Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
At the tail end of this conversation, Ricochet Members Scott Reusser and EJHill get into a discussion of recent moves by the Obama administration to get a little leverage -- for national security reasons, says the government; for power politics reasons, says EJHill -- over the internet.
(By the way: I really love the way conversations on here meander away from the original topic and onto a new, interesting, fresh topic. We'll have to work on ways to make it easier to discover and follow the new avenues that open up, but I never want to lose that sense of surprise.)
Okay, back to the point: The Lieberman-Collins-Carper bill, now somewhere in the process of becoming a law, creates an Internet Kill Switch, which, according to Joe Lieberman, would shut down the internet -- all of it -- in order to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people."
This all sounds scary to me, EJHill, and Instapundit, who says, simply:
If they shut down the Internet, I’m getting out my gun. And I think everyone should take it as a signal to do the same — because one way or the other, it means the country’s under attack.
Others -- especially over at the Volokh Conspiracy -- aren't so exercised. Writes Stewart Baker:
There’s an Internet kill switch all right, but it ain’t in Washington. It’s in Beijing and Moscow. And soon in Pyongyang.
The Lieberman-Collins-Carper bill, which might take the kill switch away from our foreign adversaries, will soon have bipartisan support in the House. It gives the President basic authority to respond to an attack on our power, phone, and financial systems.
It’s needed, badly, because the President today has less authority over the vulnerable electronic underbelly of our banks and power grid than he has over deepwater oil drilling. Of course the “kill switch” crowd don’t see the need for any such authority. After all, why would we expect private companies ever to screw up in a way that would hurt the rest of us?
Come to think about it, BP could have saved itself $20 billion if it had just persuaded Congress last year that trying to regulate deep sea drilling would create a crazy Big Government “Oil Supply Kill Switch.”
Nobody wants an Oil Supply Kill Switch.
Until, oops, they really, really do.
I can't help but ask: can you imagine the six-act drama that would have ensued if, say, Dick Cheney had asked for this power? And it's odd, isn't it, that since January 20th, 2009 at 12:01PM, suddenly the federal government is our wonderful friend! Fit to switch on and off the internet; fit to conduct domestic spying operations, fit, even, to run the news business.
I'm not -- yet -- as rattled as Instapundit Glen Reynolds, but he's an awfully smart guy. Maybe I should be.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
Can we add an amendment for a "kill switch" in order to stop the presses at the New York Times before they publish more information that would damage Our national security? Maybe some future Washington Post?
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
Portion cross posted from original thread: ...I need to say this as a disclaimer: I believe Oswald acted alone, Armstrong walked on the moon, Al Qeada was behind 9/11 and Obama is a US citizen.
But I don't believe in one set of clueless politicians giving another set of clueless politicians the ability to control technology that they do not understand and to seize and direct private operations without due process.
To expand this a bit and spread a little bipartisan joy, do a little reading on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement which has been in negotiations far back into the Bush years. This thing was so secret that it made the technocrats in Brussels nervous and that ain't easy to do. How does warrantless search and seizure of anything that could hold a computer file sound to you?
Jun '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
Just think about Facebook alone, with half a billion users worldwide. In many countries, the power to shut off Facebook might be the difference between the political opposition getting a popular foothold through networking, or without Facebook, not getting enough public exposure (at a critical time) to succeed.
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
And to think, Rob, much of this stuff is being done in your name! Have to stop those bootleg copies of George and Leo.
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
I'm not yet as rattled as some, either, not entirely. But I'm glad we've got Glen Reynolds, Glen Beck, and, yes, EJHill raising holy hell and pushing back.
Also, if this ability is indeed necessary for Uncle Sam to keep us protected from Chinese or Russian or terrorist threats, then it's all the more reason why character needs to be the foremost consideration when choosing our leaders.
Jul '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
Speaking as a technogeek, I don't want a politician in control of my Internet. In uncounted teensy weensy ways I helped build it over the decades since I started working in a university computer lab as an undergraduate.
Mr. President and Congress: hands off!
Security and robustness of computers and network components are active research topics. Creating a single point of intentional failure — a "kill switch" — is nuts (a label often applied to users by long-suffering technical support and development staff).
Better to enhance the Internet's fissility, so it splits into parts that still function independently until greater connectivity can be restored.
As an illustration, think of a huge army with a single high command that can order unconditional and complete surrender.
In contrast, envision that army breaking into highly mobile, self-contained strike units that continue operating beyond the reach of command within general operational orders towards a pre-stated goal. (I'm thinking of John Boyd and OODA loops, here.)
