loonies given free reign to say and do whatever they want to try and derail the process.
For all comments about how "I don't trust my goverment", I will point out that in this paticular respect, our goverment has shown itself worthy of the trust. War powers were instituted during World War II, and then relinquished. The media blockade ended, the propaganda also ended (allowing people to question things like human flesh lampshades retroactively), and most of the stuff reporters covered that wasn't exactly Pro-Allies in a moral sense was archived and eventually released so if you really dig for it you can find it.
Understand that if we go toe to toe with China, and I think it IS coming, as they are developing the stuff they need to wage a war of conquest. Both in terms of material military resources (including boats, subs, and planes), and things like cyber-warfare/WMD/Satellites & Countermeasures, etc... it's going to be a war of survival. Us or them. That is going to mean having to take out all the stops, declare martial law, gather up every resource we can much like World War II, embrace tight internal security (which The Smithsonian covers), and yes... taking The Internet offline might be a good idea not just for reasons of information control, but simply because if WE take it down we can control what happens as a result to an extent. That's entirely differant from what happens if we rely on it and someone else brings it down around our heads, or worse yet takes control of it.
In general I am not a fan of Mr. Leiberman (for obvious reasons) but in this paticular case I believe he happens to be correct. It's not something I nessicarly LIKE, but it's something I admit is a nessicary evil.
Simply put in peacetime I don't believe the goverment should be able to censor anything. However when it comes to a full scale war, I believe emergency powers exist for that reason. Short of something like a war with China, I do not think the goverment should have this abillity. In a time of war it increases our chances of winning, and keeping us alive and our infrastructure intact.
The key concern here however should be to monitor such laws very carefully to ensure that this can only be done in times of national crisis. You do not want the goverment to be able to blank the internet due to internal issues that someone wants to try and declare are a worthy crisis.... like for example someone deciding to cut off coverage of a disaster like "Hurricaine Katrina" because the results might not flatter the goverment.
Not sure how many will have read this far, but basically we've been here before. It's just that most people don't realize all of what happened during World War II, how nessicary it was, and how close we came to losing despite this. As I mentioned above "The Smithsonian" has a pretty substantial collection of propaganda from the time period. It also includes stuff on how freedom of speech was limited in civilian factories and such, including signs that were put up (with a shadow of a german helmet) warning people to constantly watch what they say. It was very much a climate of paranoia, but also one that was somewhat justified if you read about some of the infiltration attempts we had to deal with.
