Kill the kill switch
There's a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate that, if passed, would create a "kill switch," allowing for the government to shut down or control parts of the Internet. Really. I'm not making this up.
When I read a headline about this early today I checked my calendar. No, it wasn't April Fool's Day. And there was no sign of Ashton Kutcher, so I probably wasn’t on “Punk'd.”
U.S. Sen. Joe Liberman, I-Conn., has sponsored the "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010" bill. Its official designation is S. 3480.
I can't believe U.S. government officials believe they can assume control of the Internet it when deemed necessary; this seems about as likely as sucking up the Gulf oil spill with a drinking straw. I doubt Liberman checked with officials in the rest of the world, although the Chinese government does manage to block certain sites (expect when hackers find holes.)
Yes, there is a huge amount of infrastructure in the United States that runs many computers and servers and enable the connections between them that comprise a portion of the Internet. And a majority of the domain-name system controls reside in the our country, but a “switch” with the power to bring down the entire World Wide Web at once simply doesn't exist. Nor should it.
(DNS is defined as: "A system for converting host names and domain names into Internet protocol (IP) addresses on the Internet or on local networks that use the TCP/IP protocol. For example, when a Web site address is given to the DNS either by typing a URL in a browser or behind the scenes from one application to another, DNS servers return the IP address of the server associated with that name." — PCMag.com)
By the way, TCP stands for transmission control protocol’ URL stands for uniform resource locator, or, colloquially, a Web address.
I found a few stories with more about the proposed Liberman legislation:
New Bill Would Give the President an Internet 'Kill Switch' — Gizmodo:
http://bit.ly/ddF8bp
Obama to be given the right to shut down the Internet with 'kill switch' — The Daily Mail
http://bit.ly/8Ya40F
Internet 'kill switch' would give president power to shut down the Web — Huffington Post
http://huff.to/b4aKFT
See the proposed bill here:
http://bit.ly/diSYpg
