Do You think that the headline above couldn’t ever happen? If Senator Joe Lieberman has his way you could very well wake up one morning to find your Internet dead and a paper on your driveway with that very headline.

AS IF it weren’t bad enough that a handful of bureaucrats over at the FCC  are beset by the howling wolves (howling for our cash) that are Internet providers across America, Senator Joe Lieberman (independent senator – Connecticut) wants to give the president, by way of “Homeland Security” a kill switch…

TO SHUT OFF THE ENTIRE INTERNET ACROSS AMERICA

Yes read those words a few times and then read this .

As the article says, “because there are few limits on the president’s emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.”  What we are talking about friend is giving a handful of bureaucrats the power to make information in American go dark, with the possibility of giving it absolute control.  Here is a terrifying quote from the same article.

“TechAmerica, probably the largest U.S. technology lobby group, said it was concerned about ‘unintended consequences that would result from the legislation’s regulatory approach’ and ‘the potential for absolute power.’ And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman bill’s emergency powers ‘include authority to shutdown or limit Internet traffic on private systems.’”

From bad to worse

And if it weren’t bad enough Joe Lieberman wants to make the novel 1984 a reality:

Lieberman’s proposal would form a powerful and extensive new Homeland Security bureaucracy around the NCCC, including “no less” than two deputy directors, and liaison officers to the Defense Department, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and the Director of National Intelligence. (How much the NCCC director’s duties would overlap with those of the existing assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is not clear.

The NCCC also would be granted the power to monitor the “security status” of private sector Web sites, broadband providers, and other Internet components. Lieberman’s legislation requires the NCCC to provide “situational awareness of the security status” of the portions  of the Internet that are inside the United States — and also those portions in other countries that, if disrupted, could cause significant harm.

Are you scared yet? Quite frankly we here at NPNM are terrified by the propensity for absolute power this would give one man, who is already the Commander in Chief and can effectively declare war on another country without actually declaring war. Think about that for a moment. Placing the power to declare war on anyone in the world and then shut down the internet at the same time in the hands of one man.

 It’s not our fault

Best of all, Senator Lieberman has included a clause that would exempt both the Federal Governement and Internet providers from any liability whatsoever:

To sweeten the deal for industry groups, Lieberman has included a tantalizing offer absent from earlier drafts: immunity from civil lawsuits. If a software company’s programming error costs customers billions, or a broadband provider intentionally cuts off its customers in response to a federal command, neither would be liable.

And yes, it had also occurred to us that this comes just on time to constitute a double barreled shotgun aimed squarely at the FCC and its proposed regulation of Internet providers.