"Last week, legislation was introduced that would create a cybersecurity adviser who reports directly to the president and who would have the authority to disconnect federal or critical infrastructure networks from the Internet if they were deemed to be at risk of attack." read more
Back in February Obama launched a review of the US national cybersecurity infrastructure
under the charge of Melissa Hathaway. Now Hathaway is set to take up the full time role as Obama’s cybersecurity adviser on the back of a set of legislation that will grant federal officials new powers to create and enforce data security standards for government agencies and the private sector.
Most significant in this legislation are a set of shiny new presidential powers that will allow him to declare a state of cybersecurity emergency, giving him the ability to shutdown public, or private networks, or portions thereof in the interests of national security.
Now if you’re like me, possibly you only paid attention to the warm fuzzy parts of Obama’s Internet campaigning and heard him make stirring speeches about net neutrality and protecting civil rights online and just possibly you fooled yourself into thinking that here at last was a man in power, who understood the Internet we grew up on – the one where you could do and say anything you wanted to under the protection of the ultimate free speech weapon, anonymity.
If so then consider this your wake up call. Obama loves the Internet, that much is very clear. However first and foremost Obama loves America He wants a safe America, he wants an Internet that’s safe for Americans to use and he is quite clearly listening to the likes of
Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller (yes he is a real Rockefeller) when they say things like:
[Snowe] "If we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."
[Rockefeller]"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs. From our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records – the list goes on."
Not concerned? Listen to what Leslie Harris CEO at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has to say:
“This is pretty sweeping legislation,” says Harris. “Seems the President could turn off the Internet completely or tell someone like Verizon to limit or block certain traffic,” she said. “There is a lot to worry about in this bill.”
To put this in layman’s terms. Obama is creating traffic laws for the Internet, very real traffic laws like you’ve never seen before, with very real traffic police and Obama and his traffic police will be able to block the roads control the flow of traffic and if they decide to – stop you from going to the wrong part of town.
Also you need to understand, that these kind of objectives can only be achieved through extensive monitoring of the traffic. Sure he means to protect your civil rights online, sure he means to protect your privacy, but you can’t hand out fines to people for traffic violations, if you don’t know where they live can you?
In good American tradition to be a real president and get what you want you really should have a war to fight and I think its quite clear – from the way he is gearing up – that Obama plans to fight his war online.
