The Saga of the 'Internet Kill Switch'

Note

With thanks to the Thomas M. Cooley Homeland & National Security Law Review

It is often said that trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy – but what about the Internet? While the Internet infrastructure took years to build, would it similarly take seconds to destroy using a 'kill switch?' According to Dyn Research, because the United States has a robust Internet economy with over 40 Internet Service Providers (ISPs), it "is likely to be extremely resistant to Internet disconnection."¹ Despite this assessment, since 2010 Congress has considered bills granting the president "the power to order ISPs to disconnect certain websites, stop the flow of information from certain countries or even create an internet service blackout."²...

Continue reading: http://magazine.milcyber.org/stories/thesagaoftheinternetkillswitch

¹. Jim Cowie, Could It Happen in Your Country?, Dyn Res. (Nov. 30, 2012), http://research.dyn.com/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-your-countr/.

². Betsy Isaacson, How To Get Around The Internet Blackout In Syria—Or A Mass Communications Outage Anywhere, Huffington Post (Nov. 30, 2012, 2:39 PM), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/internet-blackout-syria_n_2218656.html?1354304364.