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Telecom Outages Now a State Secret

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the need-to-know-basis dept.

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."

61 of 413 comments (clear)

  1. bulldust by timmarhy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    what are they going to use it for?

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    1. Re:bulldust by timmarhy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      sorry i was reffering to the terrorists. what the hell are they going to use error reports for? so they know whats not broken and go blow that up? it sounds like hystrics to me. those reports need to be publicly accessable. covering them up under the excuse terrorists might use it was thin 12 months ago. from now on i am not paying taxes because a terrorist might be employed in a government job and he'll use that money to finance his evil schemes. thats about how thin it is.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    2. Re:bulldust by rts008 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "from now on i am not paying taxes because a terrorist might be employed in a government job and he'll use that money to finance his evil schemes." That WILL increase the amount of TERRORISM, or have you never seen the IRS in action? BTW, I agree with you, but couldn't help myself....will go cut off my hands now...:)

      --
      Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
    3. Re:bulldust by Qzukk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not to mention that the reports are generally received post-mortem, unless its a *really* extended outage. By the time someone has written it up and mailed it to the FCC, the cell is back up.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    4. Re:bulldust by KevinKnSC · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I imagine the argument goes something like:

      "Terrorists could find out what has caused outages in the past, use that to find a weakness in the telecommunications network, and then cause a communication outage that coincides with a 9/11-type attack, thereby aggravating the effects of the attack." An admittedly weak argument, but I bet that's the case.

    5. Re:bulldust by iabervon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A massive data mining project to determine what events are likely to take down infrastructure and try to cause those or similar events. They could also use the information to determine how widespread events they caused were, in order to refine future plans.

      It's not an entirely stupid thing to what the terrorists not to know. On the other hand, the terrorists are likely to be able to get the information if it's at all important to them. The government knows essentially nothing about Al Queda's operations in the US (according to the 9/11 commission), so there's no reason to think they don't have people in telecom support centers if they have people preparing to drive bulldozers through fiber bundles. It's not likely they'd trust the government's reports anyway.

      Personally, I think that the global terrorists these days are satisfied to call each other by the names of public figures, make anonymous bomb threats, leave packages in lobbies, etc. It's a lot safer and easier, and no less effective at this point.

    6. Re:bulldust by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful
      think sneaky enough to see why publicly disseminating this info is a Bad Idea.
      It just looks like a poor excuse to avoid giving out bad news to me. If terrorism is being used as an excuse to not divulge commercial information of a fairly trivial nature we will rapidly get more instances of thousand dollar toilet seats and other rorts. Checks and balances are what makes a democracy work - J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was a massive step backwards as an over-response to organised crime, and it was only after it became accountable that it was an effective organisation. We need to not repeat mistakes like that in the name of terrorism, which has been with us for a long time (it started WW1 for example).
  2. RIP USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:RIP USA by mangu · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I haven't checked in detail your numbers and dates, bu t they seem more or less correct. However, to resume the rise of the Third Reich to power in one paragraph seems rather simplistic. I have in my shelf a 1600 page book by William Shirer that barely touches on the highlights of the whole thing. Shirer, who was a journalist in Germany in the 1930's, mentions in his preface how many thousands of documents, several hundreds tons of paper, he researched.


      To affirm that Hitler came to power as a result of a "political deal" seems to me the mother of all simplifications. Sure, there were many political deals as part of a process that included much more. The total failure of the Weimar republic, the lack of any credible alternative, also have to be taken into account. And at least two other facts must also be taken into account. First, Hitler was elected legally. Second, the imposition of a dictatorship was in the Nazi party program from the start.


      The German people willingly and knowingly chose Hitler as their dictator. It seemed to be the right thing at the time.


      Although I do not approve of the Bush government, by any means, I believe that putting him in the same cathegory as Hitler is a wild exaggeration. A common internet debating tactic, compare someone to Hitler. I admit to having used that same tactic, I don't miss a chance to post "Hitler was a vegetarian" comments.


      But that's a counterproductive tactic. Despite this being Slashdot, the best policy would be to mention in clear and well-balanced arguments why Bush is so dangerous. He's no Hitler himself, but he may well be tending the garden where the seeds of a future Hitler will be planted. The number of anti-liberty laws that are being implemented now in the USA is what really worries me. All in the name of what would be otherwise perfectly acceptable principles.


      We must fight terrorism. Protect the artists. We must defend life. At all costs.


      Hey, wait a second, at "all" costs? Even if the result is giving up basic personal freedom, stifling creativity in arts and science, squashing research and development, and exporting inellectual jobs to other countries?

    2. Re:RIP USA by Tony-A · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hey, wait a second, at "all" costs?
      Right. If the threat of terror, or more accurately the reaction to the threat of terror, does more damage than the terror itself, then the terrorists have won.

