Senate bills No. 773 and 778, introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., are both part of what's being called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which would create a new Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, reportable directly to the president and charged with defending the country from cyber attack.

A working draft of the legislation obtained by an Internet privacy group also spells out plans to grant the Secretary of Commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation's infrastructure "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access."

George Dill

But don't worry - since Obama is doing it and not Bush, I'm totally sure it is only being done for "good".

By coincidence, the quote for today on my tear-a-sheet calendar is:

"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake." (H. L. Mencken)

I was a fan of the Patriot Act. I have no problem with government surveillance. As long as the government is monitoring all the scary folks out there, from animal rights nutjobs to secessionist nutjobs.

They shouldn't monitor non-nutjobs, however. Drawing that line is difficult, of course.

So do you disagree with these bills then?

UKMatt

Now, maybe the UN will establish the Rules of Engagement (ROE).
Excellent counter President Obama.

I haven't read the details yet, enough to have a fully-informed opinion. From what I've read so far, however, I have significant concerns about them. So my prediction at this point is that I'll probably largely disagree with them, although there may be parts of them that I'd support.

My earlier post was primarily a comment on the irony of the situation. Frankly, mention of granting the Secretary of Commerce "access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation's infrastructure "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access."" seems to me to be an order of magnitude more invasive than anything done under the Patriot Act.

It's one thing for the government to take steps to protect its own networks from cyber-terror, and also to take steps to offer protection to certain private networks (e.g. those of utility companies, etc.) But the above sounds a lot like a blank check for "accessing" (seizing?) any network.

Since you asked, what's your take on these bills?

wait, so the government shouldn't protect private networks from what goes on over the internet? Seriously?

If a bot is hiding out in a private network, waiting to be unleased, you don't want the government to "enter" that private network and eliminate the criminal bot? That's like requiring the police to wait until a criminal goes on the highway rather than arrest him as he drives down the city streets. Seems like a silly approach, to me.

I want the government, as well as private industry, to do whatever it can to keep the internet safe. If you leave it up to individuals it simply will not happen.

I like a dose of reality with my utopian "Keep the Gubmint Out of Our Lives"-flavored Koolaid, eh?

Why stop there? Why not let the police cordon off my house, so as to protect me from possible criminals? Actually, if they stationed some police IN my house, it would be even safer. Why not let the police take proactive action by arresting everyone who fits the profile of criminals, instead of waiting for them to commit a crime? The bills as written don't make any mention of warrants, nor other precautions and limitations, and seem to give tremendous discretionary power to the President, to do whatever is deemed "necessary". Maybe an amendment process will serve to make them more reasonable.

Actually, UKMatt had a good point (at least I think it was part of his point - I may be wrong). How someone feels about these bills DOES seem to depend on their political beliefs, and how they feel about who the power is being given to. It was fair to question me about being against these bills, if I didn't have a big problem with the Patriot Act. By the same token, it is fair to question those who have no problem with these bills, if they thought that the Patriot Act was dangerous. I don't dispute that a big part of my problem with these bills is underlying suspicion of the motives. And I suspect that if the bills had been introduced when George Bush was in office, there would have been much more of an outcry. But as currently written, I also think this set of bills goes way beyond anything in the Patriot Act, and also goes way beyond detection of bots, viruses, etc.

yeah, you're right - that's the same thing

all good points

so just what motives do you think Obama has that W didn't have?

Why do you question Obama's motives? Are yo uafraid that he'll only go after right-leaning bots and not left-leaning bots?

Do you think he won't use the Act to protect the country?

Why were you more comfy with W administering the Patriot Act than with Obama administering the Patriot Act?

I'm not disagreeing with your basic sentiments, as I am happy to have Obama administer the Patriot Act while I disliked W's (Cheney's, obviously) administration of the Patriot Act.

See, we KNOW W wanted to be a dictator (he told us he did) and we KNOW his daddy loved having more and more access to info about US citizens (Pappy ran the CIA and was a spook from Day One), but Obama has never suffered from either of those deficiencies. Just what is it that you are worried about? That he'll catch right-wing tax scofflaws by snooping on their PCs?

