Weekend Gedankenexperiment - The Kill Switch

Fri Feb 4 06:13:34 UTC 2011

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:07 PM, George Bonser <gbonser at seven.com> wrote:

>
> The federal government clearly has the authority to manage
> communications across the border of the country and between states but
> it would be questionable if the federal government has the authority to
> manage any communications completely within a state.  Do they have the
> authority to tell me to turn down a connection that terminates within
> the same state that I am in?
>
> Sure, they would have the authority to tell me to turn down any
> international tunnels I might have running or a point-to-point that
> crosses state lines but I doubt they have the authority to tell me to
> turn down a cross-connect terminating in the same building.  That would
> be the jurisdiction of state authority, not federal.
>

I am making no argument to the contrary.

But I should caution you that there are forces at work currently which are
making motions to federalize this authority.

I think we all should be deeply concerned -- some of this
pandering/politicizing/scar-mongering can have ill effects.

- - ferg

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.5.3 (Build 5003)

wj8DBQFNS5kHq1pz9mNUZTMRAv3oAKCsa61VtcyKOiVWqGZ2mJX4eFScuACffSWB
thx5VA2MbLZyGn/GzH3Qz2M=
=oKF9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/