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"our country's unacceptable vulnerability to massive cyber crime, global cyber espionage, and cyber attacks that could cripple our critical infrastructure."
We presently face cyber espionage threats, they said, as well as "another great vulnerability....to our private sector critical infrastructure - banking, utilities, air/rail/auto traffic control, telecommunications - from disruptive cyber attacks that could literally shut down our way of life."
"This proposed legislation will bring new high-level governmental attention to develop a fully integrated, thoroughly coordinated, public-private partnership to our cyber security efforts in the 21st century" through what's unstated - privacy violations by subverting a free and open Internet.
During a March Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing, Senator Rockefeller said that we'd all be better off if the Internet was never invented. His precise words were: "Would it have been better if we'd never have invented the Internet and had to use paper and pencil or whatever!" Left unsaid was that without a free and open Internet, few alternatives for getting real news and information would exist, at least with the ease and free accessibility computers provide.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Jennifer Granick expressed concern about "giving the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet without necessarily improving security in the ways that matter most. (These bills) should be opposed or radically amended."
Here's what they'll do:
-- federalize critical infrastructure security, including banks, telecommunications and energy, shifting power away from providers and users to Washington;
-- give "the president unfettered authority to shut down Internet traffic in (whatever he calls) an emergency and disconnect critical infrastructure systems on national security grounds....;"
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