Slashdot Mirror
Telecom Outages Now a State Secret
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "In the past, before negotiating important or large telecommunications contracts, you could check out the detailed network outage reports that large telecommunications carriers file with the FCC. By knowing where carriers had experienced problems, buyers can negotiate better service contracts and know where to plan on redundant services. As recently as last summer, the FCC championed the marketplace benefits of making outage data available to the public. But after more than a decade of making such carrier outage reports available to the public, the FCC in August ruled that the information will be kept secret, lest it fall into the hands of terrorists."
DHS Says Cellular Outage Reporting is Terrorist Blueprint
Hello, information? I'd like the numbers for G. David Shine and Roy Cohn.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
what are they going to use it for?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"Can you hear me now? What do you mean you can't tell me that?"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
On July 31, 1932, Hitler's Nazi party won 230 out of 608 seats in the Reichstag, making it the majority party, but he was not yet in power. It was several years before Hitler became the cosmically evil war criminal. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was finally sworn in as Chancellor. Historian Alan Bullock describes it: "Hitler came to office in 1933 as the result, not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement sweeping him into power, nor even of a popular victory at the polls, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the 'Old Gang' whom he had been attacking for months.... Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue." At the time, most Germans couldn't imagine that Hitler would last long because his bombastic and swaggering manner and his overly simplistic speeches about Germany's social, economic, and political problems were a "joke." Politically sophisticated Germans dismissed Hitler as an inept caricature, but he and his accomplices consolidated their power by passing national security legislation supported by a stacked court. During these critical times of concentrating power, der Schutzstaffein (SS) made sure that Hitler's critics and opponents were kept far away and silenced so that it would appear as though he had complete national support and, indeed, a mandate. Thus peacefully began Nazi totalitarianism.
We'd tell you, but that would also tip off the net terrorists.
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
Seems more like a scheme to keep the public in the dark should there be a successful attack on the telecom infrastructure... If the public doesn't know...it didn't happen.
It strikes me as interesting that, as the article states, we are in an era of more information being collected and less returned. This applies to multiple issues, of course, not just the corporate angle - but what strikes me as odd is that none of the businesses being affected negatively by these changes are ones in which our great President Bush or his brains, VP Cheney have a hand unless their constituency specifically demands it.
A pox, I say. I've written my Senators and Representative in the past about protecting the freedom of information. Now more than ever vigilance is necessary.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Lets see..
Helps business. check
Hurts people. check
Has terrorist excuse. check
It must be from the Republican administration.
If you're the competing business of one with frequent outages, you can no longer use that to your advantage in advertising and negotiations.
And realize that the best way to hide a secret is in plain sight surrounded by lots of other secrets that may or may not be true.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The fcc did not go so far as to prohibit all network vulnerability data from reaching the public--only that the information won't reach the public via the FCC.
Telco's are still free to provide the information and apparently they have competitive reasons to do so:
Lawyers who negotiate contracts for large enterprises agreed carriers that face meaningful competition will not be inclined to stop providing relevant data, including the cause of outages, to enterprises. Some said that even where competition is not robust, carriers have an interest in being candid with their largest customers.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Isn't it scary that I thought the bit about terrorism was a joke? But no, I RTFA and sure enough, they really are putting this down to terrorism. Will future generations laugh at how easily the masses were seduced by this strawman? This is like the German Jews all over again...
apterous.org
And "big" business. I'll take 100,000 "less efficient" businesses, if you please. With a side order of "social restructuring" and "class evaluation". And a super-sized engineering degree to go with that.
Thank you, drive-through.
I mean, stupidity seems to be the norm in politics, and this sounds like it was pushed through by the telecoms to avoid having to look bad to their customers, but still, this is just so ridiculous . . . *sigh*
I'm always amazed at the creativity that the Bush administration shows. They just never stop thinking of new ways to screw the consumer. This is almost as good as making everyone pay to have their phone tapped.
"Can you hear me now? What do you mean you can't tell me that?"
Sure you can joke about this, but I remember when this story first came to Slashdot and the comments ranged from angry people calling this move nothing but exploitation of the terror card, to Score: 5 OT posts about 9/11 with possible evidence that planes were shot down by the USAF.
My take is that these kinds of laws only prove that the USA is rapidly becoming fascist.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I remember on a previous article, it was argued that if terrorist communications were to be jammed, etc, but there was no given reason for outage - then terrorists would know they are being jammed.
That seemed like bullshit to me, and I really thought that something like this wouldn't pass. Really, what use could terrorists make of such outages, except for perhaps a very tentative prediction?
Even with the terrorist excuse, records released after-the-fact would still indicate which carriers suck repeatedly to the public, while negating the "exposive-of-jamming" arguement.
So, anyone know what the official excuse is for this?
the FCC is becoming moot.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Perfect markets (the ones conservatives crow about incessantly) require perfect information. Think about that the next time you hear them blather on about wonders of the free market. Anyone who truly believes in the true capitalist ideals and still votes republi-can't needs their head examined.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Just because an insane thing happened (9/11), does the whole world have to go insane?
Apparently so...
I would sooner believe the US invaded Iraq over innacurate reports of weapons of mass destruction than believe politics and money are behind removing telecom outage reports from the public.
subject line says it all.
While secrecy may make it less likely that the information falls into the hands of terrorists, it cannot guaranteed that it won't. Much like corporate code secrets somehow find their way to the public knowlege as exploits.
In a true free market, there would be no FCC at all, and thus no requirement for companies to report any outage data. Of course, customers could still collect outage data themselves and pool it publicly (ie on the internet).
