From the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) comes the word that President Obama is about to sign a cybersecurity executive order. This is another despot power grab by an administration that refuses to acknowledge the role of the other branches of government.
In this case, Congress considered and did not pass a bill on cybersecurity. Instead of waiting for Congress to reconsider such a measure in the next term, the Obama administration is asserting nonexistent powers to implement “cyber security” measures by executive order.
This is not about cyber security. The proposed executive order is a means to further regulate and control the Internet by a regime that has assumed the mantle of unchecked powers in the grand tradition of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Rather than turning this into a partisan issue, regardless of your political beliefs, permitting any president to assert this type of authority sets dangerous precedent. For if you like the idea of a “cyber security” executive order, maybe you won’t like other executive orders that follow by the current Oval Office occupant or his successors.
Given that DHS is involved, consider how the department’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has grown into a soft Gestapo. Feel safer flying after being groped and interrogated by a TSA agent? During one of my recent flights, I got hassled although the TSA ignored two women(?) in front of me wearing full burqas. They could have been heavily armed terrorist men. The TSA didn’t care.
What do you think will come out of executive orders that regulate the Internet? Security? Hardly.
