If this passes, hopefully someone with some sense will just install a “switch” in the Oval Office and put a label under it that says “Internet”. It won’t do anything, but that’s ok. The people involved clearly have little understanding of what they’re talking about anyway. We could give Al Gore a lifetime position that requires him to flip the switch when he turns in for the night to cut back on the global warming or whatever other crisis the interwebs contribute to.
Even if the president ordered all U.S. Internet companies to block, say, all packets coming from China, or restrict non-military communications, or just shut down access in the greater New York area, it wouldn’t work. You can’t figure out what packets do just by looking at them; if you could, defending against worms and viruses would be much easier.
“Shutting down” the internet isn’t anything like closing the freeway. It’s like shutting down radio, television, and newspapers all at once. We don’t even have a radio, cable, or a TV antenna at our house, so how would we know the webs had been shut down (for our protection)? You know what that means…get ready for the phone systems to get wrecked as part of the collateral damage with people calling up their internet providers because they can’t do the Googles or log on to the Facebooks.