The Internet is comprised of several “trunks” that cascade down to branches and, by extension, leaves. These trunks are “Internet backbones” that provide large amounts of the access to the Internet. The leaves are the major corporations and general ideas on the Internet. Yahoo, MSN, pornography, art, literature, and Google are all examples of these “branches”, with sites such as whitehouse.com, deviantart.com, Google Mail, Yahoo Search, MSN Bing, et cetera, examples of such ‘leaves’. The problem is that these “critical infrastructure information system[s] [and] network[s]” are the trunks; examples of which are AT&T, Sprint, Level(3), and many others. Any control of even just these three backbones would likely render most of America without access to the Internet. Doing so would, in fact (and contrary to your comment), shut down Pogo, Yahoo, and MyCokeRewards most likely.

I would oppose this bill if Ronald Reagan were President, much less Mr. Obama. The last time I looked, the control of information is what leads to dictatorships. This is just a bad idea on so many fronts.

We are the United States of America. Not Iran. These are the sorts of tactics used in totalitarian and dictatorial nations. The first rule of a coup is to seize and control all communications. When the “government” in Iran didn’t want their population communicating they shut down the internet. Is this what our current administration and lap dogs want for us, the People? They can’t handle the truth and all they seem to want is power. We need to do everything in our collective power to make sure that anyone who supports this nonsense is removed from office for ever.

Talk to the citizens of China whose government controls what they can and can’t see on the internet. This won’t be a problem for the true computer geeks but for the everyday folks that don’t know how to get around firewalls, etc. (or their ISP has simply been shut down) it will be a problem.

I would love to vote out those that are sponsoring the bills, however they are not in my state. (But what all the representatives and senators do affect ALL of us.) How do we communicate with the voters that have the power to vote these guys out? What can be done about the blatant unconstitutional actions of both the executive and legislative branches? You sure can’t depend on the judicial branch since much of what they do is unconstitutional as well.

Remember that this administration will “not let a ‘crisis’ go to waste”. This is just another way the government is trying to seize complete control of our lives and ensure that they control all speech so that no dissent is possible.

THis is playbook totalitarianism

The solution is vote the people OUT who sponsor these bills. Look at the names on this bill and you can easily see they’ve been part of every scam the gov’t. has been trying to pull. These people have gone beyond arrogant. They think they’re GOD!

Correction….I meant drive my car. I’m so angry my fingers are moving faster than my eyes!!

the internet is truly the last place we have freedom of speech… once we start censoring and regulating there is no stop… internet is the greatest tool devised by the human mind to bring everyone together… let the users handle it…

I wouldn’t trust these clowns to drive my cat let alone trust them with CyberSecurity!!

Also, get rid of Olympia Snowe of Maine. What is up with this woman? What is up with Maine? Check out her voting record people….stimulus, Cap and Trade…what the heck?

Wow. Vote this guy out of office people. I will throw every bit of financial support to his opponent. The Rockefellers are serious Progressives, get him out!!!

This Bill is insane. America is great because we developed the internet into a Free Communications Channel for the Citizens of this country. Where does it state the government can take control of the internet at it’s free will? www.1984now.org dissected this bill, and explains it’s technical issues.

Anybody else smell fascism?

This is another attempt at the same thing that was tried a couple years ago with the “Net Neutrality” bill. That one failed, or at least lost some steam, so they made a new one.

Over reaching is an understatement. Potential loss of freedoms due to federal regulation is the exact wrong thing.

I have already written both my senators and congressman expressing my opinion. They probably won’t listen to what I have to say but at least it is a start.

This bill is loosely held together with a greater intent to lock down free speech. If you are worried about the power grids, banking and such then lock down your Intranet…not our INTERNET. Career Politicians have sold us out for too long. they don’t want Term Limits…Voter Imposed Term Limits are Coming.

As this bill is written it says ‘the president will develop a plan within 180 days of passage’. Why can’t a plan of what would be impacted, be developed before we granted the president the rights to do what was in the plan? I do not oppose protecting the federal government’s infrastructure and they should be doing that already, but to grant broad sweeping power to the president or a possible ‘czar’ without defining “exactly” what that power is, is at best arrogant.

Find a 10th Amendment movement in your state and join. If there’s not one, start one. The 10th is the last amendment in the BoR and says:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

There are numerous movement spreading quickly across the country. Here is ours in MO: http://www.meetup.com/Missouri-Sovereignty-Project/.

