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I'm no expert. Can anyone think of a set of circumstances under which this power could be reasonably used?

Alternatively, can anyone think of a likely misuse of this power? (I'm not talking black-helicopter stuff here, just standard-issue governmental overreaching).

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Misuse: the shutdown switch or codes aren't properly secured and Foreign Enemy X shuts down your country's internet throwing it into chaos.

Introducing systemic weakness isn't the answer when you're trying to strengthen your network, strengthening your network is the answer.

Let's hope they don't try to automate this; CALEA was complex and expensive enough.

And CALEA narrowly impacted on the tiny minority of systems that directly worked with voice communications. The tinfoil hat interpretation of this capability would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Well, I'd think that being at war would be a good excuse. War on terror, war on drugs. I'd think there's plenty of excuses there.

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