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Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 06:36:52 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: September 1, 2005 12:27:52 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones Dave, In watching the interviews from the areas devastated by the aftermath of Katrina, one warning comes through loud and clear, and while it's not a new one, it's still critically important: Trusting cell phones to work in many emergency situations can be dangerous or fatal. Over and over we hear people saying how their cell phones became useless (except perhaps for snapping photos). And it wasn't a "simple" matter of call traffic overloading. Even in areas where equipment wasn't flooded, power cutoffs led to microcell batteries running down within a couple of days. With so much reliance on these small, seemingly ubiquitous cell sites, power failures can turn regional cellular networks into largely useless hardware in short order. It's particularly upsetting to hear people noting that this agency or that organization depended more than ever on inexpensive cell phones rather than the expensive dedicated radio equipment that they used to use, and when the cellular network went down their communications were disrupted in major ways. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () eepi org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, EEPI - Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones David Farber (Sep 01)