Ironically, by making this information secret, telcos need to worry less about the reliability of their networks since their reliability will be difficult to assess by the buying public. This exerts less pressure on the telcos for improving the reliability of their systems.
As usual, government intervention will bring about the opposite of what they intend to do. Prescious few things are more efficient than the free market.
Remember that it wasn't that long ago that government supported the idea that a Monopoly in the telco industry kept prices down. Anybody remember exhoribitant long distance prices in the era of the government mandated telco monopoly?
If the government wants to improve redundancy, they should seek to make this information more public and more easily accessible and I guarantee you that buyers will exert the necessary pressures to keep the telcos running.
Sunny
Be my Friend
Why is it so much of this happens under the Bush watch? It happens under all presidents, but so much more so under this watch.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Terrorists are hiding under every rock, and behind every Bush. It's the new excuse for taking away our rights - "We can't let you see that because the terrorists could use it!"
Recently on Now with Bill Moyers (PBS, Friday nights, great show) there was a story about a major natural gas pipeline that would be passing near towns and populated areas. Problem is that no one could find out exactly what the route would be because of terrorism concerns. So it could pass under a school and no one would be allowed to know that. It was a great deal for the company building the pipeline because they didn't have to fight any protests over it running too close to someone's house.
So much FUD.
So, the FCC gathered all this information, compiled it and then presented it to the public. Ok, we can assume that the FCC is a non-partisan entity. Well, this rule now says that the non-partisan entity will no longer provide this information, but the original owners of the information can still make it public. So, lets see, I am Verizon I have a huge outage in some region where I commonly have outages, why would I tell the customer this information? What forces me not to give it some spin?
Useless sig.
In September 2003, Qwest Communications International Inc. service was out for 4 hours and 38 minutes after vandals cut fiber-optic cables in Bellingham, Wash.
Seems like a good plot to me- kind of like crashing a truck into the compound in Salem, OR on the corner of Hawthorne and State St. would be the obvious first move of a terror attack in Oregon- by taking out the emergency communications center you'll hinder any response to anything else you do.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Whenever the phone stops working, phone your friends to tell them about it. Seriously though, this could be used to cover up if communications are intentionally cut to keep word of protests or other undesireable news events from spreading.
Did they specify exactly how a terrorist would be at an advantage from an unplanned regional outage in the telecommunications system? If I am not mistaken, the emergency first responders are all equipped with radios and their own reserved frequencies. This sounds more like an excuse for telephone companies to conceal embarrassing information about quality of service from their customers.
Newton's Law of Politics: Every force from a political body will have an equal but opposite result from that intended
yeah - I like that
I am not well-familiar with the entire American "infrastucture" (water tunnels, electrical grid etc.), but from what I do know about it, it would be easy for a group of say four people who knew what they were doing to cause major disruptions. I mean, even when you have people working to keep things up, we still have had major blackouts on the West Coast and East Coast in the past few years.
On territory I'm more familiar with, telecommunications, there are chokepoints in the system. Fiber cuts at several specific points in a large city would take down a large percentage of the network. As far as the x.25 networks, or Internet, there are many such chokepoints as well. For the Internet, from the root name servers to core routers and their routing tables, there are chokepoints which are not difficult to DOS, never mind take over.
These things are very "vulnerable" as the corporate media nomenclature calls it. But vulnerable from whom? Saudi nationalists like Osama Bin Laden who (after the US helped Pakistan train him to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan) wanted the US military to leave Saudi Arabia? Perhaps disgruntled workers like those in Los Angeles in 1992 who had a short lived uprising until the army marched in? I myself sleep better knowing how "vulnerable" these things are, when anti-imperialists and workers go to the trouble to muck with these things, it's usually for a good reason.
What next: "No sir we didn't mess up your pizza order. We put those extra anchovies on and sent it to the wrong house and overcharged you for security reasons".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It seems to me that if the national telecom system is so fragile that the info contained in those documents would make it easy to break, then the vulnerability doesn't lie with the documents. Instead, the government should be examining how to improve the reliability and redundancy of the telecom system.
YAIOSTO
Yet Another Implementation Of Security Through Obscurity
$8.95/mo web hosting
In other news, security in Iraq requires that we are now officially at peace with Iraq. We have always been at peace with Iraq.
trom
Harry Tuttle: "Listen, this old system of yours could be on fire and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6... Bloody paperwork."
to
"We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company." - Lily (Ernestine) Tomlin
to
Friendster rep Lisa Kopp insists, "We have a policy that we are not being hacked."
These are the Pointy Haired Bushites who are protecting us from terrorists.
--
make install -not war
For Corporate Concerns!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The deadlines to register to vote are approaching in many states. If this kind of bullshit bothers you, then register, vote and do something about it. Register your friends too, at least those friends who haven't drunk the kool-aid.
"Nothing to see" messages, 503 service not available messages, and flamebait articles.
Subscribers, this is what you pay for.
Since anyone, anywhere can test the network's integrity with ping, anyone can do their own network outage surveillance. (OK, they can't test the old circuit switched telephone net, but once VOIP gets going, it won't mater). What if ping falls in the hand of terrorists? Seems like not only is the cat out of the bag, but anyone who can run ping owns some scissors.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
How about we also classify poverty and jobless statistics, so that terrorists won't know to what degree their actions are malaffecting our country?
I don't know about you, but I don't need a government report to tell me when my phone goes out, and neither do the terrorists.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Why is this necessary?
Can someone give an example of terrorists striking the phone system? Anywhere, ever?
(Need I remind people that terrorism isn't new or unique to the US.. )
Is there any indication that Al-Quaida even wants this information?
