February 14, 2011 • 31 mins
During the ousting of Egyptian President Mubarak, the government cut off internet access across Egypt. Could other governments make the same move? Join Chris and Jonathan as they take a closer look at governmental control of the internet.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pullett. I'm
(00:20):
an editor at how stuff works dot com and as usual,
sitting across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Change
the scheme, al to the mood, electrify the boys and girls,
if you'd be so kind, all right, then I have
to say he's got the presentation down at least I
think so. Thank you. You can't see it, so there
(00:42):
was a lot of arm gestures in there that was
there's a little there's a little flailing, um. But I
was not. I was not all lit up for that
particular quote. So if you know where that quote comes from,
you know why I said that. But we're gonna talk
about something actually a little serious, actually quite a bit
serious today, um, something that has been in the news
(01:02):
recently at the time of the recording of this podcast,
which is very early February two eleven, and that is
the idea of an Internet kill switch, some sort of
ability for a person or government or organization to shut
down the Internet or at least are access to the
(01:24):
Internet right now. What spurred this was the events in
Egypt that are going on. As Jonathan and I are
actually recording this. Um, I'm sure by the time you
are will be listening to this, the the fallout will
still be uh relevant to what's going on. Sure, but
one of the things if you are not paying attention
(01:47):
to current events in the world right now, you may
be unaware that there have been in late January and
early February two thousand eleven, series of protests by people
who have have been asking the Egyptian president Hostni Mubarak
to step down from office. Um. He he has as
(02:09):
of this point been in office for more than thirty years,
I believe, took office after the president Onwar Sadat was assassinated,
which I remember from my grade school days. Um so um.
You know, he may be saying, what does this have
to do with technology? Well, in an order in order
to prevent uh the ability of people who are protesting
(02:36):
the governments really really protesting and asking Mubarak to step
down from organizing using Internet based tools such as social
networking sites Twitter, Facebook, etcetera. Um, the Egyptian government basically
shut off access to the internet, um two people within
(02:58):
the country. Now there was one network that stayed up
a little longer um than the rest I believe it
was the NOR group was able to uh provide Internet
access a little bit after that, but they eventually went
dark as well, and the the the Internet was down
for about five days within within Egypt. UM. And UH.
(03:21):
The reason this is uh, the reason this is valid
to many of us who are listening in the United States. UM,
it had been proposed I guess really two thousand ten,
the possibility that to prevent uh cyber attacks on certain
infrastructure electronic infrastructure in the United States, that the President
(03:43):
of the United States would be given the ability to
shut down parts of the Internet within the company the country. Theoretically.
Now the question is can that really be done? Right?
So let's let's clear up a couple of things, because
obviously the case in Egypt got a lot of people
worried because the thought was, well, what if our government,
(04:05):
what if the United States government? Of course, Chris and
I are in the United States, so that's why when
I say our government, I'm talking about them. Uh. What
if what if the government for some reason wanted to
try and suppress civilian communication. Uh, would this give them
give the government the power, specifically the president, the power
(04:27):
to to make communication lines go dark? And it You know,
it's a scary thought because so much of what we
do now depends upon the Internet in one way or another.
It may not even directly depend on it, but indirectly
it will. And so people have gotten really sensitive about
the subject. Uh. The government, for its part, has said
(04:48):
that a lot of the fear is based upon misinterpretations
of the The proposed act, which is called the Protecting
Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. It was introduced by
Joseph Lieberman. Yes, and it was introduced originally in June
of It has since undergone revisions which somewhat define some
(05:15):
of the terms to a greater extent because the original
act had some loose language that definitely had people scared. Yeah,
But like Chris was saying, that the intent of the Act,
at least as it is worded, is not to you
be able to manipulate the Internet in order to hamper
(05:36):
communication among citizens or to infringe upon First Amendment rights.
It is, as he was saying, to protect our infrastructure
in the case of a cyber attack, right. I think
people have interpreted that to mean that, uh, citizens living
within the United States would not be able to access
(06:00):
the Internet at all anymore. And I think the if
I have read the Act correctly, what the uh the
intent is actually to shut down links to certain infrastructure
items from the Internet. So wouldn't keep people off the Internet.
It would say, if you had an electric you know,
(06:21):
electric station that were connected to the Internet, it would
shut access off between the electric and the electric generating
station and the Internet so that it could not be reached.
UM that way, now, I mean, that's that's the way
I've I've read it as a matter of fact. Um. UH.
Senator Lieberman and ranking Member Susan Collins and Senator Tom
(06:42):
Carper actually released a statement on February first about, uh,
you know, drawing the parallel between the situation in Egypt
and this act, and they denounced the the Mubart government's
actions in shutting down all Internet communications in Egypt UM
(07:06):
and attempted to clarify on that and for for instance,
they mentioned that the Communications Act of four UM does
give the president some control over radio communications providers, wire providers,
the wire people don't use it that way. But yeah, yeah,
that Their point was that the that act um Act
(07:31):
was would give the president such broad powers as to
in effect allow the president to do what we're talking
about right now is control or shut down sections of
the Internet, um under certain situations and so communications channels, right,
and and part of that depends upon you interpreting the
(07:53):
Act to extend to Internet communication. I mean, it's it's
not as clearly when the when it was written in
it was not about the Internet, right, I mean, it
was about telegraphs and telephone lines mainly. UM. The to
to to extend it to the Internet now would require
(08:14):
a little bit of interpretation, and I'm sure you would
have people challenging saying this goes beyond the intent of
the original Act. But intent and letter sometimes get a
little muddied in these situations. So Lieberman's point was that
the the Asset Act was really to to define the
(08:36):
limitations and the specific situations in which the president could
use this power, as opposed to one which was much
more broad. Yes, specifically the bill, at least according to
the statement in the clarification that was speaking of just
a moment ago um. They they issued a series of clarifications,
(08:59):
one being that it supposed to be the most critical
assets available to the Internet, including infrastructure to run the
country and the economy. Also, it has to be I'm
sering no, no, I was gonna say, I actually have
the definition for that because it comes from the US
Patriot Act. The critical infrastructure is defined in this UH way.
