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Court Mulls Revealing Secret Government Plan To Cut Cell Phone Service
An anonymous reader writes with the latest in the ongoing legal battle over revealing details of Standing Operating Procedure 303, the government's plan to cut mobile phone service during an emergency. "A federal appeals court is asking the Obama administration to explain why the government should be allowed to keep secret its plan to shutter mobile phone service during 'critical emergencies.' The Department of Homeland Security came up with the plan—known as Standing Operating Procedure 303—after cellular phones were used to detonate explosives targeting a London public transportation system. SOP 303 is a powerful tool in the digital age, and it spells out a 'unified voluntary process for the orderly shut-down and restoration of wireless services during critical emergencies such as the threat of radio-activated improvised explosive devices.'"
Oh! Hi, all you other frogs in here.
Is this water getting warmer?
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Isn't that good enough for you?
No?
Well, then, you must be a terrorist.
"after cellular phones were used to detonate explosives targeting a London public transportation system."
They better block all frequencies just to be safe. It would also be a good idea to block light and sound too just in case someone uses a "clapper". While they're at it, stop time. The bad guys might use an egg timer.
If the authorities already know about a bomb that is going to be phone detonated, they will have caught the terrorists already, or the FBI has probably set up some patsy to try it.
If an event like this happens after an emergency (like a second bomb after a first bombing), almost all cell phone lines go down automatically because everyone tries to call or message loved ones and clog the system up already.
Not going post 10 obvious work arounds because I will wind up on some watch list.
But what if the terrorists flip their logic!?
Their bombs may be on timers and the only way to STOP them from exploding is to call them. Obama is risking lives!
Hmmmm.... a conundrum.
So then they simply won't use cell phones, they'll use one of the many other ways of detonating a bomb remotely.
You're welcome.
The insanity, I knew something like this was coming now that people are entirely dependent on their cell phones (well most of you anyway)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...
"The drives even have their own built-in GSM access. If the signal goes quiet for too long, the drive is destroyed."
Any GSM triggered bomb could also be rigged with a 'fail-dangerous' to detonate if signals are blocked.
Lets say there is a bomb. And it has a phone attached. And you have inside information that it is really connected to a real cell phone. And you don't know where the person is with the other phone. And you know from your inside information that the timer will wait 6 hours before the fail-safe makes it blow up.
What if it is not a bomb. What if a war breaks out, and you know for a fact that there is an intelligence agent reporting over a regular cell phone, using coded words, about the movements of ships out of a harbor. Cutting off that flow of information while you set sail might be very valuable.
I'm not arguing for (or against) the wisdom of these policies. But there are obvious and legit reasons for the government to make plans for how to deal with unlikely emergencies.
They probably also have plans for what to do if we're invaded by Canada. Not because it is likely, but because a nation this large can afford to plan for unlikely things. Some of those unlikely things will actually happen.
As to this case, the Executive gets to tell the Court that their reason is that their conclusion is that National Security requires it. That it is their opinion makes it a good enough reason, because national security is not the business of the Court. Expect this story to be nothing, and go nowhere. For or against the policy, you should be able to see this approach will not yield any fruit.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in February sided (PDF) with the government and ruled that the policy did not need to be disclosed under a Freedom of Information Act request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The court agreed with the government's citation of a FOIA exemption that precludes disclosure if doing so "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual."
Except that having your phone shut off is going to endanger your life.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
...before the actual emergency occurs. As we've seen many times, during major emergencies the cell phone networks are already crippled by volume and no one can make a call anyways. Unless of course your talking about a 'critical emergency' created by the government where they themselves need to cripple communication in order to commit some sort of atrocity.
As usual, this kind of ham-handed policy will simply inconvenience (or even imperil) tens to hundreds of thousands of innocent, law-abiding people while the criminals will simply switch (if they haven't already) to a different means of remote activation.
I'd love to say it's unbelievable, but it's becoming sadly predictable.
The terrorists used cell phone to coordinate their attacks and coordinate response to police and military actions.
in a day and age that local cell phone jamming is relatively easy, it seems like the obvious construction is to have a device that must get a text message every interval (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, whatever) or it triggers.
an cheap FM radio could be put on a frequency that is not used, and be triggered by a strong signal on that frequency (a bit dangerous, but you're a terrorist, you probably don't give a fuck), or a DTMF decoder-on-a-chip could be packed inside of the radio for a slightly more secure deliver.
Another option is a rather inexpensive RC toy, or a slightly more expensive hobbyist RC transmitter/receiver combo (not as portable as above). Range can be a few miles if you get the VHF receiver (normally required a HAM license, but terrorists wouldn't care about that)
802.11 wifi and the passwords for the coffee shops and hotels in range should do the trick and work anywhere. Plus, no need to dial in. You can have it triggered online. Welcome to the Internet of Things, where Things include bombs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why.... is this government completely inept?
This would totally work. Except for WiFi, 433mhz industrial radios (easily available), CBs, ham radios, family band radios (from walmart, target, etc.), never mind anyone who was really serious about whatever they wanted to do and went through the effort of acquiring wireless communication gear not so commonly available.
