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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."
This really smells like a case of the "terror card" being played so that information that otherwise would deserve to be public gets pulled back not just for protection from terrorists, but also to protect other interests... including:
- Protecting embarassing localized failures of a cell network from being reported as news, which would of course lower a company's stock price.
- Protecting the cell phone industry from consumer groups keeping stats on outages, which would actually cause companies to have to improve their service in poor areas.
- Allowing Tom Ridge and friends to ask that cell phone service be cut around areas where "National Security Events" are taking place and being able to claim that the tower simply went down rather than having own up to the fact that they interrupted service to the general public based on nothing more than a reasonless fear.
- Allowing the government to take down cell service around any incident that the government would rather not news spread quickly about. By ensuring that the people within the secured zone can't call or send pictures out, and reporters can't get in, they can assure a delay in the release of any account of what's going on in that zone... such jamming would be glaringly clear if all of the cell companies filed reports about the simultainous downtime without any equipment failures.
It is a whole lot easier to cover up a cell service downtime being caused by either company mistakes or government demand if nobody has to file a report on it. And that seems like a much more likely motivation.
If terrorists figure out the pattern of outages, they could attack during a peak collapsing the cell networks, and that would be bad, IMHO. Chaos would ensue. For once, I don't believe it, I'm in agreement with Homeland Security.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This is getting silly. I doubt seriously this is "Terrorist Roadmaps", more like Cell Companies want to keep exact details of outages secret.
This Patriot act is getting downright unpatriotic.
If you want to spin the headline a bit... you also can see that the FCC is actively considering making cellular service companies file downtime reports just like landline companies do, and that's something that has never been required before.
Of course, that'd be something that's only of geek interest. It becomes a whole lot more newsworthy when the Department of Homeland Security has come in to claim terror fears should be reason enough to not publish such reports along side the service providers who would be expected to grasp at any reason they'd have to object.
Seriously folks, this is getting f@*&ing ridiculous. The word 'terrorist' is becoming the modern version of 'communist' and 'witch.'
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Of course the same argument can be applied to maps. Knowing the locations of streets, rivers, libraries, or entire cities could provide terrorists with a major intelligence coup. Sooner we'll be just like the old Soviet Union where entire cities did not appear on maps due to National Security issues.
Dr. Rick
- "It's such a fine line between clever and stupid" (Nigel Tufnel)
- Zort! (Pinky)
""What 9/11 produced for them is a windfall opportunity to rebake all of their old bogus arguments as to why we shouldn't have any of these (outage reports)," Moir said. "They've morphed all of their comments into post-9/11-ese.""
I couldn't help but think this is basically what Bush did in regards to invading Iraq.
It would be a fantastic win for us if the terrorists started blowing up random communications towers instead of buildings full of people. Unfortunately they aren't going to go after such low-drama targets and this is just so much bullshit to cover the fact that these companies don't want to have to publicly disclose their mistakes.
Michael
This November vote and put an end to this nonsense!
Unless of course the voting is postponed due to terrorist threats.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
GAAAHHHHHRRRR that's it! i quit, they win, give me the flip'n Prozack II 2 pill, bar code my head, and implant the tracking chip, take away my cash adn give me an RFID card, and tell em what to think, feel, wear, eat, sit, sh!t, sleep, walk, run, and jump. I'm tired of all this crap, why not make everything illeagle that way you can arrest anyone at any time for anything. The system is broken, there are not Mr. Smith in washington, you can't fight city hall, the sky is falling we might as well give up and accept our fate now.
Screw you homeland security, why not cover the county with soft fluffy pillows so when we (or at least "the children") fall down they don't get hurt. Look damit, terrorist are not backwater ignorant bucktoothed country folk, there are eductated (usually in the U.S.) religious zelots or crackpots or both. They do not need to use these reports to generate a blue print, they already have one. Security through obscurity has nor, does not, nor will it ever work. Go ask Microsoft if you don't believe me. Besides i would love to see real time reports so that way we can send in a team of heavily armed drunken red necks in their 57 chevy to all the big outages just incase the outage was due to a terriost attack, be casue no matter how much of the religious zelot they may be, no one can stop Zek and Earl after they've downed a case of Highlife.
