well, you claimed that ruining the country's economy was a small price to pay for a public servant... epic lols.spartan231490 said:
Poll: Sentate Committee passed "Internet Kill switch" Bill
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how is the Obama fault? Lieberman submitted the bill and somehow managed to convince a senate committee it was a good idea, thats doesnt have anything to do with Obama, gah, learn how your damn govt works.
In reading that I guess I just waffled.
See, I am one of the few who was 100% in support of adding an internet "kill switch" to the President's emergency powers, how that would be implemented is anyone's guess, but in a time of war where the emergency powers and martial law are coming out anyway, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.
On the other hand, however it's defined, I do not like the idea of creating what amounts to a new division of cyber-police. Whatever it's intended to do, I can see that snowballing out of control and leading to peacetime censorship initiatives, and the goverment being able to do whatever it wants on The Internet providing it can rubber stamp it as being some kind of "national emergency".
The differance of course being is that the "Kill Switch" as I heard about it was not something that could be casually invoked in any crisis, it would require a full on national emergency rather than just an isolated incident that may or may not be of national importance.
To me this went from being what seemed like a reasonable updating of the president's emergency powers, to what amounts to a big goverment power grab. I don't believe for a second that we're going to create this division and then "not even know they are there". What's more once they exist it's much easier to expand what they are capable of (one big thing about the FBI for example is that the scope and power of the agency increased dramatically under Hoover, things like that do happen. In this paticular case it worries me).
This generally plays into the whole information-control schtick that the current administration has been on. Everything and anything they can get that allows censorship and control they are going after full throttle. Stuff like this, and trying to get us to sign away our rights in order to "protect the children" and "stop hate speech".
See, I am one of the few who was 100% in support of adding an internet "kill switch" to the President's emergency powers, how that would be implemented is anyone's guess, but in a time of war where the emergency powers and martial law are coming out anyway, it seems perfectly reasonable to me.
On the other hand, however it's defined, I do not like the idea of creating what amounts to a new division of cyber-police. Whatever it's intended to do, I can see that snowballing out of control and leading to peacetime censorship initiatives, and the goverment being able to do whatever it wants on The Internet providing it can rubber stamp it as being some kind of "national emergency".
The differance of course being is that the "Kill Switch" as I heard about it was not something that could be casually invoked in any crisis, it would require a full on national emergency rather than just an isolated incident that may or may not be of national importance.
To me this went from being what seemed like a reasonable updating of the president's emergency powers, to what amounts to a big goverment power grab. I don't believe for a second that we're going to create this division and then "not even know they are there". What's more once they exist it's much easier to expand what they are capable of (one big thing about the FBI for example is that the scope and power of the agency increased dramatically under Hoover, things like that do happen. In this paticular case it worries me).
This generally plays into the whole information-control schtick that the current administration has been on. Everything and anything they can get that allows censorship and control they are going after full throttle. Stuff like this, and trying to get us to sign away our rights in order to "protect the children" and "stop hate speech".
I don't see what's wrong with full body scans at airports. Also I am confused. Does this mean that they can shut off the internet around the world or just america? It's bullshit either way, but can someone please give me a straight answear.McNinja said:
Oh, you most certainly can. There are a number of primary . . . I forget the technical term for it at the moment, but there are a number of stations where the internet signal is broadcast from in this country. You could shut down the power at these stations and the internet would go black for the entire country. It can easily be done, it's just that nobody has had the authority to do that other than the internet providers and they haven't wanted to because they'd loose business.Tharwen said:
Last time I checked the internet was not exclusively based in the US (someone correct me if I'm wrong), so this means that their 'kill switch' would affect America only (which would be somewhat poinrless, a 'cyber-attack' would probably be intended to attempt to shut down or disrupt the systems in a country, having a 'kill-switch' would just deny a 'cyber-terrorist' the satisfaction of being the one to fuck over America).
I would've answered yes if the question was "Is this going too far?" However, the Obama Administration is not a Senate committee, so no, the Obama Administration is not going too far, this Senate committee is.
Thank you Mornelithe, for curbing the tendency of those on this forum to mouth off broadly over exaggerated bits of uninformed cynicism.
Second, Cyberthreats are very real, with numerous modern cases of massive damage caused by security failures.
http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2004/cybercrime/112904terror.html?page=1
"Confidential documents about supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, for instance, have been found in al Qaeda hiding places in Afghanistan, while the Irish Republican Army has said it plans cyberattacks on crucial supply systems, according to Justin Lowe, principal consultant with PA Consulting Group."
"Few, if any, of the industrial control systems used today were designed with cybersecurity in mind because hardly any of them were connected to the Internet. For the most part, these companies viewed their infrastructures as secure from cyberattacks because of their isolated structure."
"However, utilities and factories are now using the Internet to carry SCADA messages from an increasing number of Web-enabled, remote-control systems"
"Not only that, but also many of their "private" networks now are built with the help of competitively priced fiber-optic connections and transmission services provided by telecom companies, which have become the frequent target of cyberattacks."
"In the last few years, a power utility crash that was caused indirectly by the Slammer worm paralyzing a leased telecom service. For its SCADA communications network, the utility used a frame relay service, which a carrier provided over its ATM backbone. The ATM network was overwhelmed by the worm, blocking SCADA traffic to substations."
