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FCC Won't Release Cell Carrier Reliability Data
imuffin writes "MSNBC is reporting that the FCC has been collecting data on the reliability of different cell phone carriers in the US. This data could be invaluable to consumers trying to choose a company to sign a lengthy contract with. Just the same, the FCC won't release the data to consumers, citing national security risks. The data collection on cell services began in 2004, but were simultaneously pulled from public view. FOIA requests to obtain the data have been denied, and commentators feel this is simply for the government's convenience." From the article: "'There is nothing mysterious behind it, it is corporate competition protection,' said [terrorism analyst Roger Cressey] ... 'The only reason for the government to not let these records get out is then one telco provider could run a full-page ad saying 'the government says we're more reliable.'' Cressey added that he couldn't imagine a scenario where the reports would be valuable to terrorists."
Just the same, the FCC won't release the data to consumers, citing national security risks.
Once again, confirming the fact that "national security risks" and "risks to corporate profit" are the same thing.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Cressey added that he couldn't imagine a scenario where the reports would be valuable to terrorists.
Except, say, if they're trying to pick a quality cell phone provider?
Money Talks.
The truth is an offense, but not a sin.------R. N. Marley
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines...
it could be financial, technilogical prowess, who knows..
even if it 'were' terrorists, how else will they know which companies service to use for their remote triggers?
lastly. when WHATEVER entity commissioned the collection of data, started with a request for funds to collect the data.. the request must have detailed SOME benefit to justify (stop laughing, even though it's government, it's true) anyone have an idea of what the original justification was?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Why the hell did they do the study in the first place?
The reports at issue here concern the uptime of the cell phone providers' networks, not the rate of dropped calls or coverage problems.
FTA: Consumers have no idea how reliable their cell phone service will be when they buy a phone and sign a long-term contract.
My solution is not to trust any of them. I had a contract with Cingular. Largest Network, Fewest dropped calls, blah blah. I don't buy it. Why should I trust Verizon not that it's claiming to have the largest network? If I get a prepaid phone, It'll be Cingular because most of the rest of my family is on Cingular, but I'm under no illusions that it will work more than 85% of the time away from large towns or cities.
So the Government uses my tax dollars to commision a report, and then denies me the information within that report?
This is information that I am paying for and could weigh heavily in my decision of which service to subscribe to. It is ridiculous that the government does not support a consumer-driven economy.
of course it's valuable to terrorists. This way the evildoers will plant a cellphone activated bomb somewhere and - get this - it won't go off because there's no signal! Bush is a freaking genius, and sometimes I have the depressing feeling this board doesn't appreciate that.
Obviously, terrorists will manipulate this information to drive down the stock of the lower-performing carriers (yes, Cingular, I'm looking at you). Then, once they drop low enough, they'll purchase the company at fire-sale prices and...#5 PROFIT!
Just junk food for thought...
People, corporations aren't the only carriers of cell phone signals. The government maintains it's own systems, and even many military technologies are based upon the commerical technology we take for granted. Now, we don't need to be reminded that the government can be somewhat....lazy....when it comes to research. So it isn't a big stretch to assume that they've basically bought a private network with commercial technology. The reliability of a network is a function of more than just pixie dust. It takes signal encoding, RF broadcast angle patterns, and a widely cast net of signal towers to name a few things.
See, if the terrorist had information about who had the most outtages and where, they could all buy into the most reliable plan for their area. And then their calls would be free to each other while they coordinate the descruction of our nation.
They should be listed at http://malfy.org/
You know, I normally mod down grammar nazis. But I can't help but complain here. My article summary has been so heavily edited that I barely recognize it. When I submitted this story, it didn't have these subject/verb disagreements:
The data collection on cell services began in 2004, but were simultaneously pulled from public view.
or
FOIA requests to obtain the data has been denied,
And I certainly wouldn't use the questionable idiom "Just the same."
Come on, mods. If you're going to edit my submission beyond recognition and destroy its grammatical integrity while you're at it, at least don't attribute the submission to me.
...a scenario where the reports would be valuable to terrorists.
Rip out the land lines, shoot down the communication satellites, blow up the unreliable cell phone carriers, thank the reliable cell phone carrier for doing a job well done, and Google stock shoots straight up as they own all of the undamaged dark fiber. Did I miss anything?
And that is the threat! We must be prepared for threats we can't even imagine! The terrorists are cunning and we have to remove any information that could be used in any conceivable way by terrorists, even if we can't think of how they may use them!
