Lessig: Beware the coming i-Patriot Act

Via boingboing: In a recent panel on the future of the internet, Stanford law professor and digital legal activist Lawrence Lessig — a founder of Creative Commons and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation — warned that the first major system-wide cyber attack will bring down a i-Patriot Act for the internet.

Said Lessig:

"There’s going to be an i-9/11 event, which doesn’t mean an al Qaeda event. What it means is an event where the instability, the insecurity, of the internet becomes manifest. Some major malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. Remember that after 9/11, the government dropped the Patriot Act in about 20 days, and it was passed, and the Patriot Act is huge. I remember someone asking a Justice Department official, how do they write such a large statute so quickly? The answer was, it’s been sitting in a drawer at the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event that would allow them to drop it. Of course the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are not protected by the government of the United States.

"I had dinner once with Richard Clark at the table and I said ‘is there an equivalent to the Patriot Act — an iPatriot Act — just sitting waiting for some substantial event just waiting for them to come have the excuse for radically changing the way the Internet works?’ And he said, ‘Of course there is’ — and I swear this is what he said, and quote — ‘and Vint Cerf is not going to like it very much.’"

Here’s the video of that segment. Or you can watch the whole discussion here.

Lawrence Lessig: The coming i-Patriot Act (1:24)