The US Government Has An Internet Killswitch - And It's None Of Your Business
Submitted by Derrick Broze via TheAntiMedia.org,
On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that sought to force the Department of Homeland Security to release details of a secret “killswitch” protocol to shut down cellphone and internet service during emergencies.
EPIC has been fighting since 2011 to release the details of the program, which is known as Standard Operating Procedure 303. EPIC writes, “On March 9, 2006, the National Communications System (‘NCS’) approved SOP 303, however it was never released to the public. This secret document codifies a ‘shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during national crisis.’”
EPIC continues, “In a 2006-2007 Report, the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (‘NSTAC’) indicated that SOP 303 would be implemented under the coordination of the National Coordinating Center (‘NCC’) of the NSTAC, while the decision to shut down service would be made by state Homeland Security Advisors or individuals at DHS. The report indicates that NCC will determine if a shutdown is necessary based on a ‘series of questions.’”
Despite EPIC’s defeat at the hands of the Supreme Court, the four-year court battle yielded a heavily redacted copy of Standard Operating Procedure 303.
The fight for transparency regarding SOP 303 began shortly after a Bay Area Rapid Transit (“BART”) officer in San Francisco shot and killed a homeless man named Charles Hill on July 3, 2011. The shooting sparked massive protests against BART throughout July and August 2011. During one of these protests, BART officials cut off cell phone service inside four transit stations for three hours. This kept anyone on the station platform from sending or receiving phone calls, messages, or other data.
In July 2012, EPIC submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the DHS seeking the full text of Standard Operating Procedure 303; the full text of the predetermined “series of questions” that determines if a shutdown is necessary; and any executing protocols related to the implementation of Standard Operating Procedure 303, distributed to DHS, other federal agencies, or private companies.
After the DHS fought the FOIA releases, a district court in Washington, D.C. ruled in EPIC’s favor, but that ruling was later overturned by the court of appeals. The appeals court told EPIC the government was free to withhold details of the plan under the Freedom of Information Act because the information might “endanger” the public. In 2015, the digital rights group asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling by the federal appeals court.
With the Supreme Court’s refusal to address EPIC’s petition, the issue seems to have reached a dead-end. The American people are (once again) left in the dark regarding the inner-workings of another dangerous and intrusive government program. It is only through the hard work of activists and groups like EPIC that we are at least aware of the existence of this program — but knowing bits and pieces about the protocol is not enough. In order to combat such heavy-handed measures, we need to have access to the government’s own documents. Hopefully, there is already a whistleblower preparing to release these details.
What we do with the information we do have is up to each of us as individuals. We can sit back and watch the United States further devolve into a militarized police and surveillance state — or we can spread this information, get involved locally, and create new systems outside of the current paradigm of control and exploitation.
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It's time for a new internet...
It's time for a new government. Tear this one down and rebuild it per the Constitution.
You've got my vote...
I second.
Agree with you in spirit, but doing what you suggest will bring the exact same infection back, twice as deadly.
'Rebuild' by removing 'Federalism' in any/all permutations from the new construct and you have the basic ingredients needed for long-term freedom and Liberty.
Not necessarily. I would propose several additions to the original Constitution and several deletions, most notably removing the first 8 of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights and only leaving the final two.
I would also update wording in much of the document.
No freedom of speech?
No right to keep and bear arms?
No right to trial by jury?
No right to....
Well, whatever you have in mind as a replacement for our last bulwark, I'm definitely against it.
does it prevent crooked HFT?
heh. sadly, their killswitch does not extend to my community mesh network
Depends on where and how the switch is implemented. If it's in the chipset...
when Michael Chertoff was appointed second head of dhs, I knew that Big Brother truly loves us.
That guy belongs on the hundo dollar bill.
had to look him up. daamn.
Just because "everybody knows this" doesn't make the article worthless.
Its a fucking damn pity the huge bunch of over paid arseholes didnt have a brain, on your fucking wedge by the way.
You idiot cunts put the entire banking network on the mother fucking interwebs. Now tell me, a simple bloke, just how the fuck can you turn the cunt off? You and I know you will be bankrupt before the morrow morning if you do.
Stupid fucking cunts. And you in-educated fucking imbeciles are the very best the 'West' has got? Did that little blip escape your ever so educated minds? Fuck me, I clean windows for a fucking living. These wankers make even 'Plebs' like me look like that cunt Einstein. You put your entire bent operation on the web, big style, and now you are going to turn it off?
