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"The Federal Communications Commission is considering a plan to route U.S. emergency 911 location calls through a Russian satellite system. In a proposal before the FCC, the 911 emergency system would rely on the Russian Federation’s GLONASS precision navigation and timing satellite system to locate people calling 911 from their mobile phones. If the plan is enacted, Russia may have the ability to impair America’s 911 emergency capabilities and could use it as a tool to spy on the whereabouts of first responders among other things."
The plan was put forth by carriers AT&T Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon along with the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials and the National Emergency Number Association. They say it's to improve the ability of police, firefighters and medics to locate people who use their mobile phones to call for help.
The article goes into detail as to the support and non-support for the plan. What do you think?
"The Federal Communications Commission is considering a plan to route U.S. emergency 911 location calls through a Russian satellite system. In a proposal before the FCC, the 911 emergency system would rely on the Russian Federation’s GLONASS precision navigation and timing satellite system to locate people calling 911 from their mobile phones. If the plan is enacted, Russia may have the ability to impair America’s 911 emergency capabilities and could use it as a tool to spy on the whereabouts of first responders among other things."
The plan was put forth by carriers AT&T Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon along with the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials and the National Emergency Number Association. They say it's to improve the ability of police, firefighters and medics to locate people who use their mobile phones to call for help.
The article goes into detail as to the support and non-support for the plan. What do you think?
On the face of it, it sounds completely insane to put the safety of American citizens in the hands of Putin.
But given how blatantly obvious it is that it's crazy given the strained relations between our nations, that leads me to believe that there must be details under the surface that prevent the Russians from utilizing the information or else the idea wouldn't even be considered.
Remarkably, no credible news agencies have reported this story yet, so it remains securely in the category of "cynical right-wing media deception" for now. Filtering out the typical inane nonsense that the right-wing media typically uses to distort the truth, there's nothing particularly interesting about the story that would make it particularly partisan, but there's no accounting for the silliness that goes on in the reactionary brain. Having said that, and primarily because the best lies are wrapped around kernels of truth, I suspect that the basic facts are true - it is just the fact that this is considered news and considered news for the reasons presented by the right-wing media that are worthy of ridicule. Reading between the lines, it seems that big business actually initiated this, a reflection of aspects of governance that both Republicans and Democrats agree on, at least in principle, based on the respective actions of each when they are in a position to affect this kind of policy. Therefore, it is doubly silly that right-wing wackos in Congress oppose it. All part of their full-service hypocrisy, I suppose. Note that Mike Rogers has said nothing about passing regulations, warming diplomatic relations to facilitate negotiating the necessary diplomatic arrangements, and funding initiatives to supplant the Russian satellite network as the best technical solution to the problem. It's just cry cry cry but when it comes time to pay the price for actually making things better, watch the right-wingers crawl back into their holes.
"The Federal Communications Commission is considering a plan to route U.S. emergency 911 location calls through a Russian satellite system. In a proposal before the FCC, the 911 emergency system would rely on the Russian Federation’s GLONASS precision navigation and timing satellite system to locate people calling 911 from their mobile phones. If the plan is enacted, Russia may have the ability to impair America’s 911 emergency capabilities and could use it as a tool to spy on the whereabouts of first responders among other things."
The plan was put forth by carriers AT&T Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon along with the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials and the National Emergency Number Association. They say it's to improve the ability of police, firefighters and medics to locate people who use their mobile phones to call for help.
The article goes into detail as to the support and non-support for the plan. What do you think?
"I think" the entire situation deserves a 'look-see'. This tech stuff is way beyond my comprehension (and that of most all of us) -- but there is a persistent and recent history of some Hinky Stuff going on with our Satellites and communications in the last couple of years.
The concern was that LightSquared’s plan to build a wholesale broadband network would jam the military’s GPS receivers. LightSquared’s proposal was scrapped eventually, and the company filed for bankruptcy.
Two years ago, the Pentagon was blind-sided when the State Department contemplated giving Russian space agency Roscosmos permission to build a half-dozen buildings housed with antennas and electronics across the U.S.
Lawmakers were flabbergasted by the lack of communication by the two agencies and responded by inserting legislative language into the 2014 defense bill that blocks the Pentagon from entering into contracts for commercial satellite services with foreign entities.
Most of these systems also need ground towers to work -- are we going to let Mother Russia build communication towers all over the US? The Congress passed a law against that when the US State Dept tried to slip by them - it was in the 2014 Defense Bill.
The LightSquared Issue is still on-going .... is it involved in any way with all this? I have no idea, but I sure hope that somebody is on top of all this Communication Razzle Dazzle. Our Emergency Systems are handled by the US GPS system - it's behind on Satellites. Why? LightSquared was interfering with the GPS system, a part of why it was shut down, but Billions and Billions of dollars are involved in all this.
It's not a "partisan issue" (or at least it shouldn't be) but when a Foreign Country wants to do something of this magnitude
..... it sure doesn't deserve the typical "shrug". We've been well Gruber'd lately, we should pay more attention.
Oh for Pete's sake, everyone here, including the writers of the article, need to learn how this all works. GPS, Galileo, and GLONASS are all send-only systems. A receiver (such as a cellphone) works out ITS OWN position by comparing the timing of all the signals from all the satellites it can receive from. There is no transmitting of information into the Russian network, a dinky little cellphone doesn't have nearly the power such a transmission, at least not the ones in general-use consumer hands. I'm 99% certain that this proposal is only to enable the 911 network to receive GLONASS positioning information from people's cellphones in addition to the GPS system. When Europe's Galileo system is fully operational, I expect a similar integration in order to more quickly, and more accurately determine a caller's position.
I think 911 calls should use whatever satellite system(s) is/are the most convenient no matter what country they came from, unless there is reason not to do so (the NSA spying on calls routed through US satellites is one example of such a reason). Besides, to use the simplistic thinking of earlier posters I think Americans' 911 calls are as safe or safer with Putin than with Obama; at least if Putin uses them to make trouble the US government will protect them, but good luck getting the US government to protect people from itself.
I think 911 calls should use whatever satellite system(s) is/are the most convenient no matter what country they came from, unless there is reason not to do so (the NSA spying on calls routed through US satellites is one example of such a reason). Besides, to use the simplistic thinking of earlier posters I think Americans' 911 calls are as safe or safer with Putin than with Obama; at least if Putin uses them to make trouble the US government will protect them, but good luck getting the US government to protect people from itself.
*bashes head repeatedly on wall* Did you just ignore my post? NOTHING IS BEING ROUTED THROUGH ANY SATELLITE ANYWHERE!!!! Even the internet does not primarily travel by satellite, it's mostly carried by cables, land and undersea. Why does everyone hear "Russian satellite" and immediately assume some kind of Obama-Putin plot to fluoridate the chemtrail-brainwaves from our tv sets or something?
Oh for Pete's sake, everyone here, including the writers of the article, need to learn how this all works. GPS, Galileo, and GLONASS are all send-only systems. A receiver (such as a cellphone) works out ITS OWN position by comparing the timing of all the signals from all the satellites it can receive from. There is no transmitting of information into the Russian network, a dinky little cellphone doesn't have nearly the power such a transmission, at least not the ones in general-use consumer hands. I'm 99% certain that this proposal is only to enable the 911 network to receive GLONASS positioning information from people's cellphones in addition to the GPS system. When Europe's Galileo system is fully operational, I expect a similar integration in order to more quickly, and more accurately determine a caller's position.
A well-founded answer based on an understanding of the technical issues? Keep fighting the good fight, but I predict at least a 5:1 ratio in favor of "OMG! RUSSIANS!!!".
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