I can't believe how careless cities are by providing traffic flow numbers and population densities. That kind of reckless pre-911 behavior will get us all killed!
Where is the free market in all this? Are we not allowed to choose the best provider? TFA says that if they release the data, the customers will start using the best provider! No kidding! I think what the FCC is doing here is just plain sad...
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
Yet another incident wherein the public is not allowed to see/do/say/read/etc something because it would be a "national security risk". This is bullshit, obviously. They're using the Terrorism Scare (sort of a neo-Red Scare) to justify actions that would otherwise generate a lot of flack.
"We've been collecting information on cellphone services, and have produced a ranking of reliability. But, unfortunately, if we let Joe Sixpack have access to this information, the terrorists will win! So of course you realize that we're just keeping your best interests at heart, right? You wouldn't want the terrorists to blow up little Johnny's elementary school, now would you?"
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
FTA: Consumers have no idea how reliable their cell phone service will be when they buy a phone and sign a long-term contract.
...
...
This blatant over generalization is contradicted by
FTA: Complaints about cell phone service are near the top of every list of consumer gripes. The Illinois attorney general's office, for example, last year ranked cell phone complaints as the fourth-most-common complainComplaints about cell phone service are near the top of every list of consumer gripes. The Illinois attorney general's office, for example, last year ranked cell phone complaints as the fourth-most-common complain
People talk. They aren't just complaining to the authorities, either. As a result, everybody knows spotty service is an issue when they decide on *any* service provider. Caveat emptor is understood, so we move on to other decision factors. A much more significant factor is the family/friends connection. If the majority of the people I will be calling are on service X, I'm going with service X, even if service Y is more reliable, because service X will likely be lower cost.
I think this article is an attempt to enrage the masses because MSNBS is angry at being rejected by the FCC. It's a troll.
When the federal government stops using Microsoft Windows. There hasn't been a Windows release to date that didn't include some back door for a Terrorist Hacker(TM). If they were so serious about security that they won't publish this report, you'd think they would have at least considered the security of their own computer systems.
Or, more likely, it has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with corporate protectionism.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
RTFA, and you will see that only really large outages are noted. This does not cover MUCH more common issues like:
* Poor RF optimization, leading to dropped calls and poor coverage
* Span outages to cell sites, forcing all calls on that site to drop and new attempts to be blocked
* Audio issues
AFAIK, while the feds may compile the data, I know of no efforts by any govt agency to independently collect this sort of data, IIRC it's all self-reported.
Now, if they lowered the thresholds (not gonna happen), then you would see more things of interest.
Honestly, who doesn't see it coming? I'm also guessing that the information will become available via a "lost" laptop, CD, DVD, pen drive, or possibly floppy (it *is* the government, we're talking about), that will leak the results. The most reliable companies' stocks skyrocket, people sell sell sell for the poor performers, and the government workers buy buy buy before the leak occurs.
because I am not a consumer, I am a producer.
I am often a customer of other services, but since that isn't mentioned I guess this has nothing to do with me.
What are they really hiding?
The real issue that is being hidden here is the number of times paranoid homeland security dickheads takeout the cell networks in response to perceived local threats. This may be done with or without the carriers co-operation. However, the carriers know when it is happening.
Part of the problem is there's network, and then there's network. Just because you operate the most extensive network of any single cell phone company doesn't mean you have the biggest area where your customers can place non-roaming calls.
For example, I have a phone with T-Mobile. T-Mobile has a pretty small network; however, you can roam on a lot of other networks, particularly Cellular One in my area, at no additional charge over your normal plan. So the effective network is bigger than their actual company network.
Other cell phone providers have bigger networks themselves, but don't partner with anyone, so their effective network may be smaller.
paintball
When will people learn that terrorists may be using our roads, electrical grid, water supply, and grocery stores to benefit themselves? I hear some of them may even be using the telecommunications infrastructure to communicate with each other!
Once we deprive the terrorists of access to these resources, we can live safe and free. Limiting access to these things will be difficult as a practical matter, our best option is probably to blow all these things up.
We should probably burn down the schools and universities too -- there's no telling what a terrorist might do with knowledge they could gain there....
The deficit and the national debt should also be kept secret for national security concerns.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Your "risk to corporate profit" argument doesn't fly unless you're arguing that the Bush administration has some kind of stake in the least reliable carriers.
