“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley in 2010.

Government Internet Takeover Continues Apace

Moves to place restrictions and controls on the internet by Western governments are gathering pace, with the US setting the standard as the Department of Homeland Security seized yet more domain names over the weekend and shut down several websites under the guise of piracy and copyright regulations.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing Monday to debate the Obama administration’s proposed move to provide the president with the authority to completely shut down the internet during a national emergency.

As we have documented, the administration’s vision provides the President the power to shut down the Internet with a figurative flick of a switch, and has made it clear that his Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act is about big government deciding who can say what on the web.

Critics in the Senate, including Maine Republican Susan Collins, argued that the government is taking advantage of “outmoded yet potentially sweeping authorities granted in the Communications Act of 1934” that allow for the president to take over radio stations in a time of national emergency.

The administration is seeking to extend those powers to online communications.

Long term internet censorship proponent, Joe Lieberman argued that “The country would be better off if we did create some new law regarding the authority of the president to act in these emergencies,”

Last year, Lieberman’s Senate Homeland Security Committee pressured Amazon to axe Wikileaks from its servers. At the time, the Senator stated that the “Decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston labeled Amazon’s decision to kill the website “disappointing,” adding that “pressure” from Lieberman’s office or any other authority serves to “limit the materials the American public has a First Amendment right to access.”

Lieberman’s vision for the Internet is less of an information superhighway and more of a government-controlled sanitized clone of cable television, where the web is purged entirely of dissent in a system even more draconian than that employed by the Communist Chinese.

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley in 2010.

This is what Lieberman envisions for the future of the Internet in the United States, a highly regulated, state-controlled forum where the government can shut down websites it disapproves of on a whim, as is already being done by Homeland Security without court order, as yet more cases have proven this week...

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