What are Obama’s cyber-war powers?
With worries over cyber-attacks growing, questions are beginning to arise about what powers the Obama administration has in defending against coordinated attacks against critical American sites.
The reality of the problems that can be caused by cyber-attacks were truly brought home a few months ago when hackers in the employ North Korean Army brought down a number of sites in South Korea and the United States. There had already been much discussion about the exposure of a computer-controlled electrical power grid and the secure status of official government sites, both public and private, and how well they would do in case of an electronic attack, according to an AP story. When sites started going down due to the actions of a foreign power, those questions struck close to home.
Laws are pending before Congress to better protect the power grid and exposed government sites, but doubts are also being expressed about the preparedness of commercial Web sites, and that brings into question the responsibility of securing such sites: should the government take charge of all internet security, or only for that of government sites, and for that matter, how can one make a meaningful distinction?
The response of Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, has been echoed widely. He says, “The government needs to get its own cybersecurity house in order first before it tries to tell the private sector what to do.” He continues that the laws currently under consideration in the Congress leave the “tough questions to the president, and that isn’t comforting because some presidents will answer those questions in troubling ways.”
Nor does it help that critical government and commercial sites have the internet as a common denominator. If a huge blanket attack against both types of sites is under way, do we need a single switch to simply turn off the internet, even if that were technically possible? Does the President have that right, just as he has other broad war powers?
The internet has historically been a fairly free-wheeling affair, and all of the attempts to protect it also hold the seeds of ways to restrict it. The argument for an unrestricted internet are even stronger and wider than the arguments for a neutral internet, because the question itself is more broad. This administration is being fairly careful to go easy on any restrictions involved in making the internet stronger against attack. In their turn, the commercial community is trying to remain open to help from the government. With the future of the net at stake, this issue deserves our attention and thought, so that these questions may be answered in the most democratic manner.
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