The FCC is an independent agency that answers to Congress, not the president. See USC Tile 47 151 and 154
What I think is more important than grammar mistakes is that your article summary was posted in the form of a direct quotation, with no indication that your words had been edited. That's extremely poor journalism. Quotation marks should always been reserved for direct word-for-word quotations... any changes by editors must be clearly indicated as such by the use of brackets. Or, the editors should paraphrase the summary instead of writing it in the form of a direct quote.
Not necessarily. What if I just moved into the area, and I don't have that many local friends? What if my friends are stupid, and I'd rather trust some sort of objective report? What if my friends are generally poor and don't have cell phones? What if my friends all work at the same place and their phones all come from a single provider, affording me no comparison? What if my friends all live far enough away that their cell outages aren't the same as mine? I can keep listing if you want me to, but the point is that in order to make an informed decision about something, we need information. Who are you to say what kind of information we should or shouldn't find more valuable?
Let's just say for a second that you 100% correct and that MSNBC is angry at being rejected their FOIA request by the FCC.
So? What difference does it make?
If MSNBC files a legitimate FOIA request (which they did), and the FCC rejects it for bogus reasons (which they did), it doesn't matter what MSNBC's motivations were or how they feel about it. It is wrong, and it needs to be fixed. Otherwise, we're setting the precedent of government denying FOIA requests for reasons that may have to do with more important things, like holding government accountable or protecting freedom.
I don't care if MSNBC wanted to use the report as toilet paper, it's publicly-funded non-national-security info that they have a right by law to get.
was written with just such an event in mind... EFF, go to work!
on 24 never has cell problems; I want that company!
Can you hear me now? ...
Ok... How bout now?
You take it, I don't want it...
The FCC is an independent agency that answers to Congress, not the president.
Wow, thanks for the laugh, that's the funniest thing I've read all day.
FWIW, the commissioners are appointed by the President, and then confirmed by congresscritters. 3/2 split by political party.
Source? The FCC website The congressional oversight is a joke.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
>>> Cressey added that he couldn't imagine a scenario where the reports would be valuable to terrorists.
How about if the report highlights single points of failure that are a bit dicey already and could be targeted to wipe out the network causing untold damage to businesses.
It didn't exactly take much imagination to come up with that.
All it needs is a large explosion somewhere (not necessarily with any loss of life) added to a communication blackout and you've got pandemonium. Yeah I've heard of landlines, satellite phones and VoIP but these aren't what the majority will use to check up on their relatives and loved ones.
Information on telecommunications infrastructure has always been obscured for security reasons.
There's probably enough information in the report to allow analysis of weak points in the system. In other words, it indirectly shows how take down as much of the system down as possible with the least amount of effort.
Cue up the dweebs whining about security through obscurity...
If the terrorist can get reliable cell phone service, then they've won.
So how is knowing that carrier A drops 3% of calls and carrier B drops 5% of calls really going to make a fking difference to that scenario, brainiac ?
"OMG teh Al Kayeeda blew up the mobile tower, I can't call Mom and tell her to pick me up from soccer practice, let's start pandemonium!!!!1"
"pfft, don't panic, that tower drops 7% of calls anyway, n00bs"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If America doesn't convert the totally unaccountable "national security" excuse into a government system that's part of the oversight mechanism of checks and balances, then unaccountable government will destroy America. The national security excuse is therefore clear and present danger to real national security.
I note that "national security" is the excuse that Bush gives to protect his warrantless NSA spying on Americans, which covers the same telcos these reliability data could expose as unreliable with immunity, though they can use the data themselves for anything they want, including business competition.
Is there anyone left who believes Bush and his "national security" excuses are anything but fascism: government by and for, but not of, corporations? Anyone who believes anyone coming after Bush will be any more accountable, now that Bush has proven how easy it is for even a fool to abuse us this way, while we're actually under attack?
Why do they hate America?
--
make install -not war
those parasitical "free market" pirate goombahs bet on everything, up, down or sideways. There's zillions to be made being the first with info and analysis, and also having the clout to get your hedges accepted higher up the line. The spooks have been using insider info for years to make fortunes, a few steps removed of course for obfuscatory purposes. Do you *really* think all that crap they mark secret is for national security? If you had access to unlimited and extensive data taps, what would that actually be worth if it was used to make business and trading decisions? Ubertrillions maybe? Of corse this data will be used..just you won't get to use it..that doesn't mean a lot of others won't. Every worker on the planet has "job perks", governmental insiders included.
