Planning a Cybersecurity Auto‐Immune Reaction
A Senate plan to give the president authority to seize control of the Internet in the event of emergency is security malpractice of the highest order. As I told C|Net’s Declan McCullagh, this is a plan for an auto‐immune reaction. When something goes wrong with the Internet, the government will attack that infrastructure and make society weaker.
The Internet is the medium over which we communicate and self‐organize. It’s where emergency response happens—where individuals learn what is happening, communicate it to others, compare notes with friends and loved ones, and determine appropriate responses. (Our appreciation for “first responders” should not be diminshed by noting that they are typically second responders, taking over for private citizens who are almost always first on any scene.)
The Internet is also self‐repairing. When weaknesses in it are exposed, that fact is communicated via Internet, and the appropriate fixes and patches are distributed via Internet. Seizing control of the Internet—to the extent the government can do that—would degrade society’s natural response to emergency, and it would undercut the Internet’s ability to self‐heal.
This idea—of government authority taking over the Internet for our protection—fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the Internet, the nature of our society, and the type of government the Framers prescribed for us.
