When Egyptian protesters began calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down after 30 years in power, the Egyptian government shut off the internet. And when they managed to bribe or put enough plainclothes policemen in the streets to act as pro-Mubarak “protesters,” they turned the internet back on.
If I might grab my chalkboard for a moment, I just want to point out that it can happen here! Cnet reports that Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins want to introduce a bill that would give the U.S. an internet “kill switch.” Which is funny because they also say the president already has the authority to shut off the internet in an emergency:
For their part, Lieberman and Collins say the president already has “nearly unchecked authority” to control Internet companies. A 1934 law (PDF) creating the Federal Communications Commission says that in wartime, or if a “state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency” exists, the president may “authorize the use or control of any…station or device.”
In congressional testimony (PDF) last year, DHS Deputy Undersecretary Philip Reitinger stopped short of endorsing the Lieberman-Collins bill. The 1934 law already addresses “presidential emergency authorities, and Congress and the administration should work together to identify any needed adjustments to the act,” he said, “as opposed to developing overlapping legislation.”
The U.S. is not Egypt, where political power is so centralized into a single person that abuse of power is a far simpler matter. But the way Egypt used its power should nonetheless caution us about the wisdom of this kind of a proposal–particularly since Lieberman so successfully pressured private companies to stop Wikileaks from doing essentially what media companies do every day.
