I would think that considering the audience here, it's quite obvious that the voting will be overwhelmingly for "no", making the poll pretty pointless. You're asking a group of people who largely make their living thanks to the internet in some way whether the government should have the ability to turn it off whenever they feel like it. The answer will unsurprisingly be no.
Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#12 "Sixty-one percent of Americans said the President should have the
ability to shut down portions of the Internet in the event of a
coordinated malicious cyber attack, according to research by Unisys." [1]
Those who consider this poll pointless because they think the idea of a kill-switch is obviously impractical are ignoring the reality. They are being ignorant of the fact that there exists a debate on the topic, even if it seems trivial to themselves.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#13Poorly defined question. What's an "Internet kill switch?" An executive order to shut down all routable ASes in the US? Legislative? I think this question doesn't really have an answer because it's too poorly defined.
> Stupid question.
Don't you think that's a little harsh to say, if not even disrespectful. As quoted from the Hacker News Guidelines (that I'm sure you must have read before):
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.
E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened
to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> I think this question doesn't really have an answer because it's too poorly defined.
This is fair to say, but I left it broad for a reason - hoping people would debate the general principle rather than specific details. If the broadness of the poll is too much for you, then ignore it.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#14Poorly defined question. What's an "Internet kill switch?" An executive order to shut down all routable ASes in the US? Legislative? I think this question doesn't really have an answer because it's too poorly defined.
> Stupid question. Don't you think that's a little harsh to say, if not even disrespectful. As quoted from the Hacker News Guidelines (that I'm sure you must have read before): When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." This remarks adds nothing to your point and rather discredits your opin…
Perhaps that was too harsh. I changed it to "poorly defined question," which is critical but helpful.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#15Poorly defined question. What's an "Internet kill switch?" An executive order to shut down all routable ASes in the US? Legislative? I think this question doesn't really have an answer because it's too poorly defined.
It's an open question, certainly, but the broad meaning isn't vague. It's anything that would legally or technologically enable the Executive branch to disable public internet access in all or part of the United States at will. I can't think up a way to make that a plausibly good thing to exist in any form.
Then explain to me how this could not exist. As long as there are routable ASes they can be shut down.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#16Poorly defined question. What's an "Internet kill switch?" An executive order to shut down all routable ASes in the US? Legislative? I think this question doesn't really have an answer because it's too poorly defined.
I don't even think it needs to be a switch. The actual bill that was brought up in the Senate doesn't explicitly say 'kill switch' anywhere. In reality a call from someone in the government to a few people who work at large ISPs/backbones would be enough, since they would just comply. We saw this happen recently with Wikileaks, after all....
It is not so easy--large networks will have a lot of redundancy built-in. Consequently, even shutting down a single large BGP autonomous system is not a simple problem and would have a lot of unintended consequences.
Wikileaks is not a good analogy. Wikileaks is more analogous to black-holing one small AS.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#17That would be insane.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#18That's like asking, "should the United States have free speech?" But it also has other implications as well. If our enemies have networks, and ours our disabled, how in the world are we going to "win"? How do you even "win" a "cyber war"? You can prevent "cyber warfare" by disconnecting sensitive stuff. You don't need to kill Wikipedia or my blog because there's not much warfare you can really wage with pages that ar…
We have to stop the evil enemy from posting false information to wikipedia and evil comments to your blog. :D
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#19That would be insane.
Let's give the US the root servers AND a killswitch.
Re: Poll: Should the US President have an Internet kill-switch?
#20Well, of course on HN the answer will be overwhelmingly "no". What is interesting (to me) is the rationale behind the few "yes" answers: might be instructive. Anyone care to expound? Thanks!