This is genuinely scary. This op-ed outlines a federal bill proposing to give the White House full control over the internet. No, seriously. Stop laughing. This is for real. [Editorial notes added.]

Sens. Jay Rockefeller. D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine [who is a RINO moron]… introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (SB773), which would permit the White House to declare a “cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any network the president declares “critical.”

A companion bill (SB778), creates the new “cybersecurity czar” [a.k.a Big Brother] to take his place among the troubling number of similarly named posts in this administration.

The bill’s language also allows the commerce secretary to “access all relevant data” on those “critical” networks “without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.” The bill as currently written provides zero structural oversight over the proposed broad new executive branch powers.

In case you didn’t understand that, this bill would give the Pres (Bronco or otherwise) the authority to shut down the internet. Umm. Really? And exactly how would that work? It’s not like there’s a giant read switch somewhere that one could flip.

What’s worse, it gives the Commerce Secretary the right to usurp any and all laws and privacy agreements to access bank records, emails, chats, any dang thing he wants on ANY network in the US. Seriously?

Look. I’ve been working on the internet for over ten years now. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The internet is not one big network. It’s not based in a single building. It’s not controlled by a single organization. The internet is made up of literally thousands of servers, switches, routers, firewalls, etc. all over the world and it is run by literally thousands dudes in t-shirts who carry around pagers and laptops 24/7 so they can know at a moments notice if their network is under attack. The notion that Uncle Sam is going to do a better job of policing the Internet than the guys I’ve worked with for a decade is more than laughable.

The Federal Government, in the last three months, has taken on the worst God Complex in the history of mankind. This really needs to stop.