And they all do it, not just the US. "National security" mumbled by officials as practiced by various states is partly always an economic racket. There's three forms, the economic racket, the CYA gambit from something stupid or embarrasing or criminal(extremely common, there is no one in any governmental job anywhere who is unaware of this), then way,way,way down at the bottom of the list is true "national security".
"How about if the report highlights single points of failure that are a bit dicey already and could be targeted to wipe out the network causing untold damage to businesses."
Um, maybe, just maybe, if the single point of failure is that vulnerable, it should be (what's that word again? Oh yeah!) FIXED.
Keeping secrets doesn't work.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Assessing domestic vulnerabilities is routinely done to plan for crisis management/response strategies. Questions such as what will happen to the grid if powerplants x, y, and z go down are not trivial to answer since under some particular circumstances loss of less than 1% of generation capacity could bring down over 70% of the grid!
Recall that on 9/11 a loss of certain routers around WTC basically brought down the entire Internet (the very system designed to be withstand losses of individual nodes.)
In case of cell carriers, the justification could have been, if some heavy shit goes down, which network can FEMA take over and use to coordinate first responders, etc.
Another thing you do not hear much about is Feds pushing for cell phone multicast capability: sending some alert to tens of millions cell phones simultaneously should the need arise.
According to the article:
Anybody can submit a FOIA request online. If enough people make that request, maybe someone will pay attention and do something about.
but teh terrorizts might get us if we let facts speak over marketing!
bah its sad how many excuses from the gov are now 'terrorism'. Its the new 'matter of national security'
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I read the article and something is pretty unclear to me. The article states, "Any time a carrier has an outage that affects 900,000 caller minutes - say a 30-minute outage impacting 30,000 customers - it must report it to the Network Outage Reporting System." My question is, how does the provider know in the case of mobile phones, how many were affected in a network outage? They could go by billing address, which, on average might be reasonable assuming that residential and business areas are uniformly distributed but that's not the case. One could assume that a common contributing factor to outages is network congestion. So let's say a provider has an outage in a dense business dominated area where few of the customers have their bills sent to. This might, by the metric above, not trigger a report to the Network Outage Reporting System. Another issue with this measure is how it would be weighted or manipulated. There are 4 large national generally distinct networks currently in existence: Verizon, Cingular/ATT, Sprint/Nextel, and T-Mobile. I've read in many places, though none truly authoritative, that T-Mobile has the smallest network among the national networks. If that's true, then it's possible they might have the fewest reportable outages. Most of the problems T-Mobile users experience would either be a function of lack of coverage of network congestion, neither of which seem to be reportable. A different method which would come closer to answering the true question of the quality of a national cell service provider would involve randomly sampling different providers in different regions among different classes of customers (i.e. low, medium, and high volume customers as additional proxies for the variety of places an individual has traveled and to weight their view on network congestion). Just my 2 cents or 3.46 cents if I melted them down at no cost and resold them
My question is, how does the provider know in the case of mobile phones, how many were affected in a network outage?
They could go by billing address, which, on average might be reasonable assuming that residential and business areas are uniformly distributed but that's not the case. One could assume that a common contributing factor to outages is network congestion. So let's say a provider has an outage in a dense business dominated area where few of the customers have their bills sent to. This might, by the metric above, not trigger a report to the Network Outage Reporting System.
Another issue with this measure is how it would be weighted or manipulated. There are 4 large national generally distinct networks currently in existence: Verizon, Cingular/ATT, Sprint/Nextel, and T-Mobile. I've read in many places, though none truly authoritative, that T-Mobile has the smallest network among the national networks. If that's true, then it's possible they might have the fewest reportable outages. Most of the problems T-Mobile users experience would either be a function of lack of coverage of network congestion, neither of which seem to be reportable.
A different method which would come closer to answering the true question of the quality of a national cell service provider would involve randomly sampling different providers in different regions among different classes of customers (i.e. low, medium, and high volume customers as additional proxies for the variety of places an individual has traveled and to weight their view on network congestion).
Just my 2 cents or 3.46 cents if I melted them down at no cost and resold them
"untold damage to businesses."
"not necessarily with any loss of life"
Doesn't sound like an terrorist attack to me, no loss of life
and damage to business (yeah wwhatever the fuck that means) is not somethign a normal person is scared of happening..
I know if I was going to use cellphones to detonate bombs, or communicate with others during a plot, I would definately like to know who the most reliable network belonged to.
I don't believe that the FCC has weighed the benefits of consumers being able to have Government collected data to aid them in making their decision when selecting a provider against the ills of terrorists having the same tool.
