Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act would eliminate a 1942 law that could let the president shut down the internet

GovTrack.us
GovTrack Insider
Published in
4 min readNov 27, 2020

--

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI2)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

Should the commander-in-chief be able to turn off cyberspace as a necessary cybersecurity tool in these increasingly-digital times, or would that be an unprecedented violation of rights waiting to happen?

Context

In 1942, during World War II, Congress created a law to grant President Franklin D. Roosevelt or his successors the power to temporarily shut down any potentially vulnerable communications technologies.

At the time, that mostly meant radio and telephone lines. (Television was in its infancy and most Americans didn’t yet have a TV set.) The exact legislative text says that during a time of war, and lasting for up to six months after war’s end, a president can “cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communication and the removal therefrom of its apparatus and equipment.”

In the modern day, though, that could mean any variety of since-created technologies — including, perhaps most dangerously of all, the internet. While the president has never taken such a drastic step in the U.S., 122 partial or full internet shutdowns were instituted by 21 nations in 2019, affecting more than 250 million internet users globally.

What the legislation does

The Unplug the Internet Kill Switch Act would reverse the 1942 law and prevent the president from shutting down any communications technology during wartime, including the internet.

The House version was introduced on September 22 as bill number H.R. 8336, by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI2). The Senate version was introduced the same day as bill number S. 4646, by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

What supporters say

Supporters argue that the ability to shut down the internet would be an unprecedented violation of civil rights and liberties in the digital era, far more than any mere regulation.

“Our legislation would fix a WWII-era law that gives the president nearly unchallenged authority to restrict access to the internet, conduct email surveillance, control computer systems and cell phones,” Rep. Gabbard said in a press release. “No President should have the power to ignore our freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and violate our civil liberties and privacy by declaring a national emergency.”

“If you give government an inch, it takes ten miles, and this has been vividly illustrated by the surveillance state’s overreaches in a time of seemingly endless war,” Sen. Paul said in a separate press release. “No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”

What opponents say

Opponents counter that an internet kill switch, even if it sounds Orwellian, is actually a necessary government tool in this nearly-entire-digital era, as a matter of national security.

“The fact is that our entire computerized economy is balanced on a knife edge,” columnist and pundit Stewart Baker wrote in 2010. “It could be attacked by many countries today. And there’s evidence that both the risk of attack and the scale of the damage it would cause are growing all the time. There’s an Internet kill switch all right, but it ain’t in Washington. It’s in Beijing and Moscow. And soon in Pyongyang.”

(That last sentence was written several years before North Korea’s 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, which largely shut down the internet and computers at the movie studio in retaliation for their anti-North Korea movie The Interview.)

“It’s needed, badly,” Baker continued, referencing the then-recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill, “because the President today has less authority over the vulnerable electronic underbelly of our banks and power grid than he has over deepwater oil drilling.”

Odds of passage

The House version was introduced by a Democratic lead sponsor and has attracted one cosponsor, a Republican: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY4). It awaits a potential vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Senate version was introduced by a Republican lead sponsor and has attracted two cosponsors, both Democrats. It awaits a potential vote in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.

Like our analyses? Want more? Support our work!

--

--