Teenage Customer: “I’m looking for a book I need for school. I think it’s a year or something like that.”
Me: “1984?”
Teenage Customer:”Yeah, that’s it! So, what’s it about? Is it, like, about the 80′s or something.”
Me: “Yep, talks about Member’s only jackets, hair bands, all that stuff.”
Teenage Customer:”Cool, I can handle that.”
Some people we shouldn’t even try to educate.
The federal government is working on passing a bill that would allow our Dear Reader to assume emergency control of the Internet.
Let’s pause and take that in. He will be able to take over the one truly open forum of communication that exists where ideas can be spread quickly and in a non-linear fashion.
The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.
So first, he can declare an emergency for computers that don’t even belong to him, while also designating that those systems (which still aren’t his) have to be managed by professionals that the government has endorsed. I don’t see any problem with that, do you? No possibility at all that those licenses would be given out at political payback and that the holders of those licenses would be a lot like the political officers that the Russians had.
“Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?”
The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government’s role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is “not as prepared” as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.
Why should the government be involved in ANY form of security that is outside of the government itself? This attitude that government should be there as a “working partner” and to help us along is crap to begin with. Will they be coming around to our houses and advising us on our door locks and smoke detectors and then make us hire a government approved adviser to make sure we get the right one and have them put in the right way?
“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”
Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.
Isn’t that nice. If the government decides, for whatever reason, that your company is a critical company, then the government will essentially take it over and make all of your hiring and firing decisions for you as well as take over your computers. Tell me how many businesses do you think will keep their doors open if they know that at any time the government can step in an say “We’re in charge now, you’re too important to allow to run around free.”
And what happens when that company is something like, oh – I don’t know, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Cisco? Do you really think that once the government has it’s hands on them that they won’t be digging into your computers right after that? Or maybe just shutting down parts of the Internet that they don’t want you to see?
Gee, what country does that already…. right on the tip of my tongue…. oh yea, CHINA!
Here is the official response that Declan McCullagh received about this when he asked.
The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shutdown or takeover of the Internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.
“The President of the United States has always had the constitutional authority…”
Hmmm…. looking…..
