CybersecurityBill giving president power over Internet in cyber emergency to return
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; the bill which emerged from a Senate committee on 15 December 2010, is more restrictive in three respects than the original bill, made public June 2010: The revised version sayis 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”; a third authorized the submission of “classified” reports on security vulnerabilities
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 Senatros Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) 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.”
CNET News reports that 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 15 December. 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.
CNET News notes that 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 Senatros Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) 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