  3. Hands of the terrorists? by darth_MALL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Hands of the terrorists? by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Insightful
      > 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.

      Conversely, if the public doesn't know, then it wasn't a very successful attack on the telecom infrastructure, was it? :)

  4. Hmph. by Southpaw018 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  5. Lets see by clenhart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lets see..

    Helps business. check
    Hurts people. check
    Has terrorist excuse. check

    It must be from the Republican administration.

    1. Re:Lets see by BrynM · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You're both missing the bigger point:

      Hurts business. Check.
      Hurts people. Check.
      Has terrorist excuse. Check.

      Must be the US of A
      (Sadly, my own country's record)

      --
      US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
    2. Re:Lets see by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This does not help business. It helps previously established businesses. (Keeping the little guy from competeing is a form of harming business, in the long run.)

      Yes, that is a hallmark of a republican administration, though - to act as if past business success gives you an entitlement to future business success indefinitely, and if your business model starts to fail because the world is a changing place, then pass laws to make the world change more slowly.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    3. Re:Lets see by atta1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A hallmark of a Republican Administration??? Gee, I could have sworn that most of the RIAA and MPAA favoring laws that do exactly what you describe were introduced by Democrat legislators.

      --
      "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote" -- Kosh
  6. Frightening by mistersooreams · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Frightening by TiggertheMad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "I HAVE IN MY HAND, A LIST OF 12 CARD HOLDING COMMUNIST PARTY MEMBERS, THAT WORK IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT..."

      Yeah, we are so much wiser now, we would never fall for that old, 'red scare' paranoia that was rampant in the 1950s. What silly, foolish people our grandparents were to fall for such an obvious paranoid delusion. The real sad thing is, unlike the 1950's, there is no single vocal Joe McCarthy type to debunk. If compairing the current political situation to the 'Red Scare' is accurate, we will have to put up with this for a good ten years.

      --

      HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
    2. Re:Frightening by rarkm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The obvious rationale of not posting telecom outage is to deny helpful feedback to those trying to hack the US telecom system from afar. Duh.
      ___________________
      "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..."
      _________________
      This comment is an all-too-common trivialization of more than a decade of human tragedy.

      Last week was the 63rd anniversary of the agony of city where nearly 40,000 Jews, mainly the elderly, women and children, were machine gunned in groups of ten by Einsatzgruppe C over two days, September 29th and 30th, 1941. Over that summer, more than 100,000 people, Jews, Ukrainians, Gypsies and resistance fighters were shot and their bodies thrown into a ravine. Two years later, the retreating Nazis frantically tried to dig up and burn the bodies to destroy the evidence.

      You can still see the spot, it's about six subway stops from downtown Kiev and its name is Babi Yar. There were many thousands of similar massacres known and obscure during that period, big and small. Tens of millions of real people died, many of whom would be living today had it not been for the insane ambitions of the Nazis and the Communists.

      --
      [Insert pretentious and semi-clever sig here: ______ ]
    3. Re:Frightening by Random_Goblin · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Yes, not knowing if a phone is working in Podunk, WI is the same as 10s of Millions of people dying. Excellent analogy, you broke Godwin without even putting up a fight. You lose!


      do you even have any idea what you are talking about? clearly not I think you'll find the horrific death toll of the Holocaust to be between 5-6 million Jews and a similar number of non-Jewish victims, (the gypsies and the homosexuals for example) a quite horrific enough figure without being misrepresented as 10s of millions.

      The number of victims of Stalin's death camps and mass executions is certainly in the 10's of millions however.

      Now who do you think the German and Russian People were to allow such terrible actions to be done in their name? They were people like you and me who had their freedoms and rights taken from them slowly and under the guise of Just Cause and Security. They were given monsters to be scared of, and more importantly to blame, and they lost control of their country to very evil dictators.

      There is an old adage about the best way to boil a frog is to turn the heat up slowly, so it doesn't notice. From what I can see America is having the gas turned up notch by notch.

      As for the very trivial banning of phone outage records, it is not that they are being withheld... it is that the reason given is "Homeland Security".
    4. Re:Frightening by Artifakt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fascism can develop without a racial extermination angle. The current government of mainland China, for example, has survived for 3 generations, and is probably much closer to fascism than communism, while its fascist traits are generally unrecognized as such - for example their semi-official policy that ethnic Chinese that are citizens of other nations are still really subject to PRC law, and those people have an obligation not to speak ill of the Chinese government or they are betraying their entire race, etc.

      Fascism tends to need scapegoats for its failures, but those don't have to be chosen along racial lines. Americans who are "soft on terror" would make a lovely scapegoat. The way the word 'Liberal' is used in some circles is well along towards scapegoat status. There don't have to be mass exterminations at all, unless the fascist government screws up the economy enough that slave labor starts looking really effective. A few lynchings here and there are often enough to keep the powers that be in power.