Course you are child rapers, course you are. Stupid fucking cunts to a man.
;-)
Well said.
Damned dirty apes, the lot of 'em.
i like your iambic pentameter 'mix, so i'm having another shot of Quervo in your honor. nostrovya! ps. keepin comin............................
Come on my good man Sgorem, I do believe you know I am a well educated personage of reputable repute, with a lineage not many may procure, not withowt good wedge.
Whats that mean? You sly old bugger you....
;-)
Bank debts to account holders disappear when the interwebs get shuttered. Got gold??
Think deeper scotty mate, the world doesnt work like that.
Every mother fucking thing is posted online, including the last time I had a shit, now think about it a different way, the fuckers are bonafide fucking imbeciles.
Contact-less payment? Fuck off. And barclays can fuck right off, child molesting cunts.
;-)
In most nations this would smack of totalitarian rule. But unlike the rest of the world, America is ruled by a group of citizens chosen in free, fair and open elections. The rulers can be evicted from office at any election cycle, making it self correcting. In such a case of "People's Rule", an internet kill switch would only exist as a function of a free people's demand for one. With our consent, our citizen legislators are seeing to our safety in an emergency, and that is with full consent of free and informed electors.
sarc/
No Interwebs = No EBT
damned if you do, even MOAR damned if you don't.
10-1 EBT would be on an intranet to placate.
Commerce will not be interruped from your pocket to theirs.
portable cb radios
I have two SpongeBob walkie talkies, will those do?
meet me on channel 19!
deleted double post.
Firechat app. I'm always signed out but it's on my phone just in case I'm not at home on my Ham or in my car on my Ham. ;>
Firechat is very popular in Cuba
Exactly something like that but it has to be open source, open standard. Having that company running it is no good. Also needs to be extended to message boards and text only websites.
This was news long before the BART protests, but those certainly did give us a clue as to how PETTY the reason for the cut can be. Now a nationwide cut would be something completely different. At that point either the economy wouldn't be functioning at all, a major metro area would've be nuked, bioterror attacked, or some such fuckery, so we'd have some clue already as to why we couldn't log in to check our Facebook pootie of the day.
Amd what do we know about SOP 666?
It's got to be there.
TB 303 was an awesome machine, used for creating otherworldy bass in an indie environment.
If they pull the 303 switch, we'll all be indie again. Like, bronze-age style.
I was thinking more like straw age...
Riots lol were way passed the " if they do one more thing to us were gonna ( insert your favorite terminology) Americans with guns and all ain't gonna do shit, and TPTB know it, this is why the fucking continues cause we're all nothing but arm chair commandos, and with every threat of " we're gonna" they laugh in your face while they steal every last cent you have right in front of you.
now can they provide an example of an emergency situation when population doesn't need internet access and sellphone connection?
They'll surely never use it until it's too late for them, anyway. We'll be at their doors, already.
From there I got away, me spirits never failing,
Landed on the quay, just as the ship was sailing.
The Captain at me roared, said that no room had he;
When I jumped aboard, a cabin found for Paddy.
Only in case of a "national emergency"?
And just WHO determins that?
"The President", you say?
I feel safer than ever now.
Conspiracy theory today.
Conspiracy fact tomorrow.
This'll really come in handy for when they want to transition from proxy war to all-out WW3 against Russia via false-flag ops.
A previous poster Yen Cross stumbled onto something.
No internet means no recharging of all those EBT cards.
Civil unrest would be everywhere.
Every major city in the nation going up in smoke would be catastrophic.
On second thought... well, let me think about that.
There needs to be a good push for a decentralized open standard similar to http://opengarden.com. It is a message passing service, decentralized so it doesn't require the internet, just users. The problem is by the time everyone realizes they need something like this it will be too late, unless we get lucky and there is a dry run of something like this where everyone is left standing after it.
The good news is, all bitcoin enthusiasts can now officially stfu.
ITYS.
Nice
Noo! They'll, like, trade flash drives and shit. Keep the dr3@m tr00 bro!
Just imagine if the only information getting out was from nutters in their basements on ham radios?
Worse still would be msm.
Breaker -Breaker Good buddie, got your ears on? take it to 14 where we can talk-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5ZLJWQmss
Ad-hoc battery powered mess wireless response teams.
Nothin to see here...move along.
"Nearly all democracies in the international community provide for national referendums. Yet there is no such provision in the U.S. Constitution."
I guess we should just accept the reality that we live in an undemocracy.