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DHS: Obama Cyber Security Executive Order “Close To Completion”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on September 19, 2012 and said that a cyber security executive order is “close to completion” that will grant the president broad and sweeping powers over the internet.
Napolitano said, “DHS is the Federal government’s lead agency for securing civilian government computer systems and works with our industry and Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government partners to secure critical infrastructure and information systems.”
Joe Wolverton, II, at the New American, rightly points out the problem with the federal government’s exercising an authority they are not specifically given in the Constitution.
Precisely which clause in the Constitution grants to the president specifically or the executive branch (of which DHS is a part) generally authority to exercise any sort of oversight of such matters was not cited by Secretary Napolitano.
Naturally, a document written 225 years ago would not include a reference to cyber security, but the principles of enumerated powers and limited government apply to any program or project of the federal government. According to the contract that created the three branches of the federal government, none of those departments may do anything unless specifically granted that authority in the Constitution.
This is a principle of constitutional interpretation often overlooked. Those promoting a larger government with increasing influence on the lives of private citizens commonly defend government growth by insisting that “nothing in the Constitution forbids us from doing” whatever federal program they are advocating.
Had I been living at the time, I would have sided with the anti-Federalists. However, Wolverton goes on to point out that James Madison wrote in The Federalist, No. 45:
