The topic has been around for a while. Is it fact or fiction? It seems that these days anything is possible, and something like that is way more probable than ever in light of the NSA surveillance news in the headlines each and every week.  After all who would have thought just a year ago that the NSA would have the kind of systems and operations that they have come forward?  All towards gathering information from social networks, email addresses, financial records of private citizens, tracking of calls and everything else that has been attributed to them through the slow release of documents from the Edward Snowden files. It remains to be seen which of these are actually based in truth and turn out to be real. Back to a year ago the only people in the common population that would have any concept that any of this was going on would have to be thrown into the tin foil hat crowd. Now, we’re all getting tin foil hats.

So the question for some would be why would an internet kill switch exist? We’ve actually seen examples of the internet getting cut off and proposals to create just such a mechanism. We’ve seen cell phone networks jammed by devices in certain high security and emergency situations. To some an internet kill switch doesn’t really seem plausible, after the internet is everywhere, no one really owns it. However there is plenty of motivation on why to do it.

Although, there is “a plan”. It calls “kill switch”. Or, in normal language: Standard Operating Procedure 303 (SOP). And the US government has the authority to do that. SOP is probably determined as a number of measures classified to implement a shutdown and restoration process for wireless networks in the event of a national crisis, that is a viable threat of a terrorist or cyber attack.
Recently, The Department of Homeland Security applied for approval its plan to shut off the internet and cellphone communications or SOP 303 to prevent a potential terroristic or cyber attack threat.

We may find out for sure, and soon

Apparently there’s an effort under way to get the details of this plan into the public square, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request:

Though, The United States District Court thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) ordered the plan to be disclosed to the public, because it discloses “techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions” or could “reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.”
So far, DHS is required to release the records in 30 days by December 12 or appeal.
Generally, the kill switch involves the government to disconnect local, or localized commercial and private wireless networks in the event of emergency, such as terrorist attack or serious cyber assault. It allows federal authorities to use cellphone jammers to interrupt service in a targeted area or to turn off cellphone towers at all.

Or this may be something we have yet to discover may have already happened from another Snowden NSA document.

In the meantime it would seem that the legend of an internet kill switch is possibly more fact than myth and if not somewhere on the roadmap.  If you look at the mode of operations the NSA has leveraged in getting information, there are some interesting possibilities. First off, they could try and hack their way there. This would probably prove to be very difficult as the infrastructures are built to be resilient, to never go down and be secured from cyber threats. The path to the internet kill switch is more likely much simpler than that. They can just walk in and shut it off.  Part of these alleged NSA operations has been a number of reported government orders to comply with their requests. Under threat, companies have reportedly been forced to comply, then completely deny their hand in allowing the organization to do what they do. If you think about that and as powerful these executive agencies are right now, with little power for anyone to object, it could happen. This would likely be under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). If a number of internet service providers were put into this situation, boom you have an internet kill switch. It’s that simple.

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