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FCC Inquires Into Its Own Authority To Regulate Communication Service Shutdowns
New submitter DnaK writes "The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing whether or when the police and other government officials can intentionally interrupt cellphone and Internet service to protect public safety. A scary proposition which will easily become a First Amendment issue. Does the FCC have the authority to [regulate local or state authorities' decision to] take down cellular networks if they determine there is an imminent threat? The FCC is currently asking for public input (PDF) on this decision." According to the article, "among the issues on which the F.C.C. is seeking comment is whether it even has authority over the issue. The public notice asks for comment on whether the F.C.C. itself has legal authority over shutdowns of wireless service and whether it can pre-empt local, state or federal laws that prohibit or constrain the ability of anyone to interrupt service." Maybe they just don't like being upstaged by BART.
This is potentially scary, but not surprising, considering the recent developments in the UK (with SIM cards being remotely disabled by the government after being "Vetted" and determined to be spamming)
I didnt RTFA so STFU about it However i was wondering what is an imminent threat from a cellular network?
What kind of threat could justify interrupting internet and cellphone services? The only thing those can do is distribute information, by shutting it down you are restricting communication, I don't think internet or cellphones can do harm enough to justify shutting it down.
The "public safety" excuse is flawed.
Seems to work ok in Caracas, Havana, Damascus, Cairo, Republic of Geogia,. Moscow, and Tiananmen Square. I think the government of every repressive dictatorship should be able to disrupt free speech, and public assembly. What's wrong with that?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
For looking at my story and accepting it. Even if it was not selected as the article to hit the front page because of my terrible formatting and editing. I'm new to slashdot and still trying to learn the ropes! Please be forgiving:) This news story caught my eye and immediately scared me a little that the FCC has any type of authority to shut down communications networks. How can shutting down access to emergency service numbers and other people ever help? Are we going to shut down local networks if we believe "terrorists" are about to commit an act of violence? I personally do not see a reason to ever stifle speech, good or bad. The amendment is there to protect the minority. Not the majority.
Why isn't that a first amendment issue as well?
I would hope that if the threat is significant and "imminent" that the FCC would just do whatever the hell they wanted, laws be damned, on the sole condition that the decision maker is held personally accountable for their decision after the threat has subsided, and that their accountability would be judged by the people.
As much as I like the FCC, what in the world would they need to do this for? This seems like a terrible way of stopping the "enemy" from communicating by stopping Citizens from communicating. The FCC has had my back in the past with our thought process on how communications should be handled, I'm glad they are asking for public input on this.
People use their cell phones for a lot of things, including calling for help from the police, fire, and other community protection services. There really aren't any public pay phones around any longer, so we rely upon our cell phones in order to contact authorities about dangerous situations. I think that BART should have been severely reprimanded and fined a LOT of $$ for cutting off the signal in San Francisco. Those that made the decisions should have been charged (IMO) with reckless endangerment of the public. The entire idea of shutting off cell phone service in some sort of "emergency" is just the opposite of what should be done, which is to extend coverage as much as possible.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
I'm not an American, but I understand the the FCC has overarching authority over Spectrum Regulation.
In that sense, local Police or other State organizations would be acting illegally if they interrupted communication without FCC aproval.
Presumably the FCC want to test the right of State organizations to be able do this.
I've got a public comment, best expressed with a single finger. Yeah! You're number 1 FCC!
The FCC does not need the authority. A letter to the carrier with DHS letterhead should be enough. It makes everyone else fold up, including verisign.
Silence is a state of mime.
The airwaves are a government regulated resource which it reserves the right to limit access to at its discretion. Way things are set up, you could quite legally, totally loose access to the airwaves at any time for a verity of reasons. I am fairly confident the constitution protects your right to free speech, not your right to emanate electromagnetic waves at any power level or frequency. One might suggest a 28th amendment establishing that right if it is a major concern. In the end, denying access to wireless communications while inconvenient, does not inhibit the ability to speak, only the ability to disseminate information which isn't a protected right.
You have the right to say, write, or believe what you want. Beyond your mouth, you do not have the right to access the means to tell anyone else.
Remember, you choose to be dependent on your cell phone and the Internet.
Its unfortunate that as our continent slides deeper and deeper into a fascist wet dream we feel satisfied quibbling over minutia on the internet. I love this forum, some of the most engaging and thought provoking conversations take place here, but I feel like it might be time for the smart people to organize something in meat space. In terms of systems theory, we have the energy and venue, but they have a stranglehold on communication. For this race to survive we need some big sacrifices.
with the riots in England, there was all sorts of scary talk about rioters using mobiles to organize, but then we hear about concerned citizens using mobiles to organize cleanups
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Having the ability to disrupt cell phones will give officials a false sense of security. Evil doers will plan around the cell system and police won't know what they are doing.
