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DHS Says Cellular Outage Reporting is Terrorist Blueprint
Tuxedo Jack writes "U.S. landline telephone companies have to file public reports when their networks have major outages, so you would think the same would hold true for cellular providers and ISPs, right? Not if the Department of Homeland Security gets its way. CNN/AP reports that the DHS wants to make cellphone outage reports secret, claiming that they could be used as 'blueprints for terrorists.' I don't know about you, but I'd kinda like to see public disclosure on what happened if my cellphone/Internet access is down for an extended period."
Well, at least he wants to scale it back, rather than the current administration's intent to add more to it.
While voting for it was pretty much indefensible, only 1 (Feingold) out of 100 senators voted against it and it was passed only a month and a half after 9/11. Feingold may have been the only one who actually read the thing.
Get your amateur license. It's extremely simple to do. I got mine last October. Amateur radio is fun as much as it is rewarding. Even if you aren't on the air every day you'll appreciate when you can communicate during a power outage or national emergency.
For a little studying and $12 you can get your technician's license which affords you a lot of bandwidth above 50MHz. Check ww.arrl.org for your nearest radio club and get in touch with someone.
KD5ZEF
Families that listened to the cockpit voice recording in April 2002 said that the recording, while not completely clear, did clearly indicate that there was a struggle in the cockpit shortly before the plane crashed. In addition, had the plane been shot down by a missile, there would have been debris scattered for miles before the impact site along the flight path -- Sidewinder, Sparrow, or AMRAAM, those things will blow a lot of pieces off of a large plane.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
People in Washington and elsewhere have noticed that terrorists use the internet in much the same way they do. They point to web sites and even combat games used as "online training camps".
Words like that are usually followed by bombs and at least one person has been to jail over it already and speech has not been free everywhere forever. The EFF has a nice list of sites already shut down.
More stupid laws can't be far behind a propaganda ramp up like that. The only way to implement the censorship that would be to continue to centralize telecommunications further. The only way to kill free speech is to kill free enterprise.
The pattern is clear. The government is augmenting it's own power by proping up favorites in industry. It's so unAmerican that I want to throw up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"umm, there WAS debris found 8 miles or so from the main impact site, backwards from the line of flight,[...]"
One thing to take into consideration, is that if there was a struggle in the cockpit, and the aircraft went out of control, it is quite likely that pieces were ripped from the aircraft by the extreme loads placed on the airframe. An airliner is no fighter jet, one can rip the wings, horizontal/vertical stabilizers off quite easily under extreme maneuvers/speed, or in an uncontrolled dive. As far as accounting for the debris field being so far away, the aircraft could have sustained damage, but actually travelled some distance before impact, as we're talking starting at an altitude of around 30,000-35,000 ft, which means that the aircraft could have been in a fairly steep dive, losing more and more pieces, and still cover 8 miles ground distance. Although not an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic or crash investigator, I am a retired senior avionics technician, and have helped in crash investigations before, including black-box voice/data extraction from damaged recorders, and have also worked helping to repair crashed aircraft that were salvageable, so have some experience from which to speak.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The brunt of the argument is that
DHS is not concerned about "the network is currently down" notifications being "blueprints for terrorists". DHS is concerned about the ones like this:
That's what the DHS means by "blueprints for terrorists" - they're concerned that the level of detail in the fault analysis would be enough for someone to cause an outage on purpose, thus preventing people calling in or out of that mobile coverage area.
So please just read the damned article before harping on about "how could a network outage possibly benefit a terrorist"?
As it stands, a network outage could be of great benefit to terrorists, if they can cause the outage at will.
TRANSMISSION ENDS
Well, hooo-kay then, how did she activate it without her credit card, which was presumably back in her purse as well?
This is the problem with many conspiracy theories--they ask such simple, obvious questions, that clearly point to no rational explanation besides conspiracy.
Er, no. First of all, you're begging the question of whether or not the stewardess in question actually had no access to her credit card. How about this--if I were a steward(ess), I'd realize that carrying a purse or backpack while I worked was impractical. I'd also realize that I was travelling all over the country, and that I might end up staying in a strange city on any given night (weather diversion, mechanical trouble, etc.). Lastly, I might realize that my purse/bag/backpack could be stolen while I'm off at the other end of the plane, and I might not know about it until after the passengers were long gone.
What would I do in such a situation? I'd stuff my driver's license, a credit card, and (especially for international flights) my passport into the pocket of my uniform where they would be easy for me to keep track of. I wouldn't carry my phone on me, because a)it's bulkier than the cards, and b)I'm not allowed to use it on the plane anyway.
For that matter, the stewardess could have just borrowed a card from someone seated near the phones. If the plane I was on was hijacked, I wouldn't begrudge someone a few minutes of toll charges.
The question of debris is addressed by a well-written sibling post. Briefly, a struggle for control in the cockpit could easily result in deliberate or accidental rapid maneouvres that result in greater-than-design stresses on the airframe. Consequently, bits shake loose. If you stomp on the rudder pedal of an airliner while flying at anything close to cruising speed, you're going to rip stuff off. (Think about what would happen to your car if you turned the steering wheel abruptly all the way to the right while on the Interstate.)
If those are the best of the 'hundred unanswered questions' and 'strange incongruities', then I'm afraid it's a pretty weak conspiracy. Hint: lack of information does not necessarily mean conspiracy--sometimes it just means that we can't get all of the information.
~Idarubicin