This is a fine example of how DHS is *reactionary* and a complete waste of my tax dollars.
Bring it on!
Mulling is moot. It's already revealed; otherwise we wouldn't be here reading about i ~ ^& ' ` . #~ [NO CARRIER]
Table-ized A.I.
all those tin-star dictator countries where people are fed into the meat grinder if they spit on the sidewalk. dude, shut down my iPhone and I'm throwing my sledgehammer right through your blue-tint screen.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"EPIC originally asked for the document in 2011 in the wake of the shut down of mobile phone service in the San Francisco Bay Area subway system during a protest"
Same reason they shutdown the traffic webcams, anything to shutdown peaceful public protest.
"The Department of Homeland Security came up with the plan .. after cellular phones were used to detonate explosives targeting a London public transportation system."
Where, when did this happen, do you mean the July 07 2005 bombings. Weren't they triggered by suicide bombers during a government training exercise. On the underground which didn't have phone access. The traffic webcams also went down at the same time.
mobile networks already have the ability to kick subs off in case of emergency and reserve the bandwidth for the emergency services - its why some Telco employees have two sims and hope to God the second sim never gets activated
It's already happened...
An unexpected and unwanted text message from a wireless company prematurely exploded a would-be suicide bomber’s vest bomb in Russia New Year’s Eve, inadvertently thwarting a planned attack on revelers in Moscow, according to The Daily Telegraph.
It's also happened in Egypt and a couple other countries that I'm aware of.
Oh, and some are talking about having the system 'fail deadly'. The 'easy' fix to that is that you keep the 'network connection' up, you simply disable the servers - IE no calls go into the area, nor any texts. You see signal, but all anybody calling you gets is(ideally), 4 rings and voicemail.
I don't read AC A human right
The government has no right at all to effectively, even temporarily, lobotomize the citizenry. Cutting off mobile communications and apps is just that.
Look at the article that came before this( http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/04/06/2011250/build-your-own-satellite-for-less-than-30k ), you can now build a satellite for under $30k. Build yourself a cube sat, configure it for your personal Sat phone, encrypt it for you personal Sat Code and now your set for when the riots begin. Honestly if I could figure this out then a "terrorist/private citizen/news reporter" could.
We are on the verge of the same thing for personal vehicles. No drive zones. Vehicle disables due to local/regional/global emergency. Do not fear, citizen, we are in control.
Now might be a good time to invest in CB Radios or a HAM license and station.
Finding God in a Dog
They wouldn't shut down all cell phone service over a bomb threat. They'd shut it down to stop an organized flash mob.
But the flash mob is already working on specific apps that do not need a working cell tower to run. The serval project and firechat come to mind. both can contact other smart phones without needing a cell tower. plus people are working on p-cells and modified routers that can work as cell towers just fine in very limited areas, Microsoft is working on white space routers that can handle thousands of transactions at once, and is testing it in several places. not to mention the 802.22 standard already implemented for a router with a 40 mile range.
So the stingray is a police run cell tower designed to track phones by their sim or imei handshake. Is already up and running in most places, but doesn't actually carry traffic.So what would stop the government from using stingray to "brick" all phones through an over-the-air signal?
But then again, a rooted phone can probably be set to ignore that....
and the dance continues.
There is really only one legitimate broad category that would require shutting off cell service: Mass uprising, revolutionary activity, organized protests, and riots. Think of the Ferguson riots, but slightly more extreme, with organized looting and organized attacks against government installations. When tempers flare, just a few hotheads on each side could escalate the situation to full-scale combat. We've seen several examples in Egypt, Turkey, & Syria, along with other countries affected by the Arab spring uprisings. I am absolutely certain the govt had backup plans to shut down cell service in Ferguson if rioting got out of hand and became a broader threat.
The government has a compelling reason to plan for these scenarios where several dozen or perhaps even hundreds of cells of motivated actors coordinate assaults. Do you remember last year when dozens of militia groups decided to converge and "protect the southern border", and brought a shit-ton of assault rifles with them? What if something outrageous happened- imagine if there was a false report of an attack on one of the militia group from the Mexican army. Or hell, imagine a few mexican soldiers did have a shooting confrontation with some of those militia members? The call to arms would be broadcast very quickly via cell phone among the groups there, and that kind of crowd panic could easily turn nasty. Backup could be called from miles away. Scouting missions could be sent against a nominally hostile army and those scouts can communicate back with the main force. If those militias were thrown into a combat situation, what exactly do you think would happen if the govt tried to step in and disarm them? One very real alternative that can save lives and slow down further escalation is to shut down communication.
These are the scenarios the govt is planning against, where thousands of its own citizens might rampage against some percieved threat. These aren't ridiculous what-if scenarios, but real events that happened within the past 12 months, that very easily could have spun into chaos.
"after cellular phones were used to detonate explosives targeting a London public transportation system" - Realy?