      Let's not wait for mass exterminations this time. Protecting some big, long established businesses that have close ties to government from public scrutiny is an early sign, not just in regimes such as Nazi Germany, where the end result was genocide, but in Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, which had plenty of their own share of evil without necessarily being big on killing jews.

      --
      Who is John Cabal?
  7. I am completely at a loss for words . . . by achurch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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*

  8. Just Another Way That Bush Screws the Consumer by ortcutt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. You can joke by mfh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "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.
  10. Arguement for this? by phorm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

  11. I suggest we end the charade by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the FCC is becoming moot.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:I suggest we end the charade by KevinKnSC · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think he's using it a new "controlled by the very industry it was designed to regulate" sense.

  12. Knowledge is power... by terraformer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Knowledge is power... by BetaJim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This reminds me of one of my favorite email sigs:

      "Any conservative who claims to be in favor of capitalism -- the
      unrestricted exchange of goods and services between consenting
      persons -- but is in favor of the drug war, is a hypocrite."

      I don't know the author, but I approve of the sentiment.

      --

      "Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.

  13. Just because... by rewt66 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just because an insane thing happened (9/11), does the whole world have to go insane?

    Apparently so...

    1. Re:Just because... by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think it's a good idea to give out extra tolerance to people as a reward for them being oversensitive intolerent people themselves - just like it's a bad idea to give in to the demands of a hijacker - because it teaches the lesson that being a bad person is a "winning" strategy.

      The day a major popular television show is made in the middle east that can make jokes about Islam that are as raunchy and irreverent as the kinds of things you see about Christianity on the Simpsons or Family Guy over here, without fear, then maybe I'll have more empathy for them.

      As an atheist, I've often wished that people around the world would just give up religious styles of thought (which exist in things other than just religions - the way some people approach politics have the same sorts of problems), but I don't think that's ever going to happen. Now I'd just be happy if people would be more tolerant of opposing viewpoints. The splintering of Christianity into many different little factions really helped transform it into mostly being the religion of peace and tolerance it claims to be (when it really wasn't before that, with major church doctrine being tied to political machinations). My only hope for Islam is that it ends up having the same sort of thing happen to it soon. The biggest concern I have over it is that it is a religious tenet in Islam that religion must rule over government - so it would be hard to have a secular government in an islamic country like the many secular democratic governments that exist in christian countries. Turkey has managed to pull it off, but I can't think of any other good examples. (Pakistan would have been but it's still operating from the results of a military coup).

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    2. Re:Just because... by HunterZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just because an insane thing happened (9/11), does the whole world have to go insane?

      I think it's more along the lines of the U.S. government and corporations using the constantly news-media-fanned flames of mass hysteria to push their own agendas, which normally would be met with much resistance by the people (who, reasonably, don't want to give up their freedoms without sufficient cause). I don't know which is the worst:

      - The government and corporations taking advantage of the sheeple's ignorance and mass hysteria,
      - The media stoking the hysteria to keep people watching the news instead of pro wrestling and reality shows, or
      - The fact that people really are stupid enough to buy into all these scare tactics used by the government, corporations, and the news media to take advantage of us.

      I've heard multiple people recently talk about how they're afraid to fly or work in the air transportation industry because of "all the terrorists in airports and on airplanes these days."

      --
      Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
  14. American Paranoia (Tm) by ThePeices · · Score: 2, Insightful

    subject line says it all.

  15. And How? by minister+of+funk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  16. The FCC by its very nature is anti-free market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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).

  17. Free Market? by shirai · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  18. Newton's law of politics? by daveb · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.

    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

  19. STO by br00tus · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Well of course security through obscurity is ridiculous. We already have more downtime due to management chintzing on paying people for uptime, this will contribute to 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.

    1. Re:STO by russint · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well..
      Beating up != Arresting

      --
      ^^
  20. Vulnerability detected in the wrong place by Dachannien · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  21. denialogy by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

  22. Deadlines to Register to Vote Approaching by ortcutt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  23. Does this make ping a security risk? by G4from128k · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  24. Why stop there? by Anonymous+Custard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  25. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing... by k98sven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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]

  26. Re:Important distinction by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the data isn't fed through a third party, then what reason do you have to believe it is accurate? It would be as believable as a company's own press release, and have just as much lack of accountability.

    --

    Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

  27. Re:Security: the new big excuse by Tim+Doran · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...or maybe "security" really was the reason. Perhaps it was routed through a country that permits mail to be searched.

    Kinda like sending "suspected terrorists" to other countries for the dirty work of torture.

  28. Re:In Other News... by pcmanjon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How could a terrist terrorize us by knowing that SWBELL lost its backbone connection on Nov, 3, 2003?