This is just ridiculous to the extreme, no matter how you look at it. Just to play devil's advocate, I'll go along with the fact that the US is engaged in a 'War on terror'.
Is this 'war on terror' a conventional war?
Is the goal of Al-Quaida (or whatever terror group you want) to disable the US military and its supporting infrastructure through strategic attacks? Why? Do they plan to invade?
Hell, no. The goal of terrorist organizations is to create terror. That is best done through spectacular things like hijackings, bombings and the slaughter of civilians.
Terrorists kill people. They don't bomb bridges, bust dams and destroy communications networks. They kill people, as many and as violently and as publicly as possible. The purpose is to create fear and publicitity. Actual military-strategic damage is far less important.
So why can't we know when our phone systems are down? Why are bridges being guarded? Why are people being harassed for photographing locks?
The USA has managed to inflict more fear on itself than Osama ever could.
[/rant]
Hurts business. Check.
/. political thread.
Hurts discourse. Check.
Has terrorist excuse. Check.
Must be another
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
This doesn't matter, the telcos never told anyone any worthwhile info about anything anyway.
customer who's phone is down: *picks up cell phone, calls phone company*
phone company: "hi, what can we do for you"
customer: "hi, I was wondering when my landline phone service would be up again, can you give me an estimate?"
phone company: "sir, it appears your phone line is down"
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
I am not American, Australian actually and live primarily in the UK, but is seems to me that our countries (including the US) are missing the point!
What the hell is the point defending things, preventing information falling into the hands of terrorists etc if you are destroying the very way of life you are trying to protect.
Flame away, but, it does strike me that Sep 11 was a tremendously "successful" terrorist action in terms, not so much of the event itself (although, from the instigators perspective, that can hardly be seen as a failure), but in terms of our reaction to it. It is now almost a matter of routine that more and more of our public and private rights are taken away from us and information is restricted to us.
(The recent bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta has been used to refuel the flames in Aussie politics).
Who is doing the most damage to our way of life? Us or them?
These aren't of course unique ideas, but they are ones that should never be forgotten.
Small disclaimer: I of course abhor terrorism in all its forms, when I refer to "success" I simply refer to the level to which the instigators objectives have been met.
Small note on disclaimer: It does bother me the level of paranoia is such at the moment that I feel the need to have the write the last paragraph and basically declare myself to be a reasonable human being who wishes no harm to anyone lest anybody make the assumption otherwise.
And as the nation's top incompetent technology professional, I have but one thing to say. If I don't like it or understand it, there's no reason the government or monopolies should either tolerate or share it. It's a simple rule. One I live my life by when I'm not being dazzled by the functionality of common consumer electronics and crippling the market.
Thank you for your time, and vote Bush Cheney 2004. I've got some really fantastic blunders planned, you don't want to risk missing out.
Now if they can just ban access to that nasty election and recount data, the terrorist will really be screwed.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
In a report from the newly appointed SPC (Scaring the Public Commision) it is stated that, due to the increased terrorist threat, all roadmaps are made illegal. "This way," senior spokesman G. Busk says, "we will make it harder for terrorists to find their way in our country." According to the ruling all, people in position of roadmaps should hand them in to their local government, who will arange for them to be burned. It is decided that all maps shal be burned on big bonfires in every city and town, on November 1. "This way we make it a happening. Something to lighten the mood, so to speak!" Mr. Busk exclaims. "We will encourage people to bring tables, chairs, snacks and drinks. Hot dogs will be grilled on the bonfires and sold. We belive this will be a great party!"
After this date, if you are caught in position of a roadmap, you can be sentenced to pay fines on up to $5000 or to prison in up to 2 years, depending on the size of the map.
Terrorists have no power, unless we give it to them (through fear)...doing shit like this is just making it worse (unduly causing more public fear). Assuming for a moment that fighting terrorism was the real purpose of this...
I'd say those two meanings are almost identical.
I think this is pretty ridiculous too, but there certainly is an argument, however weak.
See, if you know the details of outages and why they occurred, then it's a lot easier to make your own. And if you don't release enough information to make it at least marginally useful to terrorists, you don't release enough information to make it even vaguely useful to businesses.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If Bush was a democrat would the media or you have a different opinion on this story and many others?
I would't care too much about exactly when the service outages occur, but a summary as to what % of the time the service is down in a year would be helpful. At the very least the state government can provide a web page giving a number next to each carrier indicating service availability in the past 12 months for a zipcode. It would be great if they could break it down according to the month or even week, but yearly data will work just fine. I can't see how that will help the terrorists.
A village in Texas isn't missing it's idiot. Have you taken a look at how much vacation George "Running as a War President" Bush takes? You're pretty likely to find that idiot in his village, who's newspaper does not endorse him. Ouch.
In contrast to Bill Clinton, who went from his mother's funeral to a NATO summit.
how will I know how long we've been at war with Oceania?
FreeBSD for the impatient.
...no way.
If we were trucking around hydrogen, maybe. But harden millions of miles of high tension power lines? Harden thousands and thousands of microwave links and telephone trunk lines? How do you even do that? Put them underground, sunk in concrete? But then who's to stop people from hitting them with a jackhammer (to make the hole) and then a few pounds of high explosives?
