Australian Libertarian Society

A lesson from Egypt – decentralise the internet

For five days recently, the internet in Egypt was off the air because the government contacted ISPs and told them to shut down. As an attempt to suppress anti-government protests it was a failure, but it serves as a heads up for the rest of the world.

Much of the internet’s core infrastructure is located in the United States, where a bill known as the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” is proposed. The bill first appeared in 2010, sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins. It is making an appearance again in 2011, commonly known as the internet “kill-switch” bill.

The idea is that during a “national cyber emergency” (e.g. internet-based attacks on the power grid or hacking into US weapons systems), the President and the Department of Homeland Security would have the authority to shut down private systems across the country, essentially bringing down the internet to stop the attacks until everything could be secured. (Because the internet is a distributed network and the US is a huge country, it’s unlikely the government could take down the whole thing but it could knock out a big chunk.)

However, a provision of the legislation is that it “shall not be subject to judicial review.” In other words, the courts could not declare the legislation unconstitutional, effectively striking it down. Clearly there is more at stake than simply protection from terrorist cyber attack.

We are now starting to hear comments in Australia about “cyber-security” too. As we have no Constitutional safeguards to include or exclude, we could end up with a more complete  government kill-switch than the US.

There are two possible responses – fight the kill-switch politically, and decentralise the internet.

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February 7, 2011 Posted by davidleyonhjelm | General | 8 Comments