You can also go to TAC and keep track of the movement:
http://pledge.tenthamendmentcenter.com/.

The 10th is already institutionalized in the Constitution and we intend on institutionalizing its “effects” into the fabric of as many states as possible. When we get 20-25 states who go far beyond these “resolutions” being passed, we can literally marginalize the federal govt.

But believe me, we know this is a decade-long job. But we will never give up.

Thomas Grady, Founder
Missouri Sovereignty Project

"" Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;" is NOT the whole internet."

Just to clairify critical systems would be reffering to the core routers on the internet owned by AT&T, Nortel, Qwest etc.

Technically you could shut down these routers and kill the internet, one thig no one has mentioned is that the military already has this ability in case of an attack on the U.S. after all the internet was originally built by the military. Although the executive branch could access the core routers and block private IP addresses!!

Write your senators and congressmen/congresswoman to tell them if they vote for this you will vote them out!!

I agree. This bill reaches too far.

I like the aspects that promote “Cybersecurity Standards”, however giving the government CONTROL… NO.

I’m not feeling all Chicken Little like some people about this bill, but I think it’s too vague on some crucial areas, like who gets to decide what “emergency” means? Where are the checks and balances?

How about a compromise to create a cybersecurity warning system. The govt can serve the people by notifying IT managers of a possible cybersecurity threat, and then the IT managers can evaluate it for themselves and take responsible action. The govt would provide notification only.

I do take the potential threat of cyberterrorism seriously, but the US, unlike many countries, has a special tradition of relying on the private sector for quick action. Let’s have a cybersecurity defense plan that leverages that strength.

Fascism
They are afraid of people waking up.

You are partially correct about legislation originating in the House, but only legislation pertaining to spending must originate there. The Senate is free to introduce legislation that is not related to spending.

" Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;" is NOT the whole internet.

Do you really think that the President is going to invoke “National Security” as an excuse to shut down Pogo?? or Yahoo?? Or MyCokeRewards??

Why don’t we all try actually thinking for a few minutes??

f we have finally decided, or are close to deciding, what level of “attack” through networks constitutes a declaration of war (and if we haven’t, we damn well should be doing THAT too), then the POTUS as Commander In Chief needs to be able to do the kind of crap you do in an attack on your country. And putting into law is a LOT better than letting whomever is the President at the time make up his powers in that situation from the ether like the Bush Administration did. This particular bill may or may not be the correct answer.

Something like this, however, is going to and should be put in place.
I’m all for using the political process to make it the best possible bill, but acting like the government shouldn’t ever be able to do this kind of thing is fantasy.

The bits of the Internet that are on sovereign US territory are most certainly vital national infrastructure by now, and the law needs to be updated. It’s long past time that the US government, and the US population woke up to the threat vectors presented by the Internet, and deal with the hard questions surrounding what to do when the “cyber war” eventually happens, whether it’s concerted non-state entities mounting an attack against Internet connected infrastructure or government/military Internet areas, or state entities.

BTW, while it’s quite a lot of things, being disconnected from the Internet is NOT a breach of my privacy. I hadn’t heard that Echelon was dismantled, so I’m pretty sure that anything I send out unencrypted is being parsed (and anything encrypted stored for future reference) even without this particular emergency order. My stuff on my computer is still on my computer.

And I know I’m going to get flamed for this, but frankly it’s about time that this kind of thing was talked about and put into law.

(follows previous post)

This meaning that basically any government related network such as national power grids, water plants. (Things that don’t need to be accessible from the internet to begin with) will be under the control of the president during a time of an emergency.

This doesn’t affect the (Internet) as a whole. The internet is not a central computer that sits in a government warehouse with an On/Off button. The internet is a protocol, not an object. Basically it is the collection of various servers and networking devices from all over the world.

You simple can’t just “Turn it off” which is what many people are fearing.

So in short, if we the united states was under some kind of Cyber attack, the President could not turn off (Slashdot.org, digg.com, weather.com) but they could control the networks of those that are government related.

I wish there was a way I could hide all the posts from people who haven’t read the bill. The ignorance being posted is mind boggling. It actually hurts my eyes to accidentally read what many of you are posting.

1. The original legislation was proposed back in April and hasn’t gone anywhere. At this point I think it’s just lacking supporters.
From the actual Bill:

(2) may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;

(5) shall direct the periodic mapping of Federal Government and United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks, and shall develop metrics to measure the effectiveness of the mapping process;

(6) may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security"….

People, read the bill.