No, Obama Isn’t Taking Over The Internets
Cybersecurity bill threat appears drastically overstated…
Declan McCullagh has for years had a nasty habit of actually reading the laws Congress passes into law, which is frequently more than can be said of Congress itself. Last week, McCullagh wrote a piece for CNET exploring a new bill aimed at shoring up the nation’s cybersecurity defenses. According to McCullagh, the bill would allow Uncle Sam to “seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.” McCullagh, who has a Libertarian bent, wound up terrifying the entire Internets.
While that sounds scary, there’s just one problem. According to Wired’s Nicholas Thompson, it isn’t true. While the original bill had some now-removed scary language, the new version simply acts to do things like provide scholarships for promising security researchers — and doesn’t give the President any power he didn’t already have. The passage in question that started it all:
In the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network — [the president] may declare a cybersecurity emergency; and may, if the President finds it necessary for the national defense and security, and in coordination with relevant industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network.
The wording is incredibly vague, insisting the President “may” in “coordination with the relevant industry sectors” simply “direct the national response” to the threat. That’s a far cry from saying he’s installing a secret Internet kill switch. There’s plenty of very real Obama technology policy positions to criticize (like stocking the DOJ with RIAA lawyers and his positions on telco wiretap immunity and surveillance) without making any up.
(By Karl Bode | DSLReports.com)
- Naiomi Solomon
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