"Deregulation of the energy market in the U.S. has led to cost-cutting that has affected investments across the board, including security systems and services."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/06/60minutes/main5555565.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
"Project "Aurora" diabled a 27-ton power generator using the internet"
"No, not sufficiently," Langevin said. "The private sector has different priorities than we do in providing security. Their, in a sense bottom line, is about profits. We need to change that. We need to change their motivation so that when we see a vulnerability like this we can require them to fix it."
"The big generators that we depend on for electrical power are one, expensive, two, no longer made in the U.S., and three, require a lead time of three or four months to order them. So, it's not like if we break one, we can go down to the hardware store and get a replacement. If somebody really thought about this, they could knock a generator out, they could knock a power plant out for months. And that's the real consequence."
"They could physically blow up and permanently disable a 27-ton power generator using the Internet."
"In 2007 we probably had our electronic Pearl Harbor. It was an espionage Pearl Harbor," Lewis said. "Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information."
"We know that cyber intruders have probed our electrical grid, and that in other countries cyber attacks have plunged entire cities into darkness"
"Several prominent intelligence sources confirmed that there were a series of cyber attacks in Brazil: one north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005 that affected three cities and tens of thousands of people, and another, much larger event beginning on Sept. 26, 2007."
"That one in the state of Espirito Santo affected more than three million people in dozens of cities over a two-day period, causing major disruptions. In Vitoria, the world's largest iron ore producer had seven plants knocked offline, costing the company $7 million. It is not clear who did it or what the motive was."
From what I understand of the bill, it doesn't provide the new government agency any additional power to spy on online traffic, nor does it in ANY WAY impede free speech on the internet. I really don't understand where spartan231490 is getting his paranoid fantasies from, its certainly not the text of this bill.spartan231490 said:
Second, Cyberthreats are very real, with numerous modern cases of massive damage caused by security failures.
http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2004/cybercrime/112904terror.html?page=1
"Confidential documents about supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, for instance, have been found in al Qaeda hiding places in Afghanistan, while the Irish Republican Army has said it plans cyberattacks on crucial supply systems, according to Justin Lowe, principal consultant with PA Consulting Group."
"Few, if any, of the industrial control systems used today were designed with cybersecurity in mind because hardly any of them were connected to the Internet. For the most part, these companies viewed their infrastructures as secure from cyberattacks because of their isolated structure."
"However, utilities and factories are now using the Internet to carry SCADA messages from an increasing number of Web-enabled, remote-control systems"
"Not only that, but also many of their "private" networks now are built with the help of competitively priced fiber-optic connections and transmission services provided by telecom companies, which have become the frequent target of cyberattacks."
"In the last few years, a power utility crash that was caused indirectly by the Slammer worm paralyzing a leased telecom service. For its SCADA communications network, the utility used a frame relay service, which a carrier provided over its ATM backbone. The ATM network was overwhelmed by the worm, blocking SCADA traffic to substations."
"Deregulation of the energy market in the U.S. has led to cost-cutting that has affected investments across the board, including security systems and services."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/06/60minutes/main5555565.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
"Project "Aurora" diabled a 27-ton power generator using the internet"
"No, not sufficiently," Langevin said. "The private sector has different priorities than we do in providing security. Their, in a sense bottom line, is about profits. We need to change that. We need to change their motivation so that when we see a vulnerability like this we can require them to fix it."
"The big generators that we depend on for electrical power are one, expensive, two, no longer made in the U.S., and three, require a lead time of three or four months to order them. So, it's not like if we break one, we can go down to the hardware store and get a replacement. If somebody really thought about this, they could knock a generator out, they could knock a power plant out for months. And that's the real consequence."
"They could physically blow up and permanently disable a 27-ton power generator using the Internet."
"In 2007 we probably had our electronic Pearl Harbor. It was an espionage Pearl Harbor," Lewis said. "Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information."
"We know that cyber intruders have probed our electrical grid, and that in other countries cyber attacks have plunged entire cities into darkness"
"Several prominent intelligence sources confirmed that there were a series of cyber attacks in Brazil: one north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005 that affected three cities and tens of thousands of people, and another, much larger event beginning on Sept. 26, 2007."
"That one in the state of Espirito Santo affected more than three million people in dozens of cities over a two-day period, causing major disruptions. In Vitoria, the world's largest iron ore producer had seven plants knocked offline, costing the company $7 million. It is not clear who did it or what the motive was."
Someone with a few functioning braincells probably pointed out that a kill-switch, if used, has the potential to cause just as much damage as full scale cyberwarfare. Considering that in most modern nations 'the internet' and 'the communications infrastructure' are essentially the same thing, and just about service and industry you can name relies on the infrastructure, if not the net itself, to some degree you're installing an off switch for your nation... which I can't really see anyone thinking is a good idea for their own country.Mornelithe said:
Then again, seeing most of the self-righteous outrage that spring up when a politician in Oz even says "internet" I'm not surprised a lot of people waving their arms and pronouncing The End Of Times when a US politician says "internet kill-switch".
One thing I find interesting is that while certain US officials talk about 'cyberwarfare units' in other countries they fail to mention that by definition pretty much any electronic intelligence or signals intelligence unit (ElInt and SigInt, respectively) can be called a 'cyberwarfare unit' and the US armed forces has more than a few of those.