The U.S. government couldn't shut down the Internet, right? Think again.

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

The U.S. government couldn’t shut down the Internet, right? Think again.

By Jessica Rosenworcel
March 8, 2020 at 4:14 p.m. EDT

Jessica Rosenworcel has been a member of the Federal Communications Commission since 2012. This article is adapted from her keynote remarks at this year’s State of the Net Conference.

In the age of the always-on Internet, what happens when a government decides to turn it off? For many people around the world, this is no longer a theoretical question.

Last year, Internet service was shut off for roughly seven months in India’s Kashmir Valley, affecting 7 million people. The government of the world’s largest democracy justified the blackout by saying it was necessary to avoid protests and loss of life. In Bangladesh, a government-directed shut-off disrupted humanitarian and emergency services in Rohingya refugee camps for more than six weeks in 2019. Congo blacked out the Internet for 20 days after last December’s elections, preventing electoral observers from relaying information from rural polling stations. Ethiopian authorities shut down the Internet for three days last June to prevent student cheating on national exams. In January, there were outages in Iran during protests over the downing of a Ukrainian plane, following a week-long blackout last year after the price of fuel went up.

-snip-

You might think it could never happen here in the United States. But think again.

To understand how, start with the Communications Act of 1934 — which, though it has been amended and updated several times, is essentially an 86-year-old law that is still the framework for U.S. communications policy today.

Section 706 of this law allows the president to shut down or take control of “any facility or station for wire communication” if he proclaims “that there exists a state or threat of war involving the United States.” With respect to wireless communications, suspending service is permitted not only in a “war or a threat of war,” but merely if there is a presidential proclamation of a “state of public peril” or simply a “disaster or other national emergency.” There is no requirement in the law for the president to provide any advance notice to Congress.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-government-couldnt-shut-down-the-internet-right-think-again/2020/03/06/6074dc86-5fe5-11ea-b014-4fafa866bb81_story.html

[dewsgirl]

1. They have lost control of the narrative and there is no way

they can try to control social media, like China did. This is one of my biggest worries, especially with the US stories getting darker and darker with each passing day.

[Perseus]

4. People in Venezuela used to say "It Can't Happen Here!" when people who knew Chavez told them

that if Chavez got elected communism would take over the country, they did not believe it, did nothing, and it happened.

There is a good book written in 1935, the title? "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis .

The book is exactly about that, I think he had a crystal ball and saw trump in 1935, he saw the devastation and chaos that one stupid man brought to the country, how he destroyed democracy. The good thing is that it doesn't end well for him or any of his people, but the damage is already done, the deaths, the suffering cannot be ignored and it takes a long time to put the country together.

The Gutenberg Project has the book online for free on PDF.

[link:http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html|

I saw what happened in Venezuela, how it evolved into the chaos that is today, and I am afraid that I see the signs of the same development here. If you go to the Dr because you have a rush, when the Dr sees the rush he/she immediately knows what you have, they may say "it looks like this or that, I will need to run some tests" and they run the tests because by law they have to do it, but they know what it is...The same happens after you have lived a situation like that in Venezuela, even if indirectly, it gives you the knowledge to later understand what is gong on somewhere else, and I can tell you without reservation that it is happening here. Why do you think there is a war on the press?

People think the crooks in the administration are incompetent, they are wrong, its just that they need to create public chaos in order to work on their agendas behind the scenes, that is exactly what is going on.

We all need to wake up, the end is not pretty if allowed to happen.

[dewsgirl]

5. This is terrifying.😳

I'll be honest here, I'm kind of getting my fill of terror here lately, I have heard of that book and thank you very much.
Ordinarily minus Coronavirus, I would be all over something like this, I will save it and pray I get a chance to read it.

[Perseus]

9. You will be fine, you will be able to read the book. Don't panic, we will prevail.

We need to talk to all our friends and spread the word that we need change, we need to remove the crooks in the current administration if we want our kids to have a country they deserve.

