Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US

http://www.zdnet.com.au/internet-kill-switch-proposed-for-us-339303838.htm

by petercooper • 16 years ago

47 64 16 years ago

zdnet.com.au

stretchwithme6• 16 years ago

If we are being attacked electronically, it makes sense to be able to defend ourselves.

thefool• 16 years ago

By attacking ourselves even more.

hartror• 16 years ago

Hmmm things would have to pretty dire to need to do this, can you imagine the financial repercussions for thousands upon thousands of business if they were irrecoverably disconnected from their servers & clients for a unknown period?

The fallout would be huge!

pyre3• 16 years ago

An Internet 'kill switch' is akin to a 'slash and burn' tactic. e.g. 'They' are using our road system to attack us, so we mine our road system. In the end, nobody wins. Even if we defeat 'them' we have to pick up the pieces that we left ourselves.

Vivtek4• 16 years ago

Actually, this is an excellent analogy. Nobody would believe that mining the Interstate highway system in case enemies used it to invade would be a good idea. But put the word "computer" next to anything else and most people's brains just switch off.

stretchwithme6• 16 years ago

I don't think their talking about destroying the Internet. Come on.

mschaecher5• 16 years ago

Re-posting my comment from above:

Agreed, not to mention that the real bread and butter of our nations military and intelligence networks are completely separate from what we know as the internet. There is a huge difference between taking, say, whitehouse.gov or army.mil down verse our real command and control networks--which are probably next to impossible to take down considering there are layers upon layers of backup communication systems.

The idea of a "cyber-attack" being used as a first salvo in an act of war against the United States by any nation-state is pretty ludicrous, as it would minimally (if at all) affect our ability to destroy whoever was dumb enough to try it.

MaysonL• 16 years ago

What happens when somebody hacks the kill switch?

aw3c2• 16 years ago

What could possibly go wrong?

Perceval• 16 years ago

Any kill switch capability that is built in will simply become another vector for attack—in this case an attack that overrides the core competency of the Internet which is massive redundancy in case any one section fails.

It is almost a certainty that such a capability will be exploited.

stretchwithme6• 16 years ago

how about a guy at the border unplugging the fiber optic cable? I assume it can already be disconnected somewhere physically; all this does is authorize the government to do it.

lisper2• 16 years ago

You forgot about satellites.

blhack• 16 years ago

There would be quite a few cables to unplug:

http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeo...

jackowayed• 16 years ago

Related: A few months ago, Bush's advisor on cybersecurity was on Fresh Air, an NPR interview show, talking about cyberattacks: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1260970...

barmstrong• 16 years ago

What hypothetical attack would this prevent?

Dirt_McGirt• 16 years ago

Miley Cyrus upskirt pictures.

Vivtek4• 16 years ago

Domestic insurrection.

ars• 16 years ago

So you are saying you want to prevent me from talking to someone over a private communication channel I paid for?

Unless it's a war, good luck with getting that past a court review.

loewenskind2• 16 years ago

Sadly, since the US government has tricked its people into fighting a concept it is always war.

haily• 16 years ago

Oh the irony! We want our Internet to be robust, robust, robust! This bill just did half the work for some evil hacker.

jauer2• 16 years ago

Reposting a commend I made on this topic when it came up sourced from Infowars...

Unintended consequences aside, this is less about a kill switch or government censorship and more about forcing a industry that has not taken security seriously to get their act together.

Many providers don't actively police their customers for botnet activity or respond to security incidents that don't affect their network infrastructure or back office systems.

This appears to establish a regulatory framework where network security officially becomes more than a law enforcement issue and lets DHS order operators to secure their networks and help out if they are unable to do so.

Zak2• 16 years ago

Maybe it is, but

a. That's not the government's job.

b. Once a new power is in place, it will be used, and not just for whatever the original intent was. We separate policy from mechanism in software for a reason. It works in law too.

jauer2• 16 years ago

Amen on B.

