FCC Won't Release Cell Carrier Reliability Data 185
imuffin writes "MSNBC is reporting that the FCC has been collecting data on the reliability of different cell phone carriers in the US. This data could be invaluable to consumers trying to choose a company to sign a lengthy contract with. Just the same, the FCC won't release the data to consumers, citing national security risks. The data collection on cell services began in 2004, but were simultaneously pulled from public view. FOIA requests to obtain the data have been denied, and commentators feel this is simply for the government's convenience." From the article: "'There is nothing mysterious behind it, it is corporate competition protection,' said [terrorism analyst Roger Cressey] ... 'The only reason for the government to not let these records get out is then one telco provider could run a full-page ad saying 'the government says we're more reliable.'' Cressey added that he couldn't imagine a scenario where the reports would be valuable to terrorists."
they've pretty much proven.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, confirming the fact that "national security risks" and "risks to corporate profit" are the same thing.
Re:they've pretty much proven.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the figures were published the effect would presumably be that the profits of the worst carriers might suffer and the profits of the best carriers might improve as customers migrate to the better carriers.
Why would the Bush administration care who wins and who loses?
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Because one of the carriers that would be losing was one of the Republicans' biggest contributers, maybe?
Bush or no Bush, your entire post was on how releasing the information would hurt some companies' bottom lines, while it contained no information whatsoever on how it would be useful to terrorists, and therefore does nothing to refute the assertion that "risk to national security" was codespeak for "risk to corporate profit".
Re:they've pretty much proven.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:they've pretty much proven.. (Score:5, Interesting)
More likely, somebody is an idiot and actually believes that data is sensitive, somebody thinks calling the data sensitive will make them seem more important, thus advancing their career, or the report is so poorly done that they want to bury it before people realize their incompetence.
This culture we have of pinning things we don't like on politicians we don't like even if there is no evidence or connection is absurd. It is *the* reason that the leaders of both our major political parties are complete morons who's sole talent is pinning blame on somebody else. We get it. You don't like Bush. But stand up and have some principles. Otherwise you are no better than he is.
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The People will not tolerate NO regulation.
They will however fall for the appearance of regulation. Man, does the FCC appear to regulate!
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There's been a steady trend to remove consumer protection. About the only blip in the opposite direction was number portability.
How useful is this information? (Score:2, Insightful)
My question is, how does the provider know in the case of mobile phones, how many were affected in a network outage?
They could go by billing address, which, on average might be reasonable assuming that residential and business areas are uniformly
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The only time they might get it significantly wrong is if a mast was down, and during that downtime period there was a major event near the mast that brought lots of people to the area, or made them all want to make phone calls at the same time.
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I think there is more behind the scenes than people realize. There have been complaints about unreliable cell coverage and other telecommunications issues filed with the FCC for years. Maybe they're gathering evidence to determine if charges or additional legislation are required.
If that's the case, it's pretty clear why they don't want to release the data: it's evidence.
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Why would the Bush administration care who wins and who loses?
Maybe one of the lesser reliable carriers made large campaign donations?
I don't see the big deal since if the report said that carrier Z had the best quality and tons of customers migrated to carrier Z, it would add additional strain to their system and they would end up with lesser reliablity. Of course, the people leaving carriers A through Y would leave those carriers with a lighter load and probably better service, so it would all balance out in the end.
The point is that people should be able to get a
Bush? (Score:3, Insightful)
The FCC is an independent agency that answers to Congress, not the president. See USC Tile 47 151 [cornell.edu] and 154 [cornell.edu]
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Completely independent, I'm sure. Just like Congress has been completely independent for the last half decade.
The President can do a lot w/o Congress (Score:3, Insightful)
When you read article II you realize the president can't do shit without Congress's approval.
The mandate of the Commander in Chief, as we've seen lately, is rather broad. The U.S. Constitution is one of enumerated powers, but where the separation of powers is unclear, history has demonstrated that politics is the deciding factor. Whichever branch of the federal government jumps in first is likely to control, at least until they screw up. Witness our Fearless Leader. For years Congress didn't want to exe
Mod parent +5 funny (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, thanks for the laugh, that's the funniest thing I've read all day.
