Egypt turns off internet, Lieberman wants same option for US

Original Article

by Cenobyte     Fri Jan 28, 2011

Yep -- Joe Liebermann is still an asshole.

As Egypt cuts Internet access to and from the outside world in its efforts to quash the popular uprising, it is worth revisiting the fact that Joe Liebermann wants the government here to have that very same power.

On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesys explains it here and confirms that "virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide." This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman wants to be able to do the same thing in the US.

This isn't a new move, last year Senators Lieberman and Collins introduced a fairly far-reaching bill that would allow the US Government to shut down civilian access to the internet should a "Cybersecurity Emergency" arise, and keep it offline indefinitely. That version of the bill received some criticism though Lieberman continued to insist it was important. The bill, now referred to as the 'Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act' (PCNAA) has been revised a bit and most notably now removes all judicial oversight. This bill is still currently circulating and will be voted on later this year. Lieberman has said it should be a top priority.

So long, Joe. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Technorati Tags: Internet,Internet Access,Joe Liebermann,Egypt,Current Events