I know the questions/answers weren't directed at me, but I'll interject anyways because I think you bring up some interesting points:

1) Why question Obama's motives/judgement/adminstrative abilities?
-First, where he stands in relation to W is a non-issue...what Obama does in administering any act has to stand up on it's own. A bad decision (or a good one, for that matter) is not tempered or enhanced by the track record of his predecessor...really, the "would you prefer Bush" line of questioning has never made much sense to me for this reason. Obama didn't oversee the Patriot Act, and Bush didn't oversee this proposed legislation.
-I do think that it's reasonable to question Obama's judement and/or motives. The guy has gone back on his word/radically changed his positions on multiple issues in the short time that he's been president. No, I'm not harping on Daschle. In the grand scheme of things, I hope that Turbo-Tax Tim doesn't matter either. BUT--all of his errors in judgement/sidestepping promises he made in this field don't give me great reason to trust the man's judgement or his promises. Then, try a far bigger issue: FISA+wiretapping: Obama has done a total 180 on this. (It's possible that he has ""seen the light"" and realized that he was "wrong" about his prior views. I'd love to think so. Frankly, I think he's more worried about maintaing executive priveledge than anything else, but that's for another thread) Reliable leaders with sound judgement don't do this sort of thing--or if they do, they have the good graces to say "I was wrong, and here's why I'm right this time." Just saying "trust me" doesn't inspire a lot of confidence when it comes from a guy with almost no experience or record.

Editorializing: Obama has shown himself to be no better than any other double-talking, sidestepping, slick politician. I don't trust him to make judgement calls about what surveillance is good/bad any more than I'd trust Bush to. Why should you? What has he proactively done to earn your trust, and how does this outweigh his actions to the contrary?

Sparknotes: I don't see why you trust Obama--just as you wouldn't trust a random shmoe with the keys to your car, why would you trust a politican with virtually no track record or executive experience with the keys to wiretapping all of our electronic communication?

The Bill is much bigger than what you're looking at. Next year, you might be required to pay for sites like Swedespeed. Bill 773 and 778 is just the start of it.

Battle over Net Neutrality is already happening in the UK with Virgin and idle bandwidth for certain sites.

The first major debate on net neutrality in the UK was held at Westminster on the 20 March 2006, sponsored by AT&T. It was attended by the Government and Opposition trade secretaries, telecommunications regulators, industry figures and other experts in the field. Google, a noted supporter of net neutrality, declined an invitation to the debate, and then called it "biased".[56] The conclusion was that Net Neutrality laws in the UK would be "extreme... unattractive and impractical" and that it was "an answer to problems we don't have, using a philosophy we don't share".

In Canada, Bell Canada and Telus are already moving this year to do the same... actually they are ahead of us.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/s....html

http://www.americanfreepress.n....html

Services would look like this:

Imagine what Swedespeed would be like if people had to start paying 49.00 a month for the site.

As far as censorship... Bush demonstrated how this would work here in the U.S. when they censored anti-bush comments on a broadcast of Pearl Jams concert in 2007.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759184-7.html

This Bill is basically an invitation to let the government do what ever they what to do with out criticism. The OTF won't exist anymore, especially all the global / political topics that might pop up… all gone.

Currently the Bill is being quietly proposed while we are being flooded with Pirate stories. No one is talking about this topic. Something like this should be in the news… shouldn’t it? No matter if you think it’s proactive, protecting us from terrorist or just another big brother Socialistic Bill… it should be in the news. But it's not.

It's not written in Stone yet, but the government already knows it will go through. In fact, the government already started hiring the past week:

http://obambi.wordpress.com/20...uters/

The jobs were announced the same week as the Bill was introduced... Coincidence?...

If you want to know what the end result will look like. Look at China and what they do to the Internet. They are a great example because they are a Socialist State (Politically Correct term for Communism). I believe that is what everyone is so excited about lately… becoming a Socialist government (Stake in Banks, Corps and control of Information).

Further more, this isn’t a Bush or Obama deal. It’s much bigger than that. It’s not just the U.S. that is proposing ideas like this about the internet… every country is pushing it, so please get off the political finger pointing.

If anything, the internet should be left alone.

HA, that was my first thought as well.

"I don't trust Obama's motives because he appointed Daschle, Geithner and changed his mind on issues"

??

and you're afraid of communism and you believe Obama is turning the country comunist

that a fair summary of why you don't trust Obama?

but you'd be OK if Bush was doing this.....

??

really hard for me to square that. Unless you are claiming you would have opposed this legislation if W was proposing it.

Get over it people. They have been monitoring the internet for years. This just makes it legal. I guess we will have to find a better way to communicate in private. How about face to face?

NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense. It has no cyber role beyond its own force protection.

Quote, originally posted by stev vanveit »

Now, maybe the UN will establish the Rules of Engagement (ROE). Excellent counter President Obama.

