Or used to cut citizens off from current events.  Sound familiar?

As long as it's kept on a national level.....

I wont have some forreign country have control over my internet access, no matter what their reasons might be!

I agree (intra-USA only)...but say in the case of a massive cyber attack aimed at the Pentagon etc., maybe something like that would be necessary...like unplugging the phone when being plagued by telemarketers? I don't know enough about it to express an educated opinion...just a thought.

*BTW, not all flights were grounded. The day after 9/11, vital medical flights continued (organ transplants and the like). One such flight to Seattle, WA (heart transplant) was grounded by the USAF and allowed to continue by helicopter.

What is an emergency situation?

What is temporary control?

It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

 Good one Bonehead.

"There's nothing more permanent than a temporary measure." - One Smart Cookie.

It's to keep the public (and other prying eyes) in the dark when the aliens land & use the internet to communicate with our leaders.

*Note to Mothership - Starkers knows too much.  Preparing bunker for human in Blue Mountain base.

Only if they have given up on finding any intelligent life forms to communicate with.

One man with the power to shut down the internet to an entire country.  Scary as hell.  What's next, the television and radio news will be government controlled?  General suspension of habius corpus instead of the power of such that Homeland Security can already invoke.  Dis-arming of the civil population?  We've seen all of this before both right wing and left about 60-70 years ago, lest we doom ourselves to forget history and therefore allow it to happen again, only this time in our country.

The phrese is "We the people" not we the government.................IMHO

It does seem that folks just don't want to deal with history, 'it's in the past, it all ready happend, why do I care, I can't change it'.  

That is true, but there is one more thing you can do with history, you can learn from it. 

Nah, that concept will never work.

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."  paraphrased from a wriiting by W. Durant.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".  paraphrased from a writing by Edmund Burke.

Write your Senators and have a bill like this voted down.

It's a conspiracy!  A gov't plot to take us back to the Stone-Age... to save us from ourselves.  Yup, that's it, we have become too advanced and reliant on technology.... techologies with the potential to harm the planet, wipe out the human race.  So, for our own sakes, the internet will be intermittantly turned off in ever increasing cycles until we have learned to live without it

The next obvious step is TV to isolate us from disturbing World news - enjoyable but nefarious entertainments that cause us to become fat and lazy couch potatoes - then radio so we are not consumed with devils music and jitterbug-like dance crazes.

Yes, we have become too dependent on technologies and consumerism, goods that make us soft and unable to truly fend for ourselves without them.  So in its wisdom, government will make hunter-gatherers out of us all and teach us by necessity to survive using only the basics nature has provided us. 

Motor vehicles will soon become a thing of the past... so harden your butts or get used to saddle sores. Telephones and other electronic communication devises will also phased out as well, so start training your carrier pigeons now... and watch out for the pony express because motorised mailmen will be no more.

Now you may all be sceptical, but ancient prophecies speak of a nuclear holocaust that reverts us back to the Stone-Age, and those wisest in government have decided to take us there without the davastation that would leave us glowing in the dark for centuries.

Well I dunno abouut you people, but I've ordered an abacus and my communicative drums arrived yesterday... plus I'm learnin' smoke signals cos a couple of people I know are hearing impaired and won't be able to get batteries for their hearing aids.

This man is getting WAY TOO MUCH control!!!!!

No, they won't be curried cabbage powered... the messages would be as clear as mud... and I don't want people hunting for their reading glasses just to hear what I'm saying.

What kind of moron came up with the idea to hook up the powergrid (and other critical infrastructure) on a public network? It's those idiots that are a threat to national security, not the hackers.

My bet is on Al Gore.

Yes, I believe you are correct, but he knew it was safe since he invented the internet.