Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia has introduced legislation that would give the President the authority to declare a “cybersecurity emergency” and take control of certain private, non-governmental networks during such an emergency. The bill is full of vague language and describes powers that can be exercised without any judicial or other review, if necessary for U.S. “national defense and security.”

There are all kinds of problems here, as the Declan McCullagh report enumerates. First, the government has shown itself not be be very good at cybersecurity. For another, the Obama administration invoked national security as the reason not to share a draft intellectual property treaty with the public. (See Say It Ain’t So, Barak, March 14, 2009.) By that standard, the government could take over the Internet on a whim or a scare.

This legislation is seriously flawed.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Security, The Internet and the Web, The role of government—laws and regulations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.