Jun. 22nd, 2010

defrog: (omg onoz)
ITEM: Senator Joseph Lieberman proposes a bill, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), which would grant POTUS unlimited power to shut down part or all of the Internet in the case of a cyberattack (just like the one in Die Hard 4.0, except it’ll be done by Chinese people!).

There’s been a lot of Interwubbery freakout about this – particularly from the conservative sector who seem to think this is Obama’s latest diabolical plot to take over the world.

Which is ironic, of course, since the PCNAA is a bipartisan creature (with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) being a co-sponsor), as was its predecessor, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, co-sponsored by Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). So the idea of an Internet kill switch isn’t even all that new, let alone an exclusively liberal plot.

Tellingly, the Cybersecurity Act eventually dropped the kill switch provision, primarily because it was a stupid idea. It’s no less stupid now.

Never mind the more paranoid fears about Obama randomly turning off Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project web servers or Sarah Palin’s Facebook page or whatever, or that an Internet kill switch is technologically implausible to begin with. Even if you could devise a kill switch mechanism of some kind, using it isn’t likely to thwart a hacker attack (especially one designed with that contingency in mind), and would arguably do more harm than good (not just in the US, but worldwide), as well as create more security problems than it purports to solve.

Indeed, even Lieberman has said the main advantage of having a kill-switch law is to protect Internet service providers from lawsuits. So, for example, if the President orders AT&T to shut down its entire data network to ward off a cyberattack, AT&T’s corporate customers can’t sue AT&T for damages due to the business losses they might have suffered during the shutdown.

Also, says Lieberman, China does it all the time, so why can’t we? This is war, after all.

Put country simple, we "need" an Internet kill switch because Lieberman wants his name on something that sounds bad-ass, and thinks America need a way to make sure anyone inconvenienced by it can’t sue anyone.

That’s not to say hacker attacks on “critical infrastructure” (whatever that means) aren’t a potential threat, whether they’re carried out by terrorists, rogue states or the Russian mafia. But the nature of the threat has been blown way out of proportion. The actual threat of a cyberwar can be easily prevented, or at least minimized, by keeping yr security patches up to date.

So all up, it’s a terrible and useless idea ... but perhaps for different reasons than you might be hearing on yr local news-talk radio station.

Flip the switch,

This is dF
defrog: (guitar smash)
Continuing the “Five Songs That Start With The Letter R” meme assigned by [livejournal.com profile] ayoub  ...

Those of you familiar with Scorsese’s Mean Streets or the Blues Brothers may recognize this selection.



This gets written off as a novelty record, but it’s actually a twisted kind of surreal genius. And catchy!

Whaddaya want for nothing,

This is dF
defrog: (burroughs)
Book reviews: part of a balanced breakfast.

JUST FINISHED

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

I haven’t read Jackson since high school (and those being her two most famous writings, The Haunting Of Hill House and “The Lottery”), and I don’t see her books on the shelves here much. So I thought I’d revisit her with this, her last novel, about Merricat Blackwood, who lives on the edge of a small town with her sister and uncle. They are hated by almost everyone because one of them allegedly murdered the rest of the family with poison. It’s a masterful study of agoraphobia and small-town hatred, and Jackson makes it seem intense yet almost magical in a way. Neil Gaiman cites Jackson as an influence, and you can see it here, so if nothing else, Gaiman fans should definitely try this. And the rest of you should too.

JUST STARTED

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I like Asimov’s robot stories, but the Foundation series always looked too epic for my taste. But [livejournal.com profile] puffdoggydaddy  and [livejournal.com profile] bedsitter23  have assured me repeatedly that it’s worth reading, so I’m taking a chance with it – and so far, it does seem to be paying off.

Recent titles! Haruki Murakami, Mike Carey, Duane Swierczynski, Stanislaw Lem and E.R. Burroughs! )

Life on Mars,

This is dF

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