DHS Says Cellular Outage Reporting is Terrorist Blueprint

Tuxedo Jack writes "U.S. landline telephone companies have to file public reports when their networks have major outages, so you would think the same would hold true for cellular providers and ISPs, right? Not if the Department of Homeland Security gets its way. CNN/AP reports that the DHS wants to make cellphone outage reports secret, claiming that they could be used as 'blueprints for terrorists.' I don't know about you, but I'd kinda like to see public disclosure on what happened if my cellphone/Internet access is down for an extended period."

Claiming "terror" to justify other things...

[LostCluster]

This really smells like a case of the "terror card" being played so that information that otherwise would deserve to be public gets pulled back not just for protection from terrorists, but also to protect other interests... including:

- Protecting embarassing localized failures of a cell network from being reported as news, which would of course lower a company's stock price.
- Protecting the cell phone industry from consumer groups keeping stats on outages, which would actually cause companies to have to improve their service in poor areas.
- Allowing Tom Ridge and friends to ask that cell phone service be cut around areas where "National Security Events" are taking place and being able to claim that the tower simply went down rather than having own up to the fact that they interrupted service to the general public based on nothing more than a reasonless fear.
- Allowing the government to take down cell service around any incident that the government would rather not news spread quickly about. By ensuring that the people within the secured zone can't call or send pictures out, and reporters can't get in, they can assure a delay in the release of any account of what's going on in that zone... such jamming would be glaringly clear if all of the cell companies filed reports about the simultainous downtime without any equipment failures.

It is a whole lot easier to cover up a cell service downtime being caused by either company mistakes or government demand if nobody has to file a report on it. And that seems like a much more likely motivation.

Wow

[mfh]

If terrorists figure out the pattern of outages, they could attack during a peak collapsing the cell networks, and that would be bad, IMHO. Chaos would ensue. For once, I don't believe it, I'm in agreement with Homeland Security.

I'm tired of losing rights....

[Kid Zero]

This is getting silly. I doubt seriously this is "Terrorist Roadmaps", more like Cell Companies want to keep exact details of outages secret.

This Patriot act is getting downright unpatriotic.

Re:I'm tired of losing rights....

[Exatron]

Getting unpatriotic? It was unpatriotic from the start.

This is a follow-up story to another story...

[LostCluster]

If you want to spin the headline a bit... you also can see that the FCC is actively considering making cellular service companies file downtime reports just like landline companies do, and that's something that has never been required before.

Of course, that'd be something that's only of geek interest. It becomes a whole lot more newsworthy when the Department of Homeland Security has come in to claim terror fears should be reason enough to not publish such reports along side the service providers who would be expected to grasp at any reason they'd have to object.

This just in..

[fiannaFailMan]

Airline schedules are to be taken off all websites like Travelocity, Expedia, and the airlines' own websites to prevent terrorists from planning their next hijackings. Anyone wishing to book a flight will now have to go to an old-fashioned travel agent's office, prove that they are not of Middle-Eastern extraction, take a polygraph test to prove that they plan to stay on the plane until after it lands, and only then will a limited amount of scheduling information be dispensed.

Seriously folks, this is getting f@*&ing ridiculous. The word 'terrorist' is becoming the modern version of 'communist' and 'witch.'

Re:Wow

[Metallic Matty]

"If terrorists figure out the pattern of outages, they could attack during a peak collapsing the cell networks, and that would be bad, IMHO. Chaos would ensue. For once, I don't believe it, I'm in agreement with Homeland Security."

There are a lot of things that could happen. But I personally don't feel this justifies making everything a big secret. National (or Homeland) Security is important, but it shouldn't just be a magic make-anything-you-damn-well-please-a-secret card.

Are you afraid to leave the house during a storm because you might get struck by lightning?

Better hoard your maps!

[Dr Rick]

Of course the same argument can be applied to maps. Knowing the locations of streets, rivers, libraries, or entire cities could provide terrorists with a major intelligence coup. Sooner we'll be just like the old Soviet Union where entire cities did not appear on maps due to National Security issues.

