S. 773, the Cyber Security Act of 2009, was introduced by Senator John Rockefeller (D, WV) with Senators Evan Bayh (D, IN), Bill Nelson (D, FL), and Olympia Snowe (R, ME) as cosponsors.

Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT):

“The cybersecurity threat is real, but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jennifer Granick:

“Essentially, the Act would federalize critical infrastructure security. Since many of our critical infrastructure systems (banks, telecommunications, energy) are in the hands of the private sector, the bill would create a major shift of power away from users and companies to the federal government. This is a potentially dangerous approach that favors the dramatic over the sober response.”

In forums and comment threads across the internet, users are typing in all caps, scared that this act will give the president unfettered power to “SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET”. I’ve read the bill, and it is as scary as everybody makes it out to be, but let me remind you:  one cannot simply shut down the Internet, that’s virtually impossible.

There are a few ways for you to understand this legislation:

1. Read the full text of the bill, and use your superb linguistic abilities to comprehend it.  Here’s the full text.

2. Read this bill breakdown in it’s entirety, it’ll take awhile, but you’ll understand everything about the bill and you’ll know pretty well how to talk about the bill with others.  In bold lettering throughout the text, you’ll find key points which you can follow if you’re speed reading it.

3. If you’re lazy, just skip to the summary at the bottom.  You’ll get the main points of the bill, but it’ll be out of context and you won’t be well-read enough to discuss the bill with others.

I’ve broken the bill down into each section.  I summarize what each section proposes and provide excerpts of the sections.  Have fun.

Section 2, (6):

Paul Kurtz, a Partner and chief operating officer of Good Harbor Consulting as well as a senior advisor to the Obama Transition Team for cybersecurity, recently stated that the United States is unprepared to respond to a ‘cyber-Katrina’ and that ‘a massive cyber disruption could have a cascading, long-term impact without adequate co-ordination between government and the private sector.’.

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Free Your Phone.

In case you didn’t know, virtually every cellular phone on the market today is locked to a single carrier, which serves only to divide the users, and maximize profit for the carriers.  Broadly speaking, it’s a form of digital rights management perpetuated by anti-circumvention clauses in laws like the DMCA, and the EU Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation has launched a campaign to unlock phones; go to the site linked above and sign the petition.  It will be sent to the Copyright Office, in hopes of bringing attention to the matter.  Hey if Google can do it, so can we.

Full Story

Thanks to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, illegitimate patents are being busted in rapid succession.  The most recent reexamination is that of a Seer Systems patent “for a system and method for joining different musical data types together in a file, distributing them over the Internet, and then playing that file.”