The data has been collected, that in itself is a security threat when the information is kept the out of the hands of the average American.
In such a situation, it is more likely for a specially trained terrorist informant to get ahold of the data than it is for a law abiding citizen.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
When you read article II you realize the president can't do shit without Congress's approval.
The mandate of the Commander in Chief, as we've seen lately, is rather broad. The U.S. Constitution is one of enumerated powers, but where the separation of powers is unclear, history has demonstrated that politics is the deciding factor. Whichever branch of the federal government jumps in first is likely to control, at least until they screw up. Witness our Fearless Leader. For years Congress didn't want to exercise its war powers, and was content to let the President exercise his. Now they're having second thoughts, and are beginning to give him less lattitude.
As for the FCC, although the FCC Chairmanship must be approved by Congress, it hasn't exactly been the kind of appointment the minority party is willing to fight over. When the majority party runs the House, the Senate, and the Congress, the President will get a rubber stamp on whomever he wants to run the FCC. Nobody likes fussing with FCC politics. It's messy, complex, and the electorate finds it boring. Better to spend political capital going after gay whales and people on respirators.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The idea that if the government releases the data, everyone will switch to the best provider is ridiculous. If everyone switches to the "best" provider, they'd become oversaturated, lots of service unavailable, and drop calls. They'd stop being the best. Then with the next report, everyone would switch to the new "best" provider. No, it doesn't work that way. Reporting will make all the companies more accountable and try harder to improve their service.
I would find out who is privy to the report and then track down who they use, chances are it's one of the ones at the top of the list we don't see. Well at least in their area I would suspect. But they may know how bad it really is and not even own a cell phone!
Clever or not, I got nothing...
>SOME benefit to justify (stop laughing, even though it's government, it's true) anyone have an idea of
>what the original justification was?
Congressional cell phone contracts expire in January.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
That's the beauty of national security - anything can impact it. besides, FOIA requests cost money, take time, and may uncover embarrassing facts - so let's keep the US safe from those terrorist bastards and keep our secrets to ourselves. And anyone who thinks different must be a commie pinko spy or an undercover agent for the FBI...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Say you're in charge of communications for someone very, very important, or something very important. You notice a method, mind you a few laws must be passed (or paid for), that will enable yet another backup 'channel' you could take control over. If needed. Or you know, wanted.
You then might want to know, in this case, which company was the best.
Force them with some laws, and dammit, you have your answer. Don't believe one of them? Totally audit that ass, right?
Meh, fuck it, we'll keep the data to ourselves. 'Cause ya know we're gettin' paid to. Fuckin'A, right? Fuckin'A.
They'll lose a laptop with the data on it soon enough.
They always do. The signal always gets through.
The FCC should release the report. There are a lot of things the FCC should start doing, beginning with its job. It doesn't matter anyway. All the new cellular phones suck, and the FCC will never start doing it's job. I have a bag phone and several bricks. I was never not able to use the bag, even in remote areas. The bricks, only in the remotest areas would I have to resort to the 3 watt booster with a larger antenna. Those phones were also a lot tougher than the junk we're forced to use now. I can no longer obtain service for those and am forced to use one of these new digital pieces of junk. These things don't work that great in urban areas much less someplace remote, and don't get me started on the "digital quality sound". While my GSM phone is better than my ANSI-136, it's a far cry from my old AMPS bricks.
Don't you know that terrorist want reliable communications?
I'm involved with contributing data to the reports in question. Let me point out that the accusation against the FCC isn't quite right. Submitter claims that the FCC has been collecting data on the "reliability" of different cell phone carriers in the US -- data that could be be invaluable to consumers. The data in question are actually "outage reports" that involve FCC reportable events. These types of events generally involve damage to systems and read like: "911 service down to 175,000 subscribers for 17 hours due to fiber burned in arson event at 777 Bozo St.", or "45,000 subscribers had no services in Deer Meadows when falling tree knocked over Hwy 32 repeater". They describe specific incidents and addresses with number of subscriber minutes affected.
Outage event reports full of acts of God (and acts of vandals) do not provide any data on the actual "reliability" of cell phone carriers as judged by consumers. Consumer reliability is seen as: "How often do my calls drop - how many areas of town have no service - how often do my call attempts say 'try again' or 'network busy'". Knowing that 20,000 users lost long distance service in BFE when an idiot with a backhoe dug up a fiber does not help with those questions -- oversubscribed cell phone towers are not reported as outage events. In short, the FCC does not know who the most "reliable" carriers are -- only which ones sustain the most damage to their facilities.
