http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...net-kill-swit/

"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must disclose its plans for a so-called Internet “kill switch,” a federal court ruled on Tuesday.
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the agency’s arguments that its protocols surrounding an Internet kill switch were exempt from public disclosure and ordered the agency to release the records in 30 days. However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling."

This is yet another example of government overreach.

When I first saw the title, I wondered if this was a contingency plan to reduce criticism of healthcare.gov by making all websites equally unavailable. But the article only referenced wireless networks, not the whole internet.

I, for one, don't think that "public disclosure" of such things is at all a good idea, and I see this order as "over-reach" by the judge.

You see ... "any fool already knows" that the Internet, being an extension of the MILNET, must have various things in place by which traffic could be blocked. (It would be a great deal more than a "kill switch.") Heck, you've got such things in your company network, including things called "firewalls."

But, I don't think that things like this should be "openly discussed and revealed." Yes, there should be oversight, but: "Knowledge Is Power."

Remember the media takes things out of context and over sensationalizes. It could be that
Really means shutting down all wifi access points in government buildings deemed as critical to security, i.e. the government owned parts of "the internet".

Imagine your working for a company and you write the DR plan would you keep writing <company name> in every sentence such as "shut down company x's wifi access points" or would you simply write "shut down wifi access points".

You make a very plausible argument.

But I doubt that's what they meant. I suspect this was done in response to the Boston Marathon bombing. Those who enjoy controlling people enjoyed being able to keep everyone in their homes while they searched for the evil-doers, and they started asking what else they could do to control the public.

If most people in government were good, God-fearing, honorable people, I would agree with it. But good grief! Look at the news these days.

There are two sources of wrongful attacks against us. Evil-doers with bombs and weapons, and evil elected officials who never waste a crisis in their pursuit to gain more control.

Well, we know that cell-phones are a very common way to remote-detonate bombs. Thus, it actually makes "extreme sense" to have a planned ahead-of-time procedure ... and to keep that subject out of public view.

"Knowledge Is Power."

"Because Somebody Talked!" ... yeah, it's a WW2 poster, but, as is plastered everywhere at Fort Meade, "the message is still the same.™"

There actually is a strong reason for: "Need to Know." While I entirely agree that there has been "government" AND "government contractor(!)" over-reach that is just now coming to light ... "what is proper to do about it" is an entirely different question, and, I think, "the answer to that question" is not "to just make everything public," even if a well-intentioned judge says so.

There must be oversight (and, there has not been ...), but, there must also be information security. There are over 316 million people, just in this country alone, and sometimes only a secret ... properly made, and properly kept ... protects them from things that they truly cannot (and should not have to ...) imagine.

Your probably right, I just know how the media plays with words. Part of me says the internet is too distributed to make it happen but then I think of a while back when Egypt basically shut down all of their communications that it starts to become plausible. There are only a few major backbone carriers so you tell them to shutdown and spread the message to the rest, then the regional shut down, etc.