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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: 4, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday April 30 2015, @05:53PM
Agree with everything else you said, but I find this one hard to believe. You're saying there are existing directional, log-keeping, antennae with sufficient density to locate someone sending a single pulse transmission in a typically-unused frequency band that they'd have no reason to expect traffic on?
I'm not saying that absolutely no one would pick up such a transmission, but getting a reasonable localization beyond "somewhere in the New York City area" seems hard.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday April 30 2015, @06:03PM
Well, that's fair.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Thursday April 30 2015, @11:03PM
Trilateration will find most radio transmitter with high precision. The question is to what extent that kind of listening is still done. Because you need to sample a wide bandwidth in the general area or miss it. Something that costs power (watts) and money.