As for security matters: If anyone wanted to create havoc, they'd take one glance at the report and burn down the sites responsible for the largest outages listed. "National infrastructure" is described in painstaking detail. It wouldn't take a criminal mastermind - only a couple of drunk high school kids.
Perhaps, for whatever reason, the most unreliable carriers are also the ones offering the least objection to illegal and secret wiretaps. That would make this data a risk to "National Security" (where, of course, "national security" is defined as an obstacle to the current Administration's ability to operate outside the law with impunity).
This actually isn't as crazy as it sounds. It is very likely that the companies that know what they are doing legally also know what they are doing technically. Consequently the companies that told the neo-cons where to get off may well also be the most reliable carriers.
I must have missed that. I was on IMs with people in Tribeca and Brooklyn before, during and after the towers fell.
the big D party is just as much involved, start with the new speaker, check out her telecom holdings.
Both parties are tools of the transnationals, time to get with reality. Look who pushed copyright extensions and DMCA crap, there's some more.
tools man, dump the D and R kleptocrats, they all suck, and it is way past time to get rid of that phony left/right stuff. It is 1% controllers uberrich-and everyone else, that's the only two "parties" that matter.
Seems the FCC works for the Cell phone companies.
No big surprise here..
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Actually, this is normal practice for the FCC. In fact, it's also the reason that there was never a broadcast television "Channel #1". For the sake of competition, they didn't want a single television channel claiming they were #1 - hence the 2-13 most of us remember.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
You would find that cellular carriers have really crappy service.
Unfortunately you won't find any of that information confirmable unless you have about 4 million cell phones distributed around the country and can start gathering data on all 4 million phones and the successful connectivity rates between the phones and yourself.
Unfortunately there aren't too many people who have that kind of cellular coverage and data.
Unless you are OnStar.
>>> damage to business (yeah wwhatever the fuck that means) is not somethign a normal person is scared of happening..
You mean a normal unemployed person who doesn't consume any inputs presumably.
So do you understand the concept of a premise or are you just flaming?
... so I drive across town to find a signal / phone and maybe a coffee shop with a hot drink. Everywhere in my city has no power. I notice cars leaving the city at a greater rate than usual. My reaction might be - panic and try to leave town. Reality might be a manmade explosion at a local chemical works along with a terrorist hit on the cities power grid.
You'll notice that as I haven't read the report I speculate on it's content and use the word "if" to show that my considerations are only valid (in my opinion) for cases in which the premise is true. The premise is that the detail which the FCC does not want to release pertains to a single point of failure.
Clearly, from your comment you are privy to the details of the report. It would be more constructive therefore to release the details of the report to the public rather than lambasting my uninformed comment like some kind of deranged imbecile.
In response to one of the other replies. Yes they should fix it _if_ such a situation exists.
You see the parent said he "couldn't imagine" how the report could be used by terrorists. So I imagined content which, if I were a terrorist, I'd find potentially useful.
Lastly, someone commented along the lines of: terrorists kill and not being able to call your mom ain't going to kill anyone. To respond briefly. Terrorists cause terror - the clues in the word formation. Terror or panic can be caused without direct loss of life. Example: I see a large mushroom shaped cloud of smoke after a big earthshaking bang, none of the electrical devices in my home work any longer. I try my cellphone, no signal
You also tried to IM anyone OUTSIDE NY, say in CA or London or Tokyo during 10am-2pm period on 9/11/01, perhaps?
if you can cause explosions like that, why would you need to know which parts of the mobile phone network were vulnerable, it doesn't matter which parts you blow up.
These people took down the World Trade Centre, do you think the need a map of cell phone towers ?
Drive a truck onto the Golden Gate Bridge and detonate it McVey style.
Demonstrative, terrorising acts don't require vulnerable targets, any target will do.
I live in a place where the terrorists blew up pubs, shopping centres, fish & chip shops, court houses, police stations, soldiers on patrol and people's cars, they didn't need a fking map.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Is there anyone left who believes Bush and his "national security" excuses are anything but fascism: government by and for, but not of, corporations? Anyone who believes anyone coming after Bush will be any more accountable
C'mon, be realistic - there are plenty of cultural references from the 90's and before where, seemingly at every turn, things are classified as 'matters of national defense' to frustrate our friendly neighborhood protagonist.
It's an old excuse - not that it's any justification - but let's not pretend this is something Bush invented to raise his fascist state.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)