U.S. Government Proposes "Internet Kill Switch"

[The_ModeRazor]

So... I'd have to pirate the internet itself?
Actually, this sounds like some way to disrupt the flow of free information to the people, and so they could only rely on newspapers and the TV to get any info on how the war that suddenly started while the internet was dead is justified by the government.
Absolute control, anyone?

 

[Lizardon]

How can one countries government decide to shut down the internet? They do realise that America isn't the only country with internet access, don't they? Plus with the logistics of setting up such a switch would probably just result in them giving up because it's to hard, so I'm not losing any sleep.

 

[Hyper-space]

Oh yeah?

Well the US government can suck my cock.

Damn right!

How amazingly self-centred of them... That would disrupt internet commerce the world over!

I'm all for increased levels of security online... but that's just going way too far.

Oh noes! the government can shut down the internet if a full-scale cyber-attack would have occur!

the horror...

But seriously, i think national security is more important that finishing a game of TF2.

Edit:

Surely turning off the internet during a time of crisis would worsen things? Most people rely on electronic news sources these days. I mean for example:

Crisis 1: Terrorists denote an explosive
Internet gets turned off: People assume the internet is broken because the Russopeans/Chapanese/Islamistanis have BLOWN UP THE DATA CENTRES! IT'S AN INVASION! GET YOUR GUN! SHOOT ANYONE IN A UNIFORM!

Crisis 2: A small earthquake
Internet gets turned off: IT'S A SUPERQUAKE! WASHINGTON HAS BEEN DESTROYED! GET YOUR GUN! SHOOT THE GROUND! IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE SANDWORMS!

I could go on.

It doesn't help that "Lieberman" really sounds like the name you'd give a Bond villain.

THEY WOULD NOT TURN OF THE INTERNET IF SOME TERRORIST WOULD DETONATE A BOMB.

I get that people like to scream "1984!" every time the government does ANYTHING but this is just bordering on sheer stupidity.

Actually, that's called accountability.
They have that in democracies.

This proposed bill ostensibly gives the President powers to protect the United States against a massive cyber-attack.
This "internet kill switch" seems like a very poorly thought out response.

Why kill an entire nation's networks in response to the threat of a cyber-attack? Surely a more effective and prudent move would be to prevent such an attack through tighter security systems?

You mentioned national security. This implies protecting American interests, does it not? How are American interests served by crippling their own information economy? Would this not only severely impair an effective, and adequate response to this hypothetical "crisis"?

How exactly does such a move provide the federal authorities with the means to track the origins of the attack? I'm not American so I could argue that I have no stake in this whatsoever.
But that's not really true.

Most of the websites I use are American. A lot of them contain my personal information, such as my gmail account...
The point I'm making is that such a massive disruption in the US would cause a global, international problem.

The internet (ie the sharing of information), as has been pointed out by another poster, belongs to everyone and no-one.

However, the service provision belongs to those companies and government agencies that run them. That said, such is the extent of interdependence via the internet, it is very hard to differentiate between what would only negatively affect the US, and what would affect negatively affect the communication and economic activities of several other major countries?

I have every faith that more sane and savvy people than Liebermann will decide the fate of this shoddy bill.

the Kill Switch is not something that would be used regularly and i'm pretty sure that shutting off the internet would prevent a mass-scale attack.

think about it, if terrorists were attacking they would also attack your bank accounts would they not? and then what are you gonna say?

The kill switch could provide the momentary safety of the nations economy and national security that the U.S would probably need in face of a full-frontal cyber-attack.

edit 1:

Oh yeah?

Well the US government can suck my cock.

Damn right!

How amazingly self-centred of them... That would disrupt internet commerce the world over!

I'm all for increased levels of security online... but that's just going way too far.

Oh noes! the government can shut down the internet if a full-scale cyber-attack would have occur!

the horror...

But seriously, i think national security is more important that finishing a game of TF2.

Edit:

Surely turning off the internet during a time of crisis would worsen things? Most people rely on electronic news sources these days. I mean for example:

Crisis 1: Terrorists denote an explosive
Internet gets turned off: People assume the internet is broken because the Russopeans/Chapanese/Islamistanis have BLOWN UP THE DATA CENTRES! IT'S AN INVASION! GET YOUR GUN! SHOOT ANYONE IN A UNIFORM!

Crisis 2: A small earthquake
Internet gets turned off: IT'S A SUPERQUAKE! WASHINGTON HAS BEEN DESTROYED! GET YOUR GUN! SHOOT THE GROUND! IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE SANDWORMS!

I could go on.

It doesn't help that "Lieberman" really sounds like the name you'd give a Bond villain.

THEY WOULD NOT TURN OF THE INTERNET IF SOME TERRORIST WOULD DETONATE A BOMB.

I get that people like to scream "1984!" every time the government does ANYTHING but this is just bordering on sheer stupidity.

You assume most people just don't like it because it would inconvenience them, but seriously dude, think about it.

USA thinks they're under attack, so they switch off the internet.
Now every country is losing money because of this, and actually attack america for doing so.
Que world war.

Extreme example, sure, but pretty much this disrupts every internet business in the world and gives it control over these businesses.

Go america! Land of the free my ass...

THEY WOULD ONLY SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET IF THEY WERE UNDER ATTACK!

jesus fucking jove, this is a government back-up plan, meaning that this is probably run by people 10x smarter than the average forum goer.

