Will we see an Obama kill switch implemented this year? If mass demonstrations continue sprouting up across the globe, you could probably bet on it.
If there is one takeaway for the United States from Egypt’s 2011 revolution, it’s that social networking is an unstoppable, bulletproof force that fuels uprisings and gives body to civil unrest. The most powerfully armed regimes on the planet just might be powerless in the face of Twitter and Facebook. How would an Obama kill switch come to pass?
Some background:
At 10:30GMT last Thursday night, there was a massive interruption in Egypt’s internet service—an internet blackout aimed to staunch the flow of Egypt’s popular democratic uprising.
The Telegraph reported, “The shut down involved the withdrawal of more than 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes by Egyptian ISPs, according to Renesys, a networking firm. Only one ISP out of 10, Noor Data Networks, appeared largely unaffected. It connects to the outside world via an undersea cable operated by Telecom Italia.”
It should come as no surprise that a dictator like Hosni Mubarack and his military-backed regime would attempt to sever internet communication in Egypt, as protestors used social media like Twitter and Facebook to communicate and organize, just as occurred in June of 2009.
Twitter was also used in the G20 protests in Pittsburgh, where protestors actually had to sue the city in order to protest, after several protest permits were denied.
And the U.S. response to Americans using Twitter in a time of protests is little known but eye-opening. Activist Elliot Madison used Twitter to help crowds of protesters disperse from advancing police. The government didn’t take kindly to Madison using the very same tactics they had encouraged Iranians to use in 2009, and so they raided Madison’s hotel room. A week later the FBI raided Madison’s home ‘Tortuga House’ in Queens, NY, on a search warrant related to Madison’s Pittsburgh tweets.
The message was profound: Twitter activism used abroad in unfriendly regimes like Iran is okay, but used here at home and it becomes a felony.
Now that Egypt has actually proceeded beyond denying service on Facebook and Twitter to a near wholesale internet blackout, we Americans should remember that Joe Lieberman‘s parting gift, the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset” bill, would give the president the power to declare certain systems national assets in a time of a national emergency.
And while we have been instructed that the bill will in no way limit our free speech, the definition of a national emergency can be as flexible as a frightened president or Congress wants it to be, or as malleable as the Justice Department can make it.
What is to stop a U.S. president from using the “internet kill switch” to create a blackout similar to what we’ve seen in Egypt?
Lately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been quoted in the press admonishing Egypt for the internet blackout, decrying it as a baseless attempt to limit free speech during a time of social upheaval. The aspirations of the people are represented in their tweets and wall posts. So shutting down their ability to communicate freely is inhumane, corrupt and immoral.
Any use of an internet kill switch would most assuredly be framed under an issue of national security, as just about anything vague and offensive to the hearts and minds of the American people often is.
The impact on the economy alone would be reason enough for our pro-business administration to never implement such a measure, unless the days of the dual internet are coming faster than we thought. If business transactions could commence while us plebes were stuck with a permanent Fail Whale, well, more power to the executive branch then.
The idea of an internet kill switch seems unreal, but we’ve learned from this administration that reality is negotiable. But there’s always the bright side: We’ve still got the post.
February 01, 2011 at 12:16 am, Obama said:
Your a hate mongering moron. What if Obama wore a moustache like Hitler? Would that give you more to hate against. You are made of the same cloth as Mubarek. Your postulation is as probable as you making a good U.S. President.
February 01, 2011 at 12:31 am, Jared said:
So protests start getting organized via Twitter and Facebook. Obama/congress/whoever shuts the internet down. Anybody smart is going to swap telephone or cell phone numbers with each other to keep in contact. And I would LOVE to see them shut off America’s telephone and cell phone network.
You can’t stop an angry populace from rebelling save for giving them what they want or killing all of them. Britain tried during the American Revolution, look what happened there.
February 01, 2011 at 12:31 am, Shaun750 said:
I’m from the UK and always loved the idea of the USA and a written constitution.
The internet and youtube has revealed to me,that you are in pretty bad shape.
Both Democrats and Republicans,seem to secretly hate freedom?
If you don’t turn it around,the whole world is in trouble?
Maybe Egypt will be the land of the free,they are certainly brave.
February 01, 2011 at 12:34 am, Robert said:
Nice try. There’s waaaay too much internet infrastructure in North America to make this even plausible, even if we completely ignore the unlikeliness of it even happening in the first place.
February 01, 2011 at 12:34 am, Robert said:
Nice try. There’s waaaay too much internet infrastructure in North America to make this even plausible, even if we completely ignore the unlikeliness of it even happening in the first place.
February 01, 2011 at 12:39 am, He_brews412 said:
this is another example of absurd power madness. only dictators want to stifle free speech.
February 01, 2011 at 12:39 am, He_brews412 said:
this is another example of absurd power madness. only dictators want to stifle free speech.
February 01, 2011 at 12:47 am, Anonymous said:
You are forgetting that he may take away the internet but he can’t take away out vote.
February 01, 2011 at 1:10 am, jabber_wolf said:
I really don’t even see how they can have a kill switch.
there are so many providers out there and means to get to the internet.
The USA started the internet as Arpnet with a mesh network specifically to make it as difficult to disconnect all points. And Its grown as a mesh exponentially since then.
February 01, 2011 at 1:19 am, Jack said:
How about a switch to turn off the government instead? That would be much more useful.
February 01, 2011 at 2:06 am, Timothy Leo Ernest Crowe said:
I buy my service via satellite through another country. All an internet kill switch can do to me is, well nothing. To bad the economy has to be worse off for it. This kill switch just promotes more foreign products.
February 01, 2011 at 5:42 am, xxxx said:
If a president killed the internet Im going to say he might need to leave the country before the people take down the government.
February 01, 2011 at 11:07 pm, SamTheMan said:
If they shut down the Internet in the USA, then we go back to modems and dial-up connections; although they would need to be long distance to countries like Canada.
Any one remember how to use a modem and dial-up? I still do!
They could never shut down the telephone land lines – even the government needs them.
February 07, 2011 at 2:05 pm, john charles webb jr. said:
The 2nd Amendment , is enough of a guarantee to insure that corrupted Presidents who can abolish or order the FCC to keep their hands off of the internet , will be dealt with accordingly .
obama is corrupted :
a damn shame :