Hardening the entire country against terrorism is the kind of reaction that would seem silly if people weren't so inclined to actually think that way these days.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
People keep trotting this issue out (cheaper long distance rates since the breakup), but I have to wonder. The breakup of AT&T was about twenty years ago. Who is to say that prices would not have dropped and regulations changed if the monopoly had been kept? Aren't most of the decreases in rates due to better / faster / cheaper technology based on better computer chips (including now, voice over IP?) Perhaps we are paying more for phone service and having less broadband and less unified (3G) cell phone service in the USA because there is not one highly regulated monopoly like in most other developed countries? Clearly most everyone agrees the USA is way behind of the rest of the advanced industrialized world in Broadband and Cell Phone access. And, after all, we have also lost the crown jewel of basic research (AT&T Bell Labs) which devolved into Lucent and Bellcore and now who knows what, resulting in a big loss for humanity. As someone once told me, AT&T Bell labs was a remarkable basic research institute (think the transistor and the solar cell) funded by people dropping dimes into boxes all across the US.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Time to move -- but where? Really...
I can't get this information if I wanted it for a good business reason? My name is: My birthday is: I am who I am, born here as my father, his father, and well back many a generation. I have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and pass a security check? Fine. I had to to legally carry a gun as well -- which is in itself understandable, but another bothersome issue that existed well before 9/11... (my concern would be war, invasion, and if _I_ was invading the first list to round up would be the gun carriers).
I thought it was also ridiculous that the phone company tries to hide and doesn't want to give me a list show all area codes and prefix and which band (A, B, C, or D) they're in. 15 years ago I could request a NAMP list (I think it was) and get it. 5 years ago they simply refused. I have VoIP now, which is tapped I'm sure, but I digress...
Why are YOU looking into this status SWAHHEDABEEB? Maybe the FBI needs to pay you a visit.
Just because Rumsfeld, father of Nutra-sweet, was shaking hands with Saddam while providing him with the chemical precursors to chemical weapons, in a bid to keep the theocracy of Teran in check, at a time the US government was secretly supplying *them* with advanced shoulder fired missles, you assume there was some sort of wink and a nod grand conspiracy. Can't a man just be polite and shake the hand of a brutal tyrant who styled himself the Arab Stalin while grinning like an idiot?
At least he's not like that traitorous flip-flopper John Kerry, who only put his ass where Bush's mouth is, who besmerches the good name of Costa Rica, who was so greatful to be a member of the willing Iraqi coalition, they, in the interests of humility and generosity, asked to not recieve any credit for their support.
Clearly, you just hate America, and thus all Americans, especially the ones who bleed and spill blood so I can ramble on nonsensically on the web or on horrible cable "news" programs.
This is likely to be the only insightful comment in this whole thread.
And while I'm at it . . . I don't ever want to read the word straw-man ever again. I can't remember the URL, but there is a website where they list all kinds of invalid proofs with funny examples. One is proof by condescension, IE this step is trivial so we'll skip it. Simply calling an argument straw-man does not count as valid contradiction. Can you imagine if this kind of argument were used in a presidential debate.
Dan Rather: And Mr. Kerry, your response?
John Kerry: Well Mr. Bush, clearly your argument is a straw-man and I can't believe that retarded viewers back home fall for it. It just goes to show what a jack-ass you are.
See, while it may do a good job a insulting posters and readers alike, it doesn't do much to convince people that you're actually right.
Virtually any piece of information could be of potential value to a terrorist. I seriously doubt that limiting access to information which is currently available to the general public has foiled any terrorist plans. Actually these measures may clue in terrorists on what targets are vulnerable.
I got one... lets burn all written materials.
BTW, we are also recruiting "firemen" now.
Does anyone know where Montag is?
-Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me.
At last we will now be safe...
Where the Koran is not involved the terrorists are not exactly "readers".
It wasn't until the government started publicizing a fear of bioweapons, as well as mention how cheap and easy they are to produce, that Al-Queada started looking into them.
When ever they do moronic things like this, they're only helping the terrorist narrow their options when looking to make a big impact.
TEH TERRISTS R CUMMING, TEH TERRISTS R CUMMING
QUICK -- GRAB ANKLES, BEND N INSERT HED INTO ASSSSSS!!!@#@#!~!!!
Ohhhh fux0r -- it's so dark -- there must be black ops in here!!!!
This story is yet another prime example of why I am seriously considering expatrioting myself from this fear mongering society of irrational and doctrines of hysteria enfored by skittle colored terror alerts.
I had a conspiracy theory that I made as a "joke" back in the 9/11 days that the twin towers attack was "allowed" in the same way that the British allowed Nazi airstrikes because they didn't want the Nazi's to know that they could see them coming via a new tech called "radar" Only this time, instead of strategizing against an outernationalist enemy, they are strategizing against US citizens by inciting a state of controlled panic to leverage measures to restrict our liberties and nullify the constition.
You see... the constitution has loopholes that allow for secrecy of public information and "temporary" revocation of rights in the event of "war time" needs. So the obvious exploit is to start a never ending war and exploit those holes in our national charter to rootkit the entirity of the constitution.
At the time I considered it an item that would make you laugh then make you think... but as time has gone on, I'm laughing less and thinking more.
To the end-user, the "little guy" like you and me, a summary might be fine. But if you or the company you work for purchases a LOT of telecom, for example suppose you or your employer maintain a server farm or operate an ISP that has users who wish to have reliable connectivity. Than these details make a LOT of difference.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Genuine Answer: No, nothing so sinister.
Ping is seen as a cracker tool by many. I'm sure sometime I'll see someone getting arrested as a "cyber-terrorist" (bionic Osama?) that is using traceroute between two points with a network controlled by a very clueless pointy haired boss in the middle.
