Slashdot Mirror
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... --
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.
No, this is not ineptness. They found an excuse to justify shutting off cellphones in case of mass protests which the government does not approve of.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Except that having your phone shut off is going to endanger your life.
Because you'll be furiously clicking everything you can to try and figure out why your texting is no longer working, instead of occasionally looking up from the phone, because you were texting while driving?
And of course nobody in the history of the world has ever thought about a type of deadman switch (possibly software based on a smartphone) where if it doesn't receive a "keep alive" signal at specific intervals or communications are interrupted for more than a very short period, it automatically triggers.
"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?
You probably got that out of the Anarchist Cookbook! I never read it, but I'm even more sure now that it needs censored!