IEDs are often cellphone-triggered. That said, it's far more likely that "imminent threat" would be taken to mean "speech we disagree with"...
This will not change things with regard to IEDs, although it may change the IEDs to make them more dangerous. In general, it doesn't matter anyway, since IEDs rarely happen in the U.S., which is where the F.C.C. has jurisdiction, anyway, unless it's in a movie or in a television drama like N.C.I.S.. There is not a lot of unexploded ordinance lying around for the taking.
Another poster suggested a dead-man's circuit so that shutting down the cell access for the bomb is rigged to trigger it. The workaround would be for the authorities to evacuate, THEN shut down the network. The work around for the workaround would be to enable a motion detector, such that evacuation then shutdown would be ineffective.
On the bright side, if they think the way the parent poster does, it will only be a matter of time before it's a requirement to be able to shut down RFID in passports and credit cards, since that can be used to identify targets as well.
Of course that's not possible, but the workaround there, if it was, would be to couple an RFID reader with a motion sensor and use IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) such that you are at risk if you are not carrying an RFID device on the terrorist approved list when you go past the motion sensor.
Or to hack the system to shut down the RFIDs without the threat that the shutdown mechanism was intended to thwart, thereby disrupting commerce, as a terrorist act in itself. Of course ... then aren't the BART authorities who shut down the cell network guilty of a terrorist act? I guess it's an administrative action if I do it and a terrorist act if you do it.
This is of course all ridiculous, and it's clear that what's really going on is a power grab to obtain the ability to shut down BART-like protests and/or flash-mob protests that are only protests when there are no police in the area to interfere with the protests.
-- Terry
Not to sound too cliche, but freedom isn't free. If the cost of the government not being allowed to shut down our communications is the occasional bomb being triggered by a cellphone, so be it. This is rife for abuse. Oh, people are protesting in DC and they want to send in the riot patrol? I hear there might be a bomb in the area, better shut down the networks!
The FCC is asking the wrong people. If they are unsure if they have the authority over the decision of local and state governments to take down cellular networks, the very first step should be to ask Congress. The FCC only has the authority that Congress has given it. So, the first step is to ask Congress if Congress believes that the laws that Congress has passed give the FCC this authority. If Congress' answer is no, that is the end of the discussion. If Congress' answer is yes, the next step is to determine whether or not Congress has the authority to regulate the decision of local and state governments to take down cellular networks. That is a more complicated question and more difficult one to answer, but if Congress has not delegated anyone the authority to do so, we do not need to examine the question of whether or not they have the authority to do so.
A more difficult question is whether or not local and state governments have the legal authority to take down cellular networks, and if so, under what circumstances. However, the answer to that is independent of whether or not the FCC has the authority to regulate if and when they do so.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If something truly is a matter of life and death, then yes of course they should do whatever needs done and let the pundits bitch about their civil rights after. If I were a police officer, agent, or whatever and the only thing standing between me and saving one or more lives was some rule about people's "liberties", I'd tell them to go to hell and do what needed done. That's what any ethical human being should do.
That's not the problem: The problem is that the authority in this country can't be trusted. Decades of abuse of power has led the public to be generally mistrustful of authority -- and with good reason. And more often these abuses, along with their misconduct, mistakes, and every other bad thing gets swept under the rug. People who question it are outed as "terrorists", and put on watch lists for not being patriotic enough.
The question really being asked here isn't if they should have that power or not: It's how the hell can we trust them given how badly they've abused our trust in the past? The fact that this is even newsworthy is pretty telling: We've gotten to the point where we are willing to risk our lives and those of our fellow citizens to try to hold on to what pathetically few civil privileges we have left to us. They aren't even rights anymore: We just don't want to be the next poor bastard to make the evening news so our friends, family, and coworkers can give each other furtive glances at each other and wonder how it ever came to this.
That's the real story: That all levels of government have become so corrupt that the public no longer trusts it even in the face of a clear and present threat.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This is an easy question, since it's similar to the "this terrorist knows the location of an armed atomic bomb - can we torture him to save a city?" one. You simply require people (e.g. government employees) to obey such orders when lawfully received from their superiors, but make it an offense [in the case of torture, a capital offense] to initiate such orders. So anyone - e.g. the president but really anyone in the chain of command - who really believes she is likely to save a million people from a bomb [or whatever the cellphone shutdown is supposed to help with] would be understandably upset at the personal penalty for doing the "right" thing, but would surely not be stopped by giving the orders to torture. After all, you really think you are probably saving 1M people from instant death and many more from radiation poisoning. Not willing to give your own life to prevent this? Maybe you don't think there are a million lives in serious peril after all (or maybe you are truly selfish bastard who shouldn't be near such decision making positions in the first place.)