Bush and Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

""What 9/11 produced for them is a windfall opportunity to rebake all of their old bogus arguments as to why we shouldn't have any of these (outage reports)," Moir said. "They've morphed all of their comments into post-9/11-ese.""

I couldn't help but think this is basically what Bush did in regards to invading Iraq.

Bomb the towers!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a fantastic win for us if the terrorists started blowing up random communications towers instead of buildings full of people. Unfortunately they aren't going to go after such low-drama targets and this is just so much bullshit to cover the fact that these companies don't want to have to publicly disclose their mistakes.

Michael

Vote!

[Michael.Forman]

This November vote and put an end to this nonsense!

Unless of course the voting is postponed due to terrorist threats.

Michael. [michael-forman.com]

Re:Wow

[mfh]

> In your opinion it seems that the most heinous thing a terrost organization could do to a country would be to cause its cell phone network to be overloaded.

In case you didn't remember, during the September 11 attacks, cell networks were in chaos. Imagine if they attacked during outages or could cause outages.

It's not the network I'm worried about... it's people dying and unable to say they love their families before a ten ton cement block crushes their skulls. Or worse... what if they were buried and could tell the resuce guys where they are? They couldn't exactly do that if the networks were down, could they? Many people survived the World Trade centers *because* they had working cell phones, at least for a while.

i quit

[isbhod]

GAAAHHHHHRRRR that's it! i quit, they win, give me the flip'n Prozack II 2 pill, bar code my head, and implant the tracking chip, take away my cash adn give me an RFID card, and tell em what to think, feel, wear, eat, sit, sh!t, sleep, walk, run, and jump. I'm tired of all this crap, why not make everything illeagle that way you can arrest anyone at any time for anything. The system is broken, there are not Mr. Smith in washington, you can't fight city hall, the sky is falling we might as well give up and accept our fate now.

Screw you homeland security, why not cover the county with soft fluffy pillows so when we (or at least "the children") fall down they don't get hurt. Look damit, terrorist are not backwater ignorant bucktoothed country folk, there are eductated (usually in the U.S.) religious zelots or crackpots or both. They do not need to use these reports to generate a blue print, they already have one. Security through obscurity has nor, does not, nor will it ever work. Go ask Microsoft if you don't believe me. Besides i would love to see real time reports so that way we can send in a team of heavily armed drunken red necks in their 57 chevy to all the big outages just incase the outage was due to a terriost attack, be casue no matter how much of the religious zelot they may be, no one can stop Zek and Earl after they've downed a case of Highlife.

The larger picture

[Sean80]

I think a whole bunch of people will argue one way or the other as to which way this thing should go. What's interesting to me is the larger picture here.

Presumably, one of the concerns here is that terrorists would be able to determine the locations of vital cell-phone network equipment and thereby disrupt that network. This made me think of the other news we've seen lately, particularly the concept of a P2P cell network, where cell-phones participate on a swarm-like network. Potential of disrupting such a network? Very, very low.

It's easy to leap to other conclusions here as well. Telecommuting is another example of a technology where it would be difficult to kill a large number of people working in an office building simply because they're suddenly geographically distributed over a large area.

So yeah, a little offtopic, admittedly (that ought to attract the mods), but an interesting future for what may or may not be an actual problem in the present, don't you think?

Re:Wow

[mr i want to go home]

I don't think it's so much the pattern of outages they're worried about (BTW aren't outages supposed to be random? Do you know something we don't? ;-) ). They're more worried about specific information on easy targets being available....for example (from the FA):

SBC Communications Inc. reported in January that 43,224 customers lost service for three and a half hours because frozen water pipes burst in a central switching office in Stamford, Connecticut. Water seeped down two floors and "damaged the Symmetricom Digital Clock Distributor."

Who really cares though (except the people who want to know why their phones weren't working...). If you really want to disrupt cell phone networks you could just look for the building with all the antenna's sticking out the top and torch that one.

Any major service, public or private, should be accountable to it's customers - terrorists be damned.

I don't understand the logistics...