FWIW, the commissioners are appointed by the President, and then confirmed by congresscritters. 3/2 split by political party.
Source? The FCC website [fcc.gov] The congressional oversight is a joke.
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It's not necessarily the Bush Administration, but on average more wireless companies give money to Republicans than Democrats. See this page on OpenSecrets [opensecrets.org]. AT&T (Cingular) and Verizon both gave more money to Republicans than Democrats.
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The FCC not willing to release reliability data for risk to the national economy^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsecurity is information in itself.
The current administration has clearly shown the strong belief that healthy big companies are a requirement for a healthy economy. Whether or not you or me agree with that is besides the point, the government (political part
Re:they've pretty much proven.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not to say this data should be kept secret, or that the "national security" banner isn't used to hide thing for political purposes, but it's silly to pretend that the economy plays no part in security.
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Beside that, the second line in my post notes that I'm not claiming this particular activity is a valid use of the national security tactics to protect the economy, just that t
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Which teaches us which carriers are reliable and which are not, because if carrier reliability would be linear with company size, there would be no problem with releasing the data. Obviously, they found that some/all big carriers suck big time and some small carriers rock, so releasing the data would cause big economical shifts in the customerbases of those companies...
Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
Except, say, if they're trying to pick a quality cell phone provider?
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
Osama: Hello? Hello? Mustafa, are you still there? WTF! I should've heeded that government report and gone with Sprint!
Won't somebody think of the terrorists? (Score:2)
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:4, Funny)
Of course!
The idea is that without knowing which carriers are reliable, the terrorists will by chance pick an unreliable carrier. Then, when they're making the final call to initiate the attack, the call might be dropped, hopefully at a point that makes it sound like the attack is cancelled (like in those television commercials).
Come on, that's about as effective as most of our anti-terrorism initiatives, isn't it?
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It would appear from a naive perspective that anyone who isn't Amish supports terrorism. :-)
The first law of politics (Score:4, Insightful)
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It would have been handy .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It would have been handy .... (Score:4, Insightful)
national security terrorists.... (Score:3, Insightful)
even if it 'were' terrorists, how else will they know which companies service to use for their remote triggers?
lastly. when WHATEVER entity commissioned the collection of data, started with a request for funds to collect the data.. the request must have detailed SOME benefit to justify (stop laughing, even though it's government, it's true) anyone have an idea of what the original justification was?
Well, if they aren't going to release it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Well, if they aren't going to release it... (Score:5, Informative)
These aren't the data you're looking for (Score:5, Informative)
Whom to Trust? (Score:3, Insightful)
My solution is not to trust any of them. I had a contract with Cingular. Largest Network, Fewest dropped calls, blah blah. I don't buy it. Why should I trust Verizon not that it's claiming to have the largest network? If I get a prepaid phone, It'll be Cingular because most of the rest of my family is on Cingular, but I'm under no illusions that it will work more than 85% of the time away from large towns or cities.
Part of the problem... (Score:3, Informative)
For example, I have a phone with T-Mobile. T-Mobile has a pretty small network; however, you can roam on a lot of other networks, particularly Cellular One in my area, at no additional charge over your normal plan. So the effective network is bigger than their actual co
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Not happy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is information that I am paying for and could weigh heavily in my decision of which service to subscribe to. It is ridiculous that the government does not support a consumer-driven economy.
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We could probably assume that whatever carrier has paid the most to lawmakers had the worst reliability in the study.. since the carrier with best coverage, if they paid the most, would want the study released. (unless of course it makes all cell phone companies look highly unreliable - highly l
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http://opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=B
(that site rocks!)
Terrorist to Terrorist calls are free! (Score:2, Funny)
Grammar nazi alert (Score:5, Informative)
The data collection on cell services began in 2004, but were simultaneously pulled from public view.
or
FOIA requests to obtain the data has been denied,
And I certainly wouldn't use the questionable idiom "Just the same."
