DHS Says Cellular Outage Reporting is Terrorist Blueprint 421
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."
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, what could terrorists do with the knowledge that cell overage was out? I could see how knowing that cell phones did work in an area could help in, for instance, planning an RF detonation of a bomb. Perhaps we should pre-emptively shut down all the cell networks? That's a bit of a trite over simplification, but I just can't see how not reporting cell outages does anything except ebb the market pressures that would force cell companies to improve service.
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:4, Interesting)
Decentralized communications are more reliable and flexible, albeit sometimes harder to make efficient.
Re:It's true that... (Score:2, Interesting)
No more Bitorrent, Kazaa or edonkey, and none could even report it on slashdot.
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is the main reason. Anybody remember Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six? (the book, not the game.) If you were about to hit a bunch of suspected terrorist cells, and wanted to make sure they were completely isolated (communications-wise), you want to jam the cellular frequencies, or isolate the local towers to make sure that they couldn't warn their buddies when the men in black start kicking in the doors. Suddenly realizing that service in your area is out might be a good tip-off that the hammer is about to fall, and being able to visualize that on a global map would be a great way to figuring out what areas to avoid during an extended operation.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
We've gone way beyond 'ridiculous' now. (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds like something a terrorist would say! Quick! Call John Ashcroft, this man is hiding something! What exactly would you do with this information you Amurrika hatin' terrorist you!
Actually though if you want to see how useless, stupid and ridiculous our "war on terrorism" has become (hope this one goes better than the "war on drugs" cuz last time I checked drugs were winning big time), check out the story of Ian Spiers. Here is the link [brownequalsterrorist.com] to his website describing his run-in with Homeland Security types or you can read this story [nwsource.com] from the Seattle Times or this column [nwsource.com] from the Seattle Post Intelligencer. For those of you who don't want to read the articles Spiers was harrassed by the local police and Homeland Security types because he was taking pictures of the Ballard Locks, oh, and he's kind of not-white looking, but that never figures into the actions of our Homeland Security Overlords.
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard a wise soul on slashdot say "Terrorism, drugs, and kiddy porn is the root password to the constiuttion."
Reason (Score:3, Interesting)
If the outage is reported by civilians, in case of public access to these reports there is a possibility to analyze and reconstruct path and timing patterns of such security procedures, without need of a large grid of measure equipment or observation.
Of course, real terrorists will probably resort to real measure equipment, because of public database could be easily falsified by spooks, but for government a more useful effect of such denial of information is keeping population in fear.
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm tired of losing rights.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know when it started -- but at some point the conservatives/Republican party decided to use *words* against their enemies. They've been able to insert phrases into the political lexicon which are inflamitory; "tax and spend democrats", "liberal" (said with disgust), "Clinton recession", "Activist Judges" ... There's a million others but I can't think of them at the moment.
They aren't the only ones to do this, but they sure are the most active. The "Patriot Act" is a constitutional disaster, but how can something called the "patriot act" be bad?
To combat this, I call the reps, "Cheap Labor Republicans."
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it, we shot down that airliner. Everyone was focusing on New York City and little attention was paid to the Pennsylvania field. Cheney and Rumsfeld had already authorized shooting down any of the hijacked airplanes and there was plenty of time for armed fighter jets to intercept it from Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Kentucky.
Re:I'm tired of losing rights.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, John Kerry actually fought in a war. I'd think that counts.
Re:This just in.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Since Bush has been in power the Geneva convention is more or less void, a country has been overrun (ok, with a wrong leadership), the country is spending billions (more) on weapons, Israel gets a "do whatever you like" card, rights have been taken away from citizens, corporate america has been placed above the law, the VN was almost invalidated, money for good causes is being withdrawn and you think it is _getting_ ridiculous?
America, get yourself another president, _please_.
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's on the net, just not on the 6 o clock news.
Here's another one. That stewardess who allegedly called her husband had to use a phone built into the plane, because her cellphone was in her purse, which she couldn't get to because the terrorists were in the way and stuff....
Well, hooo-kay then, how did she activate it without her credit card, which was presumably back in her purse as well?
If you want more, there are more than a hundred unanswered questions and quite strange incongruities and even stranger coincidences with the governments story about all the events surrounding 9-11. Those above are just two of them.
