WARNING: This man can turn off the internet

A huge cyber attack or mass civil unrest would give CultureSecretary Jeremy Hunt powers to shut down the web. But how is iteven possible? Nick Harding finds out

According to David Eagleman, a respected scientist and the authorof Why the Net Matters, 21st-century technology obviates the causesthat led past civilisations to collapse and because of this, heargues, that the web is crucial to our survival. It has become suchan intermeshed part of society that a world in which the internetsuddenly goes down or is switched off is hard to imagine. TheHollywood-sized scenario reads like this: email, telephone andtelevision services would go dark, media organisations become unableto gather and disseminate news, governments struggle to communicateemergency information, commerce grinds to a halt, shops run out offood, the transport system collapses and electricity supplies are beseverely disrupted. Within months gangs of feral youths would takeover the towns, cannibalising the weak and elderly, while citizenstrembled behind barricaded doors, weeping over their useless copiesof Call of Duty: Black Ops.

In Britain there are two pieces of legislation which give theGovernment power to order the suspension of the internet and, intheory, bring about web armageddon. The Civil Contingencies Act andthe 2003 Communications Act can both be used to suspend internetservices, either by ordering internet service providers (ISPs) toshut down their operations or by closing internet exchanges. Underthe protocol of the Communications Act, the switch-flicking would bedone by the Culture Secretary. In the eyes of the legislature,Jeremy Hunt is the man invested with the power to send us back tothe dark ages.

The chances of this happening are extremely remote, partlybecause these powers can be used only in times of emergency toprotect the public and safeguard national security and partlybecause consensus governance would act as a check to any nefariousindividual ambitions. In theory, the mechanical process of shuttingdown the internet should be simple. In addition to ordering thenation's main ISPs to cease operation, officials can also close maininternet exchanges such as Linx - the London Internet Exchange -which handles 80 per cent of our internet traffic.

The ISP shutdown process was used recently by the Hosni Mubarak'sgovernment in Egypt, ostensibly to stifle the propagation ofdissent. On 27 January Egypt was effectively disconnected from therest of the web after its ISPs were ordered to shut down theirservices. Shorty after going offline Vodafone Egypt issued astatement explaining: "Under Egyptian legislation the authoritieshave the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to complywith it."

Egypt's other three big ISPs - Link Egypt, Telecom Egypt andEtisalat Misr - also stopped services. A few days later the finalservice provider, Noor, went down, taking the country's stockexchange with it.

The pattern has since been repeated in other parts of the MiddleEast where popular uprisings have occurred. On 19 February Libyawent completely offline. In Bahrain reduced web traffic flow wasreported between 14 and 16 February.

As the authorities in Egypt discovered, however, the net kill-switch can be circumvented. During the shutdown there, telephonelines remained active and tech-savvy protesters were able to set upinformation networks using dial-up modems.

Telecomix New Agency, a global affiliation of internet activists,reported: "We set up servers which could answer modem calls vialandline. Many of the Telecomix agents who were setting up thesesystems were not even born when this technology was consideredmodern. Some touched their first modem in those days. There were noinstructions how to set up a computer to make a modem call andconnect it to the internet. We had to learn how to do it. OutsideEgypt, in France, the Netherlands and Germany, some providersreactivated their modem pools."

Because modems work by dialling a number and swapping datathrough a telephone line, lists of active dial-up ISP telephonenumbers had to be distributed by fax and by hand because emailservices had been taken down along with domestic internet services.Numbers were also read out over shortwave radio. Even normallyapolitical companies made efforts to maintain the flow ofinformation. Twitter teamed up with Google and its newly acquiredSayNow company and offered an internet-free way of Tweeting over thephone. Callers could leave voice messages including #tags and theirmessages were posted online for them.

That repressive governments have been able to use laws similar tothose in the UK to implement such draconian crackdowns on thefreedom of their citizens has rightly raised questions about whetherour politicians have too much power over the internet.

From a legal standpoint, there are safeguards. The section of theCommunications Act which allows internet provision to be suspendedcan be enacted only "to protect the public from any threat to publicsafety or public health, or in the interests of national security".And there are statutory avenues for recourse should these powers beabused.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport explains: "It wouldhave to be a very serious threat for these powers to be used,something like a major cyber attack. The powers are subject toreview and if it was used inappropriately there could be an appealto the competitions appeal tribunal. Any decision to use them wouldhave to comply with public law and the Human Rights Act."

Experts such as Dr Peter Gradwell, managing director of businessinternet provider Gradwell and trustee of the Nominet Trust, believethe fail-safes are adequate.

He says: "The legislation also includes the requirement to makecompensatory payments for loss or damage. Would the Government wantto foot the bill for switching off a multi- billion-pound industry?If a notice is served on an ISP and ignored, the penalty is only afine. If the public were massing on the streets of London, I believethat many internet providers would be happy to argue the legitimacyof such a penalty in court."

As long as the balance between freedom of information andprotection of the public is maintained, few may argue against havingwhat amounts to a national firewall at a time when cyber warfare isarguably the fastest growing threat to national security.

In the US lawmakers are drafting even more wide-ranginglegislation than that available to politicians in Britain. TheProtecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act will give PresidentBarack Obama the ability to declare a state of cyber-securityemergency, during which he would have full control over internetnetworks and could isolate the country and its critical nationalinfrastructure from attack for a period of 120 days.

However, if an eventuality ever arises in which Westerngovernments need to use these powers, they may ultimately proveuseless, according to many specialists. While Egypt was relativelysimple to switch off, the UK, with its advanced digitalinfrastructure, would be much harder. It has more than 3,000independent ISPs, several national mobile operators and at least 10undersea high-speed fibre cables linking it to all other parts ofthe world - mainland Europe, Africa and the Americas. Each of thesecables is capable of carrying huge amounts of traffic.

If, for example, the Coalition invoked the Civil ContingenciesAct and shut down the main exchanges, some mobile broadbandoperators would still be able to operate. T-Mobile could routetraffic via Germany and O2 through Spain. Some dial-up services suchas SprintNet, which is used for AOL facilities, could still operate,because its services are routed through the United States.

As Claire Sellick, event director of Infosecurity Europe,explains: "On a practical level, switching off the internet in theUK would be very difficult. Most ISPs have diverse routing, withsome - notably mobile broadband operators - routing trafficoverseas. It would only be partially effective. Broadband localdelivery may be curtailed but dial-up modem, leased line and otheraccess systems would still operate."

The problem comes down to the very nature of the internet indeveloped countries. It is a mesh of networks. It transcends bordersand has no definable beginning or end. As a result of this structureit is almost impossible to isolate all the connections. In the UK,many providers have private interconnections with each other andwith other providers in other nations as well as connections tointernet exchanges.

In addition the UK also has a diverse alternative infrastructurewhich could be utilised to carry data. Many cities have wireless andwimax mesh networks in place, there are lots of radio enthusiastsand privately owned optic fibre follows roads, railways, waterwaysand underground networks.

As Dr Gladwell explains: "Any shutdown would be hugelyproblematic to start with, but could be easily subverted. If youtake down something like Linx it would initially affect lots ofpeople but you would end up with a secondary network being built upquite quickly."

It seems highly likely then, that as happened in Egypt, if theJeremy Hunt Doomsday scenario were ever come to pass, an alternativenetwork would quickly expand and provide access to the internet forall. Which is a relief.