Twitter Outage In China

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June 2, 2009 | BY Brad Wellman
  


Jason Douglas
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Tuesday, China’s government has blocked Internet users access to Twitter. Though there has been no official statement from the Chinese government, it is likely due to the approaching 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government may feel that this will curb any negative conversation that may have occurred otherwise.

This is not the first time China has blocked various social media sites, as they had a ban during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in August 2008.

There are other reports that other social media sites have been blocked, including Flickr, Bing.com, Blogspot, and YouTube.

My question: would there ever be an appropriate time for the United States Government to block Internet users access to a site?

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  • http://twitter.com/leslieberg Leslie Berg

    Last month an anticommunist uprising in Moldova was organized via Twitter, which gives China some clout in how they’re handling the situation there.

    On April 1 legislation was proposed that would grant Obama the authority to shut down public and private networks, including the restriction of internet traffic – all as part of a “cybersecurity emergency plan.”

    “This legislation is the beginning of the process – the objective of this cybersecurity bill is to start the debate and chairman Rockefeller welcomes comments from all parties, he is sitting down with stakeholders already and he welcomes input from all those supportive of the legislation and those with concerns,” said Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation.

    Check out the bill here (PDF), hosted by NetworkWorld.

    If you read the bill, the second provision gives the President the authority to disconnect federal networks from the Internet in the case of cyberattack. That doesn’t seem like an outrageous provision to me; it sounds like a sensible option to protect vital government systems. In fact, I’d be surprised if that power doesn’t already exist within the various federal agencies. This would allow the President to make a blanket order to take networks off line.

    That doesn’t make it completely benign, either. That power could get abused to keep people from accessing public information. However, the provision on its own does not equate to “shutting down the Internet”, at least not how I read it.

    Section 14 may be a bigger problem. It essentially revokes all privacy safeguards on Internet use for all networks. The Fourth Amendment would go straight out the window with the explicit inclusion of “private sector owned critical infrastructure information systems and networks.” While Section 18 limits jurisdiction to federal networks, Section 14 allows the government to go after private networks without search warrants. The section also doesn’t limit the jurisdiction to acute attacks, either. That jurisdiction exists at all times.

    The big problem isn’t that Obama might shut down the Internet. It’s that the bill essentially puts limitations on the Fourth Amendment.