Just wanted to point out that in neither of the two recent major bombing incidents on London Transport (excluding earlier IRA attacks) was a cellphone used to trigger the devices. The 7th July 2005 attack was from four bombs in backpacks triggered by the wearers. The 21st July attack was from timed triggers with no mention of cellphones.
The Madrid train bombings on the other hand did use pairs of cellphones to form a logical AND gate such that two simultaneous calls would be needed on different numbers to trigger the bombs. Because its sort of a bad idea as a bomb maker if your bomb gets triggered early by a wrong number.
That said, it may well be a good idea if you really know that your attacker is going to use a cellphone signal as a trigger to deny them that ability. But, a reasonably intelligent bomb maker will I think already know this and make allowances for it by for example having a backup timer that starts should the phone loose signal for an extended time, or be unable to ping a known service. So really its just security theatre, responding to a prior attack without thinking ahead.
There is some merit to this. Amtrak, by the direction of the Feral Railroad Administration, already had guidelines for using electronic devices near suspected explosive devices. However, they is a matter if discretion. Is electronic communication used for dicumenting an event. Or is it used for sending a signal to detonate a device? It is hard to tell.
Here is the dirty little secret of security: there isn't any.
The best anyone can do is spend whatever limited resources allocated on the most likely problems with fingers crossed. There is no absolute security, but doing something is better than giving up after realizing no one with any sized budget can stop every or even most avenues of attack.
What, it's not enough to believe scenarios too crazy for a season of 24, you have to be a complete fascist at the same time? My, what a nice blackshirt you have, my dear.
"But on August 11, 2011, however, BART took an unprecedented step. Under orders from BART police, the system shut down underground wireless service for three hours. The interruption covered stations in downtown San Francisco. In a statement, administrators clearly identified “organizers planning to disrupt BART service . . . us[ing] mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police” as the rationale behind the move."
https://www.aclu.org/blog/tech...
It has nothing to do with "bombs". We had to get the patriot act in order to fight terrorists.
"Of the 22,741 warrants issued since 2003, 21,838 (96%) were issued under the heading of "Narcotics."
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
How many times are we going to fall for this trick?
Do you have ESP?
I was thinking when the cellphones go down in major disaster,
http://www.qsl.net/n/n0drc/Oth...
mfwright@batnet.com
1. Text messages can get through when voice calls will never get through. Even if you have zero bars, there's a good chance it will get through. Get some elevation if you can to increase your chances of reaching a non-congested cell.
2. If you happen to find a genuine payphone, international trunks may still be active, even if local and national ones aren't. Call a friend in another country, and ask them to relay messages to whoever you need. (I used this during 9/11 to bypass the damage in Manhattan. I called a friend in England, and he in turn was able to call my parents and let them know I was safe.)
[End Of Line]
One of those words does not mean what you hope it means.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So now that my burner phone's going to be dead I have to purchase a cheap burner quad-copter and repurpose it's remote control. Damn!
{O,o} Plblptblplbt!
Marshall Law? Who he?
Maybe you mean Martial law, after Mars, the god of war.
(Avoi marital law).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You simply have the local smarphone program read the local SMS, then if it receives some kind of code (encrypted generated from another PC, sent by any regular old phone) on regular basis, nothing happens. then if it receive no "stay unexploded" or receive one with the wrong encryption key, it trigger itself.
It is simple, if the enemy can cut off your signal, then make the absence of signal the trigger. Deadman switch.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's got to come down to whether they do it by telling the cell companies to turn everything off, or if they have kill-switches in the towers. I'm not sure it really matters at this point.
What if the bomb detonates if it loses cell phone service?
Because there's no other way to trigger from miles away, current off the shelf RC hobby tech is plenty powerful with FPV applications being able to transmit over 5 miles. Cell signal not required, and electronics are small in size.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Off the shelf cheapies may have a range of 300 - 600 feet.
Entry level will get you further than you can see say a mile, mid priced FPV will get you 5+ miles.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The government has protocols for all types of crazy situations. It is usually better to come up with a plan when you have some time to discuss options than on the fly. Many of these protocols have never been used and never will.
I think what we are concerned about is when the government USES the protocol. Certainly there would be improper uses of it, and that is what should be at issue.
Do critical emergencies include protests... I mean riots?
Marshall Law? Who he?
Marshal Law is a deconstruction comic dealing with superheroes as hypocritical villains and the self loathing of those who find themselves with powers. There is also a second series where they train new superheros and a third where he meets Pinhead from Hellraiser.
This was in the news media for a long time. It was discussed on talk shows. Hardly any "secret".
I guess the police of the world have all been militarized. And police feel that the whole universe and physics revolve around them and what they do. So much for people having to call first responders for life and death emergencies because they are worried about an alleged bomb. So next time a swatting happens do we have to worry about local cell service to terminate? Lets just say that the terrorist have already won. Because non of us live in a free society and we used to before 9/11 and our police forces were more than happy to make it this way.
Paul E. Bahre
If the cell phones had been shut down on day one of intervention, the entire history of that war may have been vastly different. Could this be a lesson learned ?