People think that just because they are paranoid fucks who scream TOTALITARIAN at every opportunity that the government would so hastily use the kill switch.

edit 2:

I get that people like to scream "1984!" every time the government does ANYTHING but this is just bordering on sheer stupidity.

That's what they want you to think! Luckily, they can't get me through my tinfoil hat.

But on a serious note, the government should not be given more power, they have too many already. They want to control our health care, tighter gun control, blah blah blah. I know it's been said a thousand times.. But it's a real possibility.

OH THE HORROR! people with mental instabilities can no longer by 15 assault rifles and teenagers no longer have easy access to hand-guns.

And do you know why the government wants to have a tighter control of your health care? BECAUSE YOUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS BROKEN AS FUCK AND COSTS THE GOVERNMENT (read the taxpayers) BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR.

Your broken and failed system is a massive sink-hole for the tax-payers money, while leaving millions of people uninsured or screwed over.

 

[slightly evil]

mark my words, all you need is top notch anti-virus, this is just another way of censorship to control us and just you wait, afterwards they'll start introducing bigger things with 'the people's interests' in mind and then we have no unrestricted information and we become entirely dependant on the governments side of the news. Fuck You control freaks, we'll go all distopian future and have illegal iternets circling the world if you try that.

 

[LeQuack_Is_Back]

Ugh....
the darn fools.

 

[dkyros]

Don't scoff at the risk this could be Cyber 9/11 times 1000!

The trouble with the internet is it was designed to withstand Nuclear attacks. You can't stop the signal.

You mean... 91,100?!?! Dear God.

 

[GloatingSwine]

jesus fucking jove, this is a government back-up plan, meaning that this is probably run by people 10x smarter than the average forum goer.

Dude, this is a plan to apparently "switch off the internet", which, as noted, is pretty much impossible without invading all the countries that have all the other root DNS servers and turning those off, because otherwise all you do is make the internet slower as the remaining root DNS servers have to route around the (now offline) US ones. (not to mention that the root DNS capacity would likely be expanded outside the US if this bill passed precisely to maintain operation in the event of anyone turning off the US root DNS servers)

This is a bit of feelgood legislation which will have no practical benefit, by people who do not understand a computer, let alone the internet.

 

[jords]

I was going to comment, but then i saw that there was already 17 pages and it seemed a little redundant. Oh wait

 

[Spacelord]

If it's even possible to HAVE an 'internet kill switch' I'm not sure I'd be comfortable for it to be in the hands of the US government.

Also:

[...] cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals." [...]

Didn't we stop using that terminology in the 90s?

 

[Ekonk]

Oh yeah?

Well the US government can suck my cock.

You and me both, brother.

I can see why they would want it though. The flow of information can damage government plans. Just look at Vietnam. Still, that's just fucking tough luck, US government.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

By the time the crisis got to the government and the order was given, any planned attack would already have been easily carried out. I do not see this having ANY sort of use or protection, save for the utter control over the internet by the US.

I think every country needs to start planning for if they do turn off their portion of the internet to be able to keep our systems running smoothly!

Stop all unnecessary code linkages to US servers and back up all data I say.

 

[DoctorObviously]

Heh, there's more behind this than we know. But I couldn't care less. They could do this before they announced this. They're the US government, they can do anything they want.

 

[veloper]

Yeah, great fucking idea USA, just pull the kill switch any time a website is unavailable due to DOS attacks.
That won't make it work again.

I can see some merit in blackholing specific areas in the world in case of an emergency though.

 

[RobCoxxy]

Who the hell voted for this guy?

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Don't scoff at the risk this could be Cyber 9/11 times 1000!

The trouble with the internet is it was designed to withstand Nuclear attacks. You can't stop the signal.

You mean... 91,100?!?! Dear God.

No. It's ten times worse than that!

 

[Maverick Siragusa]

i wonder what would happen to the internet when it was switched off and someoen accidently deleted the on switch....riots would happen for sure becouse people cant update needless statuses
and why should it affect all the world.... why not only america since america is the oen who thought they spend millions on makeing a switch

hey if were going down by some retarded switch were taking you guys with us

on a serious note what if the cyber ninjas attack the cyber president oh god

 

[Latinidiot]

Pettu fools. do they not know that internet is God, the energy that connects and binds us? You do not killswitch the internet

The Internet Killswitches You

 

[Hyper-space]

jesus fucking jove, this is a government back-up plan, meaning that this is probably run by people 10x smarter than the average forum goer.

Dude, this is a plan to apparently "switch off the internet", which, as noted, is pretty much impossible without invading all the countries that have all the other root DNS servers and turning those off, because otherwise all you do is make the internet slower as the remaining root DNS servers have to route around the (now offline) US ones. (not to mention that the root DNS capacity would likely be expanded outside the US if this bill passed precisely to maintain operation in the event of anyone turning off the US root DNS servers)

This is a bit of feelgood legislation which will have no practical benefit, by people who do not understand a computer, let alone the internet.

I think the plan will be to turn off the connection state-side, as to prevent the cyber-attack from breaching the servers that the military uses, but not to turn of the ENTIRE internet, as it is impossible without international agreement or a resolution passed by the U.N.

 

[Nihilism_Is_Bliss]

seems the US government has predicted skynet's arrival as being sooner than the rest of us anticipated...

 

[R3dF41c0n]

This is coming from the same group of people that believe the internet is a "series of tubes". I say let them try, there is entirely too much opposition to that bill. And if they did pass the bill all it would really do is create a market for foreign ISPs to sale satellite internet service to American consumers.