As for A, it became the government's job when provider apathy with regard to infected clients and hosts with botnet controllers etc permitted a situation to arise where the means of a (supposed) attack for a foreign power is actually based within the US. At that point it stopped being a private security issue and became a national security issue.

I don't like it, but the problem it addresses does exist.

How would you separate policy from mechanism in this case?

fjabre• 16 years ago

Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure

Is it any surprise that he's the primary sponsor? You can always count on Joe to be on the wrong side of history.

An Internet kill switch is one of the worst and most authoritarian ideas I've ever heard coming out of the US government. Here's to hoping Schmidt uses his veto power on this one.

philwelch4• 16 years ago

Let's imagine there's really a national security risk that actually requires the President to order the internet turned off. I don't know what it would be, but let's say it's dire. In that case, the president (for all practical purposes) has the power to send the national guard into all the relevant physical locations and cut the power to the internet backbones. It's illegal and wrong, in the same sense that Abraham Lincoln's multiple violations of the Constitution were illegal and wrong. Which is to say, it's one of those edge cases that the law, by design has to leave out, a situation where you have to violate the Constitution in order to save it, but there is no way in hell you're going to give any freedom within the law itself to do anything of the kind. This is a very difficult idea for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.

gojomo• 16 years ago

Indeed. And it's doubtful he'd have to use troops and cut power lines; if it really was a observable national emergency, his request would be enough. People grant amazing deference to putative leaders in uncertain/dangerous times, and the people in private organizations who run various systems aren't antigovernment ideologues, idiots, or malicious foreign agents. It's only requests that are wildly unreasonable, open-ended, or based-on-secret-evidence that they'd resist. So there's no need to formalize this sort of Presidential power.

lionhearted4• 16 years ago

I was just talking about Lincoln with a friend. If you're bored sometime, look at one of Lincoln's speeches and replace "union" with "empire" - it still works! "Our most sacred American empire must not be divided... these rebels may not be allowed to break the spirit of the empire..."

And for the record, I like Lincoln - but he's easily, easily the most imperial-minded president in U.S. history. It's a shame we don't call it for what it is - the Confederate secession was by-the-books legal, the south became a separate sovereign country, and the north went and conquered them. And yet, I think it was the right call.

Every American should read Lincoln's first inauguration address. Basically everything school teaches about Lincoln is wrong. Here's his own words:

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html

"There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?"

Here's Lincoln's part about the union being preserved, his argument is that the American union is older than the Constitution and comes before it (a crazy argument never used before or since):

"Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity." --

And here's my swapping out of "empire" for "Union" -

"But if destruction of the Empire by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Empire is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity." - It still works.

And mind you, I like Lincoln. He made the right call. But saying the Civil War was about slavery is like saying World War II was about coal. I mean, it kind of sort of was in a very tortured way, but that's a very incomplete understanding. Lincoln was very pro-slavery in his first inauguration address, and threated the South with war to preserve the empire if they tried to leave. They thought he was bluffing. He wasn't. Every American should read that first inauguration address, it's Lincoln's own words. Your view of the American Civil War will never be the same afterwards.

philwelch4• 16 years ago

I'd say the Civil War was about slavery the same way WWII was about fascism--the casus belli wasn't that one side held slaves or that one side was fascist, but having fascists control a couple of central European countries leads to war the same way having a pseudo-aristocratic slave-owning social structure in the same country as a free-labor capitalist society leads to inevitable divisions and attempted secession.

The South was a deeply evil society even then--plantation owners were hereditary lords in all but name, except their slaves were mere chattel rather than serfs, and everyone in the middle were exactly that.

stcredzero• 16 years ago

If you're bored sometime, look at one of Lincoln's speeches and replace "union" with "empire" - it still works!

I agree with your outlook on what Lincoln did.