The UN Charter doesn't give the international community power over that of sovereign states, except in very narrow and specifically defined cases. I suggest you read the UN Charter. It is a short document that outlines the organization's mandate and authorities in very clear terms.

Rules of Engagement describes individual states' authorities governing the use of force by its own troops.

So the notion of UN ROE to trump President Obama (or any other head of state) is a non-sequitur.

(All of which raises the question of where do you come up with this, Stev? From grocery store tabloids that speak of government conspiracies and two-headed alien babies?)

Get the inside track at: http://forums.swedespeed.com/z...59114

That battle is over. Read the UK RIPA Act.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/ac..._en_1

Get the inside track at: http://forums.swedespeed.com/z...59114

I glanced over it. It protects info from A to B, from what I got out of it. But the thing Virgin wants to do in the UK is idle control. Totally wrong to block the info, but nothing say's they can't restrict some undesired sites to a crawling 46k speed while others get free flow of speed.

What are you more interested in when you click on a web page... something that loads in seconds or something that takes 5 minutes to load?

There are other means of getting rid of unwanted sites with out breaking the law or blocking info in the UK.

Virgins CEO already said in 2008 that he want to crush Net Neutrality. http://torrentfreak.com/virgin...80413/

So, the battle isn't over yet. In fact, there is a group out of Belgium that talks about this every month.

I am not an expert on net neutrality, but wouldn't a site like Swedespeed be available under the "basic services" ($29.99/month) rather than the enhanced or nifty (i.e. YouTube) services ($49/month)?

for folks who want to simply use the web to chat, it would be cheap. for folks who want more entertainment, that would cost money

I don't have a problem with that aspect (but, again, I am reasonably uninformed on this)

It's hard to say, but there is a group called IPower that has been really vocal about this. According to them and the price example, posting sites like SS would fall under the 49.00 bracket. Their thought would be that simple e-mail services would fall under the 29.oo a day. You know, stuff that pertains your day to day business communications.

My opinion is that if something like this does happen, that the line is drawn over bandwidth. A site where people post pictures, videos and such eats up more bandwidth, so I would assume SS would fall under the higher bracket.

Looking at it with that perspective… you only have to ask yourself how many times you've seen **56k warning** in the title of the post here.

Some infrastructures in the U.S. ... and I know the UK has this problem, is bandwidth. Apd, you and I may not see this problem because we are on the west coast. We have great service here. Some area's here, especially in the Bay Area are using an Internet2 infrastructure with much, much more bandwidth than you and I see. I think it was the Berkley kids a couple of years ago that were getting into trouble because they were downloading boot leg 2 hour movies and entire music collections in about 2-5 minutes using the Internet2 infrastructure.

A good example of infrastructure problems that I see is, I use a National Verizon Broadband card. It works great everywhere I conduct business and it's very quick. Right now I'm working on 3 hospitals in Honolulu. The speed in every area here is great! Back home in O.C., it's great and when I go to San Fran it's great. However I went to Boston, last year, maybe the year before... can't remember how long, but anyways the service in that area sucked big time. I was only a few blocks from MIT and my service was like a 56k speed... or much slower. The Internet at the hotel was the same.

Do I feel that’s our problem, NO.

I think it will be one of many examples that congress will use to implement control. And, that’s just one of the things that I feel is unfair.

Another example maybe the Term coined War on Terrorism. I’m not failing for it anymore. I’m defiantly not worried when someone threatens me on the internet. Sorry to use you as an example, but when you had that temper attack and there was an exchange of words in the post… do you think anyone was terrorized? More than anything it made for good entertainment for the bystanders.

What constitutes the word terrorism or cyber attack? It’s not spelled out. It’s too generalized. I think it will be attached to almost anything… maybe someone might think your last outburst was a terrorist attack… or I was terrorized. Where to do we stop with the generalizations and put really meanings or examples behind the words or laws we create?

I’m headed out for dinner right now, so I leave with that. I have a bunch of meetings tomorrow but I’ll check back at the end of the day. I really, really think this bill is bad news or the start of it. As I said before, I’m jam packed with work, but I really don’t mind taking some time out to talk about this subject. The American people don’t like to be screwed all at once, but they defiantly don’t mind having it get handed to them in increments.

Here is a link to the Ipower guys: http://ipower.ning.com/ Just keep in mind that they are very passionate about what’s happening. Don’t look at it as weird or far fetched.

Modified by KillerB at 2:15 AM 4-23-2009