STEALTH MANEUVERS AGAINST FREE SPEECH
(as protection against cyber attacks)

Despite having been made to publicly read the Constitution and all of its Amendments, during its opening session last month, it seems that our honorable members of Congress just can’t resist tampering and tinkering with one of our most fundamental constitutional rights….free speech.

Apparently they’ve come to realize that the internet poses a major obstacle to any kind of government information controls, so they are now proposing a – Kill Switch – bill to give any President the power to shut down the internet, in part, or all of it, or even specific sites deemed subject to cyber attacks, or other “national crisis” situation.
While the proponents of such a scheme may be seriously well-intentioned one can’t help but wonder about their real motives for such a move. Specifically, they have seen how powerful a communication mechanism the internet can be, especially if it is used to stir up massive popular reaction and opposition against any kind of flim-flam legislation Congress might have in mind. Last year’s ferocious massive Tea Party protest rallies against the Health Care Reform bill, are a prime example of that. And, of course, there are those similar actions last year in Burma, Iran, the WikiLeak episode, and of course the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt.

What the proponents of this idea don’t seem to understand, however, is that the internet, along with its galaxy of related applications, is simply too massive a matrix to be controlled that way. Further, their excuses, their rationales, for attempting it is to defend against possible cyber attack, or face other “national crisis” situations, are specious ones because, to paraphrase a political aphorism…..You can shut down some of the internet some of the time, or even all of it, part of the time, but you can’t shut it all down for all of the time. In short, such a – Kill Switch – idea can only be a temporary cyber attack band aid. It is not a defense against them.

We are supposedly a free and open society, unlike the many examples we see every night on the TV news. Such an approach has no place with us. If security against cyber attack is truly the reason for proposing such a move, the focus should be on ways and means to develop effective cyber counters to such attacks, instead. We surely must have the technological brain power to come up with a better solution than flipping a switch to turn things off. Perhaps something like a cyber version of a –Killer Bee Swarm – system which, at the first hint of hacking or cyber attack, would be unleashed to flood back through all an attack’s back channel links, right to its point of origin. There, the “swarm” would literally destroy the attack launching server or computer system.

Something of that kind would be a much better form of defense (and much like the atom bomb would probably only have to be used once, or twice, to make its point).
But the fact that the proponents of such a bill aren’t thinking in such terms, and worse, will probably have the aparatniks of the Department of Homeland Security designated as the primary agency which would determine if such an attack or crisis situation were in play, and that, does not bode well for our freedom of speech….or otherwise. As I’ve pointed out before we should not overlook that –Homeland Security- translates into German as – Geheim Stadt Polizei – the acronym for which is – GE…STA…PO.
All of which leads us to this question: Is there any kind of possible cyber attack, or national crisis, that could ever justify this further erosion of our liberties?
Let’s hope, we the people, will know the right answer to make to that question.

CENTURION