However the implied "logic" in this sentence I disagree with. Of course it still works if you substitute one noun for another! That's how parts of speech work! This is especially true if you use a substitute noun which has semantics close to the original. (Empire and Union both indicate a national/supra-national polity.) In other words, this isn't any more significant than the observation that you could take many texts containing "Terrier" and substitute the word with "Pekinese."

lakeeffect• 16 years ago

Killing the internet would seriously disrupt the flow of information, information that is integral to remedy any attack and the psychological welfare of those affected.

A Weather Service Style Notification Service would be much more beneficial, that is unless that is skynet is controlling the robots.

yason• 16 years ago

In other news: "Terrorists seed internet with dangerous files, government places emergency connectivity restrictions all over the U.S."

sdh• 16 years ago

what useful purpose would cutting off mass communications serve a democratic government?

loewenskind2• 16 years ago

A democratic one... not much. :)

adamtmca• 16 years ago

I find myself very conflicted about this. I think the wording of "kill switch" is an extremely poor choice so I will try to illustrate what I think the genuine national security reasoning is, using China as the hypothetical aggressor. The Chinese government controls all of the hubs which connect the internet in China to the rest of the world, the "great firewall" as some have called it. The chinese use this for censorship, but it also puts them in an advantageous situation during a conflict. Imagine the impact widespread denial of service attacks on financial and governmental institutions would have on a nations ability to wage war (read estonia). China could launch such attacks while effectively defending itself against similar attacks from foreigners. The chinese subset of the internet would continue to function while blocked off from the rest of the world.

With that in mind it seems like the "kill switch" should kill or limit connections to outside the United States. That said, the power this would give the domestic leadership may pose a greater threat to liberty than a foreign aggressor. I think I agree with philwelch.. I would rather see the plans to do this confidentially drawn up by the CIA than written into law.

Devilboy• 16 years ago

Any kind of attack can already be filtered by the top tier ISPs around the country, and if it's really serious they'll unplug anything Obama asks them to. I just don't see how any kind of mass internet attacks can be a real threat to the USA.

We've had bad things happen on the internet so many times that we're pretty much immune to them now.

mschaecher5• 16 years ago

Agreed, not to mention that the real bread and butter of our nations military and intelligence networks are completely separate from what we know as the internet.

There is a huge difference between taking, say, whitehouse.gov or army.mil down verse our real command and control networks--which are probably next to impossible to take down considering there are layers upon layers of backup communication systems.

steveklabnik• 16 years ago

So, we save our computers from a DDOS by... shutting it off? I don't really see how this makes any sense.

Vivtek4• 16 years ago

That's why you're not the Senator from Connecticut.

I hate that man.

Jach• 16 years ago

So in the event that the main Internet goes down, for whatever reason, who wants to help buy up a bunch of wireless routers (and other applicable items) to start forming a giant mesh network? Neighborhood by neighborhood... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Building_...

borism• 16 years ago

JulianMorrison• 16 years ago

They have something similar in Iran - for all the wrong reasons. Although even there, they don't dare sever themselves from the 21st century economy entirely, and that has left enough gaps for circumvention software.

Turning the internet off is something that can't be used for good. It's a tool of repression and anyone who supports it sees themselves as likely to benefit by repression.

joubert• 16 years ago

It is quite ironic that ARPANET was designed for survivability.

jawn2• 16 years ago

I tried to make this same argument in another thread and was down voted for it, so here goes...

Any act of electronic warfare has an equivalent physical response. Regulation such as this is nothing more than power grabs by government and the defense industry.

pyre3• 16 years ago

I think that it's hard to make the case for open warfare when you can't prove that it was the (for example) the Chinese government that launched the attack. Or are you suggesting a covert retaliatory attack?

jawn2• 16 years ago

Open war, covert actions, or economic sanctions would work fine on a state v state level.

In the case of non state actors, current policing methods should be sufficient. In the cases where its not (and there is sufficient cause) covert policing actions should not be ruled out.

ax0n• 16 years ago

Awesome. Let's give The Prez the ability to leverage a massive-scale worldwide denial of service attack at his every whim before the Evil Haxors can pound their script kiddie tools through the firewall. Way to go.

Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US

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