Come on, mods. If you're going to edit my submission beyond recognition and destroy its grammatical integrity while you're at it, at least don't attribute the submission to me.
Re:Grammar nazi alert (Score:5, Funny)
Direct quote?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hmm, I wonder if we'll start seeing stories with this byline:
Alan Smithee writes...
Here's a scenario... (Score:2, Insightful)
Rip out the land lines, shoot down the communication satellites, blow up the unreliable cell phone carriers, thank the reliable cell phone carrier for doing a job well done, and Google stock shoots straight up as they own all of the undamaged dark fiber. Did I miss anything?
couldn't imagine? (Score:4, Funny)
And that is the threat! We must be prepared for threats we can't even imagine! The terrorists are cunning and we have to remove any information that could be used in any conceivable way by terrorists, even if we can't think of how they may use them!
I can't believe how careless cities are by providing traffic flow numbers and population densities. That kind of reckless pre-911 behavior will get us all killed!
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Re:couldn't imagine? ... poor imagination (Score:3, Interesting)
How about if the report highlights single points of failure that are a bit dicey already and could be targeted to wipe out the network causing untold damage to businesses.
It didn't exactly take much imagination to come up with that.
All it needs is a large explosion somewhere (not necessarily with any loss of life) added to a communication blackout and you've got pandemonium. Yeah I've heard of la
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"OMG teh Al Kayeeda blew up the mobile tower, I can't call Mom and tell her to pick me up from soccer practice, let's start pandemonium!!!!1"
"pfft, don't panic, that tower drops 7% of calls anyway, n00bs"
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You'll notice that as I haven't read the report I speculate on it's content and use the word "if" to show that my considerations are only valid (in my opinion) for cases in which the premise is true. The premise is that the detail which the FCC does not want to release pertains to a single point of failure.
Clearly, from your comment you are privy to the details of the report. It would be more constructive therefore to release the details
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These people took down the World Trade Centre, do you think the need a map of cell phone towers ?
Drive a truck onto the Golden Gate Bridge and detonate it McVey style.
Demonstrative, terrorising acts don't require vulnerable targets, any target will do.
I live in a place where the terrorists blew up pubs, shopping centres, fish & chip shops, c
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You mean a normal unemployed person who doesn't consume any inputs presumably.
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That's actually a good point. The airline security theatre is always updated to counter the latest terrorist technology, so it will consistently lag one step behind evil. Any real security would have to take future imagination into account. Thus solving the problem once and for all!
Yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We've been collecting information on cellphone services, and have produced a ranking of reliability. But, unfortunately, if we let Joe Sixpack have access to this information, the terrorists will win! So of course you realize that we're just keeping your best interests at heart, right? You wouldn't want the terrorists to blow up little Johnny's elementary school, now would you?"
Caveat emptor applies (Score:2, Interesting)
This blatant over generalization is contradicted by
FTA: Complaints about cell phone service are near the top of every list of consumer gripes. The Illinois attorney general's office, for example, last year ranked cell phone complaints as the fourth-most-common complainComplaints about cell phone service are near the top of every list of consumer gripes. The Illinois attorney gene
Maybe, but emptors need information (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily. What if I just moved into the area, and I don't have that many local friends? What if my friends are stupid, and I'd rather trust some sort of objective report? What if my friends are generally poor and don't have cell phones? What if my friends all work at the same place and their phones all come from a single provider,
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A nobody expressing an opinion. Isn't that what we do here?
I don't think the difference in service reliability would persuade me to change.
>What if...? What if...? What if...? What if...?
Obviously, the "objective" source of information would benefit you, since you might be forced to move to a place full of poor, stupid people with only one place to work. If I was forced into such a situation, figuring out how to
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How ass backwards is it when you are making up excuses why a government of the people, by the people, is witholding the work of our hard earned tax dollars, conducted under the direction of our democratically elected representatives
Who the hell decided this was a good idea? Who do they work for if not us? And you're making up excuses for them?
