With the Flick of a Switch

The revolution in Egypt recently pushed the issue of Internet control into public debate.  As the population in Egypt began to organize and protest, the government, run by Hosni Mubarak, sought to stifle the massive uprising by eliminating the ability of the protesters to communicate and organize by disabling all Internet and cell phone service.  Almost simultaneously, the United States Congress reviewed a legislative proposal giving the president that very same control over US online activity.  The proposal was dismissed in December, but reintroduced in early February.

While the legislation may be, as suggested, an emergency control to shut down "the system that controls the floodgates at the Hoover Dam", it can not be ignored that this control would allow the government the ability to effectively disable the Internet the same way that Mubarak so recently did.  

In his article on the legislative push, PC Magazine writer John C. Dvorak, highlights how many supporters of the bill, such as Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, know very little about the Internet and United States network infrastructure.  The Internet could never be attacked as a whole and the days of e-mail worms are over,  let alone the floodgates of the Hoover Dam opened from a remote location.  Misinformation is the battle being fought, and the greatest weapon against it is the Internet itself.