[Mitleid]

...to such a proposal. Is the implication that when "terrorists" see a widespread cellphone outage caused by a single location that they now have knowledge of a vulnerable spot in the communication infrastructure?

Personally I think people give "terrorists" too much credit, and the DHS makes them out to be more resourceful than they really are. If terrorism relied on such precise and surgical strikes as the DHS would like us to believe, then we wouldn't need an absurd Terror Alert Level to tell us when we've got something to worry about; if the U.S. had as much to fear as the government tries to proclaim, I'm sure we'd all be feeling the effects firsthand. The attack on the WTC happened nearly 3 years ago, and to this day we have seen how many more massive "terrorist" attacks on US soil? It seems to me that the most damage we've suffered is the extreme paranoia and collective uncertainty fostered by a government that continually proclaims to be keeping us safe with it's "expertise".

This proposal by the DHS just seems like another two-pronged attack to feed a self-inflicted sense of fear and victimization. Make people feel like the DHS can actually do something about those few terrorist groups who can actually get their shit together and carry out something as horrific as the WTC, and at the same time put some more power in government hands. Ya know, just in case...

Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things...

[GreyWolf3000]

I think the crux of this issue is that on 9/11, cellphones from New York spread work quickly, and soon that flight in Pennsylvania went down because (presumably) the passengers knew their plane would be used as a missle and got up and did something about it.

The primary difference is...

[!ramirez]

...that cellular telephone companies are NOT the holders of a monopoly on wireless telephone service in their areas, whereas for the past 50-75 years, RBOCs (and AT&T before them) have had monopolies granted by the government (and regulated by FCC/PUCs/PSCs). Buildout of the public telephone network was partially done at taxpayer expense - I cannot see how major (commercial) ISPs or wireless phone providers that owe nothing to the government for funding for their networks should even have to disclose such information.

(But, if they did, it should definitely be public :)

Reminds me of...

[Spaceman40]

...the "bug reports causing vulnerabilities" argument.

'Nuff said.

Among other things...

[TiggertheMad]

This, combined with the fact that the president wants the ability to reschedule elections in the event of a terrorist attack is making me rather paranoid, and I have never been a member of the 'tin foil hat' birgade.

Why should any company providing a service vital to the country not be subject to the same rules about information disclosure as the government? (I intended to say that without irony, but considering how Jr. has been trying to hide everything lately...)

Re:Wow

[SpecBear]

OK, consider a couple of things things:
First off, any terrorist attack will likely cause the local cell network to collapse. A network is most likely to be overloaded when it is in use by a large number of people in a small area. Guess where a terrorist is most likely to attack?
Secondly, hiding this information will not make us safer. In fact, it will put us more at risk. Here's why.

• Having outage information publicly available is only useful for a terrorist if the outages show a pattern that can be used to predict a future outage.
• If a cell phone provider is having regular, predictable outages, then the network is broken and needs to be fixed.
• If the information is public and available, the cell provider is far more likely to fix the problem.
• If the information can be kept secret and hidden, the problem will be of a lower priority.
• If fixing regular outages is a low priority, then the overall reliability of the network will be lower.
• A weak cell phone network will be much easier to overload and exploit regardless of whether the terrorists are even trying to do so.

Security by obscurity is a problem not just because it's ineffective, but because it can encourage bad/lazy practices in other areas of security.

Re:Wow

[smclean]

Agreed, I thought that was a little of an odd line of reasoning. The talk of the use of cell phones for emergency purposes makes sense. However, to me, it is indeed strange that they wish to make cell phone outages secret, while keeping landline outages public. All emergency services are landline-based. If a landline outage occurs, it's far more of a 'terrorist blueprint' than a cell phone outage.

And CNN reports that the huge multinational conglomerate phone companies are *so concerned* for all our safety that they think Homeland Security is dead on. At least CNN does a good job of ripping that to shreds:

"What 9/11 produced for them is a windfall opportunity to rebake all of their old bogus arguments as to why we shouldn't have any of these (outage reports)," Moir said. "They've morphed all of their comments into post-9/11-ese."

