No “Internet Kill Switch” in Lieberman-Collins Bill, But There’s Been One Since 1934 | Technoccult[lang_de]No “Internet Kill Switch” in Lieberman-Collins Bill, But There’s Been One Since 1934 | Technoccult[/lang_de][lang_zh]No “Internet Kill Switch” in Lieberman-Collins Bill, But There’s Been One Since 1934 | Technoccult[/lang_zh]

Jul 12

black budget tech, conspiracy, CULTure, informative text

Last week the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs passed the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, a bill now better known as the “Kill Switch Bill.” The bill will now be considered by the Senate. There’s no “kill switch” provision in the bill, but the President has had that power for decades…

It doesn’t sound like a “kill switch.” The bill would require the President to submit a report describing, among other things, “The actions necessary to preserve the reliable operation and mitigate the consequences of the potential disruption of covered critical infrastructure” (pg. 84 lines 1-4). That sounds like the opposite of a kill switch: this legislation describes a process by which the president is expected to take action to ensure access to “critical infrastructure” -including the Internet.

There’s plenty of room to debate the merits of the federal government dictating the security policies of private companies, the ability of the president to continually extend any provisions beyond 30 days, the value of establishing new cyber security departments within the government, and the vagueness of the language in the bill. But this is nothing nearly so radical as some are making it out to be.

In fact, as Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ web site for the bill points out, the President already has a legislative (but of course, not technological) “kill switch.” The Communications Act of 1934 gave the president power to shut down “wire communications.”

Bookmark: