Calls for greater government control over the internet after reports of Stuxnet virus we engineered!
Stuxnet is a double-edged sword. In addition to setting back Iran’s nuclear program, the sophisticated malware engineered by the U.S. and Israel at the Dimona complex in the Negev desert has been exploited to push for restrictive cybersecurity measures in the United States.
“The very fact that Stuxnet exists shows that we can no longer pretend that a cyber attack on our critical infrastructure is hypothetical and hyperbolic,” declared Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairman Joe Lieberman in November. “You’re talking about a very well-resourced and structured adversary.”
Lieberman and Susan Collins, the panel’s ranking Republican, used Stuxnet to push for their cyber-security bill, entitled The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010.
The bill would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and extend the already-broad definition of “critical infrastructure” to the internet and would allow Obama to shut down not only entire areas of the internet, but also businesses and industries that fail to comply with government orders following the declaration of a national emergency, thus increasing fears that the legislation will be used as a political tool.
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