Re:Better hoard your maps!

[KZigurs]

I'm afraid you already are. I have experienced USSR and effects of cold war in it's full glory and now USA is very rapidly approaching just exactly the same state of things:

-- Stupid restrictions on anything.
-- Access to innocent information closed due to concern.
-- A lot of "Good" citizens that will gladly rip your head off as soon as you will do something "SUSPICIOUS" (like taking a photo of popular landmark) and even feel proud afterwards.
-- More and more power to absurd authorities that are supposed to deal with threats, but instead just bullies innocent people.
-- Government that considers that any mistake can be hidden by constantly advertising it as significant archievement or just hiding it.
-- Media that dances by government commands and looses jobs if tells truth.

There is just one difference though - in USSR the power was, at least, with patriotic (ok, sarcastic, but true) individuals that had some principles. In USA the power is in hands of greedy corporations and megalomaniacal president. Everything else is the same, even including people that gets missing, unjustified and aticonstitutional raids or arrests and so on, so on...

Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use a cell phone, which blabs itself back to the cell, when you could use a one-way pager, instead, as a remote control bomb detonation device?

Hack the pager to do something not only after being called, but by getting a specific page message...

It would be a lot harder to get the pager providers to supress service at the whim and fancy of the govment, because chances are, they would also be denying service to hospitals, etc...

Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things...

[GlassHeart]

Besides, what could terrorists do with the knowledge that cell overage was out?

Even if there was something they could do, what if we simply delay the publication of such outage data by three months? That way, the public still get the accountability, and the terrorists don't get "useful" data.

Pointless response

[warm sushi]

My understanding from all of the news coverage thus far is that fairly significant knowledge of terrorist plans are available before the fact - the problem seems to be not in alerting the terrorists, but in alerting OUR OWN FREAKING GOVERNMENTS TO THE INFORMATION HELD BY THEIR OWN INTELLIGENCE ORGANISATIONS!

Compromise

[Anonymous Coward]

One solution which might help both the public and sooth security fears would be to publicize reports and location of outages but not their cause. The cause information would be kept by the FCC and DHS.

That way the consumer groups could monitor carrier reliability which is what most people are concerned about anyway. The FCC could hold carrier's feet to the fire over the cause of probles. And DHS could monitor for any patterns of outages which might be related to terrorist activities.

The only losers in this scenario are the carriers who should be owning up about these problems anyway. In a supposedly capitalisitic system I as a consumer need to be able to determine the quality of the goods and services I purchase. Blocking that information only serves the interests of those corporations who wish to deceive their customers.

USA - USSR

[Wyatt Earp]

Ho boy, the United States has a long way to go to get to the best day in the Soviet Union level of governmental controls.

1. Where are the Gulags? I know some consider the prison system to be gulags, but honestly they aren't. There are no Federal or State prisons or jails

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
"After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 Lenin announced that any "class enemy" could not be trusted and should be treated worse than an ordinary criminal. The Gulag was a reformed extension of earlier labor camps (katorgas) operated in Siberia as a part of penal system in Imperial Russia, which quickly overflowed with the enemies of the people, a designation used by the Bolshevik government for corrupt officials, saboteurs, embezzlers, political enemies and dissidents"

"According to the Encyclopædia Britannica 2004 edition, "Western scholarly estimates of the total number of deaths in the Gulag in the period from 1918 to 1956 range from 15 to 30 million."'

"In some camps, the fatality rate during the first months was as high as 80%."

2. As for the idea that "Good" citizens will do things to "Bad" people, that's so much BS. For example, this weekend I was flying along the Oregon coast, we saw a strange Lockheed Orion, I've posted to the web and to the Usenet to find out what an Orion in strange colors was doing 500 meters off the coast at 500 feet above the water and the FBI hasn't shown up yet. So where is that closed information or backlash about asking questions?