Initiating an internet/cell shutdown order might not be significant enough to merit a death sentence, but there needs to be a severe personal disincentive that makes sure you only do it when the plausible threat is deeply serious. Maybe forfeiture of all your assets and 100% tax thereafter for the rest of your life? You can make the outage happen, but it has to be for a threat that you feel so serious that makes your own well-being seem rather insignificant.
Does the FCC have the authority to [regulate local or state authorities' decision to] take down cellular networks if they determine there is an imminent threat?
I'm not sure which scares the hell out of me more. Giving the FCC the power to do this. Or the agency that will have the power to do so if it's not the FCC. I don't like the idea of the FCC having this power, but I like the idea of DHS even less.
This deserves to get modded up. I think the disincentives you give are excessive, but the general idea is sound.
I'd propose:
Giving the order to torture - you must immediately be turned over to the Hague. They'll decide what to do with you.
Giving the order for an internet shutdown - four years in prison and a fine of 150% of your net worth (thus bankrupting you, and taking a portion of your future earnings).
Obviously a Constitutional amendment would be required, if only to prevent your VP from taking your place and immediately pardoning you, which makes this extremely unlikely. But it would be a good way to give useful powers to the government while making sure that those powers don't get abused.
The FCC is more or less trying to keep the government in check by telling them NO when they try to black out wireless networks.
The FCC has done far more good than Congress and any other authority I've recently seen. They aren't asking for control to black out the network, they are asking if they have the right to prevent smaller entities from blacking it out....
Generally SLashdot users seem to find it totally acceptable that the FCC control how companies run networks. So it follows naturally the FCC has the power to shut down networks too.
You can't have it both ways people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know that the Internet is usually against government power. But people, in this case, you WANT the FCC to trump local laws. For decades now, the FCC has has the sole power to regulate antennas, emitted power, signal purity, etc. And for decades, it has done this in a positive manner, as an enabler rather than as a restriction.
Up until now, the FCC's power has trumped the petty Napoleons in your local government. For example, your HOA might rule about the obtrusiveness of your antenna. Whether it is tall, reaches over your fence, or is conspicuous. But they cannot forbid you from having one that works. That power does not belong to them.
Believe me, the status quo on the FCC's power is fine. Even though big government might be evil, in this one circumstance, you need them.
If i had mod points i would unload them on you, even though you are AC and thats against my rules
The Internet doesn't kill people. People kill people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC03hmS1Brk
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
In wartime, congress (with the help of the FCC) has shut down radio communications modes before. They've even coordinated plans to do such shutdowns on very short notice, google "CONELRAD".
I would far rather put this in the US congress's hands via the FCC, than in local law enforcement's hands. It's not that I think the world of the current US congress, but rather it's their inability to get together and agree on ANYTHING. Contrast with local yokel law enforcement and city councils setting up a patchwork of local laws and limits on radio and phone and other forms of communications.
If the FCC wanted to do some good, it should inquire into its own authority to dissolve itself permanently. The FCC's track record is ghastly. It injects politics into everything it can its grubby hands on and impedes communications technology instead of promoting it.
http://www.arrl.org/getting-licensed
TO: All
RE: Who Can Shut Down Cellular Networks
Only local authorities, e.g., County Sheriffs and City Police, should be able to shut down cellular commo networks. State and Federal have too wide an area of influence to keep them 'honest'.
They can request local authorities to shut down a section of the cellular network in support of one of their operations. But let's keep things 'local', as those people—the sheriffs, their deputies, the chiefs of police and their officers—have to live in the impacted communities, so they'll be better judges of the impact to their community.
RE: Who Can Shut Down the Internet
NO DAMNED ONE IN THE WORLD!
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. -- President James Madison]
I'm not an American, but I understand the the FCC has overarching authority over Spectrum Regulation.
In that sense, local Police or other State organizations would be acting illegally if they interrupted communication without FCC aproval.
Presumably the FCC want to test the right of State organizations to be able do this.
It gets more complicated than that. There is a law prohibiting willful or malicious interference with radio communications, for example, and there's a whole debate about whether it should apply in this kind of circumstance (it was passed in response to threats to the public safety from interference in police communications). There are also common carrier laws requiring the FCC to be contacted if someone is going to discontinue common carrier service--but the FCC has generally exempted mobile services from that law, which they are allowed to do under another law. The entire FCC licensing regime was passed, in part, in response to difficulties in communication caused by signal interference during the sinking of the Titanic--interference that was widely believed to have cost lives. If you shut down cell service, you're often shutting down 911. And that's all before you get to the First Amendment issues.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Seeing as the number of IED's going off weekly on US soil is so plentifull this is definitely an issue.
Is the FCC asking whether it DOES have this authority or if it SHOULD. Because only one of those should come from public opinion.