Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch" - Tech Talk - CBS News: "A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a 'national cyberemergency,' and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.
Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
'We're not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet, the entire Internet backbone,' said Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and counsel for the committee.
Instead, Milhorn said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the point of the proposal is to assert governmental control only over those 'crucial components that form our nation's critical infrastructure.'
Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure.
The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government's designation of vital Internet or other computer systems 'shall not be subject to judicial review.' Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include 'provider of information technology,' and a third authorized the submission of 'classified' reports on security vulnerabilities.
The idea of creating what some critics have called an Internet 'kill switch' that the president could flip in an emergency is not exactly new.
A draft Senate proposal that CNET obtained in August 2009 authorized the White House to 'declare a cybersecurity emergency,' and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to 'order the disconnection' of certain networks or Web sites. House Democrats have taken a similar approach in their own proposals.
Lieberman, who recently announced he would not seek re-election in 2012, said last year that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. 'For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,' he said.
Civil libertarians and some industry representatives have repeatedly raised concerns about the various proposals to give the executive branch such broad emergency power. On the other hand, as Lieberman and Collins have highlighted before, some companies, including Microsoft, Verizon, and EMC Corporation, have said positive things about the initial version of the bill.
But last month's rewrite that bans courts from reviewing executive branch decrees has given companies new reason to worry. 'Judicial review is our main concern,' said Steve DelBianco, director of the NetChoice coalition, which includes eBay, Oracle, Verisign, and Yahoo as members. 'A designation of critical information infrastructure brings with it huge obligations for upgrades and compliance.'
In some cases, DelBianco said, a company may have a 'good-faith disagreement' with the government's ruling and would want to seek court review. 'The country we're seeking to protect is a country that respects the right of any individual to have their day in court,' he said. 'Yet this bill would deny that day in court to the owner of infrastructure.'
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