3. The Media doesn't "dance" to the government's tune, if it did do you think the Prison Scandal in Iraq would have made it out? Would news about casualties in Iraq even make it out? No, of course not, hell in Russia the families of the Krusk still aren't told what happened, during the Soviet Union mistakes on warships like the Widowmaker got Officers executed and the familes were not allowed to have the bodies for burial. During the first press conferences in 2000 when the Kursk went down members of the crew's families were sedated by Russian Government doctors if they asked questions. Needles in the neck, on TV.

Here in Portland for example, one can still go out to the airport and watch the civilian and military jets take off, and when I take pictures no jackbooted thugs attack.

Re:USA - USSR

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say the first US Gulag already exists. It just conveniently isn't on US soil to avoid US laws - it's at Guantanamo Bay.

Sure, nobody dies, but that's because in 80+ years we've gotten a lot better at torture, more cold, more calculating. Now they know having a bunch of strict Muslims strip nude and form human pyramids is a more effective punishment than bashing one of their heads in.

Re:We've gone way beyond 'ridiculous' now.

[synaptic]

Hate to break it to you Anonymous Coward, but those aren't the "terrorists" to which our government is referring.

You're right, I don't live in and wasn't in Oklahoma City. But I *was* in Kingman, Arizona and I *saw* the miles-long military reinforcements to the National Guard Armory roll into town. I *saw* the FBI setup camp and investigate everything that moved.

I also saw our military punch holes in the home of American citizens in Waco, Texas as chimney vents for the fire they started moments later.

"Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher.
For good or for ill it teaches the people by its example."

Why? EMS depends on Cell Phones these days

[bandy]

The cops know that everyone is listening to their frequencies on scanners. Also, their towers are in well-known locations. Take that out and the police are paralized. Well, they were. Once cell phones were pocket-sized, local EMS realized that they were not only a good "private" way to communicate but also that they were a reliable backup in case of emergency.

Re:USA - USSR

[Anonymous Coward]

1. We have millions of people in our prisons; a higher percentage than any other nation on Earh. You're right, people in our prisons aren't dying, they are just getting raped. And all the LOL PRISON RAPE jokes that come up whenever incarceration is mentioned in casual conversation show it's considered acceptable and just punishment in our culture for just about any crime.

2. You said "so where is that closed information" -- find out anything about that plane yet? Yeah. And just because guys didn't come knocking on your door in this one case doesn't make all the cases [uncletaz.com] of "homeland security" gone wrong that have happened over the last few years go away.

3. Let's take your example: You said "Would news about casualties in Iraq even make it out?" Did you miss the story about the government trying to block pictures of coffins from making it into the media? During the Vietnam war, the nightly news on all major networks showed the body bags, gave the casualty count, showed graphic footage of the war, every day. The US government learned its lesson from this and has had policies in place ever since to hide the ugly side of war to keep support from eroding. Until Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, many people had never seen photos of the dead and wounded from the Iraq war!

Besides, the guy's point is that major media is require to act like lapdogs to whomever is in power at the moment, or they will get their "access" taken away. No more interviews, press passes, or anything. Bye-bye business. Do a little research on this -- it's been going on for quite a while now.

Re:This is a follow-up story to another story...

[Richthofen80]

it would be nice if cellphones didn't have to file downtime reports, not because of terrorist threats, but that would mean that cellular phones are less regulated by the FCC. Personally, I think the FCC is an overgrown monster that forces communications companies to jump through hundred of hoops to even consider being a successful business. this drives up startup costs and means that national/largess companies end up running things, and rely on government to keep the other guys out.

The reason why cellphones have been successful and proliferated is because they aren't local telcos. they don't have to put a tower everywhere. they can refuse business to customers. they don't have to share their networks if they don't want to. they don't have to lease their lines like local telcos.

the less the government tries to run corporations, the better. look how they manage their own budget / affairs? they buy $800 hammers and expect to be able to dictate how to run a successful company? please.

Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things...

[Xyrus]

Well with all those terrorists out there...

Terrorist 1: So do I get to suicide bomb today? Do I?!? Do I?!?!

Terrorist 2: No. The cellular service isn't down.

Terrorist 1: Awwwwwww I never get to be the bomb!

