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."

Comments

We shall start a civil disobedience campaign!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

MOD PARRENT UP

[mosb1000]

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.

I see the underlying business plan

[Rorian]

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!