One thing that come through in Bruce Sterling's non-fiction book "The Hacker Crackdown" is the ridiculous military armed response to suspects of computer crimes - with a document "The Anarchists Cookbook" (fanciful bomb recipies by teenagers) which has been online for a long time used as the excuse. For some reason there is always plenty of press on hand to see these dramatic responses - so are probably more publicity stunts than paranoia.This new policy is just so stupid. Quite frankly is smells like a simplistic way to sweep piss-poor service under the rug so that consumers can no longer make an informed choice about their phone service. The only ones who benefit from this are the telcos since it allows them to legally hide crappy service from prying eyes.
When all else fails, run.
Well the media might be slightly different...but not much.
Republicans....Democrates.....both are the same old corporate owned parties.
Robert
Online maps will however still be available to the general public
... federal election results!
That'd make sure these pesky terrorists won't target our fearless leaders.
isn't big brother supposed to be monitoring all cell phone calls?
Point being, are they admitting a failure?
Or who ever believed the government is capable of such widescope privacy invasion?
that's a relatively easy answer, that is addressed in the day to day lives of people known as "survivalists" if you prefer the original "scary" non politically correct term, or the more modern "preppers" short for those who practice practical preparations. Basically carrying the boy scout motto to "be prepared" into a fuller understanding. To those of us who follow these precepts, depending on an intact infrastructure all the time with no backups at allother than a piece of paper called insurance and maybe a credit card with a decent borrowing limit just don't cut it all the way. You have to deal with tangibles.
Our infrastructure is vulnerable because it is a centralised distribution model primarily (I am very generally speaking, but that's it in the gist of it), and almost all of it is vulnerable to the current JIT or "just in time" delivery method. It "all" sorta has to work or none of it works. there's a certain minimum amount percentage wise of damage we live with day to day, but the pain threshold rises dramatically as more of it becomes destroyed or severely damaged or disrupted.
Here's your short list, and what I have done in addition to using the "normal" centralised products which is what most folks have in total.
electricity - grid, then solar, wind, fuel generator
phone - landline, cell, internet then various multiband receivers, and transcievers 2 meter, 10 meter, FRS, CB
gas -gas stationstill shy here,needs improvement, no on site production yet (I could produce small quantities of burnable ethanol if pushed obviously) but I make-do with stockpiling, gasoline, diesel and propane, along with a lot of firewood.
transportation - personal vehicles or public transportation, rail, plane, subway, bus, no public transportation locally except for greyhound next city over. Then, multiple vehicles,some decent off road capability, multiple bicycles,and I'm in the cheap market for a horse now actually. Looking forward to it really.
I'll add 2 more, the most important two in my opinion, people's day to day necessities as opposed to luxuries that they take for granted a little too much, that are vulnerable to the centralised distribution business model. Most people have only one vulnerable source for each of these topics. I have that, then my additions
food - grocery store, restaurants, other markets like delis, etc, then we have stored food of the short term (grocery store level) medium (home canned and dried ) and long-term storage capable (nitrogen packed, or packed with oxygen absorbers in sealed cans), to the tune of at least two years total, in addition, extensive year round working gardens, very good knowledge of wild plants and foraging and other sorts of food gathering, like hunting, fishing, trapping, etc, and more importantly,live in an area where this is possible right out the door.
water -several hundred gallons stored on site, two sources locally (personal well and pond),and several of the best quality filtration systems you can get.
As to what society can do, really, I'm a geek, if I waited for society or big business or government to "do" for me what I already know how to do anyway, and what I should do, I'd still be waiting. They aren't ever going to be able to provide backup complete infrastructure, it's about all they can do for them to maintain the infrastructure they attempt to keep running now. They *barely* can deal with hurricanes that are well known to happen, the areas of them happening are well known, the effects are well understood, the time to prepare is basically all of the time, because they know it'll happen. That is about the maximum effort the government could do on any realistic scale. Anything beyond that, you would be on your own. Depending on the disruption, it could conceivable be a lot worse than a hurricane, for example, a regular small nuke in a major city. A major biological disease outbreak, either from an attack of just "natural".
Best bet is to do it yourself now, at least some basic backups. It's a good idea for data, it's a good idea for your basic day to day stuff too, IMO. Paper insurance, then some "real" insurance.
Government is no better than business in at getting things done right (and government is harder to sue and make go bankrupt if they aren't doing a good job). In many ways, government is part of the problem, not the answer (can anyone say X-prize, spaceship one, government zero)...
Sure the politician class can come and go in elections, but the bureaucracy seems like it's here to stay (until there's a revolution).
As for the social restructuring and class evaluation, hmm, if you are going for a super-sized engineering degree, I'd say you are already a net "winner" in the current social order. Perhaps you would like to enter a standard-of-living lottery where you trade your lot in life for a random one one in the USA. Given most people's lot in life in the USA is likely less than your's I don't blame you for your hippocracy... I wouldn't trade either...
Vote libertarian! With a libertarian hands-off government philosophy, you might get 100,000 "more efficient" businesses which seems like a better choice to me. No corporate welfare for big-business, no inane rules for small businesses. It might take a few elections to get there, but if we don't start, we won't get there...
I guess they should ban those call before you dig signs. They're just telling the terrorists where to dig (presumably without calling, those scoundrels) when they want to tear up some infrastructure.
Would this affect data/VoIP carriers?
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I can't speak for 'The Media', (washes hands wih expression of disgust on face), but no, I would not have a different opinion on this story if Bush were a Demublican rather than a Repocrat.
Shhhhhh! Don't tell them where the airports are!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If the FCC is so concerned about this then they should watch out for outsourced work from telecom carriers to foreign countries directly or through intermediaries. It is not just call center personnel that's offshored, something that could be considered relatively safe, but also development of systems that interact with USA telecom networks.