That kind of solution is technically more elegant and robust, but it denies power to ruling elites — so they don't like it.
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
First of all, this is an incredibly stupid idea. Every business of any size in the United States relies on the internet so deeply that "killing the internet" will kill the businesses. Much of the telephone system has been converted to the internet, particularly in businesses.
Second of all, it will **never** get through Congress, because business will not allow it, for the reasons detailed above.
Third, it is technically very difficult to implement a single point of control over any substantial piece of the internet. All that being said, I didn't read the article to mean a broad "kill the internet" switch, but rather the ability to cutoff a site or country from the American section of the internet. This is not unreasonable, although it is technically technically just as difficult due to the "self-healing" nature of the internet. If the direct route from me to (say) telmex.com is cutoff, the internet knows how to reroute the packets, perhaps through Brazil, to reach the destination.
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
I'm not a supporter of the Internet kill switch, but the security threat is real. In April, Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event, was asked which national security threat kept him awake at night. After mentioning the usual suspects for context -- nuclear weapons proliferation and terrorist attacks -- he devoted his answer to the risk of a disabling cyber attack against the US economy. Apparently, the Russians are practicing for this sort of thing, as with the 2007 denial-of-service attack against Estonia using a zombie botnet of 1 million PCs based in Latin America.
So some sort of defense capability is clearly required. But let's kill the kill switch.
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
Someone is going to have to explain the technical side to me, and that's for another time and place (you'll need much more than 200 words to get the ins and outs of shutting down the web through my thick skull). For those of you who do understand, though, is this a case of overheated rhetoric - "kill switch" - swamping a legitimate security debate? The Eisenhower interstate highway system was a great idea and no one on this board could imagine life without it. But if the interstates were constantly raided by bandits, thieves, and highwaymen, the whole thing would be useless. (This is not some paranoid, far-out ranting - my family comes from a remote part of Missouri that was basically inaccessible well into the country's industrial development for that very reason.) We all like the stuff the roads carry, and we all like the stuff that comes to us over the web. If the roads and web aren't secure, though, you better not get too used to it.
Maybe this is really a question about the quality of our leaders and the trust we're willing to extend to them.
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
The glory of the US section of the internet is that it is not under total government control. It is composed of some government computers, universities and large ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, etc.
The government can shut off their part, come to "reasonable" understanding with schools because they receive tax dollars, but they have no authority over the private sector.
So let's say Lieberman/Collins passes. China launches a cyber attack. How long, from noticing the attack to authorization to calls made to heads of ISPs to calls made to someone who actually has the key to the room that houses the servers?
By the time everything gets down the chain of command we're probably toast anyway. (And if I'm wrong folks, please say so! It has been known to happen!)
What bothers me is how comfortable the political class is with the idea of doing it. Handing the authority to the government comes first and then figuring out how it would actually work comes second. Which, come to think of it, is exactly their approach to ObamaCare and Wall Street.
Jul '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
"China launches an attack…"
Any attack worth the label would be widely noticed by net & sys admins pronto. Any top-down response authorization would arrive long after the netties & syssies were elbow deep in packets & streams fixing the problem & tracking the source. It would rightly be seen as an irrelevant and annoying distraction.
Just ask the BP engineers working to cap that dang well their opinion of President Obama's "kick ass" comment.
The biggest problem with handing another big club to ruling elites is that they'll use it as a lever to get something else.
Never strengthen the coercive capabilities of government over its own people.
PS: I'd say "One of the glories of the US section of the Internet is that it is not under total government control." There are a lot of way cool things about the Internet — and the Internet should be rabidly & viciously defended against government takeover.
Don't say no to the kill switch: say HELL no.
May '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
I agree with cehwiedel and tomjedrz. An ability to cut off access from a particular nation or region makes good security sense, particularly in light of the greatly disruptive probes to our government and financial systems last year. But "One Switch to rule them all" does not improve our security and gives the government power analagous to cutting off all phone services in a stroke.
As cehwiedel has said, we're better served by segmenting the internet so that everything cannot be seized, corrupted or destroyed in a single attack. Furthermore, we should question if some level of private ownership or private administration is preferable to a government monopoly. Private ownership of firearms certainly improves our nation's ability to defend against both invasion and domestic tyranny. Would private maintenance of communication resources not do the same?
I'd love to hear Victor's thoughts on this.
Feb '10
Re: Shut Down the Internet? Where's My Gun?
I'm just speculating, but what could be the real motivation for the Internet Kill Switch?
What if it's to give the government another tool to shut down a second American Revolution if things get so bad that it comes to that?