Personally, I'd prefer to see authority specified in statute rather than a company doing something rather severe just because the President asked and may or may not have had the authority to do so. That's one of my big problems with the warrantless wiretapping. The telco's should not have rolled over just because they were asked to. The action was illegal and only made pseudo-legal in retrospect in a craven act of ass covering.
If we want the President to have the power to do something drastic like shut down air travel, shut down major Internet network segments, apply a wire tap without a warrant, etc, that that is something that needs to happen as part of a Congressionally authorized bill with full visibility from the public. That didn't happen before. It is now. I'm still not sure if I approve of the actual power or not but I'm glad it is being done through actual legal channels for once. You seem to be favoring asking forgiveness for acts committed versus asking permission. This is one of those big philosophical debates...how much power should the Presidency have to protect the country? I'd rather have that debate before the issue comes up this time instead of just seeing what goes down when it does happen. Judah On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Robert Munn<[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Judah McAuley <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Robert Munn<[email protected]> wrote: >> > It's a bad bill and a bad idea. The government needs to stay out of >> private >> > networks. >> >> I would tend to agree by and large but to play devils advocate here, >> how is this different than shutting down all air travel after 9/11? >> > > In principle, I'm not sure what the difference in power is. Bush didn't have > specific authority to shut down air travel, but given the attacks and what > we feared might even be tens of thousands of deaths in the WTC, he would > have been reckless to do otherwise. > > More pragmatically, I don't see cyber attacks as posing the same level of > threat. The essence of the problem after the initial 9/11 attacks was that > every plane in the air was a potential WMD- thousands of individual threats > that could only be dealt with by grounding every plane. I can't imagine a > scenario in a cyberattack that would pose the same risk, and I can't imagine > a responsible company ignoring a *request* from the President to cut of > network segments in the event of a serious attack. > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:303081 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
