Regarding the risks of cyberattack on US infrastructure and Obama's duty to protect us.

I realize that Fox News has to play up these things, because it is really important financially to keep the ratings high and the sponsors happy. But here is my spin on the alarm that has been sparked by the Senate Bill which would spell out the president's powers to disconnect private computers from the internet in case of a cyberattack on the US government or on public infrastructure. It's overblown.

Here is an email which was sent to reporter Declan McCullagh, a contributor to CNET News, by Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee:

" The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president's authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a "government shutdown or takeover of the Internet" and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government's response."

Well if you put it that way....

I would like to point out some of the complexities of this issue. This is what Donald Rumsfeld, back in the day, would have called a "known unknown". In other words, we understand that it is theoretically possible for clever cyberterrorists to damage our economy or the functioning of our government by the application of hacker techniques. In theory, that would be bad- in fact, it could result in things such as the electrical grid going down. That is a life threatening thing.  One other complexity: this legislation is being written to clarify the powers of the President to respond to cyber attack. That's "The President", as in whoever occupies the White House. These powers are not just for Obama to use, they are for any and every President to have, until we develop something better than the Internet. So don't pretend that this is all about Obama.

Question: could Obama in theory take advantage of such powers, and just because he dislikes Fox News, shut them down?  Well, how many of you think that there is a snowflake's chance in hell of Obama doing something that would cost him so much politically and gain him nothing?  For it to work, he would have to talk Al Qaeda into staging an attack on Con Edison using the Fox News computer system as a Zombie, and then use it as a pretext. Nah, that's too complicated. Al Qaeda does not take orders from Obama, anyway.