Terrorist 2: Cheer up, little guy! You never know...Hey Look!

Terrorist 1: What?!?! What's going on?

Terrorist 2: The cellular service just went down! You see? Now you can blow yourself up in the name of !

Terrorist 1: Hoooray! Hooray!

The Department of Homeland Stupidity is the biggest friggin' joke going in America. At least Hitler's SS had some creative reason's to start trampling rights.

How the hell is this information going to help a terrorist? Terrorist are not spur of the moment. They plan. Just like any other paramilitary self-righteous group of assholes on the planet.

Knowing that cell coverage is out in an area would only be useful to them if they did it themselves.

Conversely, knowing where cell coverage is operational would be good for them if they wanted to detonate a bomb from afar.

I can't believe grown human beings are making these decisions...and people go along with it!

This is almost as silly as not letting homosexuals have equal rights....oh....yeah.

~X~

I support Bush as much as I support terrorism.

Re:We've gone way beyond 'ridiculous' now.

[multiplexo]

Where to start with this bullshit? Well why not here:

They got a tip that a dark-skinned person was taking pictures and notes. If they had *not* followed up and those locks were bombed next month, would you want their heads? I bet you'd be outraged.

It's worth noting that those locks are a military installation run by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The Ballard Locks a military installation. Yeah, I guess that those Sockeye salmon are really valuable to our national security, as is the ability for those boat owners on Lake Washington and Lake Union to get their boats to and from Puget Sound. My God! The whole country would collapse if the locks were damaged! Quick! Suspend the Constitution!

So what if people calling in tips to the DHS use profiling? I don't recall any WHITE people bombing us. When someone says the word terrorist, you know, like when we're at a heightened security alert, what mental image do YOU form? Thought so.

You don't recall any WHITE people bombing us? Do you have memory problems as well as being completely stupid? I guess that you don't recall the bombing of the Murrah federal building in April of 1995, which was done by a couple of white guys, one of whom, Timothy McVeigh, was executed for it. I guess you don't recall the bombings of abortion clinics that were done by WHITE right-to-lifers. I guess you don't recall the bombings of churches in the south by WHITE KKK members.

The mental image I form is of the Department of Homeland Security crying wolf again and again and again. The terrorist alerts, which weren't that great of an idea to begin with, have been so overblown as to become meaningless. I'm also beginning to form an image of Homeland Security releasing these to distract our attention from other events, and so are a lot of other people. Witness the latest Homeland Security alert which contained no new info and was a rehash of information from several months ago.

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, lieutenant Taco? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Spiers, and you curse the Department of Homeland Security. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Spier's questioning, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

If fucking retards such as yourself are the only thing standing between me and Osama Bin Laden then I'm fucked. Oh BTW dickhead, I spent 13 years in the National Guard as an M60 and M1 tanker, what are your credentials? A four digit /. ID number? A high score playing America's Army, a John Ashcroft Junior G-man badge? Sitting through all 24 episodes of 24 without having to get up and go to the bathroom?

Quite frankly your existence is grotesque and incomprehensible to me. Why didn't your mother abort you? Why didn't your dad drown you in a bathtub? Why don't you shoot yourself in the head?

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

You provide me with my freedom? Did you write the Constitution? Did you fight in WWII, Korea, Afghanistan? Were you a first responder on 9/11? If not then you haven't done shit, pigfucker. You're either some sort of fucktard poseur who has spent too much time playing with his George W. Bush flight suit action figure or you actually do work for one of the idiot bureaucracies that is concerned with "homeland security". If it's the latter then I have news for you old son, you and your buddies haven't done jack fucking shit for our security. Osama Bin Laden is still out there, so is Mullah Omar and Zarqawi. What have you fucktards achieved other than harrassing US Citizens and trashing the Constitut

Re:USA - USSR

[Wyatt Earp]

Are the inmates at Gitmo there to do work? No.
Are they there with little hope of release? No, people are released all the time.

Comparing Gitmo or what happened in Iraqi prisons to the Gulags doesn't work. Gitmo is a camp for Prisoners of War, well for folks who were in and around a war area but were not uniformed combatants.

