Sunday, August 30, 2009

Hope and Change!

Remember: It's only overreaching and intrusive when the other guys do it!
The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."
Meanwhile, the Democrats have controlled the legislative branch for coming up on three years now, and the oft-derided USA-PATRIOT Act is still with us. I guess they only hate it during election season.

5 comments:

Tango Juliet said...

But didn't the Dems, who voted for the Patriot Act and its re-authorization in great numbers, tell us that it wouldn't be if they were in charge?

"The Party who looks out for the little guy." Yep. Uh-huh.

Joseph said...

The problem with "vague" laws is that they are applied to a lot of things. Often, these laws can be struck down...but it takes a long time for that to happen and a lot of people can get screwed over in the meantime. That is one reason why laws in the US have a tendency to be very specific. A law like...ahem..."Treason against the State" can be applied to damn near anything, for example.

Standard Mischief said...

...I guess they only hate it during election season.

They only hate it when it is useful to differentiate themselves from the GOP. Otherwise we'd be back from Iraq and Gitmo would be closed by now.

Of course we could say the same thing about RKBA sunshine laws too. It's a sad fact that we've made more progress on restoring the RKBA during Obama's first 100 days than we've manage to do during all of Bush's first term. (and we only got that by constantly berating the NRA until they decided to go on the offensive)

Van Halen said...

One of my Liberal friends was upset that if Palin was elected, books would be banned (since she has a history of doing this) and we'd be put in camps.
Good thing we didn't elect that idiot Palin! Otherwise we'd be seeing her grab control of the internet under some vague 'cybersecurity emergency' law!

Anonymous said...

"I guess they only hate it during election season."

They only hate it when they're not in charge of it. "Course that can be said about anything; they only hate you because they're not in charge of you, for example. -- Lyle