(09:20):
It says the term critical infrastructure means systems and assets,
whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States
that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets
would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security,
national public health, or safety, or any combination of those matters. Now, UH,
(09:41):
the the Asset Act that Lieberman introduced further defines it
and actually adds in some stuff that made some people nervous,
including UH information providers, which could essentially be I s
s um he he went on in the state meant
to say that it would require the president to if
(10:04):
there was an ongoing or imminent attack that's a quote,
um that could cause national or regional catastrophic events. That's
the kind of thing that would have to be going
on for the President to use this power. And UH
he or she the president UM in this case President Obama,
but whomever after later on down the road, assuming this
(10:25):
stays in in place, would have to use the least
disruptive means feasible again a quote UM. They would have
to notify Congress UM and wouldn't be able to be
continued for more than a hundred twenty days without approval
from Congress thirty day blocks up to a hundred twenty days,
and then at that point you must have Congressional approval
(10:46):
to continue it. And the bill also they, according to
statement UH, specifically forbids actions that would violate the First
Amendment and would not prevent in net traffic, email, and
other forms of communication unless they're involved with critical infrastructure.
So if you were you were I am ing a
(11:07):
friend on you know, a social typical social network that
would not be considered critical infrastructure, you should theoretically um
be able to continue to do that. Yeah, you should
still be able to use things like Facebook or Twitter
to to organize groups and to you know, do whatever
it is you want to do to have those those
peaceable uh public gatherings, that kind of thing. The another
(11:34):
element I remember reading about was that when we're telling
critical infrastructure that The example they use was Hoover Dam. Yes, right, yes,
but yeah, that's what we're really talking about. What we're
talking about critical infrastructure. We're talking about things like power grids,
water supply, water supply, nuclear power plants, the military infrasture,
(11:57):
military infrastructures, Yes, stuff that were it to be compromised,
would mean a terrible, terrible outcome for the citizens in
the United States of America. Right, I assume they o.
Also when they mentioned economy, we're talking about things like
Wall Street, the stock exchanges and things like that, they
would want to be careful to protect that infrastructure as well.
(12:18):
And if we apply a little critical thinking to this
situation and really think about, you know, is is this
is what the government is telling us? Is that really
what they mean? Like, in other words, does it really
you know? Because of course we should be skeptical, we
should question our government, but not blindingly, right, we shouldn't
just assume that what they're telling us is a fib
(12:42):
but we should definitely look into it, look into it, right,
And so part of the looking into it means, all, right, well,
do what do I believe that the government would not
abuse this power in such a way to somehow like
let's say let's say the wiki leaks. Sure, let's say
that the government is as, hey, you know what wiki
leaks is, uh is creating a true danger to national security.
(13:07):
So what we're going to do is now command all
I s I s p s in the United States
to block wiki leaks so that people in the United
States can no longer access it. That's that's something that
people were worried about. Well, under this Act, at least
in theory, you would not be able to do that
unless there were a real perceived threat, like an actual
(13:28):
cybersecurity attack going on that involved wiki leaks in some way.
Otherwise you would not be allowed to just tell all
the ice pas to block it. That doesn't mean that
an I s P couldn't choose to block it, right,
I mean they can because those are private companies. Right.
One of the criticisms I've seen of this had nothing
(13:48):
to do with, um the the potential violation of First
Amendment rights. It had more to do with why is
it the government telling private businesses how to protect themselves
when private businesses are decades ahead of the government as
far as cybersecurity is concerned, Which that that's a viable question.
(14:09):
I mean, you know, the the the kind of extreme
case that I've seen is saying, how can the lawyers
and the politicians who are part of homeland security, who
have no experience in I T security at all, how
can they expect to improve our practices? When we do
this for a living. This is how we build our business,
(14:31):
this is how we provide our services. We know how
to do this. How is someone else who has no
experience in this going to help? That's a that's a
legitimate question. You could ask, well, why does the president
need this power in the first place? Because let's say
that you are an engineer at Hoover Dawn and you
detect that there is some sort of cyber intruder or
(14:54):
a threat to the infrastructure, the computer infrastructure at Hoover down.
There's a a good chance that engineer is going to say,
you know what, we need to shut this down. We
have to close off our our our ports portals to
the outside world as far as the virtual port portals
are concerned, and and take care of this problem. Why
(15:14):
is there a need for a government intervention? And that's
a good question to ask, you know, that's that's probably
a more appropriate question to ask rather than is the
government going to shut down Facebook, because that's less likely
to happen. And I think that again, when you think
about this critically, the government taking strides to say shut
(15:37):
down the Internet. Let's let's take the most extreme case
that the government for some reason has decided to shut
down our access to the Internet so that no one
in the United States can now get on any sort
of Internet service. UM, there would be chaos and there
would be there. You would not solve it problems that way, right, right,
(16:01):
that would just create even more anger and distrust in
the public. I don't I can't imagine any sane government
official saying this is a good idea, because there's very
little chance that a positive outcome will will happen as
a result of it, right, And I think I think
to some degree, we've seen that in what happened in Egypt. UM.
