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from the this-explains-why-we-never-have-bars dept.
The US government will be forced to explain why its cell network kill-switch plans should be kept secret today.
Under Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 303, the US government – in particular the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – is allowed to shutdown cellphone service anywhere in the country, and even across an entire city if it feels there is a crisis situation.
However, the actual content of the policy remains secret, raising fears that it is open to abuse. For example, it's not clear who is authorized to make such a decision nor under what circumstances.
There are also groups concerned that killing of cellphone service during an emergency could make things worse.
In a frequently quoted example, San Francisco's rail system BART flipped a cell network kill-switch in several subway stations in 2011 amid a protest over a BART cop who shot and killed a drunk homeless man ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/12/bart_polioce_cut_mobile_phone_service/ ). Charles Hill allegedly threw a knife at an officer before the police opened fire.
The fact that the network shutdown was ordered against a public demonstration raised immediate concerns over how the policy is written and implemented.
In February 2013, sparked by the BART event and a refusal by the DHS to release the policy under a Freedom of Information Act request, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) sued the DHS ( https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/04/27/epic-case-dhs-phone-kill-switch.pdf ) [PDF] in order to get it to disclose the details.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 30 2015, @05:34PM
What's the range of cheap two-way radios? Here is your receiver with source untraceable. To avoid mistriggers, just add off-the-shelf pattern recognition, like "god hate fags" in morse code
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday April 30 2015, @05:40PM
"of the shelf pattern recognition" isn't exactly as easy and anonymous to come by as prepaid cellphones.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday April 30 2015, @06:04PM
Yup. It's so difficult you'd probably have to spend a whole *twenty dollars* for FRS/GMRS walkie-talkies from K-Mart! Most of them have a calling or paging features, and many of them have vibration motors or flashing lights or something that responds specifically to that call signal. Granted, it's always possible that someone else will have a similar radio and send the signal prematurely, but that seems pretty unlikely.