Presumably, one of the concerns here is that terrorists would be able to determine the locations of vital cell-phone network equipment and thereby disrupt that network. This made me think of the other news we've seen lately, particularly the concept of a P2P cell network, where cell-phones participate on a swarm-like network. Potential of disrupting such a network? Very, very low.
It's easy to leap to other conclusions here as well. Telecommuting is another example of a technology where it would be difficult to kill a large number of people working in an office building simply because they're suddenly geographically distributed over a large area.
So yeah, a little offtopic, admittedly (that ought to attract the mods), but an interesting future for what may or may not be an actual problem in the present, don't you think?
...to such a proposal. Is the implication that when "terrorists" see a widespread cellphone outage caused by a single location that they now have knowledge of a vulnerable spot in the communication infrastructure?
Personally I think people give "terrorists" too much credit, and the DHS makes them out to be more resourceful than they really are. If terrorism relied on such precise and surgical strikes as the DHS would like us to believe, then we wouldn't need an absurd Terror Alert Level to tell us when we've got something to worry about; if the U.S. had as much to fear as the government tries to proclaim, I'm sure we'd all be feeling the effects firsthand. The attack on the WTC happened nearly 3 years ago, and to this day we have seen how many more massive "terrorist" attacks on US soil? It seems to me that the most damage we've suffered is the extreme paranoia and collective uncertainty fostered by a government that continually proclaims to be keeping us safe with it's "expertise".
This proposal by the DHS just seems like another two-pronged attack to feed a self-inflicted sense of fear and victimization. Make people feel like the DHS can actually do something about those few terrorist groups who can actually get their shit together and carry out something as horrific as the WTC, and at the same time put some more power in government hands. Ya know, just in case...
--
Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
...that cellular telephone companies are NOT the holders of a monopoly on wireless telephone service in their areas, whereas for the past 50-75 years, RBOCs (and AT&T before them) have had monopolies granted by the government (and regulated by FCC/PUCs/PSCs). Buildout of the public telephone network was partially done at taxpayer expense - I cannot see how major (commercial) ISPs or wireless phone providers that owe nothing to the government for funding for their networks should even have to disclose such information.
:)
(But, if they did, it should definitely be public
...the "bug reports causing vulnerabilities" argument.
'Nuff said.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
This, combined with the fact that the president wants the ability to reschedule elections in the event of a terrorist attack is making me rather paranoid, and I have never been a member of the 'tin foil hat' birgade.
Why should any company providing a service vital to the country not be subject to the same rules about information disclosure as the government? (I intended to say that without irony, but considering how Jr. has been trying to hide everything lately...)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
My understanding from all of the news coverage thus far is that fairly significant knowledge of terrorist plans are available before the fact - the problem seems to be not in alerting the terrorists, but in alerting OUR OWN FREAKING GOVERNMENTS TO THE INFORMATION HELD BY THEIR OWN INTELLIGENCE ORGANISATIONS!
One solution which might help both the public and sooth security fears would be to publicize reports and location of outages but not their cause. The cause information would be kept by the FCC and DHS.
That way the consumer groups could monitor carrier reliability which is what most people are concerned about anyway. The FCC could hold carrier's feet to the fire over the cause of probles. And DHS could monitor for any patterns of outages which might be related to terrorist activities.
The only losers in this scenario are the carriers who should be owning up about these problems anyway. In a supposedly capitalisitic system I as a consumer need to be able to determine the quality of the goods and services I purchase. Blocking that information only serves the interests of those corporations who wish to deceive their customers.
Ho boy, the United States has a long way to go to get to the best day in the Soviet Union level of governmental controls.