(16:25):
Not only that, but people in Egypt found unique ways
to continue getting their message across UM. I was doing
some reading in preparation for the podcast about some of
the things that they were doing. UM. You know, they
were using. They were initially using the tools that that
(16:46):
so many of us use, different messaging UM and social
networking tools. But when the Internet blockage came down. UM.
As a matter of fact, I was reading on our
recaled by Ellen or Mills who wrote that on in
January twenty six, one of the c net writers and UM.
She said that people were using you know, regular phones,
(17:09):
fax machines, Ham radio. Remember we did our our podcast
on on Ham Radio sometime ago. Now, UM, you know,
even dial up modem usage started to go up again,
so so people had had access to those tools. UM.
You know, they didn't shut down the phone networks, just
the Internet, at least I didn't read anything that indicated
(17:31):
that they shut down the traditional phone networks. And in addition,
Google on Twitter UM started a service for posting tweets
without an Internet connection. Basically, uh speak to tweet allowed
people to say what they wanted to say, and it
would it would transfer it to a Twitter message with
(17:52):
the hashtag Egypt added on to the end of it.
So it you know, outside organizations were actually helping protesters
get the word out. So I mean, I think it
would be very difficult UM to shut it down completely.
And in some cases too, I believe they were using
mash networks UM, which I can't remember if we've ever
(18:14):
mentioned that on the podcast, but we definitely need to
do something on that because I think it's really cool.
One laptop per child also uses mash networks. Um, they're
sort of ad hoc UH networks, usually wireless networks, if
I'm not mistaken. UM, and uh, they don't use the
typical infrastructure on a lot of cases, places like well
in places where they use the one laptop per child
(18:37):
uh product. Um, we're talking about places that don't have
that infrastructure in place. They don't have hard wired phone
lines and cable connections. UM, so they use these local networks,
local internet network networks that aren't actually connect to the Internet,
but they are a small wireless network. UM. I shouldn't
(18:58):
have used internet in net case it. But yeah, I
mean people would were communicating using those as well. So
I don't think even if the government shut everything down,
I don't think it would the traditional infrastructure. I don't
think it would take long before people found new ways
to get in touch with one another, especially considering the
(19:19):
tools we've been given. And further another point, I would
I would suggest that says the government would be very
uh reticent to to take such an extreme action as
to shut down the Internet. So you've already got the
one case where you know you would infuriate your citizens
and you don't really want to do that. There's really yeah,
(19:41):
how would you make things better after that? Right, especially
if ostensibly your goal is eventually to come out of
this with a peaceful resolution, you would you would essentially
end up losing the trust of the citizens and in
a representative government, that means that your government is no
longer valid if the citizens no longer trust in the
government that represents them. Um. You know, assuming that you
(20:04):
continue to be a democracy, that pretty much means you
have guaranteed you are out the door, um as soon
as possible, in fact, probably before even elections would roll around.
So that's one part. But another part is the fact
that so many businesses rely upon the Internet, particularly in
(20:24):
the United States, but all around the world. And of course,
you know, the Internet has made the world a you know,
a global a true global economy. So you've got businesses
that are centered in America that would be deeply affected.
But you've got businesses in other countries as well that
have interests in America, they have um, they have infrastructure
(20:47):
in America that would be very much affected by the
Internet being shut down within the borders of the United
States of America. You're talking about losing billions of dollars
worth of revenue and and doing intense economic damage. In fact,
one might be able to argue that shutting down the
(21:07):
Internet would cause more damage economically than if you had
let the Internet stay up right like that, you know,
one of the guidelines to this act is that you
would only invoke it if there were an imminent threat
to national economic security. Well, if you were to shut
down the whole Internet, you would create that threat. Actually,
(21:30):
So that's the other reason I don't think it's very
likely to happen in the United States. That doesn't mean
that we wouldn't see this act UH put into place,
or even take an advantage of It's just that I
think we would be more likely to see it the
way that we're told it's intended, right, so that if
there were a concentrated attacks, say on the Pentagon, that
(21:51):
the President would have the authority to tell Pentagon officials,
all right, close off all routes to the Internet until
we resolve this. Again, you could argue, why does this
even need to be a presidential thing? But you could
also argue, while there, what if you have some company
that is or or some person, some organization there's in
(22:12):
some way UH partnering with these attacks that you know,
maybe it's not that they're the victim, but are rather
a conspirator, you know, a co conspirator. Well, in that case,
you do have to maybe rely on a higher authority
than just the company head to take UH, to take
take control of the situation and to to try and
(22:35):
limit whatever harm could come of it. Um. It's still scary. Yeah,
you know, you see, we've seen this happen before, not
just in Egypt, we also in Iran. We saw it
um a couple of years ago where there were the
Iranian protests. Also a lot of people were trying to
(22:57):
um UH organized through Twitter and Facebook, and we saw
that the Iranian government tried to UM confuse the issue
as much as possible, or at least those are the allegations, right.
I mean, it's hard for me to say, I don't
I can't understand the language, so I have to rely
(23:17):
upon the reports I'm seeing, and some of the reports
were not necessarily the most unbiased, so it's hard for
me to draw my conclusions. But that's based upon the
information that I encountered. Yeah, it's um, it definitely shows
how dependent we are on the Internet for all kinds
of things. The the outcry over something like this would
(23:40):
not have been nearly as serious in say, as it
is now because so many people are are you know,
used the Internet for communication, keeping up with friends and
family um and uh and for commerce um that you know,
we've we've come to expect that it's you know, I've
(24:03):
actually heard the the the idea thrown out in the
last few days that Internet access may be considered a
human right, which is a wow, that's that's sort of
a topic for another podcast really, but you know, I again,
I don't think this would have even been considered a
few years ago. And now the idea that you might
(24:24):
have a right to access this you know, amazing communications
tool that we all use now. Um. You know it's
funny because I wouldn't have necessarily thought of that just
a few years ago, but now so many people are
relying on it that that it is a reasonable debate
(24:45):
to have whether or not it's a um, a human
right to have that kind of access. But these tools
have also made it possible for protesters and demonstrators, whether
they are peaceful or violent, organize in ways that they
had haven't been before. So it's scary for governments too.
