new bill could shut down the internet

Under the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009, the president would have the authority to shut down Internet traffic to protect national security.
Click to expand...

somehow that seems like "the patient is ill, lets shoot him so he doesn't get worse".
 
I really don't understand the difficulty of this.
Click to expand...
It's really not that hard. All internet traffic gets where it's going by means of DNS servers. There are exactly 13 of these "root" name servers which provide DNS for the entire internet, and all of them live in the U.S. of A. Shut them down, and you can basically shut the internet down. Yes, there are name servers that will provide "some" service when the root servers are down, but will not be updated with any new or changed DNS names, and will be quickly overwhelmed with traffic. This is primarily because the caching of names/IP addresses these remote name servers perform is generally very poorly executed.

Even if DNS root servers physically lived outside of the U.S., Obama, at least under the terms of this proposed legislation, could order a shutdown of all communications into or outside of the U.S. and could easily isolate us should he so choose.
 
Funny...wonder what the reaction would be if this were proposed between, say, 9/12/01 and 1/19/09.

I'm just sayin'...

And yes, join, support and donate to the EFF if you care about your online privacy and individual rights.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top