Senate Bill Gives President Control Over Internet in Emergency

A U.S. Senate bill unveiled last spring caught flak from Internet companies and civil liberties groups because it proposed allowing the president to take control of private computers and networks in the event of a national cybersecurity emergency.

So aides to Senate Commerce Committee chairman Jay Rockefeller went to work on a revised bill. But according to an article by CNET News.com‘s Declan McCullough, who obtained a copy of the 55-page proposal, the redrafted legislation does little to allay concerns about privacy and security.

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.” …

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”

While President Obama has promised to improve the nation’s cybersecurity, initial efforts have been hampered by delays and personnel turnover. The administration has yet to fill a new White House cybersecurity coordinator’s position announced in May, and earlier this month Melissa Hathaway, the acting cybersecurity czar, announced she was quitting for personal reasons. Though a Bush administration holdover, she was considered a leading candidate for the permanent job.

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