I’m in the business of cyber security, and I’m in favor of all the help we can get. But when a liberal Senator introduces legislation to fight cyber crime, my neck hairs stand up and vibrate.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s Cybersecurity Act of 2009 raised a lot of hackles when it was first introduced because of language that would give the president broad new powers to take control of the Internet in an emergency.
And guess what? The president would get to determine what constitutes an emergency.
Would too much criticism of the administration in the blogosphere constitute an emergency?
Well, probably not. I hope. I mean, they’re not thinking about ways to shut down talk radio just for being a pain the royal foofer, right? But read this from a story in eWeek:
The original draft bill gave the president the broad authority to designate various private networks as a “critical infrastructure system or network” and, with no other review, “may declare a cyber-security emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from” the designated the private sector system or network.
Reaction to that language was so intense that Rockefeller changed it to something more vague, but no less ominous. It still allows the president to declare a cyber-security emergency and assume authority over “non-governmental” networks. It would only apply in times of national emergency, but that isn’t clearly defined. It’s left to the president to decide.
Another provision in the bill gives the government authority to standardize security software and force security firms to get government approval for new software. Yeah, right. Guess how long that would take. Of course, the law probably would apply to authors of malware, too, so why worry?
One more excerpt from the eWeek story:
The legislation also calls for a public-private clearinghouse for cyber-threats and vulnerability information under the authority of the Department of Commerce. The Secretary of Commerce would have the authority to access “all relevant data concerning such networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access.”
Just what’s needed to fight cyber crime–more bureaucracy.
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