Throw the worthless bums out.
Records likely NOT detailed (Score:3, Insightful)
RTFA, and you will see that only really large outages are noted. This does not cover MUCH more common issues like:
* Poor RF optimization, leading to dropped calls and poor coverage
* Span outages to cell sites, forcing all calls on that site to drop and new attempts to be blocked
* Audio issues
AFAIK, while the feds may compile the data, I know of no efforts by any govt agency to independently collect this sort of data, IIRC it's all self-reported.
Now, if they lowered the thresholds (not gonna happen), then you would see more things of interest.
I foresee insider trading.... (Score:2)
Homeland security requests the outages! (Score:3, Insightful)
The real issue that is being hidden here is the number of times paranoid homeland security dickheads takeout the cell networks in response to perceived local threats. This may be done with or without the carriers co-operation. However, the carriers know when it is happening.
Why won't people take terrorism seriously? (Score:4, Funny)
When will people learn that terrorists may be using our roads, electrical grid, water supply, and grocery stores to benefit themselves? I hear some of them may even be using the telecommunications infrastructure to communicate with each other!
Once we deprive the terrorists of access to these resources, we can live safe and free. Limiting access to these things will be difficult as a practical matter, our best option is probably to blow all these things up.
We should probably burn down the schools and universities too -- there's no telling what a terrorist might do with knowledge they could gain there....
Freedom of Information Act... (Score:2)
Jack Bower (Score:2)
Hakumahad Benzabbii... (Score:2)
Ok... How bout now?
National Security Excuses (Score:5, Insightful)
I note that "national security" is the excuse that Bush gives to protect his warrantless NSA spying on Americans, which covers the same telcos these reliability data could expose as unreliable with immunity, though they can use the data themselves for anything they want, including business competition.
Is there anyone left who believes Bush and his "national security" excuses are anything but fascism: government by and for, but not of, corporations? Anyone who believes anyone coming after Bush will be any more accountable, now that Bush has proven how easy it is for even a fool to abuse us this way, while we're actually under attack?
Why do they hate America?
Same old... (Score:2)
C'mon, be realistic - there are plenty of cultural references from the 90's and before where, seemingly at every turn, things are classified as 'matters of national defense' to frustrate our friendly neighborhood protagonist.
It's an old excuse - not that it's any justification - but let's
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Bush (his "team", really - he's just a spokesmodel) has, however, created unprecedented (in the US) secrecy and classifications, even classifying info long public. Hand in hand with unprecedented (American) fascism.
Just because his crimes aren't new doesn't mean we shouldn't care about them. To the contrary, the new ones are more alarming, precisely b
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I would venture that every president in modern history has done things in the office that would be plausibly impeachable offenses. I would also venture that impeaching every president out of partisan bitterness would also be a tragic mistake - better to get rid of the office all together. Until then, we have 4-year terms.
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What do you think we impeach a president for? Only when we find a dead body in his arms, and the president confesses?
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My point is all the modern presidents have done this, at least to the level that one could raise charges and hold proceedings, even if not convicted, at least back to Lincoln. Lincoln was on particularly thin ice with some of his executive decisions. Only my lack of knowledge of prior presidents has me stop there.
The number of laws we have practically guarantees it. Bush has probably broken several laws he doesn't even know about.
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Nixon's CIA wiretapping was the abuse that Congress wrote the FISA to stop. Nixon didn't run nearly as much surveillance as has Bush, and it wasn't specifically illegal at the time Nixon did it. Even so, Nixon avoided impeachment for that crime, among others, only by resigning.
Lyndon Johnson lied us deeper into Vietnam, with his Gulf of Tonkin fabrications and lies. That was a much less serious example, but he still probably
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Nice strawman, but my claim wasn't that they had done those two crimes, rather they've done things that one could plausibly bring up as potential high-crimes and misdemeanors.