1. Where are the Gulags? I know some consider the prison system to be gulags, but honestly they aren't. There are no Federal or State prisons or jails
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
"After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 Lenin announced that any "class enemy" could not be trusted and should be treated worse than an ordinary criminal. The Gulag was a reformed extension of earlier labor camps (katorgas) operated in Siberia as a part of penal system in Imperial Russia, which quickly overflowed with the enemies of the people, a designation used by the Bolshevik government for corrupt officials, saboteurs, embezzlers, political enemies and dissidents"
"According to the Encyclopædia Britannica 2004 edition, "Western scholarly estimates of the total number of deaths in the Gulag in the period from 1918 to 1956 range from 15 to 30 million."'
"In some camps, the fatality rate during the first months was as high as 80%."
2. As for the idea that "Good" citizens will do things to "Bad" people, that's so much BS. For example, this weekend I was flying along the Oregon coast, we saw a strange Lockheed Orion, I've posted to the web and to the Usenet to find out what an Orion in strange colors was doing 500 meters off the coast at 500 feet above the water and the FBI hasn't shown up yet. So where is that closed information or backlash about asking questions?
3. The Media doesn't "dance" to the government's tune, if it did do you think the Prison Scandal in Iraq would have made it out? Would news about casualties in Iraq even make it out? No, of course not, hell in Russia the families of the Krusk still aren't told what happened, during the Soviet Union mistakes on warships like the Widowmaker got Officers executed and the familes were not allowed to have the bodies for burial. During the first press conferences in 2000 when the Kursk went down members of the crew's families were sedated by Russian Government doctors if they asked questions. Needles in the neck, on TV.
Here in Portland for example, one can still go out to the airport and watch the civilian and military jets take off, and when I take pictures no jackbooted thugs attack.
Hate to break it to you Anonymous Coward, but those aren't the "terrorists" to which our government is referring.
You're right, I don't live in and wasn't in Oklahoma City. But I *was* in Kingman, Arizona and I *saw* the miles-long military reinforcements to the National Guard Armory roll into town. I *saw* the FBI setup camp and investigate everything that moved.
I also saw our military punch holes in the home of American citizens in Waco, Texas as chimney vents for the fire they started moments later.
"Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher.
For good or for ill it teaches the people by its example."
The cops know that everyone is listening to their frequencies on scanners. Also, their towers are in well-known locations. Take that out and the police are paralized. Well, they were. Once cell phones were pocket-sized, local EMS realized that they were not only a good "private" way to communicate but also that they were a reliable backup in case of emergency.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
They got a tip that a dark-skinned person was taking pictures and notes. If they had *not* followed up and those locks were bombed next month, would you want their heads? I bet you'd be outraged.
It's worth noting that those locks are a military installation run by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The Ballard Locks a military installation. Yeah, I guess that those Sockeye salmon are really valuable to our national security, as is the ability for those boat owners on Lake Washington and Lake Union to get their boats to and from Puget Sound. My God! The whole country would collapse if the locks were damaged! Quick! Suspend the Constitution!
So what if people calling in tips to the DHS use profiling? I don't recall any WHITE people bombing us. When someone says the word terrorist, you know, like when we're at a heightened security alert, what mental image do YOU form? Thought so.
You don't recall any WHITE people bombing us? Do you have memory problems as well as being completely stupid? I guess that you don't recall the bombing of the Murrah federal building in April of 1995, which was done by a couple of white guys, one of whom, Timothy McVeigh, was executed for it. I guess you don't recall the bombings of abortion clinics that were done by WHITE right-to-lifers. I guess you don't recall the bombings of churches in the south by WHITE KKK members.
The mental image I form is of the Department of Homeland Security crying wolf again and again and again. The terrorist alerts, which weren't that great of an idea to begin with, have been so overblown as to become meaningless. I'm also beginning to form an image of Homeland Security releasing these to distract our attention from other events, and so are a lot of other people. Witness the latest Homeland Security alert which contained no new info and was a rehash of information from several months ago.
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, lieutenant Taco? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Spiers, and you curse the Department of Homeland Security. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Spier's questioning, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
If fucking retards such as yourself are the only thing standing between me and Osama Bin Laden then I'm fucked. Oh BTW dickhead, I spent 13 years in the National Guard as an M60 and M1 tanker, what are your credentials? A four digit /. ID number? A high score playing America's Army, a John Ashcroft Junior G-man badge? Sitting through all 24 episodes of 24 without having to get up and go to the bathroom?
