Russian Cyberspace Head Calls For Internet Kill Switch

The head of Russia’s cyberspace policy today called for global governments to react to the NSA spy scandal by creating a United Nations-style body that would have regulatory control over the Internet – including a web kill switch.

UN Kill Switch.

During a speech at a specially arranged meeting initiated by the upper house of the Russian parliament, Information Society Development Commission head Ruslan Gattarov called for a newly created group to control the world wide web, “So that everyone, not only the US, has access to the master switch.”

Gattarov made reference to the creation of the UN after World War II in calling for a similar organization to have authority over the Internet.

The special session was called in response to recent revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA has been downloading information “directly” from the servers of the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft under a vast spying operation called PRISM.

Gattarov called for an international investigation into the scandal, remarking, “We cannot let this issue sink into an abyss, as many people desire, we will not allow the question to vanish without result.”

Last November, representatives from 200 governments attended the World Conference on International Telecommunications, during which participants advocated that control over the Internet be handed to the International Telecommunications Union, which is the United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technologies.

As Alex Newman reported, the controversial plan discussed at the conference would, “allow governments to shut down the Web if they claimed it could “interfere” in the internal affairs of other UN member regimes.”

The blueprint would also permit authorities to shut down the Internet if there was a risk of “sensitive” information being leaked while also creating a huge new online surveillance framework.

Concerns over the creation of an Internet kill switch in the US have also increased since the Obama administration began pursuing an aggressive cybersecurity policy.

Senator Joe Lieberman ominously pushed for the ‘kill switch’ option to be included in cybersecurity legislation by citing the Chinese system of Internet policing as a model to which the United States should aspire, but the provision was eventually dropped from the bill last year.

Under the Department of Homeland Security’s “Emergency Wireless Protocols,” (Standard Operating Procedure 303 or “SOP 303), the federal agency also claims the power to shut down all communications, including the Internet, in the event of a national crisis.

Many have questioned why the US should be trusted with an Internet kill switch under the justification of cybersecurity when America itself has admittedly been behind a number of major cyber attacks over the last few years.

Infowars