Emergency Alert System (EAS) | Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. The EAS is a national public warning system that requires broadcasters, cable television systems, wireless cable systems, satellite digital audio radio service (SDARS) providers, and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers to provide the communications capability to the President to address the American public during a national emergency. The system also may be used by state and local authorities to deliver important emergency information, such as AMBER alerts and weather information targeted to specific areas. The first Nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System will be carried out on November 9, 2011. For more information about the test or access to the participant reporting system, please click here. The FCC, in conjunction with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service (NWS), implements the EAS at the federal level.
Releases EAS Handbooks EAS Archives. Demand Progress. Why can't we watch Al Jazeera? - War Room. Al Jazeera English’s only bureau in the Western Hemisphere occupies five floors of a nondescript office building on Washington, D.C.’s K Street. The lobby is drab — just a hallway and two elevators. There is no sign on the door, no gold symbol affixed on the wall.
In fact, the name Al Jazeera does not appear anywhere. If you didn’t know better, you might think the building was home to dentist’s offices or mid-level lobbying firms, instead of the most controversial news channel in the world. To get upstairs, a non-employee must have an escort, and on a cold day last spring, mine was Lauren McCollough. McCullough works for Brown Lloyd James, the public relations firm that represents the Qatar-based channel in what has proven — and might have been expected — to be the hostile territory of the United States. McCullough and I stepped into the elevator and she swiped a keycard through a security pad. Dora and I had never met in person, but we’d spoken over the phone several times. Indeed. Greg Lukianoff: The 12 Worst Colleges For Free Speech. Egypt turns off internet, Lieberman wants same option for US. [UPDATE: A roundup of BoingBoing's ongoing coverage of events in Egypt is here.]
On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesys explains it here and confirms that "virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide. " This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman wants to be able to do the same thing in the US.
This isn't a new move, last year Senators Lieberman and Collins introduced a fairly far-reaching bill that would allow the US Government to shut down civilian access to the internet should a "Cybersecurity Emergency" arise, and keep it offline indefinitely. That version of the bill received some criticism though Lieberman continued to insist it was important. Verizon-FCC net neutrality fight only beginning | Computerworld NZ. Network World - If you thought the Federal Communications Commission's vote to approve limited net neutrality rules were the end of the dispute, think again. Net neutrality refers to the principle that ISPs should not be allowed to block or degrade Internet traffic from their competitors in order to speed up their own. The push for net neutrality began in 2005, when incumbent telecom carriers successfully lobbied the FCC to repeal common carrier rules that required the incumbents to allow ISPs such as EarthLink to buy space on their broadband networks at discount rates.
The battle over net neutrality has been waged for years with consumer groups and some Internet companies in favor and telecom carriers almost universally opposed. THE BASICS: FCC’s net neutrality order But any dreams of even a temporary net neutrality ceasefire ended yesterday when Verizon filed a lawsuit challenging the FCC's authority to enforce any kind of net neutrality rules.
Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules. WASHINGTON — Verizon Communications Inc. on Thursday filed a legal challenge to new federal regulations that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic flowing over their networks. In a filing in federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, Verizon argues that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority in adopting the new "network neutrality" rules last month. The rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services – including online calling services such as Skype and Internet video services such as Netflix, which in many cases compete with services sold by companies like Verizon.
The FCC's three Democrats voted to adopt the rules over the opposition of the agency's two Republicans just before Christmas. Republicans in Congress, who now control the House, have vowed to try to block the rules from taking effect. The regulations adopted last month try to find a middle ground. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Home Page. Comcastrophe. Project Vigilant and the government/corporate destruction of privacy - Glenn Greenwald.
Forbes‘ technology writer Andy Greenberg reports that at the Defcon Security Conference yesterday, an individual named Chet Uber appeared with revelations about the case of accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo. These revelations are both remarkable in their own right and, more important, highlight some extremely significant, under-examined developments unrelated to that case. This is a somewhat complex story and it raises even more complex issues, but it is extremely worthwhile to examine.
Uber is the Executive Director of a highly secretive group called Project Vigilant, which, as Greenberg writes, “monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers” and “hands much of that information to federal agencies.” More on that in a minute. According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant’s manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs). A Media Colossus Is Born: Feds Approve Comcast-NBCU Merger | Epicenter They’ll be popping corks tonight in Philly. The world has never seen a media Goliath like the entity that was born Tuesday after the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, and NBC Universal, the mammoth entertainment giant. The Justice Department also announced that it had signed off on the deal.
Philadelphia-based Comcast has achieved what some have referred to as “the holy grail” of the entertainment business: the union of a vast broadband-distribution network with a rich stable of content and talent. The last time any company tried to do something on this scale was the AOL Time Warner deal, which was, shall we say, ahead of its time. Over the last year, critics of media consolidation have vigorously protested the deal, saying it would concentrate too much market power in the hands of the new $30 billion entertainment and distribution giant, and lead to higher prices for consumers. The vote was 4-1 in favor. WikiLeaks: la surveillance en 140 signes » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism. En voulant forcer Twitter à coopérer dans son enquête contre Julian Assange, le Département de la justice américain espère probablement trouver des preuves contre le fondateur de WikiLeaks.
Il vient surtout d'envoyer un message désastreux. Dans la quête qu’il a engagé pour coincer légalement Julian Assange, le département de la Justice (DoJ) américain a multiplié les manoeuvres depuis six semaines. Le 30 novembre, soit le lendemain des premières fuites diplomatiques coordonnées par WikiLeaks, le procureur général Eric Holder notifiait la presse de l’ouverture d’une “enquête active”. En coulisses, ses collaborateurs évoquaient l’Espionage Act, un texte antédiluvien de 1917 qui a valu aux époux Rosenberg de mourir sur la chaise électrique aux grandes heures du maccarthysme. C’était sans compter sur la solidité du Premier Amendement et son importance jurisprudentielle. Twitter, pour quoi faire? Discours schizophrène Project Vigilant et collaboration avec la NSA 50.000 courriers par an.