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

See also...

[Anonymous Coward]

DHS Says Cellular Outage Reporting is Terrorist Blueprint

In Other News...

[ackthpt]

Wholesalers are doing a booming business on orders of cloaks and daggers in Washington DC

Hello, information? I'd like the numbers for G. David Shine and Roy Cohn.

Repercussions on Verizon commercials.

[HTH NE1]

"Can you hear me now? What do you mean you can't tell me that?"

RIP USA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:RIP USA

[mangu]

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?

Hands of the terrorists?

[darth_MALL]

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.

Re:Hands of the terrorists?

[Tackhead]

> 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? :)

Lets see

[clenhart]

Lets see..

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

It must be from the Republican administration.

Re:Lets see

[BrynM]

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)

Re:Lets see

[DunbarTheInept]

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.

Re:bulldust

[Ingolfke]

Why negotiating lower prices on their evil global communication networks of course.

Important distinction

[erick99]

The FCC is not prohibiting the dissemination of this information, they are not going to provide it themselves, though.

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.

Frightening

[mistersooreams]

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...

Re:Frightening

[TiggertheMad]

"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.

Re:Frightening

[Random_Goblin]

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".

Re:Frightening

[Artifakt]

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.

Just Another Way That Bush Screws the Consumer

[ortcutt]

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.

Re:Just Another Way That Bush Screws the Consumer

[timmy the large]

Dear Mr. pnatural

We are writing you to apologize about your cat. Sadly it was involved in a terrorist plot the we are currently not at liberty to discuss and for reasons of national security we were forced to drive over it repeatedly in black unmarked, sedans. We thank you for your cooperation in this matter and hope this does not affect your vote.

Sincerly,

Dick Cheney

Knowledge is power...

[terraformer]

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.

Re:Knowledge is power...

[BetaJim]

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.

Just because...

[rewt66]

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

Apparently so...

Re:Just because...

[HunterZ]

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."

Free Market?

[shirai]

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.

Under every rock

[Colonel Panic]

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.

Insane...

[damu]

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?

Looks like the terrorists already know

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Terrorists?

[CodeBuster]

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.

Re:Terrorists?

[SQLz]

Apparently the Terrorist were using the information to negotiate lower fees when building thier evil information infrastructure. Since terrorists should not be allowed to pay lower fees AND attack the USA, the FCC has decided to keep that information secret. Now, the terrorists will have to pay what everyone else pays.

Vulnerability detected in the wrong place

[Dachannien]

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.

Deadlines to Register to Vote Approaching

[ortcutt]

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.

Why stop there?

[Anonymous Custard]

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.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

[k98sven]

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]

While we're at it.

[pokeyburro]

Hurts business. Check.
Hurts discourse. Check.
Has terrorist excuse. Check.

Must be another /. political thread.

Standard of life?

[kentmartin]

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.

It's about time!

[ArcticCelt]

It's about time!

Now if they can just ban access to that nasty election and recount data, the terrorist will really be screwed.

//And that's why 1984 will not be 1984 because in fact 1984 will be in 2004.

but if there's an outage....and i can't call

[discogravy]

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

OMFG!@!!!! TEH TERRISTS!!!

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

priority check

[Packet Fish]

I can understand why these politicians what to protect this sensitive and important data, but lets get our priorities strait! There is a whole host of public data that must be protected before it falls into the wrong hands. Please refer to the following list.

• My Credit Report - The terrorist might try and deny me a new credit-card as part of their nefarious plan to prevent US citizens from purchasing top notch 3d hardware.
• Station ID Badges - If we allow the terrorist to see what channel they are watching while a program is on, then they will know which TV stations to attack.
• Web Page Advertising Links - If we provide hyperlinks to some of Americas most important companies on our unrelated web page, then it is far too easy for the terrorist to find their way to the companies' web sites. To be on the safe side, we should probably ban company websites all together.
• The Words on the Karaoke Screen - By simply providing the terrorist with the lyrics to Americas treasure trove of musical tallent, we make it that much easer for them to learn the ways of our culture and blend into our society.
• Magazine Subscription Inserts - Each magazine contains a card listing not only the address and content of the magazine, but how much it costs!?! And formatted into a pocket sized card that is easily removable and constructed of heavy durable paper! What are we thingking? These cards are practically treason.
• Political Advertising - By broadcasting to the public the names, faces, and issue positions of each political candidate, we are only making them targets for the terrorists.
• Spinach - By providing this vitamin laden vegetable to the general public, we are practically inviting the terrorists to obtain it in large quantities and become big and strong so that they can overpower our military. Spinach must be tightly controlled by the government.
• Reality TV Shows - These programs describe step by step for the terrorists dangerous skills such as wilderness survival, business tactics, how to run casinos, build or renovate buildings, and how to convince weak people to do things they don't what to for no reason.
• My Grades - By providing ready access to my educational records to all potential employers and parental garidans, the government is divulging information about this country's youth's readiness to serve and protect the country and level of expertise in important national security fields such as calculus, african american studies, and spelling. This information must be protected at all costs.
• News Crawls / Stock Tickers - The national security value of protecting J-Lo's latest breakup is unquestionably paramount.
• Spam E-Mail - Providing the terrorist with information on cheep home loans and ready pharmaceuticals access is tantamount to handing them the keys to Congress.

Re:bulldust

[dbIII]

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).

You laugh now...

[Kanasta]

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!

"terrorist" bullshit

[irokin]

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

Balderdash

[EriDay]

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.