Hate for the masses.
A pair of bills introduced in the U.S. Senate would grant the WhiteHouse sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate thecybersecurity industry and even shut down internet traffic during a declared “cyber emergency.”
Senate bills No. 773 and 778, introduced by Sen. JayRockefeller, D-W.V.(Contact him), are both part of what’s being called theCybersecurity Act of 2009, which would create a new Office of theNational Cybersecurity Advisor, reportable directly to the presidentand charged with defending the country from cyber attack.
A working draft of the legislationobtained by an Internet privacy group also spells out plans to grantthe Secretary of Commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation’s infrastructure “without regard toany provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting suchaccess.”
Privacy advocates and Internet experts have been quick to sound the alarm over the act’s broadly drawn government powers.
“The cybersecurity threat is real,” says Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology,which obtained the draft of S.773, “but such a drastic federalintervention in private communications technology and networks couldharm both security and privacy.”
“The whole thing smells bad to me,” writes Larry Seltzer ineWeek, an Internet and print news source on technology issues. “I don’tlike the chances of the government improving this situation by takingit over generally, and I definitely don’t like the idea of politicizingthis authority by putting it in the direct control of the president.”