So don't panic, we are going to be fine, we just need to educate those around us.

I am going to tell you, as quick as I can, how I left a republican friend of mine thinking, this was during GW Bush...She was telling me how great republicans are, etc...I stayed quiet because I knew I was not going to get anywhere with her, but then it occur to me to hit her where I thought it would hurt but do it in a very subtle manner. I said to her "I admire you and all women who support republicans, I really do." You should have seen her face, a sort of shock combined with happiness...She asked "why?", I responded "Because you know where you stand, you fully understand that as a woman you should not be making more or the same as a man, that you should be making at least $.75 on the dollar of what we make, that your place is in the home, that your duty as a wife is to serve your man, take care of the children, have the food ready, understand that men need relaxing and going out for golf, or the pub to meet with friends should be encouraged, not nagged, etc.", I went on a little further. She looked at me, her eyes like that of a deer hit by a headlight, and walked off. But later on she told me that she had never thought about any of the stuff I had told her. I don't think I converted her, she most probably voted for trump, but who knows, maybe her seeing more of the filth from republicans we may have her on our side this time around.

Be good, all will be well. We must never loose hope, we must never give up. Let me know if you like the book when you finish it.

[mahigan]

6. It Can't Happen Here

For many years I have called "It Can't Happen Here" the Great Canadian Mantra. The problem is, that by the time we start chanting It Can't Happen Here, whatever it is is usually already happening here. I doubt it is all that different anywhere else.

[Perseus]

8. I have been singing this tune about "It Can't Happen Here" before the 2016 election

I know I have become a pain in wherever to many of my friends and my kids, their friends, and other people about this book, but it is one that must be read, and pounded over people'e heads that we are all susceptible to what happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Venezuela with Chavez, now in Spain with Pablo Iglesias who was a pupil of Chavez, and other parts in the World where authoritarians have taken power, those people never thought it would happen there.

You are 100% correct, people hear "It Can't Happen Here" then ignore it, and by the time they wake up, its already there.

What worries me the most, which I saw happen in Venezuela and other countries is that the military remains very quiet, and when you can corrupt the military then we are all toast. That is what has happened in those countries where authoritarians, disguised as "Socialists" (no reference to Sanders, he is a "Social-Democrat" ) took hold and corrupted the military who then act against the people, and when you have the force of the military by your side then it is very difficult to fight, although I do have confidence in the USA citizens.

Why do I worry about this? Because the son of a friend of mine who has a very high ranking in the Navy seems to think trump is doing everything well. Is he ignoring the facts, or is there something else going on?

[fleur-de-lisa]

2. Trump wouldn't willingly give up his Twitter audience.

He lives for that shit.

[Kaiserguy]

3. If they think the economy is going bad

now they haven't seen nothing yet. If they shut down the internet with it goes a whole lot of online sales and business. That will really tank America. Sadly Trump is stupid and power mad enough to do it.

[Perseus]

7. I never thought a president of the USA could have so much power, which in the wrong little hands...

The bottom line, and what we should learn from this atrocious, chaotic and corrupt presidency of trump is that the president of the USA has too much power which in the wrong hands can produce the chaos we current live in, if left unchecked and this corruption is allowed to stay in power four more years it will take decades to reverse the damage. As it stands, all the damage this corrupt administration has done in less than four year will take at least eight to reverse and fix. We must stop being stupid, politics is not a sport where your political party must win, if you want to treat it as a sport then consider that the real two teams are, the USA citizens against the politicians, and we must remove those who hurt us, those who consistently work against us. If the pandemic we are currently living is what they say it is, because of the incompetence and the evil nature of the USA government, it will spread all over the country and the death toll will be tremendous just because trump wants to hide it to try to prevent a backlash on his and this administration's incompetence and vile behaviour. When you have people in charge who have no concept of consequences, in other words psychopaths, we put our country and our people in constant jeopardy, and that os what we have today.