Protecting Cyberspace

Freedom sucks. Let’s get rid of it.

...and let’s start with the Internet.

According to an article on the PC Magazine website this week, The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 (S. 3480) which now moves to the Senate floor for a full vote. The article states: “The bill is an over-arching cyber-security measure, which would, among other things, create an office of cyberspace policy within the White House, which would be led by a Senate-appointed director. It would also create a new center within the Homeland Security Department, which would implement cyber-security policies.”

Hooray! A Cybersace Czar! Now we are safe! (BTW - How many Czars do we have now? Isn’t it ironic that “Czar” is synonymous with totalitarian authority borrowed from our Russian comrades, and that we now have more “Czars” in our government today than the Russians ever did in their entire history?) Only the government would come up with the idea of a top-down authority figure to oversee a system that beautifully evolved around no centralized structure.

The Homeland Security put out their own propaganda combating the notion that this bill would give the President a “kill switch”, going so far as claiming: “Rather than granting a “kill switch,” S. 3480 would make it far less likely for a President to use the broad authority he already has in current law to take over communications networks.”

Really? They are claiming this bill would “restrict” the President’s authority? That would be a first. The President already has "broad authority...in current law"? Why create a bill then?

And what in the world would ever give them the idea that government bureaucrats could administer directions in an emergency better than the private sector that actually created those systems?

In fact, in the previously mentioned propaganda piece, the government even admits: “For too long, the federal government has failed to adequately account for security when procuring information technology products and services. S. 3480 would require the government to develop a strategy to consider security risks in information technology procurements. It would be similar to efforts already under way at the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.”

The bill would “would require the government to develop a strategy to consider security risks”? They haven’t already been doing that?

They openly admit they have been inept at securing their own systems and their solution to that is to have more control over security in the private sector?

Look, risks do exist. That is the inherent “problem” with freedom. Unfortunately, as usual, our government uses fear to create yet another all-encompassing knee-jerk reaction that does more to destroy the very liberties it claims to protect.

Government already has the authority to protect assets already under it’s own control. Maybe it should work on taking care of them first before it starts giving itself any more authority.

Protect the power grid. Protect federal sites. But hands off the private sector in the name of protecting us. Protecting the free flow of information by controlling it is not freedom.