As for thinking the United States is more cold and calculating in regards to prisons than the Soviet Union or China or North Korea needs a reality check.

The worst excesses that happened in a US controlled prison like Gitmo or Abu Gharib wouldn't even make the lunchroom chat at dinner in a Gulag.

Flushing Your Tax Dollars ?

[max born]

I hope the Department of Homeland Security is spending an equal amount of its resources on developing more reliable networks.

Maybe they should propose more competition and diversity as a way of ensuring redundancy.

After-the-fact reports on cellular outages...

[SmoothTom]

After-the-fact reports on cellular outages, explaining the CAUSE OF THE OUTAGE could be used, in part, as a simple training manual on how to disrupt cellular service...

The same, of course, applies to landline services, and anyone with experience on the technical side of the 'outside plant' world can probably tell you a half dozen low-risk ways to disrupt service over selected areas...

I dislike the idea of 'hiding' the root cause of cellular outages, but I can also understand a part of the desire to do so for security.

*adjusts tinfoil propellor beanie*

Tomas

Re:USA - USSR

[PsiPsiStar]

What do you mean "nobody dies?"

How do you know that?

Re:We've gone way beyond 'ridiculous' now.

[Aexia]

The fact is that there have been 0, that is zero, as in one minus one attacks on America since September 11.

Forgot the anthrax mailer did we?

And wisely, you qualify that with "attack on America" because terrorism has increased worldwide.

Given that prior to 9/11, the last time Al Quaeda had launched a terrorist attack on American soil was 8 years before in in 1993, citing the lack of terrorist attacks in the past 3 years is hardly proof of anything.

How soon we forget...

[IBitOBear]

...I don't recall any WHITE people bombing us...

ODD... I seem to remember a very WHITE person bombing us... I think his name was McVeigh (sp?)

This all puts me in mind of the aphroisim about history repeating itself when we fail to learn from it, and I dare-say remembering is a big part of learning.

On September 11 I lost a bet. I bet my roommate that it was a melitia group protesting "The Military Industrial Complex." I figured I'd lose though, because WHITE Terroritst rarely consider the suicide aproach... WHITE Terrorists are the set-and-forget bomber types.

...that or they have been apointed by the Supreme Court of the U.S. to replace the duly elected President... (ok, that's a cheap shot, but the homilies are flying here and I am about to try to make a different point. 8-)

Before you flame go ahead and remember a little history... The term "terrorisim" stems from the means used by a government for controlling its OWN population. (No really, look up "the reign of terror" sometime.)

So some strangers blew up some buildings and, for the most part, huge sections of the world (the U.S. in particular) seem to have decided that history is meaningless and it is better to live in a condition of immediate and imaginary safety instead of a responsable and well-informed liberty.

I am amused that you go on to quote Nicholson's character in A few Good Men... I guess you missed the point of the movie. You know, the one where he was a bad person who did wrong things and got someone killed? Or the part where all the good little supporting drones almost let him get away with it because it is bad to question authority even when you know it is doing a wrong thing.

It shouldn't be "My Country Right or Wrong" it should be "My Country, and I'll make it Right when it is Wrong because it's MY COUNTRY and I take Responsibility for my PROPERTY when it HARMS OTHERS."

Capitulating blindly with the US government when it is fook-all off it's nut and being run by a wanker is the *LEAST* patriotic thing an "American" can do...

God, stop this crazy planet, I want to get off and go somewhere with intellegent life...

Re:We've gone way beyond 'ridiculous' now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have come to accept the fact that you liberals are impervious to facts and irrefutable evidence. Every single time you are faced with them, you change the subject and/or start calling the person names and placing personal attacks because you CAN'T argue against the facts. (So go ahead, and call me names - change the subject and prattle on, I've come to expect nothing more from you sheeple).

9.8 out of 10 for ironic merit!

Re:We've gone way beyond 'ridiculous' now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a tiger repelling rock to save you.

What do you mean you dont think it works, you dont see any tigers around, do you?