Internet shutdown power?

[DaVinci 0]

http://cbs4.com/local/internet.freedom.regulation.2.1757643.html

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The days of freedom on the Internet, even during a time of national crisis, may be coming to an under a new U.S. Senate bill. The legislation would grant the president emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet during times of national emergency.

I think it is a bad idea.

[billvon 3,120]

>I think it is a bad idea.

Yeah, that's a tough call. On the one hand it's become the new "public square" and a lot of people communicate through it. On the other hand, if China has launched a cyber attack and has gained control of some part of our military network, being able to stop them would be a good thing.

[Andy9o8 2]

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>I think it is a bad idea.

Yeah, that's a tough call. On the one hand it's become the new "public square" and a lot of people communicate through it. On the other hand, if China has launched a cyber attack and has gained control of some part of our military network, being able to stop them would be a good thing.

Valid both ways.

Thinking this through... on balance ... I'll say more Bad than Good idea. If a TRUE serious crisis (such as real hostilities, coupled with cyber-attacks from China, etc.) occurs, any president won't give a shit about Congressional authorization or not; he'll just do what he has to do by emergency executive order, and that will be that.

On the other hand, if enabling legislation like this is already in place, that will give a president pre-packaged justification to initiate censorship for what is really something less than a true crisis, and then invoke the statute as his justification.

During the War of Southern Treason and Insurrection, Lincoln threw A LOT of newspaper editors in prison. If we forget that lesson of history, shame on us.

[Snowwhite 0]

Censorship, gun bans. GEEZ! This is AMERICA!

skydiveTaylorville.org
freefallbeth@yahoo.com

[quade 4]

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I think it is a bad idea.

There's a shit load more to the internet than DZ.com, Facebook and whatever news source a person happens to like.

My biggest concern wouldn't be shutting down any of the information services like FoxNews, MSNBC or CNN. I'm not even worried about our military. What I'm scared of is somebody manipulating the NYSE and our national banks via some distributed network; a worm on millions of computers across the country. You wouldn't be able to shut it down by simply blocking connections from any one source. If something of that sort was being attempted, we'd have to shut down the entire internet in order to get that under control.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[kelpdiver 2]

The last significant worm that ran over the internet was in 1988.

You can use a botnet to launch a DoS attack, but that's no worse than what you getting 'shutting down' the internet.

Bank security isn't a joke - there are trillions of dollars behind them.

[rhaig 0]

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If something of that sort was being attempted, we'd have to shut down the entire internet in order to get that under control.

and that is impossible.

understanding what the internet is makes it clear why that is impossible. (that is, it's impossible without government control of every piece of networking equipment inside the borders).

you don't hope to kill a worm like that. You plan to protect your servers. Harden them from outside attacks, use multiple layers of protection between them and the outside with intrusion detection systems at every layer. Can you make it impossible to penetrate? To all known attack types, yes. (not all known attacks, but attack types)


Clearly you understand there's more to the internet than a few websites. I don't think you understand network security. At least it's not made evident in that post that you do.

--
Rob

[riddler 0]

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Yeah, that's a tough call.

It's not a hard call at all. It's wrong, and if it's implemented, people will lose faith in the 'net, and find something else to use. Fortunately, it won't happen (at least not with public knowledge). These congressional proposals are like frivolous lawsuits - they mean nothing except a waste of taxpayer dollars. Anyone in congress can propose anything, no matter how stupid, and most of the time, they don't see any daylight except in a sensational media headline.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[Amazon 7]

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Yeah, that's a tough call.

It's not a hard call at all. It's wrong, and if it's implemented, people will lose faith in the 'net, and find something else to use. Fortunately, it won't happen (at least not with public knowledge). These congressional proposals are like frivolous lawsuits - they mean nothing except a waste of taxpayer dollars. Anyone in congress can propose anything, no matter how stupid, and most of the time, they don't see any daylight except in a sensational media headline.

Nah.. this is the same kind of crap from the same people who are bringing us fear of the black helicopters that Obama is deploying, and scooping up patriots by the thousand and having them taken to the FEMA Death Camps.

Look out... the first step is Obama wanting to take away our guns...... now we get thousands of morons running around the woods in "white christian identity" militia groups calling them selves patriots.

Their actions are the ANTITHESIS of what the founding fathers built this country to be.