If you want to lower the bar to impeachment, fine, but that's going to effectively eliminate the office - so it might as well just be done constitutionally.
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You claimed that Bush shouldn't be impeached, because other presidents have done the kinds of crimes that he did. I refuted (with facts) that they hadn't done what he has done - that "even the two crimes I mentioned" are unprecedented, which you had denied in general. That's not a strawman, though apparently you can't tell the difference from a simple rebuttal.
You're the one raising the bar to impeachment. You still haven't answered which crimes should cause impeachment. So I
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You're talking about specifics, I'm talking about broad categories.
You're right, none of the other presidents have done the specific things Bush 43 has done. Agreed.
However, Clinton did perjure himself in federal court while in office. That shakes the foundation of our system.
Bush 41 - lied to Congress about his involvement in arms shipments/funding to Iraq
Regan was certainly impeachable for Iran-Contra, but even a Democratic Congress didn'
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As would those other presidents, specifically Bush Sr, Reagan and Johnson. Maybe even Roosevelt, though I doubt it.
Clinton's "lying" was supposedly when he s
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cite? This sounds like complete speculation/conspiracy theory on your part but show me the evidence and I'll believe you. If you'd rather not recognize that laws have to adapt to technology and fail to interpret the peacetime clause of FISA, but no Library Tower or Brooklyn Bridge, then
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So I don't think those Republic
Terrorist communication (Score:3, Funny)
Level the playing field (Score:2, Interesting)
I know if I was going to use cellphones to detonate bombs, or communicate with others during a plot, I would definately like to know who the most reliable network belonged to.
I don't believe that the FCC has weighed the benefits of consumers being able to have Government collected data to aid them in making their decision when selecting a provider against the ills of terrorists having the same tool.
Th
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So let's outlaw cell phones then. Can't trigger a bomb with a cell phone if there are none...
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Market balance (Score:3, Insightful)
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Actually, if 'everybody' switched, the cell company wo
Find out who made the report. (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course it's a national security issue (Score:2)
Don't worry (Score:2)
They always do. The signal always gets through.
As someone who creates these reports... (Score:5, Informative)
Outage event reports full of acts of God (and acts of vandals) do not provide any data on the actual "reliability" of cell phone carriers as judged by consumers. Consumer reliability is seen as: "How often do my calls drop - how many areas of town have no service - how often do my call attempts say 'try again' or 'network busy'". Knowing that 20,000 users lost long distance service in BFE when an idiot with a backhoe dug up a fiber does not help with those questions -- oversubscribed cell phone towers are not reported as outage events. In short, the FCC does not know who the most "reliable" carriers are -- only which ones sustain the most damage to their facilities.
As for security matters: If anyone wanted to create havoc, they'd take one glance at the report and burn down the sites responsible for the largest outages listed. "National infrastructure" is described in painstaking detail. It wouldn't take a criminal mastermind - only a couple of drunk high school kids.
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As for security matters: If anyone wanted to create havoc, they'd take one glance at the report and burn down the sites responsible for the largest outages listed. "National infrastructure" is described in painstaking detail. It wouldn't take a criminal mastermind - only a couple of drunk high school kids.
Might you then have to consider (scary thought ahead!) ACTUALLY FUCKING PROTECTING THE NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE?!
Oh noes, it costs us money to do that and we would far rather censor the reports than attempt
If they did... (Score:2)
You would find that cellular carriers have really crappy service.
Unfortunately you won't find any of that information confirmable unless you have about 4 million cell phones distributed around the country and can start gathering data on all 4 million phones and the successful connectivity rates between the phones and yourself.
Unfortunately there aren't too many people who have that kind of cellular coverage and data.
Unless you are OnStar.
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or conversely you can use the service to NOT trigger bombs. I think your airline idea is fantastic. While we're at it, I think it wouldn't be so hard to produce firearms that don't actually shoot bullets, and explosives that don't explode. Long live the counter-terrorist revolution!!! Those idiots won't know what hit them!
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