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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."
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.
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.
Let's see...
Hurts business. Check.
Hurts people. Check.
Has terrorist excuse. Check.
Must be from the Democrat administration (SEE ALSO - Bosnia, Iraq, WTC I, etc.)
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.
The article didn't talk about the FCC doing anything with the data other than warehousing so I am not sure. If the FCC went over the data for accuracy and inclusiveness then you have a very good point. If not, then I guess there is still a source for the data though I doubt it is as easy as it was getting it directly from the FCC. It might be more timely though.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Yeah, but it turns out that McCarthy was partially right about Communists in the state department (and other parts of the US gov including the Treasury dept). See the Venona Papers on Wikipedia as well as the entry for Alger Hiss.
This is not to excuse McCarthy's tactics. If you accuse enough people (and McCarthy certainly accused a lot of people) you're bound to get a few of them right.
Robert
I seem to recall a fairly convincing documentry (probably BBC) regarding a former KGB controller who took large numbers of records with him with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The files demonstrated that where as much of the millitary might of the Soviet empire was bluff, their intelligence work was first rate. The thing I found darkly funny and quite ironic was that the files showed there WERE large numbers of communist agents in the state department. (although probably not the ones Joe "mad staring eyes" McCarthy could see. Still as you state, it's a good job we don't have witch hunts in this age, we clearly have learnt the lessons of history... hmm the news is just teling me i'm now required to be fingerprinted and photographed on entering the US ... no no ... I'm sure we've learned.
I'm genuinely suprised that so few people posting here think sneaky enough to see why publicly disseminating this info is a Bad Idea.
The above example was not reaching at all. In Israel, terrorists have for some time studied the actions of first responders to determine how to disrupt them and exacerbate the damage of an attack.
In the US, you could disrupt random networks to see what effect it had. Keep in mind that the providers themselves don't typically know what effect a disruption would have--you don't know until it happens, and they don't simulate it, because, like you, they scoff at "security" measures.
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
(.....psst. Hey Bush, you might want to have a meeting with the FCC and DHS. Just a thought.)
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
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
- 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 questions