  29. Standard of life? by kentmartin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  30. Terrorists WTF? by __int64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

  31. What If.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If Bush was a democrat would the media or you have a different opinion on this story and many others?

  32. What about summary data by vigyanik · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  33. but if there's an outage....and i can't call by discogravy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    how will I know how long we've been at war with Oceania?

    --
    FreeBSD for the impatient.
  34. "terrorist" bullshit by irokin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I dunno about you guys but Im getting mighty sick of this terrorist bullshit

  35. Balderdash by EriDay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  36. Re:In Other News... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Also of interest: The government knew that the WMDs were there because they'd given them to Saddam.

  37. Re:Under every rock by ballpoint · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some months ago we had a major explosion disaster in Belgium involving a natural gas line. 23 people were killed, tens of others severely burned and still recovering.

    Slideshow here, picture 8 has the fireball:
    http://www.rtl.nl/(/actueel/rtlnieuws/)/components /actueel/rtlnieuws/2004/07_juli/30/buitenland/slid eshow_belgische_fabriek.xml

    First investigations revealed that the gas pipeline had been damaged by construction work for a service road to a new industrial building; the investigation and the legal proceedings regarding responsibility are continuing, and expected to last for another two years.

    As a result of the accident people called for better plans of the infrastructure to avoid such disasters in the future.

    Security by obscurity isn't going to work in this case.

    AFAWK, no terrorists were involved.

    --
    Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
  38. I think you're on shaky ground by philbert26 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  39. Re:In Other News... by CmdrGravy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No way would the US just give WMD to Saddam, the most evil dictator in the world. No, they probably sold them to him.

  40. Re:Sure by patches · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The US has pretty much had a divorce with the UN after invading Iraq

    In my opinion the US should completely pull out of the UN all together anyway.

    The intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion was unfounded and proven false

    First of all, you are completely wrong here, but lets look at what if the intellegence was wrong. Even if the intelligence was wrong, if Bush did nothing, then his accusers would be screaming for his head because he didn't do anything.

    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

    Here again, you are completely wrong. THEY FOUND WMDs IN IRAQ. I don't know any other way to tell this so that it makes sense. They found over a gallon of Sarrin Gas in Iraq. You do know that Sarrin is a Chemical Weapon right? And you do know that there are three catagories of weapons that constitute WMDs right? And you do know that one of those catagories is Chemical weapons right? In case you didn't know that, the other two are Biological, and Nuclear. So now that we have established that there were some WMDs in Iraq lets look at the other possibilities. In the last 12 years of Sadam defing UN sanctions, every person in the public eye that is now screaming that Bush lied was adament that Saddam had WMDs. For 12 years Saddam has been defing UN sanctions and orders, all of which authorized any member country to take military action against Iraq if Iraq didn't comply, which Iraq didn't comply. And for 12 years Saddam has had plenty of chances to hide any WMDs he had, buring them in the vast desert that is Iraq, sending them to Syria for safe keeping, etc. We have already found a number of intact fighter jets burried in the desert for safe keeping, why not WMDs?

    You are right on one thing. This war is about Oil, although you are wrong in who it is about Oil to. France was apposed to the US invading Iraq because while the rest of the world had sanctions against Iraqs oil, France had secret contracts with Iraq for cheap oil. And while the UN was running the abortion that was the Oil for Food program top officials in the UN are pocketing cash and getting rich stealing money from that program, including Kofi Annan. Hmmm, and I wonder why the UN was apposed to the US enforcing the United Nations own orders against Iraq, oh yeah, because they didn't want to give up the additional income they stole from the Oil for Food program.

    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.

    So you think the US is only in Iraq for the Oil. Ok, where is the Oil. We have been fighting in Iraq for well over a year now, where is the Oil. Why is my Gas price still close to 2.00 a gallon. If we invaded Iraq for the Oil why don't we have any? I will tell you, simply we didn't go into Iraq for the Oil. France and the UN didn't want us to go into Iraq because of there own Oil interests, but we didn't go in for the Oil. What I think is heartless is a leader of a country using Chemical Weapons against his own people. Saddam has killed more Iraqis then the US has...

    When a president can usurp sovereignty by stealing an election,

    I am assuming here that you are refering to Bush. Funny how he didn't steal the election, he was elected fair and square. The only person that was tring to steal that election was Gore, and luckily the law was enforced and Gore was stopped. There wasn't any confusion with so-called "Butterfly Ballots" The problem was that a lot of people assumed that Gore would win, so they voted for Buchanan for what ever reason, and when it became a close call, they started panicing and sold themselves out to be idiots tring to change the outcome of a legal election. There weren't any minorities that were denied a vote, there were even a few groups that set up hotlines after the election

    --
    The worst part of being athiest.... You don't have anyone to talk to during orgasm!