Bill Gives Feds "Emergency" Powers To Secure Civilian Nets 505
ziani writes "Joe Lieberman wants to give the federal government the power to take over civilian networks' security if there's an 'imminent cyber threat.' From the article: 'Lieberman and Collins' solution is one of the more far-reaching proposals. In the Senators' draft bill, "the President may issue a declaration of an imminent cyber threat to covered critical infrastructure." Once such a declaration is made, the director of a DHS National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications is supposed to "develop and coordinate emergency measures or actions necessary to preserve the reliable operation, and mitigate or remediate the consequences of the potential disruption, of covered critical infrastructure."'"
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:5, Informative)
Obama can have my root passwords only from my cold, dead, brain.
Read the freakin' summary, at the very least. It's Lieberman the Toad that wants to do this, not Obama. (Although, given the chance, Obama likely would...but still, this is about Lieberman.)
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:2, Informative)
Did you RTFA? It says that the bill covers "critical infrastructure." Not all private networks will fall under this category. The fine article says:
In fact, the article even points out that the recent Aurora attack against Google, Adobe, etc. wouldn't count. A staffer was quoted in the article as saying, “It’d have to be Aurora 2, plus the intel that country X is going to take us down using that vulnerability.”
This all sounds rather vague, however, and vaguely-worded open-ended legislation that stomps on people's Constitutional rights has a history of being shot down by the Supreme Court.
polygamy degrades society (Score:4, Informative)
a bunch of rich men (its about money, not love) taking up a bunch of women represents an equal sized population of poorer men who are now without a mate, through no fault of their own
so now you have a bunch of angry rootless loveless men in your society without any hopes for their future and nothing to lose. use your boundless imagination as to the effects of that
This is not about the power to "turn off the net" (Score:5, Informative)
From reading TFA, this is about the government needing the power to take over critical infrastructure in the advent of a threat to Americas national security. So for example this allows them to take over control of (and security of) electronic control networks running things like the electricity grid if the spooks get wind of an immanent cyber attack.
Just like the feds used their power to shut down US airspace after 9/11, the feds need the power to take over, disconnect, shut down, secure or control computer systems and networks controlling critical infrastructure in the advent of a "Cyber 9/11" attack (a threat that is not just the stuff of movies like Die Hard 4.0)
Per the proposal, "Critical Infrastructure" does NOT mean Google or Facebook or Slashdot or whatever, it means things like power grids, gas plants, water systems, hospitals, emergency services, oil refineries etc.
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:1, Informative)
and the Federal Income Tax was only a "temporary measure" to pay for the civil war. The government had no intention of it becoming the cornerstone for how they controlled and tracked the purchases and income of every citizen. It would certainly NEVER EVER be used to jail a citizen who they couldn't convict of any actual crime (Al Capone, and hundreds, if not thousands since).
Re:i'm sick of the fallacy of the slippery slope (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that propping up those industries likely prevented a 1930s style collapse? And that the safeguards which were removed (and safeguards which were not put into place) occurred during the 14 years that the Republicans controlled both houses of congress? And that it was President Bush who bought out the banking industry?
The problem with this particular law is that we don't need it. The president has this power in the event of an immanent attack or war anyway. IMHO, this is posturing - and counterproductive.
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:3, Informative)
Wow. So "your" failure to secure your network is killing people (given the scenario above), and you would still refuse to hand over the password to people trying to stop the attack and therefore save lives??
If your stance is that extreme even in the face of an example that extreme, then you may have just changed my mind on this legislation. Clearly we need it. I would have thought anyone out there, when faced with something beyond their capability, would ask for help if it was really important. Guess not.
I would also suspect you'd end up in jail for criminal negligence / negligent homicide / etc.
And also, IANAL, but I think the statement about essential services is not correct. I believe there are legal avenues for essential services to be forced to be provided. (remember the Air Traffic Controller strike, Reagan ordered them back to work, and they had to comply)
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:3, Informative)
Lets add to that scenario that it is the middle of winter in one of the northern states, so people are starting to freeze to death.
The likelihood of a cyber attack is about as close to zero as you can get -- it hasn't happened yet. OTOH, we get ice storms that cut power for weeks.
The week containing March 12, 2006 saw rain storms, snow storms, ice storms, hail, sleet, and tornados here in Springfield. If Osama Bin Laded saw the destruction the tornados caused, he'd give up. [slashdot.org] There's no way short of detonating a nuclear weapon any terrorists could cause that much damage. My power was out for a week, cable and landlines were out for a month. An ice storm in 1978 took out power here for even longer.
Kook at Katrina, and the damage hurricanes cause in Florida. Look at the earthquakes in California, the recent flood in Tennessee. Helll, speaking of disasters, look at the mess the terrorists from BP caused in the entire gulf. Who needs Muslim terrorists when we have corporations that own the government running things?
These idiots need to stop worrying about the boogeyman and fix the infrastructure in this country that's deteriorating on its own without the help of any terrorists.
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Besides, do you want "Good Job Brownie" to be in charge of YOUR power supply? Who knows, we could get a President who appointed even more incompetent cronies than Bush did -- it's a good thing Blago was impeached and arrested, he might have reached the White House. He'd be even worse than Bush (shudder).
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:2, Informative)
The president cannot declare martial law 'whenever he feels like it'. It requires the approval of congress.
The trigger for this bill is also very specific.
As to the trigger in this bill, from TFA:
"In order for the President to declare such an emergency, there would have to be knowledge both of a massive network flaw — and information that someone was about to leverage that hole to do massive harm. For example, the recent “Aurora” hack to steal source code from Google, Adobe and other companies wouldn’t have qualified, one Senate staffer noted: “It’d have to be Aurora 2, plus the intel that country X is going to take us down using that vulnerability.”
Look how easily George W. Bush went to war with Iraq. He fabricated evidence of WMD and pushed congress very hard and started a war. Since Bushy duped our elected representatives into that, how hard would it be for Obama's administration to come up with "evidence" of a pending massive cyberstrike and coercing congress to approve martial law?
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:4, Informative)
Parent isn't kidding. Please see Kelo v. City of New London [wikipedia.org].
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:5, Informative)
That's not at all clear. An actual bill number would let us check the text, all we have in TFA is two characterizations by staffers which disagree, and you've pulled the one favorable to your position and ignored the other:
See, that sounds somewhat narrowly applicable. But if you keep reading the following paragraph in TFA, you'd see another staffer suggesting that something like the Conficker worm might have triggered based on unspecific evidence that "hackers" were looking to "leverage" it in some way (not the kind of specific "country X" kind of requirement the first staffer suggested):
So, given that the staffers quoted in TFA don't agree -- and, frankly, even if they did -- maybe we shouldn't take the most inoffensive characterization in TFA as being an accurate reflection of the bill.
People complain that politicians lie too much, but you know -- if people didn't just accept the most comforting thing they or their staffers said on faith, maybe they wouldn't keep lying.
Re:Uh, no, you can't have my network (Score:3, Informative)
A believe federal law doesn't allow any emergency room to deny treatment for ANY emergency if the person can't pay. Now, the ER can go after the person for the money after treatment is done, but they aren't allowed to say "Hey, we aren't treating that bullet wound until we verify your credit card."