Say no to a government ‘kill switch’ for the Internet

I spend exactly zero time worrying that black helicopters will swoop down and impose a new world order. I don’t believe that the CIA killed JFK, and I don’t think the Air Force is hiding a UFO in the desert — which is to say, I generally don’t take conspiracy theories seriously.

But a proposed law that would give the government a so-killed kill switch to essentially turn off the public Internet is very, very worrisome, and it raises the specter of some future administration using that power to crack down on its opponents. Imagine if the Iranian government could have shut down the Internet a year ago — it tried but failed — when millions were protesting the rigged election and brutal suppression of dissidents.

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Sponsored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the 196-page Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA) would require that private companies — such as “broadband providers, search engines, and software firms — immediately comply with any emergency measure or action” put in place by the Department of Homeland Security, or else face fines.

Am I missing something here? Is this less toxic that it sounds? Apparently not. It appears that Lieberman, not necessarily the smartest man in the Senate, does have an idea of how much power the bill would give to Washington. “Right now China, its government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war, and we need to have that here, too,” said Lieberman during an appearance on CNN last Sunday.

Now there’s something to aspire to: the Chinese model of Internet security and free speech.

A bad idea that keeps coming back

This sort of bad idea has been floating around Congress for a while. A year ago, a couple of senators proposed the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which would have given the government the power to shut the Web in an emergency and give it access to “all relevant data concerning [critical infrastructure] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.”

In effect it would have allowed, or maybe mandated, that back doors be built into private networks in case the government needed access in a hurry.

That bill was sidetracked during the health care debate, but the senators who sponsored it, Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), support this version. Snowe has even signed on as a co-sponsor, saying at a press conference, “We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realizes the importance of protecting our cyber resources.”

A price too high to pay Yes, cyber attacks on this country’s infrastructure are a serious potential threat, and it’s reasonable to give the government the power to protect us. Certainly the apparent Russia-based cyber attacks on Georgia and Estonia show that cyber war, including massive DoS attacks, is more than science fiction.

Lieberman’s bill, though, would create another bureaucracy within the already cumbersome bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security. It would be called the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC).

Bureaucracies have a bad track record when it comes to protecting individual rights. Just think how many innocent Americans have been denied the right to get on an airplane because they were mistakenly put on a no-fly list by Homeland Security. Once a bureaucracy labels someone a bad actor, getting the nameless, faceless functionaries to correct an error can be nearly impossible.

The bill has a provision that would grant broadband providers immunity from civil lawsuits if they cut service to a customer on the orders of the NCCC. At first glance that may seem reasonable, but the grant of immunity will make it that much harder for innocent people to gain redress if the bureaucracy makes a mistake.

As I said, I’m not a believer in conspiracies, and as much as I dislike this bill, I don’t think that Lieberman and his co-sponsors are gearing up for some sort of dictatorship. But, there’s no telling what the political landscape will look like in the future. In an age where the Internet has become one of the most important means of political expression, giving the government the power to shut it down is giving it the power to stifle free speech and dissent.

I welcome your comments, tips, and suggestions. Post them here so that all our readers can share them, or reach me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net.

This article, “Say no to a government ‘kill switch’ for the Internet,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com.