Americans support a lot of crap they probably shouldn't and don't know a whole lot about. This is why we have a Republic, not a Democracy.<p>Edit: To put this a bit less glibly, there's a whole range of things that the "average American" doesn't know enough about to make a fully qualified decision. That's not to trash "average Americans" - I wouldn't do a whole lot better at making coherent, well-thought-out policies which take all available information into account if put on the spot - but it is to say that just because something polls well doesn't mean it should be policy. Our government is supposed to represent the best interests of the people, not blindly enact their will.
The sad thing is that anyone using an <i>Internet 'Kill Switch'</i> would do far more damage than most of the "cyber attacks" that we know about. And if the ability was built, it would definitely become a target for cyber attacks.
These surveys are usually spurious, because they don't state what questions were asked and who constitutes "the public". It's possible to get whatever results you want either by cherry picking the kind of people you ask, or by framing the questions in a way which is biased towards certain responses.<p>I bet if they asked a question such as "do you believe that the president should have the right to prevent you and everyone you know from using Facebook, Twitter and Gmail for an unspecified period of time?" the support level would be rather minimal.<p>If it was framed as "do you believe that the president should be able to temporarily suspend internet services to protect vital national security interests in an emergency?" probably the majority would be in favour. Protecting things in an emergency sounds like a good thing, it's vague enough so that it doesn't sound like something which would apply to you personally, and if it's only temporary then who cares?<p>These days many people who would not be classed as archetypal "nerds" are highly addicted to internet use, and in the past I've seen people having something close to a panic attack if they can't access their emails for half an hour.
For anybody who'd like a summary of the issue itself, I think Bruce Schneier covers the whole idea of an Internet Kill Switch pretty well here:<p><a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/07/internet_kill_s.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/07/internet_kill_...</a>
I wonder what counts as an "emergency" and "cyber attack" and what is the extent of a "portion"?<p>These terms seem too vague for me, take this example:
Someone tweets that Obama has killed a baby kitten, Obama could shut down Twitter because it's an emergency, he was falsely accused. He could shut down Facebook too, and all services that could be connected to Twitter to stop this cyber attack from spreading.<p>No disrespect, but I seriously doubt that the majority of the people(not just Americans) actually know how the Internet works, it's like asking a first graders to solve a differential equations.<p>The Internet just works fine by itself it does not need supervision from the US government, in fact it is one of the reasons it works so well.
Americans also support a government-sponsored lobotomy for themselves, to insert Patriotic God-Juice into their heads.<p>Why is this a surprise?<p>The U.S. is a success <i>despite</i> the majority of the American people, not because of them.