EQUTE — A new bill concerning what would happen if the United States were under a cyber attack has some people wondering just what kind of powers the president will have over the Internet.

The cyber security bill says that in the event of an “immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network — may declare a cyber security emergency.”

This emergency declaration would give the White House power to disconnect computers from the Internet; which has some privacy advocates frothing at the mouth. While nobody with much clout really things this means Obama is going to take our Internet away, they do question the language.

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, told CNET. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”

Anyone who has read a lot of Senate bills knows that vagary is commonplace in the legislature. When CNET asked lawmakers to elaborate, they did.

The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster.

— Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee.

This bill seems to have been designed to combat the current rise of botnets and hijacked computers.
This bill wouldn’t, however, be the means to simply turn off the Internet as some fear. If a botnet attack is coming from a single gateway (public or private), it could be shut down until the source of the problem is found.

So, in the case of a disaster or mass attack from hackers, your Internet might be shut down if you have the misfortune of sharing a building or ISP with hackers.