A sweeping legislation has been introduced in the Senate to give the President power to control the activity on both public and private networks all in the name of national security – a recent networkworld.com artcile cites. The marketing line of the bill states that it is in the interest of protecting computer system of the Federal Government as well as those deemed critical to national infrastructure. On the surface, that seems like a good idea in consideration of a computer virus outbreak or cyber attack; however, the bill reached much further than the soundbytes suggest. Here are a few quotes from the article:

“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.”

“The bill was introduced by West Virginia Democratic Sen. John Rockefeller….and Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican from Maine…” (I just have to comment here because in my experience, WV has one of the weakest wide-area technical infrastructures I’ve ever seen, but Maine on the other hand is strong even though rural.) Rockefeller says the legislation addresses the threat to private sector infrastructure such as banking, utilities, air/rail/auto traffic control, and telecommunications. But even Rockefeller said the bill was a starting point and not a finished product.” – in other words, they aren’t going to stop controlling things there.

All this power grab, control, and invasion of privacy ironically supported by the very people who wailed about the Patriot act. Hypocrites! The liberals are the very tyrannical, jack-booted thugs they keep warning you about. As for Senator Snowe (R) of Maine. She’s a RINO.

Radical and Right

Red State Radical

Resources:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040209-obama-cybersecurity-bill.html?netht=ts_040209&nladname=040209dailynewspmal