I mean, the Iranian government had a hard time because
(25:06):
the mobs or it wasn't it wasn't an Iran, it
was where it was Belarus. That was even before that,
where mobs would gather by text message they would say okay,
be at the square at twelve oh seven. It was
a flash mob. It was a flash mob. People would
show up, they would start to protest, the authorities would
come to crack them, crack down on them, and they
would have already disseminated the location of the next gathering.
(25:29):
So by the time that the authorities converged on the area,
they were gone. The protesters had gone, They had converged
on a new area, and they were they were able
to stay one or maybe even five steps of the
authorities by using these tools. It makes sense that a
government would want to be able to do that in
those instances. So that I think two is why it
seems scary, because people go, yeah, you know what, they
(25:52):
might want to do that, and what if they do
it to me. I don't want that to happen. Yeah,
we we've seen the president, which is what makes it scary.
But you see, I could see the other side why
they would want to. Certainly, it is definitely a scary threat.
It's one of those that the more you think about,
the more you realize it's less likely to have in
the United States. Now, I will never say it's impossible. No,
(26:14):
I don't think it's impossible anywhere it would be. It
would be monumentally surprising to me if it did happen
the United States, simply for the reasons I stated before,
which is that I think essentially you would have to
have a president who was saying, you know what we're
I'm just I'm going to discard the entire American system
of government for this to work, because otherwise, you're, like
(26:35):
I said, you're gonna end up voting everyone out as
soon as possible if you felt like you've been betrayed. Right, So,
in a democracy, this kind of approach doesn't really work.
If you want to read the bill, it's actually available online.
Um it is four and ten pages long. Yeah, the
first hundred pages of that have been struck through. I
(26:56):
do think that, um, yeah, I think that in light
of recent events in Egypt and some of the other
countries in the Middle East, where I mean that the
Tunisian UH protests I think have sort of helped uh
some momentum in that regard. I think that it may
(27:17):
cause people to give this bill another look, either you know,
go through and revise it again or strike it down
and start over from scratch. But UM, I I think
it's one of those things where an actual real life
event or series of events may add some perspective. Yeah,
(27:38):
if you want to read it, it's uh, it's s
period three for eight zero. That is the number associated
with this particular act um and it's a it's long,
you know, and it's and it's full of legal ease
because I mean it's you know, you gotta remember, we
got lawyers running this country, so that'll happen at any rate.
(28:02):
But it's it's good to actually be aware of what's happening.
And like Chris said, there have been a UM there's
actually been a couple of documents that have come out
trying to um clear up matters about this act and
what is covered versus what isn't covered. Uh, you were
talking about one that was released in February. Correct. Yes,
(28:23):
the one I have it was actually released back in
in June of it's called myth versus Reality exactly. They
keep having to clear up a lot of the issues.
I'm sure they use a lot of the same verbiage
because it's the same questions over and over, I'm sure,
and that I mean, it's a very emotionally charged topic,
so it's understandable, yes, and yeah, whether whether or not
(28:46):
you necessarily feel that having access to the Internet as
a human right, you can. It's hard to deny that
it's a seriously emotional issue. People want at least they
want access to the internet, is not need access to
the Internet. So it's definitely something that's going to concern people.
And I wanted to add if I may, if you're
(29:06):
looking for this UH, you'll have an easy time finding
and if you go to the Library of Congress is
UM website, you can also look for all kinds of
UM legislation United States legislation. It's called Thomas UH in
the spirit of Thomas Jefferson goes the the quote at
the top of the page, but it's UM. You know,
HTTP call and slash last. There's no WS here, so
(29:29):
it's just Thomas th H O M A S dot
l o C. That's Library of Congress dot gov, Thomas
dot l oc, dot GOVN you can look up the
status of different bills. You could see which legislators have
introduced what legislation. It's actually a pretty interesting tool. It's
very very useful. Uh. And it's an easy way to
track this one down if you're interested in doing it.
Eve unless the top five weekly pieces of legislation people
(29:50):
you're looking up, and I would imagine that this one
is one of them. Yeah, I'm sure we'll ranked pretty
high up there. But this week, let's let's conclude just
by saying, remember, according to the Act, this isn't about
shutting off the Internet. It's about protecting various parts of
the infrastructure from cyber attacks. Uh. It's debatable about whether
(30:11):
or not that could be extended to the point that
it would affect all Americans across the United States. Uh. So,
I mean, I'm not saying that those worries are completely unfounded.
I'm just saying that I think it unlikely to see
that scenario happen, right right, And I think now that
it's become something more in the public eye, people are
(30:35):
going to take note and you'll see people writing their
legislators and saying, you know, what is going on with
this bill. So I think it'll probably be in the
news and we'll be seeing more clarification or movement on it.
Thirty page version of the Act to read next time
we talk about this, Yes, because that's the way we work.
(30:57):
So if you guys have any opinions, I'm sure are
a lot of you have opinions on this subject, I
have no doubt. Please let us know. You can let
us know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is
tech Stuff h s W. Or you can send us
an email. That address is tech stuff at how stuff
works dot com and Chris and I will talk to
you again, assuming the government lets us really soon, all right.
