Janco warns about government control of the Internet

Jan. 30, 2011 - PRLog -- Park City, UT -Janco warns that Internet compliance and censorship laws are inevitably used for purposes other than the ones claimed by lawmakers. The cutting off of Internet services by the government of Egypt added a new level of risk that enterprises must access and plan for when they outsource outside of major developed countries.  

The CEO of Janco, Victor Janulaitis said, “Many CIOs are starting to re-think their assumptions in the outsourcing and disaster planning processes.  For example, HP was seriously impacted by Egyptian government’s decision to cut off Internet communications in that HP delivered a broad portfolio of information technology outsourcing services to clients in the manufacturing, financial services, communications, transportation, and consumer and retail industries and to governments around the world.”

The CEO added, “From a broader perspective Australia in recent years set up a "firewall" around its Internet, with the intention of blacklisting child pornography Web sites. But a list of the blocked sites showed that the Australian government was censoring more than porn: The blacklist contained religious and political Web sites.”
In the US, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic under a declared national emergency.

Section 249: If the President determines there is a credible threat to exploit cyber vulnerabilities of the covered critical infrastructure, the President may declare a national cyber emergency, with notification to Congress and owners and operators of affected covered critical infrastructure. The notification must include the nature of the threat, the reason existing security measures are deficient, and the proposed emergency measures needed to address the threat. If the President exercises this authority, the Director of the NCCC will issue emergency measures necessary to preserve the reliable operation of covered critical infrastructure. Any emergency measures issued under this section will expire after 30 days unless the Director of the NCCC or the President affirms in writing that the threat still exists or the measures are still needed...

In addition, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in Congress last fall by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). It would have granted the federal government the power to block access to any Web domain that is found to host “copyrighted” material without permission. Opponents note that the powers given the government under the bill are very broad. It could theoretically block access to all of YouTube, whether or not particular material being accessed infringes copyright.

For more information go to http://e-janco.com/GovernmentContol.htm

Janco is a Mountain States based consulting firm that publishes the IT Salary Survey, Browser Market Data, and the IT Infrastructure HandiGuide® series of books used by IT, finance, human resources and other professionals as the source of information on topics from policies and procedures, to job descriptions.

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Janco is a consulting firm that publishes the IT Salary Survey, Browser Market Data, and the organizational and IT Infrastructure HandiGuide® series of books.