Kill the Kill Switch!

While I have long worried about the possibility of the government shutting down the Internet, recent events in Egypt show that what I have been told is technically impossible in this country has become possible — at least in other countries.

The most ominous development to date is an actual proposal to have an Internet “Kill Switch” (in the form of a bill titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset”)  — presumably with Barack Obama’s finger on the button:

The bill — crafted by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Tom Carper, D-Del. — aims to defend the economic infrastructure from a cyberterrorist attack. But it has free-speech advocates and privacy experts howling over the prospect of a government agency quelling the communication of hundreds of millions of people.

“This is all about control, an attempt to control every aspect of our existence,” says Christopher Feudo, a cybersecurity expert who is chairman of SecurityFusion Solutions. “I consider it an attack on our personal right of free speech. Look what recently occurred in Egypt.”

Its critics immediately dubbed it Kill Switch, suffusing it with Big Brother-tinged foreboding. “Unfortunately, it got this label, which is analogous to death panels (during the health care debates),” says Mark Kagan, director of research at Keane Federal Systems, an information-technology contractor for the government.

Good! I’m glad it has that label, for it would kill free speech at a time when it is most needed, shut down small businesses, and ironically, prevent the sort of patriotic countermeasures that cyber-savvy Americans could be depended upon to mount in the event of a real online emergency.

In a very real sense, the Kill Switch is analogous to giving the government power to disarm all citizens in the event of national emergency.

The disruption to communications and economic activity “could be catastrophic,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

What irritated me the most was to read the logic behind the thinking of those who want the government to have this capacity:

Computer-security expert Ira Winkler, a staunch advocate of the legislation, counters, “The fact that people are complaining about this fact is grossly ignorant of the real world. The fact critical infrastructure elements are even accessible to the Internet is the worst part to begin with.”

The piece cites examples of how hackers have hacked into this or that system, including “a company that runs the Nasdaq stock exchange,” a “computerized sewage system” in Australia, along with denial-of-service attacks at Amazon, Yahoo and eBay. OK, I agree that hackers suck, as do virus-spreaders and spammers. But the idea that because some big government bureaucrats or corporate entities are not careful enough to wipe their cyber asses in an efficient manner (which of course they can be depended upon not to be!), all of us who are online should pay the penalty of having our communications shut down — that to me is simply an outrage.

“The Internet thing is all messed up, kids! So we’ll have to shut it down!”

A more perfect example of the National Kindergarten mentality I have rarely seen.

I hope this God-awful bill is fought tooth and nail, and I hope that every Republican who supports or votes for it is held accountable.

For starters, every one of them should be forced to read the 197 page monstrosity (PDF here) in its incomprehensible entirety out loud, while being covered with virtual tar and feathers.    

HT Glenn Reynolds.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

Comments invited, agree or disagree.

(I promise not to tar and feather those in the latter category.)