(31:21):
For moral nos and thousands of other topics, visit how
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reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pullett. I'm
(00:20):
an editor at how stuff works dot com and as usual,
sitting across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Change
the scheme, al to the mood, electrify the boys and girls,
if you'd be so kind, all right, then I have
to say he's got the presentation down at least I
think so. Thank you. You can't see it, so there
(00:42):
was a lot of arm gestures in there that was
there's a little there's a little flailing, um. But I
was not. I was not all lit up for that
particular quote. So if you know where that quote comes from,
you know why I said that. But we're gonna talk
about something actually a little serious, actually quite a bit
serious today, um, something that has been in the news
(01:02):
recently at the time of the recording of this podcast,
which is very early February two eleven, and that is
the idea of an Internet kill switch, some sort of
ability for a person or government or organization to shut
down the Internet or at least are access to the
(01:24):
Internet right now. What spurred this was the events in
Egypt that are going on. As Jonathan and I are
actually recording this. Um, I'm sure by the time you
are will be listening to this, the the fallout will
still be uh relevant to what's going on. Sure, but
one of the things if you are not paying attention
(01:47):
to current events in the world right now, you may
be unaware that there have been in late January and
early February two thousand eleven, series of protests by people
who have have been asking the Egyptian president Hostni Mubarak
to step down from office. Um. He he has as
(02:09):
of this point been in office for more than thirty years,
I believe, took office after the president Onwar Sadat was assassinated,
which I remember from my grade school days. Um so um.
You know, he may be saying, what does this have
to do with technology? Well, in an order in order
to prevent uh the ability of people who are protesting
(02:36):
the governments really really protesting and asking Mubarak to step
down from organizing using Internet based tools such as social
networking sites Twitter, Facebook, etcetera. Um, the Egyptian government basically
shut off access to the internet, um two people within
(02:58):
the country. Now there was one network that stayed up
a little longer um than the rest I believe it
was the NOR group was able to uh provide Internet
access a little bit after that, but they eventually went
dark as well, and the the the Internet was down
for about five days within within Egypt. UM. And UH.
(03:21):
The reason this is uh, the reason this is valid
to many of us who are listening in the United States. UM,
it had been proposed I guess really two thousand ten,
the possibility that to prevent uh cyber attacks on certain
infrastructure electronic infrastructure in the United States, that the President
(03:43):
of the United States would be given the ability to
shut down parts of the Internet within the company the country. Theoretically.
Now the question is can that really be done? Right?
So let's let's clear up a couple of things, because
obviously the case in Egypt got a lot of people
worried because the thought was, well, what if our government,
(04:05):
what if the United States government? Of course, Chris and
I are in the United States, so that's why when
I say our government, I'm talking about them. Uh. What
if what if the government for some reason wanted to
try and suppress civilian communication. Uh, would this give them
give the government the power, specifically the president, the power
(04:27):
to to make communication lines go dark? And it You know,
it's a scary thought because so much of what we
do now depends upon the Internet in one way or another.
It may not even directly depend on it, but indirectly
it will. And so people have gotten really sensitive about
the subject. Uh. The government, for its part, has said
(04:48):
that a lot of the fear is based upon misinterpretations
of the The proposed act, which is called the Protecting
Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. It was introduced by
Joseph Lieberman. Yes, and it was introduced originally in June
of It has since undergone revisions which somewhat define some
(05:15):
of the terms to a greater extent because the original
act had some loose language that definitely had people scared. Yeah,
But like Chris was saying, that the intent of the Act,
at least as it is worded, is not to you
be able to manipulate the Internet in order to hamper
(05:36):
communication among citizens or to infringe upon First Amendment rights.
It is, as he was saying, to protect our infrastructure
in the case of a cyber attack, right. I think
people have interpreted that to mean that, uh, citizens living
within the United States would not be able to access
(06:00):
the Internet at all anymore. And I think the if
I have read the Act correctly, what the uh the
intent is actually to shut down links to certain infrastructure
items from the Internet. So wouldn't keep people off the Internet.
It would say, if you had an electric you know,
(06:21):
electric station that were connected to the Internet, it would
shut access off between the electric and the electric generating
station and the Internet so that it could not be reached.
UM that way, now, I mean, that's that's the way
I've I've read it as a matter of fact. Um. UH.
Senator Lieberman and ranking Member Susan Collins and Senator Tom
(06:42):
Carper actually released a statement on February first about, uh,
you know, drawing the parallel between the situation in Egypt
and this act, and they denounced the the Mubart government's
actions in shutting down all Internet communications in Egypt UM
(07:06):
and attempted to clarify on that and for for instance,
they mentioned that the Communications Act of four UM does
give the president some control over radio communications providers, wire providers,
the wire people don't use it that way. But yeah, yeah,
that Their point was that the that act um Act
(07:31):
was would give the president such broad powers as to
in effect allow the president to do what we're talking
about right now is control or shut down sections of
the Internet, um under certain situations and so communications channels, right,
and and part of that depends upon you interpreting the
(07:53):
Act to extend to Internet communication. I mean, it's it's
not as clearly when the when it was written in
it was not about the Internet, right, I mean, it
was about telegraphs and telephone lines mainly. UM. The to
to to extend it to the Internet now would require
(08:14):
a little bit of interpretation, and I'm sure you would
have people challenging saying this goes beyond the intent of
the original Act. But intent and letter sometimes get a
little muddied in these situations. So Lieberman's point was that
the the Asset Act was really to to define the
(08:36):
limitations and the specific situations in which the president could
use this power, as opposed to one which was much
more broad. Yes, specifically the bill, at least according to
the statement in the clarification that was speaking of just
a moment ago um. They they issued a series of clarifications,
(08:59):
one being that it supposed to be the most critical
assets available to the Internet, including infrastructure to run the
country and the economy. Also, it has to be I'm
sering no, no, I was gonna say, I actually have
the definition for that because it comes from the US
Patriot Act. The critical infrastructure is defined in this UH way.