Therefore this seems to be just an excuse to hide information about the telecom carriers reliability from smart customers by using the terrorist threat excuse.
Wow... this is one of the sadder threads on slashdot. On a topic one would think readers would have some constructive comments (even if all negative), just drivel. First, congrats on those that actually read the article. But how many of you actually ever read these reports, or can even give their official name? I've read many of them. I can assure you, that very few consumers, even very few enterprise buyers, understand this stuff. The industry hates reporting outages to the FCC. Despite the FCC being industry oriented, they have wanted to expand this requirement to wireless, satellite, and internet service providers. I believe the new FCC rules do extend reporting requirements to some/all of these providers, but the reports will not be public. One the one hand, these reports didn't provide much useful information. Many were simple mistakes in translation. But the bulk were about infrastructure problems (cable cuts). And here is where I'm guessing people get nervous. Spending hours reading through these reports, you can find single points of failure (if they weren't single points of failure, they wouldn't generate an outage report). One could make the argument that publicizing this information would expose (and hopefully eliminate) these points of failure. An interesting trend given that the electrical industry is facing the possibility of federally enforced reliability standards. I hear that the NRC is discontinuing its reporting of atomic mishaps
Fact 1: Companies are sick of having to pander to every civilian who feels the need to have a whinge (eg. The radiation from the nuclear power plant makes my testicles tingle, I have 3rd degree burns over 80% of my body from a burst gas pipeline and now you're putting another one outside my house). These complaints are just a time/money waster.
...
Fact 2: Companies have MASSIVE sway over the Governments decisions (especially with Bush in).
Solution:
Step 1: Dumb down Americans, deny them access to any and all information
Step 2:
Step 3: PROFIT!
Will program for karma.
By knowing where carriers had experienced problems, terrorists could avoid shoddy services and choose more reliable telecommunications carriers. Those evil evil...
Haa, we'll fix that. Now, terrorists will get shoddy services like the rest of us!
I dunno about you guys but Im getting mighty sick of this terrorist bullshit
That's exactly my point. You only have to mention "Hitler was an X" if you want to discredit the X point of view. Most people will agree with you without actually checking what was Hitler's position regarding X.
Only over the long-term. In the short term, it could prevent an intended target from being warned of an attack, or from coordinating resistance, etc. In the short-term, it's about divide and conquer.
:-)
Somehow, I doubt you have any training in electronic warfare either... I'm sure you read some nice books though
If I were to disrupt the random network, I would watch the 1st responders and know what the effect was.
This is all about the Bush admin. using terrorism as their excuse for all policy. Can't say it's because Bush got $4.7 million from the Communic/Electronics industries. In the last month I've seen that we can't import drugs from Canada because they might be spiked by terrorists. Bush is promising to privatize Social Security again, he couldn't get it done 1st term because he was too busy fighting terrorists. All policy is now terrorist related.
Also, I noticed that some of you have somehow been able to slip back into being able to concentrate on your work and somehow managed to control your bowles which means I have no choice but to ratchet up the alert level to...Blackwatch Plaid!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Let's just say, for the moment, that I am a terrorist. The first thing that I would do with this informatttt#2@!@aaaaaa.........[dropped carrier]
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
Can't you take a hint?
To be clear, I did not say that the USA is fascist. I said that the US is rapidly becoming fascist. And I believe it is.
Could you please explain, in terms of the definition of fascism given by Wikipedia, why "the USA is rapidly becoming fascist"?
Sure I'll comment. If you point your browser to the Fascist mottos listed on Wikipedia, you will se a few interesting statements that seem to fit current US government attitudes.
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato, "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
The US has pretty much had a divorce with the UN after invading Iraq. The intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion was unfounded and proven false. There were no WMDs; they lied to commit their military and hundreds of billions of dollars to fight a war over oil interests and to settle an old score. The recent Homeland Security measures, including the topic of making cell phone blackouts secret, is also is a throwback to this motto.
The Patriot Act appears to be in the spirit of the above motto, from start to finish.
Me ne frego, "I don't care," the Italian Fascist motto.
I think it's pretty heartless to attack a country for oil, don't you? It's pretty tactical and devoid of humanity to kill for resources, to kill for revenge.
Libro e moschetto - fascista perfetto, "Book and musket - perfect Fascist."
You could look at the Christian doctrines of most Americans and see tones from the above motto in many news items regarding gun toting Christians. Many American Christians are not over the top like Koresh was, but if you look at the attitudes after 9/11 on talk shows and news broadcasts, there was quite a bit of patriotism against muslim states such as Iraq and Iran.
Viva la Morte, "Long live death (sacrifice)."
I'm sure Bush has said something similar to this in every single one of his speeches.
The fact of the matter is, that when a state increases the power of its government over the freedom of its people, that state is moving toward the fascist model. When the state is more important than the liberties of the people, the state is no longer operating in the realm of the common good. When a president can usurp sovereignty by stealing an election, then there is cause to wonder if Democracy is alive anymore in the States. Maybe it's not fascism. Maybe it's not democracy. Maybe it's not feudalism. Maybe it's not communism. Maybe it's not tyranny. Maybe it's just corporatism, and the latest abomination.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
,only other English speaking countries spell it "cheque" - a printed form, used instead of money, to make payments from your bank account.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
In other news, the Dept of Father^H^H^H^H^H^HHomeland Security announced today that there would be no more public coverage of the Mt. St. Helens "incident" as any information on the effects of an eruption, especially the succeptibility of Americans to motlen rock, could be used in the future by terrorists.
