[governance] Internet Kill switch bill to be trojan-horsed in?

[Lee W McKnight]

Frankly I wasn't taking this bill seriously, as the Senate bill had no companion bill being pushed through the House.

But the mechanism of stuffing the cybersecurity bill into a defense authorization bill could be a workaround and short-circuit debate; and force it through the House in a reconciliation act - as usual someone is being clever.

In an election year it could be trivially easy to paint any 'no' votes as equal to supporting identity thieves and state-sponsored (cyber-)terrorism.

So yeah now CS groups should be concerned/and US groups should try to knock the worst excesses out...which won't be easy.
________________________________________
From: Paul Lehto [lehto.paul at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 10:06 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein
Subject: Re: [governance] Internet Kill switch bill to be trojan-horsed in?

The text of the bill is proposed to be a law amending the Homeland
Security Act entitled "‘Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act
of 2010.’’

Sources say they plan to have it inserted into a defense authorization
bill.  It defines the supervision of a new agency to include not only
"continuous situational awareness" of the "federal information
infrastructure" including but not limited to the national security
apparatus, but also awareness, data, and intervention authority to
"isolate" remediate, terminate (for a time) or take other action
regarding the class of "national information" infrastructure, in
addition to "Federal information infrastructure."

In turn, the 'national information' infrastructure is defined as
consisting of everything "(A)(i) that is owned, operated, or
controlled within or from the United States; or (ii) if located
outside the United States, the disruption of which could result in
national or regional catastrophic damage in the United States; and (B)
that is not owned, operated, controlled, or licensed for use by a
Federal agency.

So once again the USA takes a broad extraterritorial view on what it
can intervene in, and includes "prevention" among the possible motives
for action involving things outside US borders on the grounds that
they might impact US interests.  Preemptive action or preemptive
cyberwar, if you will.  The Director of Cyberspace Policy is to be
notified not just of national security threats, but any event
concerning "the national information infrastructure that could
compromise or significantly affect *economic* or national security"
clearly indicating that the scope here is broad, and not at all
limited to national security projects, nor limited to US controlled
assets or US citizens.



On 8/29/10, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is this common knowledge? I haven't seen it reported elsewhere....
>
> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0828/congress-internet-kill-switch-defense-b
> ill
>
> M
>
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Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-2334
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