(09:20):
It says the term critical infrastructure means systems and assets,
whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States
that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets
would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security,
national public health, or safety, or any combination of those matters. Now, UH,
(09:41):
the the Asset Act that Lieberman introduced further defines it
and actually adds in some stuff that made some people nervous,
including UH information providers, which could essentially be I s
s um he he went on in the state meant
to say that it would require the president to if
(10:04):
there was an ongoing or imminent attack that's a quote,
um that could cause national or regional catastrophic events. That's
the kind of thing that would have to be going
on for the President to use this power. And UH
he or she the president UM in this case President Obama,
but whomever after later on down the road, assuming this
(10:25):
stays in in place, would have to use the least
disruptive means feasible again a quote UM. They would have
to notify Congress UM and wouldn't be able to be
continued for more than a hundred twenty days without approval
from Congress thirty day blocks up to a hundred twenty days,
and then at that point you must have Congressional approval
(10:46):
to continue it. And the bill also they, according to
statement UH, specifically forbids actions that would violate the First
Amendment and would not prevent in net traffic, email, and
other forms of communication unless they're involved with critical infrastructure.
So if you were you were I am ing a
(11:07):
friend on you know, a social typical social network that
would not be considered critical infrastructure, you should theoretically um
be able to continue to do that. Yeah, you should
still be able to use things like Facebook or Twitter
to to organize groups and to you know, do whatever
it is you want to do to have those those
peaceable uh public gatherings, that kind of thing. The another
(11:34):
element I remember reading about was that when we're telling
critical infrastructure that The example they use was Hoover Dam. Yes, right, yes,
but yeah, that's what we're really talking about. What we're
talking about critical infrastructure. We're talking about things like power grids,
water supply, water supply, nuclear power plants, the military infrasture,
(11:57):
military infrastructures, Yes, stuff that were it to be compromised,
would mean a terrible, terrible outcome for the citizens in
the United States of America. Right, I assume they o.
Also when they mentioned economy, we're talking about things like
Wall Street, the stock exchanges and things like that, they
would want to be careful to protect that infrastructure as well.
(12:18):
And if we apply a little critical thinking to this
situation and really think about, you know, is is this
is what the government is telling us? Is that really
what they mean? Like, in other words, does it really
you know? Because of course we should be skeptical, we
should question our government, but not blindingly, right, we shouldn't
just assume that what they're telling us is a fib
(12:42):
but we should definitely look into it, look into it, right,
And so part of the looking into it means, all, right, well,
do what do I believe that the government would not
abuse this power in such a way to somehow like
let's say let's say the wiki leaks. Sure, let's say
that the government is as, hey, you know what wiki
leaks is, uh is creating a true danger to national security.
(13:07):
So what we're going to do is now command all
I s I s p s in the United States
to block wiki leaks so that people in the United
States can no longer access it. That's that's something that
people were worried about. Well, under this Act, at least
in theory, you would not be able to do that
unless there were a real perceived threat, like an actual
(13:28):
cybersecurity attack going on that involved wiki leaks in some way.
Otherwise you would not be allowed to just tell all
the ice pas to block it. That doesn't mean that
an I s P couldn't choose to block it, right,
I mean they can because those are private companies. Right.
One of the criticisms I've seen of this had nothing
(13:48):
to do with, um the the potential violation of First
Amendment rights. It had more to do with why is
it the government telling private businesses how to protect themselves
when private businesses are decades ahead of the government as
far as cybersecurity is concerned, Which that that's a viable question.
(14:09):
I mean, you know, the the the kind of extreme
case that I've seen is saying, how can the lawyers
and the politicians who are part of homeland security, who
have no experience in I T security at all, how
can they expect to improve our practices? When we do
this for a living. This is how we build our business,
(14:31):
this is how we provide our services. We know how
to do this. How is someone else who has no
experience in this going to help? That's a that's a
legitimate question. You could ask, well, why does the president
need this power in the first place? Because let's say
that you are an engineer at Hoover Dawn and you
detect that there is some sort of cyber intruder or
(14:54):
a threat to the infrastructure, the computer infrastructure at Hoover down.
There's a a good chance that engineer is going to say,
you know what, we need to shut this down. We
have to close off our our our ports portals to
the outside world as far as the virtual port portals
are concerned, and and take care of this problem. Why
(15:14):
is there a need for a government intervention? And that's
a good question to ask, you know, that's that's probably
a more appropriate question to ask rather than is the
government going to shut down Facebook, because that's less likely
to happen. And I think that again, when you think
about this critically, the government taking strides to say shut
(15:37):
down the Internet. Let's let's take the most extreme case
that the government for some reason has decided to shut
down our access to the Internet so that no one
in the United States can now get on any sort
of Internet service. UM, there would be chaos and there
would be there. You would not solve it problems that way, right, right,
(16:01):
that would just create even more anger and distrust in
the public. I don't I can't imagine any sane government
official saying this is a good idea, because there's very
little chance that a positive outcome will will happen as
a result of it, right, And I think I think
to some degree, we've seen that in what happened in Egypt. UM.