It isn't an important distinction. What's relevant here is precisely that the information is no longer available from the FCC.
Out of these 5000, only 1 has actually had his day in court. He was convicted, but that conviction was later overturned when it became clear that Asscroft and company had fabricated and withheld evidence in order to gain their sole terror conviction. story here.
Of course, we are talking about an administration who has shown nothing but disrespect for the bill of rights from day one.
When all else fails, run.
It looks like Blue Laser's going to take advantage of Price Style's already low, low prices on paper towels and grout cleaner and use all the savings to make a button that will make it snow at the beach!
Gotta love TBC...
(.....psst. Hey Bush, you might want to have a meeting with the FCC and DHS. Just a thought.)
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
The partially restricted exchange of goods and services between consenting persons is also called capitalism?
It has always struck me that pure capitalism is nearly equivalent to pure anarchy. No restrictions on trade at all?
There are a lot of things that are at the moment illegal to sell...but I think I like having those things restricted though most else unrestricted.
I'm in favor of capitalism, except in the subcases of slavery, prostitution, murder, drug dealing, and blackmail to name a few. If that makes me a hypocrite, then I don't much care for the non-hypocritical capitalists.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I write like that in throw-away, extra anonymous comments on slashdot, and the president speaks like that in front of billions, but *I* am the one who should be more careful.
Hmm. Wow. I can honestly say I've never looked at it like that. I'd certainly like to thank you for your constructive criticism. I hate to think I might live in a world where, for lack of effort, any dullard like myself, who still hasn't completed primary school, might not write informal comments better than the formal presentations of the leader of the free world. You might mistake what I'm saying for sarcasm, but I assure you that's the fartest thing from my meaning. I dropped the F-bomb in class the other day, and let me tell you, my dad's belt reminded me that Ms. Michael's classroom is not the floor of the senate!
Maybe you could help me with one of my vocabulary words.... "Context," do you know what it means?
Sick of investing in 'Blue Chips' that aren't accountable?
Tired of spending capital on building a business only to be stomped on by big business?
Pissed over government officials making demands to disclose information that you are entrusted with by others?
The answer, invest offshore!
Portfolio or direct investment welcome!
http://www.govt.nz/
We respect you and your choice (Economic growth 4-6% predicted next year)
So wait, the war on terrorism is being won, Iraq was a success, big-budget Homeland Security is doing its job, No-fly lists are so strict even innocent people can't fly, air marshals are always alert, intelligence agencies both in the US and around the world are working 24/7 to make sure they stay on top of the game, there hasn't been an attack on the US since 9/11 and barely any before that with the reduced security, but yet the threat level is constantly at what? and everything is a matter of national security.. I think its about time you guys got some of your freedom back, baring arms style.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
i think terrorists are looking to do a little more than annoy people by messing with their dial tone...
All the torrents you could want.
It's meant as a Natural Law (ie. one which always applies). You don't go around "invoking" the Law of Gravity, do you?
HAND.
But Terrorists-Under-The-Bed have been used as an excuse for blocking public access to lots of critical safety information, particularly in industries like oil refining, chemical manufacturing, and anything nuclear, where there can be serious risks of toxicity, chemical spills, and even major explosions (I'm not ranting about nukes here - fertilizer plant explosions are much more likely.) The Feds, who used to force public disclosure of lots of this information are now banning it, and databases that used to be accessible are being closed to the public, because Terrorists and other enemies of American Industry (like anti-pollution activists and various other NIMBYs) might abuse it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
At least one major US telecom company used to regularly fly planes along major cable routes looking for construction activities - not sure if they still do that. There were usually over a thousand backhoes within a quarter mile of their east coast cable routes, but they'd still get surprises like that farmer burying a dead cow with his backhoe in the early 90s.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I agree that Bush is taking the country in the wrong direction, but vague slogans are not very convincing evidence. There are people who compare the European Union to the Third Reich using similar tactics, see for example this guy.
Whenever anyone asks me for a reason for something, I now always say 'because of the risk of Terrorism'.
Why do you not want to eat at KFC? Because of the risk of Terrorism.
Why did you not clean the house? Because of the risk of Terrorism.
The more we do this, the more people will be used to associating 'the risk of terrorism' with a stupid excuse, and the sooner it'll stop seeming like a sensible reason for things.
It's like saying 'post 9/11 changes' are the reason caravan holidays in Wales are more popular now... Sadly that's a genuine reason that's been given. See Private Eye's WarBalls section from issue 1115
Mark
Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
If the "war on terrorism" is now being won then the worst should nearly be over.
If that's the case then whilst the terrorists would certainly have been very busy over the last few years using this information to plan their numerous attacks in the US now that the attacks are beginning to decrease as the situation comes under control it should be getting safer and so this kind of legislation is not needed.
Obviously it depends how common the attacks are already, it would be interesting to see for instance how many attacks per day the telecoms network is currently experiencing thanks to this information being available.
- Standard practice is for any plane that gets off its planned course and without contact with the pilot, air force fighters fly to look after them. (Not for fear of an attack, a plane with technical problems is dangerous enaugh). This sid not happen.
- At least after the first impacts in New York the sky should have been full of air force fighters. Some are kept ready for takeoff within five minutes, around the clock.
- The "plane" that hit the pentagon took the time to fly a half circle around the pentagon, just to hit a part that has been know empty for a long time.
- Actually there was not much damage considering the size of the plane that was suppost to be the cause of the damage.
- The pentagon, full of surveillance cameras, claims to have no pictures of an approacing plane.
- The secret service had bureaus in the WTC until a few months before the crash.
