Federal control of Internet security would put Barney Fife in charge

By David McElroy · February 8, 2012

If there’s something wrong in the world, there’s one sure-fire way to make it worse — put the federal government in charge of it. Yet that’s what the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to do to fix Internet security.

The plan from Senate Democrats would give the Department of Homeland Security the power to tell businesses how to run their Internet security. Putting the people behind the TSA in charge of security would be like giving Deputy Barney Fife the power to tell banks how to design security to outwit masterminds.

Computer professionals aren’t happy with the news. According to the writer of CIO.com’s IT Security Hack blog:

“And, as with much legislation, it basically extends government power without actually improving anything. Businesses already know hacking is costing them money – this is really the only incentive needed for them. Fortunately and unsurprisingly, a lot of industry groups are lobbying against this because of the additional costs it would mean. What businesses really want is a law that would give them legal protections so they can share information with authorities without risking antitrust or privacy violations.”

The federal government has been “fixing” health care for the last 50 years or so. Everything it’s done so far has made things even worse, despite the good intentions that are invoked each time the government takes more control over the system. And then when those changes have unintended consequences of making things worse, the “solution” is to demand even more power to fix things. The real solution is to get government out of the way and let the market work. It’s the same way with the Internet.

If the federal government gets its nose under the tent of Internet security, it’s going to be the first in a long series of steps that are going to expand federal intervention in our lives even further. This time, the excuse is “security.” The next time, it might be “protecting children.” After that, it might be “protecting us from terrorists.” Whatever the excuse, each move will be one more step down the road toward complete federal control of the Internet — and loss of freedom for us.

The word “control” is really the key word. The excuse is security, but the real problem is that the people in Washington (and in every other political center of government power) believe they know know to run everything better than we do. If there’s a problem, they honestly believe it’s their job and their right to fix the problem. Unfortunately for us, “fixing” problems almost always requires them to have more power over us, at least in their own eyes. Further, the “fix” is frequently worse than the original problem.

There’s a real problem with security online today, but the companies that have their own money and other resources at risk have a far better chance of fixing things than state-appointed security “experts.” Security isn’t going to be perfect if it’s left to private parties acting in their own interest, but it’s going to be far better than turning more control over to a coercive government.

If you like what the TSA has done to airport security, just imagine putting people just like them in charge of the Internet. That’s pretty much what this proposal would do. It’s a really, really bad idea.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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