(16:25):
Not only that, but people in Egypt found unique ways
to continue getting their message across UM. I was doing
some reading in preparation for the podcast about some of
the things that they were doing. UM. You know, they
were using. They were initially using the tools that that
(16:46):
so many of us use, different messaging UM and social
networking tools. But when the Internet blockage came down. UM.
As a matter of fact, I was reading on our
recaled by Ellen or Mills who wrote that on in
January twenty six, one of the c net writers and UM.
She said that people were using you know, regular phones,
(17:09):
fax machines, Ham radio. Remember we did our our podcast
on on Ham Radio sometime ago. Now, UM, you know,
even dial up modem usage started to go up again,
so so people had had access to those tools. UM.
You know, they didn't shut down the phone networks, just
the Internet, at least I didn't read anything that indicated
(17:31):
that they shut down the traditional phone networks. And in addition,
Google on Twitter UM started a service for posting tweets
without an Internet connection. Basically, uh speak to tweet allowed
people to say what they wanted to say, and it
would it would transfer it to a Twitter message with
(17:52):
the hashtag Egypt added on to the end of it.
So it you know, outside organizations were actually helping protesters
get the word out. So I mean, I think it
would be very difficult UM to shut it down completely.
And in some cases too, I believe they were using
mash networks UM, which I can't remember if we've ever
(18:14):
mentioned that on the podcast, but we definitely need to
do something on that because I think it's really cool.
One laptop per child also uses mash networks. Um, they're
sort of ad hoc UH networks, usually wireless networks, if
I'm not mistaken. UM, and uh, they don't use the
typical infrastructure on a lot of cases, places like well
in places where they use the one laptop per child
(18:37):
uh product. Um, we're talking about places that don't have
that infrastructure in place. They don't have hard wired phone
lines and cable connections. UM, so they use these local networks,
local internet network networks that aren't actually connect to the Internet,
but they are a small wireless network. UM. I shouldn't
(18:58):
have used internet in net case it. But yeah, I
mean people would were communicating using those as well. So
I don't think even if the government shut everything down,
I don't think it would the traditional infrastructure. I don't
think it would take long before people found new ways
to get in touch with one another, especially considering the
(19:19):
tools we've been given. And further another point, I would
I would suggest that says the government would be very
uh reticent to to take such an extreme action as
to shut down the Internet. So you've already got the
one case where you know you would infuriate your citizens
and you don't really want to do that. There's really yeah,
(19:41):
how would you make things better after that? Right, especially
if ostensibly your goal is eventually to come out of
this with a peaceful resolution, you would you would essentially
end up losing the trust of the citizens and in
a representative government, that means that your government is no
longer valid if the citizens no longer trust in the
government that represents them. Um. You know, assuming that you
(20:04):
continue to be a democracy, that pretty much means you
have guaranteed you are out the door, um as soon
as possible, in fact, probably before even elections would roll around.
So that's one part. But another part is the fact
that so many businesses rely upon the Internet, particularly in
(20:24):
the United States, but all around the world. And of course,
you know, the Internet has made the world a you know,
a global a true global economy. So you've got businesses
that are centered in America that would be deeply affected.
But you've got businesses in other countries as well that
have interests in America, they have um, they have infrastructure
(20:47):
in America that would be very much affected by the
Internet being shut down within the borders of the United
States of America. You're talking about losing billions of dollars
worth of revenue and and doing intense economic damage. In fact,
one might be able to argue that shutting down the
(21:07):
Internet would cause more damage economically than if you had
let the Internet stay up right like that, you know,
one of the guidelines to this act is that you
would only invoke it if there were an imminent threat
to national economic security. Well, if you were to shut
down the whole Internet, you would create that threat. Actually,
(21:30):
So that's the other reason I don't think it's very
likely to happen in the United States. That doesn't mean
that we wouldn't see this act UH put into place,
or even take an advantage of It's just that I
think we would be more likely to see it the
way that we're told it's intended, right, so that if
there were a concentrated attacks, say on the Pentagon, that
(21:51):
the President would have the authority to tell Pentagon officials,
all right, close off all routes to the Internet until
we resolve this. Again, you could argue, why does this
even need to be a presidential thing? But you could
also argue, while there, what if you have some company
that is or or some person, some organization there's in
(22:12):
some way UH partnering with these attacks that you know,
maybe it's not that they're the victim, but are rather
a conspirator, you know, a co conspirator. Well, in that case,
you do have to maybe rely on a higher authority
than just the company head to take UH, to take
take control of the situation and to to try and
(22:35):
limit whatever harm could come of it. Um. It's still scary. Yeah,
you know, you see, we've seen this happen before, not
just in Egypt, we also in Iran. We saw it
um a couple of years ago where there were the
Iranian protests. Also a lot of people were trying to
(22:57):
um UH organized through Twitter and Facebook, and we saw
that the Iranian government tried to UM confuse the issue
as much as possible, or at least those are the allegations, right.
I mean, it's hard for me to say, I don't
I can't understand the language, so I have to rely
(23:17):
upon the reports I'm seeing, and some of the reports
were not necessarily the most unbiased, so it's hard for
me to draw my conclusions. But that's based upon the
information that I encountered. Yeah, it's um, it definitely shows
how dependent we are on the Internet for all kinds
of things. The the outcry over something like this would
(23:40):
not have been nearly as serious in say, as it
is now because so many people are are you know,
used the Internet for communication, keeping up with friends and
family um and uh and for commerce um that you know,
we've we've come to expect that it's you know, I've
(24:03):
actually heard the the the idea thrown out in the
last few days that Internet access may be considered a
human right, which is a wow, that's that's sort of
a topic for another podcast really, but you know, I again,
I don't think this would have even been considered a
few years ago. And now the idea that you might
(24:24):
have a right to access this you know, amazing communications
tool that we all use now. Um. You know it's
funny because I wouldn't have necessarily thought of that just
a few years ago, but now so many people are
relying on it that that it is a reasonable debate
(24:45):
to have whether or not it's a um, a human
right to have that kind of access. But these tools
have also made it possible for protesters and demonstrators, whether
they are peaceful or violent, organize in ways that they
had haven't been before. So it's scary for governments too.
