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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.'"
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.
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
...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.
911 generally still works during network overload; the wattage on your transmission goes up, and your phone does other ("different") things in "emergency mode". So yes, the normal traffic is all jammed up, but the 911 emergency mode service will happily kick even highest priority users off the cell tower, if there are no slots available. That's why you can be dropped off a call at peak calling times, if you are not a highest priority user.
If it gets overloaded with 911 calls, it handles those under a different mode, first come, first serve, to keep the backhaul network operating.
People in government branches have cell phones which operate in yet a third mode, and will even kick 911 calls off (secretary of state, secretary of defense, and so on).
You should really learn your phone network protocols...