Quite frankly your existence is grotesque and incomprehensible to me. Why didn't your mother abort you? Why didn't your dad drown you in a bathtub? Why don't you shoot yourself in the head?
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.
You provide me with my freedom? Did you write the Constitution? Did you fight in WWII, Korea, Afghanistan? Were you a first responder on 9/11? If not then you haven't done shit, pigfucker. You're either some sort of fucktard poseur who has spent too much time playing with his George W. Bush flight suit action figure or you actually do work for one of the idiot bureaucracies that is concerned with "homeland security". If it's the latter then I have news for you old son, you and your buddies haven't done jack fucking shit for our security. Osama Bin Laden is still out there, so is Mullah Omar and Zarqawi. What have you fucktards achieved other than harrassing US Citizens and trashing the Constitut
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I hope the Department of Homeland Security is spending an equal amount of its resources on developing more reliable networks.
Maybe they should propose more competition and diversity as a way of ensuring redundancy.
After-the-fact reports on cellular outages, explaining the CAUSE OF THE OUTAGE could be used, in part, as a simple training manual on how to disrupt cellular service...
The same, of course, applies to landline services, and anyone with experience on the technical side of the 'outside plant' world can probably tell you a half dozen low-risk ways to disrupt service over selected areas...
I dislike the idea of 'hiding' the root cause of cellular outages, but I can also understand a part of the desire to do so for security.
*adjusts tinfoil propellor beanie*
Tomas
The fact is that there have been 0, that is zero, as in one minus one attacks on America since September 11.
Forgot the anthrax mailer did we?
And wisely, you qualify that with "attack on America" because terrorism has increased worldwide.
Given that prior to 9/11, the last time Al Quaeda had launched a terrorist attack on American soil was 8 years before in in 1993, citing the lack of terrorist attacks in the past 3 years is hardly proof of anything.
ODD... I seem to remember a very WHITE person bombing us... I think his name was McVeigh (sp?)
This all puts me in mind of the aphroisim about history repeating itself when we fail to learn from it, and I dare-say remembering is a big part of learning.
On September 11 I lost a bet. I bet my roommate that it was a melitia group protesting "The Military Industrial Complex." I figured I'd lose though, because WHITE Terroritst rarely consider the suicide aproach... WHITE Terrorists are the set-and-forget bomber types.
...that or they have been apointed by the Supreme Court of the U.S. to replace the duly elected President... (ok, that's a cheap shot, but the homilies are flying here and I am about to try to make a different point. 8-)
Before you flame go ahead and remember a little history... The term "terrorisim" stems from the means used by a government for controlling its OWN population. (No really, look up "the reign of terror" sometime.)
So some strangers blew up some buildings and, for the most part, huge sections of the world (the U.S. in particular) seem to have decided that history is meaningless and it is better to live in a condition of immediate and imaginary safety instead of a responsable and well-informed liberty.
I am amused that you go on to quote Nicholson's character in A few Good Men... I guess you missed the point of the movie. You know, the one where he was a bad person who did wrong things and got someone killed? Or the part where all the good little supporting drones almost let him get away with it because it is bad to question authority even when you know it is doing a wrong thing.
It shouldn't be "My Country Right or Wrong" it should be "My Country, and I'll make it Right when it is Wrong because it's MY COUNTRY and I take Responsibility for my PROPERTY when it HARMS OTHERS."
Capitulating blindly with the US government when it is fook-all off it's nut and being run by a wanker is the *LEAST* patriotic thing an "American" can do...
God, stop this crazy planet, I want to get off and go somewhere with intellegent life...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I have come to accept the fact that you liberals are impervious to facts and irrefutable evidence. Every single time you are faced with them, you change the subject and/or start calling the person names and placing personal attacks because you CAN'T argue against the facts. (So go ahead, and call me names - change the subject and prattle on, I've come to expect nothing more from you sheeple).
9.8 out of 10 for ironic merit!
I've got a tiger repelling rock to save you.
What do you mean you dont think it works, you dont see any tigers around, do you?