I mean, the Iranian government had a hard time because
(25:06):
the mobs or it wasn't it wasn't an Iran, it
was where it was Belarus. That was even before that,
where mobs would gather by text message they would say okay,
be at the square at twelve oh seven. It was
a flash mob. It was a flash mob. People would
show up, they would start to protest, the authorities would
come to crack them, crack down on them, and they
would have already disseminated the location of the next gathering.
(25:29):
So by the time that the authorities converged on the area,
they were gone. The protesters had gone, They had converged
on a new area, and they were they were able
to stay one or maybe even five steps of the
authorities by using these tools. It makes sense that a
government would want to be able to do that in
those instances. So that I think two is why it
seems scary, because people go, yeah, you know what, they
(25:52):
might want to do that, and what if they do
it to me. I don't want that to happen. Yeah,
we we've seen the president, which is what makes it scary.
But you see, I could see the other side why
they would want to. Certainly, it is definitely a scary threat.
It's one of those that the more you think about,
the more you realize it's less likely to have in
the United States. Now, I will never say it's impossible. No,
(26:14):
I don't think it's impossible anywhere it would be. It
would be monumentally surprising to me if it did happen
the United States, simply for the reasons I stated before,
which is that I think essentially you would have to
have a president who was saying, you know what we're
I'm just I'm going to discard the entire American system
of government for this to work, because otherwise, you're, like
(26:35):
I said, you're gonna end up voting everyone out as
soon as possible if you felt like you've been betrayed. Right, So,
in a democracy, this kind of approach doesn't really work.
If you want to read the bill, it's actually available online.
Um it is four and ten pages long. Yeah, the
first hundred pages of that have been struck through. I
(26:56):
do think that, um, yeah, I think that in light
of recent events in Egypt and some of the other
countries in the Middle East, where I mean that the
Tunisian UH protests I think have sort of helped uh
some momentum in that regard. I think that it may
(27:17):
cause people to give this bill another look, either you know,
go through and revise it again or strike it down
and start over from scratch. But UM, I I think
it's one of those things where an actual real life
event or series of events may add some perspective. Yeah,
(27:38):
if you want to read it, it's uh, it's s
period three for eight zero. That is the number associated
with this particular act um and it's a it's long,
you know, and it's and it's full of legal ease
because I mean it's you know, you gotta remember, we
got lawyers running this country, so that'll happen at any rate.
(28:02):
But it's it's good to actually be aware of what's happening.
And like Chris said, there have been a UM there's
actually been a couple of documents that have come out
trying to um clear up matters about this act and
what is covered versus what isn't covered. Uh, you were
talking about one that was released in February. Correct. Yes,
(28:23):
the one I have it was actually released back in
in June of it's called myth versus Reality exactly. They
keep having to clear up a lot of the issues.
I'm sure they use a lot of the same verbiage
because it's the same questions over and over, I'm sure,
and that I mean, it's a very emotionally charged topic,
so it's understandable, yes, and yeah, whether whether or not
(28:46):
you necessarily feel that having access to the Internet as
a human right, you can. It's hard to deny that
it's a seriously emotional issue. People want at least they
want access to the internet, is not need access to
the Internet. So it's definitely something that's going to concern people.
And I wanted to add if I may, if you're
(29:06):
looking for this UH, you'll have an easy time finding
and if you go to the Library of Congress is
UM website, you can also look for all kinds of
UM legislation United States legislation. It's called Thomas UH in
the spirit of Thomas Jefferson goes the the quote at
the top of the page, but it's UM. You know,
HTTP call and slash last. There's no WS here, so
(29:29):
it's just Thomas th H O M A S dot
l o C. That's Library of Congress dot gov, Thomas
dot l oc, dot GOVN you can look up the
status of different bills. You could see which legislators have
introduced what legislation. It's actually a pretty interesting tool. It's
very very useful. Uh. And it's an easy way to
track this one down if you're interested in doing it.
Eve unless the top five weekly pieces of legislation people
(29:50):
you're looking up, and I would imagine that this one
is one of them. Yeah, I'm sure we'll ranked pretty
high up there. But this week, let's let's conclude just
by saying, remember, according to the Act, this isn't about
shutting off the Internet. It's about protecting various parts of
the infrastructure from cyber attacks. Uh. It's debatable about whether
(30:11):
or not that could be extended to the point that
it would affect all Americans across the United States. Uh. So,
I mean, I'm not saying that those worries are completely unfounded.
I'm just saying that I think it unlikely to see
that scenario happen, right right, And I think now that
it's become something more in the public eye, people are
(30:35):
going to take note and you'll see people writing their
legislators and saying, you know, what is going on with
this bill. So I think it'll probably be in the
news and we'll be seeing more clarification or movement on it.
Thirty page version of the Act to read next time
we talk about this, Yes, because that's the way we work.
(30:57):
So if you guys have any opinions, I'm sure are
a lot of you have opinions on this subject, I
have no doubt. Please let us know. You can let
us know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is
tech Stuff h s W. Or you can send us
an email. That address is tech stuff at how stuff
works dot com and Chris and I will talk to
you again, assuming the government lets us really soon, all right.
(31:21):
For moral nos and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. So learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
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