New US law will give US president emergency control of the Internet

by guestblogger Beardy…

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When I saw this, the FIRST thing I did was check the date… 1-Sept, not 1-Apr…. ok, so it’s not a bad joke… well not that sort anyway…

I *think* I understand the US view on this in this post-911 era (as alluded to by the author), but somehow I have my doubts as to how effective such a plan would be…. Sure, all the tier-1 or root servers for DNS, ICANN and many of the core routers around the globe are directly or indirectly (ie: owned by US govt, US businesses or with parent companies that are US businesses under US govt jurisdiction) controlled assets that the US govt *could* conceivably order around:

(1)…plan that encompasses all aspects of national security, including the participation of the private sector, including critical infrastructure operators and managers;
(2) in the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network…

Given that the US gov has successfully forced nations (UK, Oz, CA, etc…) with ties through WTO to write into Law even the most draconian legislation (eg: the DMCA complete with the anti-circumvention and anti-reverse-engineering clauses), in theory they may even be able to create so-called “cooperative Acts” passed by the same countries thereby extending the reach of this bill if it passes into Law…. IANAL, but history has shown some disturbing anti-rights scenarios played out against common sense, common decency and even Common Law.

The real questions are;

(1) would any telco infrastructure or ISP be exempt?
(2) if any telcos would be outside the scope of the likely flow-on Laws, could the independent backbones and ISPs provide sufficient of the meat of the Internet to keep it going under what would amount to martial law?

“Americans continue plans to switch off the internet” – The Inquirer
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1531879/americans-continue-plans-switch-internet

“Bill would give president emergency control of Internet” — CNet
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

Ref: (excerpt from proposed bill)
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/rockefeller.revised.cybersecurity.draft.082709.pdf

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