Could the U.S. Government Ever Simply Turn Off the Internet in a National Emergency?
Even before this last week’s nearly complete isolation of Egypt from the rest of the world, some conspiracy theorists have speculated about the possibility of such a shutdown of the Internet in the U.S. in the event of a national emergency (think WWIII). The idea might make for a good “made for TV movie” but the reality of such a shutdown happening is very hard to imagine from both a technical and legal prospective.
In Egypt as is true in many other countries the number of companies providing telecommunications and Internet is a small number. Often the largest telecommunications company is owned by the government or at least the ruling family. Such is true in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (both thought of as technologically advanced in telecommunications) and other countries where a ruling party or family can dictate who has the right to provide services in that country.
From a technical perspective, since there are only a small number of telecommunications providers in a country like Egypt, (who happen to also be controlled by the government or ruling family), it only took a few phone calls or Emails by governmental officials for the providers to isolate the country from the outside world and stop communication inside the country by cell phone and Internet. From accounts I read, the Egyptian stock market and governmental Internet connections were not disrupted, so I bet there was a plan in place to keep certain aspects of the country’s infrastructure operating.
Such a scenario is not likely to ever happen in the U.S.
First there are thousands of Internet service providers (ISPs) in the U.S. There may be several dozen or so major telecommunication companies that control the Internet backbone in the U.S. These companies include: UUNET, Level3, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Google, and BT.
Executives of U.S. ISPs and Internet backbone services report to their boards of directors and shareholders, not any U.S. official. The FCC does have certain authority over regulated carriers, but most ISPs and backbone providers are not regulated.
I Can’t see any U.S. telecommunications companies responding to a request to turn off services without a court challenge. Freedom of Speech is our most cherished right.
There is some movement in congress that would give the President the right to have a “kill” switch that would allow him to turn off SOME communications in the event of martial law or national emergency, but nothing like what happened in Egypt is ever likely to happen in the U.S. Such a law might allow the president to have Internet traffic routed to or from to certain countries that might be considered “enemies” off into a cloud somewhere, but I doubt that congress would give the president that power unless congress or a sub-committee of congress agreed. Such an event might even be appropriate in the case of a global war of some sort.
In order to talk about the technical issues, we need to divide the conversation into two parts. First there is cutting off the U.S. from the rest of the world. Second would be cutting off the Internet within the U.S. There are far less Internet backbones (think large fiber optic cables) connecting the rest of the United States to the rest of the world than connections within the country. Lets assume our country is under both a physical and cyber attack by a foreign government or extremists within another country. I could see congress passing a law that would allow cutting off communication to that country (sort of like a cyber-embargo). Still even if all the backbone providers cooperated by stopping Internet traffic to enemy countries by their ISP number, it would take some time (at least 48 to 72 hours) for the traffic to completely stop in both directions.
I can never imagine a law being passed where Internet traffic or voice communication was completely shut down within our country. There are simply too many redundant ways to communicate between people in the U.S. Neither could I envision congress giving the president the power to do something like shut down communications within our country and if they did, I think the supreme court would quickly rule such a law unconstitutional.
The last point I make is that the U.S. and North America has some protection by the law of large numbers. The latest estimate is that over 70% of North Americans have some kind of wired or wireless connection to the Internet. That would be a number north of 200 million people. Can you imagine how simple commerce would grind to a halt? Even local public safety relies on the Internet to provide wireless communication to computers in police, fire and EMS vehicles.
Given the complex nature of the Internet infrastructure in the U.S., the number of people using wired and wireless access to the Internet, and our legal checks and balances, I don’t ever see a day when Internet communications are disrupted within the U.S. by our government.
Sam Thacker is a partner in Austin Texas based Business Finance Solutions.
Direct Email: sam@lesliethacker.com
Twitter: @SMBFinance