- None of the black boxes on the planes were "found", although they are designed to survive (even form flying height) and to be found (they send signals to help locate them).
There is more, if you are interested, wisit Unanswered questionsSeems like the Republicans are more interested in protecting the business, and much less interested in protecting citizens.
It's about time for a regime change in America.
Everyone please vote!!
Slowly america looses it's freedom, the goverment withdraws into secrececy and the people live in fear.
Umm shouln't we be trying to combat the terror of terrorism as well as the terrorists themselves? Youre 1000x more likely to get run over by a car than die in a terrorist attack but the fear is 1000x greater that you'll die in a terrorist attaack than get run over by a car.
The reasons are simple, you can look both ways, act sensibly and minimise your risk of being run over by a car, you feel more in controll of it but no one things they can do anything about terrorism so it's blind chance that you might be one of those people.
The goverment should be educating people as to how to help fight terrorism in sensible ways, avoiding vigilantiasm, combating irational fear of muslims and arabs, and giving people a handle on terrorism.
Best way to help fight terrorism is to make sure youre not helping them, terrorists have girlfriends, they have jobs, managers, collegues, etc... did you find a copy of Jihad weekly on the photocopier?
What the government doesn't want you to know is, that they will be _imposing_ outages on a regular basis, as part of their methods of protecting the elite.
The gov't. wants you to think that the "reporting" of the outages will be kept secret, but the REAL secret is the CREATION of the outages, by order of someone high up in the curent administration.
Welcome to the machine...
The Reichstag (the German Parliament) burned down. A Dutch Communist named van der Lubbe was caught red-handed with matches and fire-lighting materials. Hitler used it as an excuse to arrest many of his Communist opponents, and as a major platform in his election campaign of March 1933. The fire was so convenient that many people at the time claimed that the Nazis had burned it down, and then just blamed the Communists. Modern historians, however, tend to believe that van der Lubbe did cause the fire, and that Hitler just took advantage of it.
---> 09.11
From now on we will not publish any information about trafic jams, delayed trains or other disruptions in the transport systems.
Terrorists may use this information to attack our infrastructure...
Remember 'way back during the Cold War, when we in the U.S. thought that the Soviet Union was rather silly to arrest people just for taking pictures of things anyone could see, and making the most innocuous documents secret?
Meet Mr. Mirror.
Must I license your sig if I simply correct its spelling?
Fine, nail me to the wall with your rhetoric. But I am not really nailed to the wall, am I? There is plenty of room to move. I am not bound by you or anything you say. Look at me! I'm over here! You can't stop me from speaking my mind. The first sign of fascists are their supporters who quickly point out that nothing is wrong with fascism -- or worse -- that nothing fascist is really happening. It's all good. Please ignore what those idiots are saying to you. Give us more power. Sign here, please. And then we get more Patriot Acts, more fun loving patriots, more war and more death. More profit for the select few. More dead soldiers. More orphaned children. More poverty.
Yup. Nothing wrong here!
I did not say that the US is fascist. I said that it is heading in that direction. It's merely a warning from an observant person. I am keen minded, sir. I can see the future and if things don't change in the States, they *are* headed for the fascist model. They will turn themselves into their worst enemy if they go that route because it's wrong and the good guys always win! Don't they?
The first, "everything in the State", refers to totalitarianism, which the US, despite its faults, is in no danger of becoming.
How nice for you to live in ignorance and bliss. But you are dead wrong. It seems that every time you turn around there is another twenty pound law encroaching on the freedoms of Americans. Maybe it won't go as far as other totalitarian states have in the past, but the similarities are unimpeachable. Perhaps you could look at them dancing on the edge of a vast abyss and just chuckle at it and think everything is okay, but I can't. I have to say something about it.
Have we been a fascist people for over three hundred years?
Hmmm. Slavery? CHECK! Civil War? CHECK! Leaders lying to do whatever they want? CHECK! Leaders assassinated for their peaceful ways? CHECK! Governments conspiring to overthrow foreign governments and mislead their entire nation into conflict to earn a buck? CHECK!
You tell me!
And you claim last quote, "Long live death", has been uttered by Bush in some form in every one of his speeches. Funny, I can't seem to recall it at all. Please document this, because no one else has.
You are taking the meaning of the motto out of context. It means long live sacrifice, and it says as much on Wikipedia.
Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:
President Bush's Acceptance Speech, September 2, 2004:
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Try reading the fscking news, dipshit: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=busi nessNews&storyID=6368143
"MOSCOW (Reuters) - ConocoPhillips won a $2 billion stake in Russia's LUKOIL and said it aimed to raise that to 20 percent in a sweeping alliance that allows the two oil majors to tap vast reserves in northern Russia and Iraq.
Both parties said the deal, announced on Wednesday, enjoyed strong support from the U.S. and Russian governments. Conoco at auction committed to pay $1.988 billion for Russia's remaining 7.6 percent stake in LUKOIL, one of the nation's two top producers.
Conoco, the third largest U.S. oil company .." ... "It will allow Conoco to add billions of barrels of reserves to its books"
I can't believe you're so naive. You don't honestly think Bush spent $200billion because he really cares about the Iraqi people or because of a gallon of sarin gas or because Saddam was a "baaad, evil man". Grow up. The world doesn't work that way.
If you do your own research in the future, and stop just soaking up whatever you see on FOX, you might not be so obviously misinformed and ignorant next time.
You are 100% wrong.
Fascism:
- exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
- uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
- engages in severe economic and social regimentation, and
- espouses nationalism and sometimes racism (ethnic nationalism).
How is this not the USA of today?The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.