Happy _legitimate_ researching!
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:1, Interesting)
That is kind of a moot point, there isn't any shortage of terrorist that are willing to die for their cause, why waste your time and money setting up something like this? If there is a problem with the device, your mission is in jeopardy and these things are not as simple to create as one might think. All you need to do is find someone willing to die and send them in and push the button, also you don't have to worry about that person talking to authorities since there isn't much of a chance you will find a peice of them large enough to question.
Make everything secret.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Be it outages in service, or just the guy down the street that got arrested..
Hell, lets make laws secret too, since terrorists could use loopholes in the law to get away with stuff...
I think ill go burn all my techincal and history books.. I feel so much safer now.. don't you?
Outage reporting would be a bad precident (Score:2, Interesting)
It's that slippery slope thing again
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:2, Interesting)
I also don't think we should have license plates on our cars. Terrorists can use the information on a license plate to track down anyone with anti-terrorist bumperstickers on their cars and commit terrorist acts against them.
I think we should stop having our government in Washington and should have it in a secret place, in case terrorists try to attack our government again.
I think we should ban newspapers because terrorists could use them to kindle fires in terrorist acts of arson.
I think we should ban gasoline and motor oil, because terrorists might use them to build Weapons of Mass Destruction.
I think we should ban guns because terrorists could use them to shoot people.
I think we should ban belts, rope, and anything that can be used in any way to harm someone, because terrorists might use them to harm someone.
I think we should ban words, because terorrists might use them to recruit other terrorists. Think about that for a while. Do you really want terrorists here on our soil recruiting other terrorists? Words have to go. Don't you see how important it is to fight terror in the name of freedom!?!?
I think we should ban water because terrorists could drown people in it.
I think we should ban wet noodles, because terrorist might attempt to slap us with them. And believe me, if terrorists don't, and you agree with anything in this post, I will.
Re:I'm tired of losing rights.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:3, Interesting)
And what effect does it have? It makes it so that the involved companies feel the pressure to make sure that the guy across the street doesn't suffer a bunch more outages than you due to the equipment on his side being inferior (I point this out because it is a serious issue here in the Denver metro area for Xcel energy customers). By having a 3rd party track such things, the companies can't ignore it.
Given how small changes in location can drastically affect cell service (for instance, when travelling to California I usually get 3 times as many dropped calls or cell towers at capacity in San Francisco than just 50 miles south of there and I rarely lose calls in other locations). Obviously the cell companies would support a policy that didn't call such hotspots of bad service to public attention.
The end result of such a policy of public attention would force improvements, which would in turn strengthen the infrastructure against attack. So whether or not such reports might be wise in the short term, I feel they would have the reverse effect long-term.
Re:more industry protectionism on the way (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember that the US goverment is good at aquiring convenient evidence. Do you also remember those WMD that were piled in 10m high stacks at every streetcorner in Baghdad that no one ever found? Also, regarding the debris field, you should remember we're dealing with an airliner here, not some fragile jetfighter. Besides, depending on which weapon used, the results would likely still be the same. Sidewinders are short range, heat/IR guided and not that powerful, thus considering jetliners carry their engines external, under the wing, a direct hit on the engine with a Sidewinder would blow up the engine or knock it off, not much else. This means the jetliner would simply plummet down. Sparrows and AMRAAMs use active radar, which means they'll hit the damn thing plain smack in the middle. This would breach the hull of the jetliner but is by far not enough to outright destroy it. The massive decompression and damage would cause the plane to loose control and crash down relatively intact.
This guy is a terrorist too. (Score:2, Interesting)
www.brownequalsterrorist.com [brownequalsterrorist.com]
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's really amazing how well the administration is playing right into Al Qaeda plans. Really amazing. They want to destroy America, and now, via the administrations reactions (creation of DHS, etc, etc), their goal is being accomplished by the systematic distortion and destruction of the U.S. Constitution. There does not need to be any terrorist attack again, only the threat of such and the continuance of the current administration, which will continue on it's misguided way.
Re:Claiming "terror" to justify other things... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow! Its on the "net"? Damn! It must be true then! The "net" would never lie to us!