[82305] in North American Network Operators' Group

home help back first fref pref prev next nref lref last post

Re: London incidents

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Popovitch)
Tue Jul 12 06:15:40 2005

From: Jim Popovitch <jimpop@yahoo.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <20050712095015.GA51536@internode.com.au>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 06:16:05 -0400
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu


On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 19:20 +0930, Mark Newton wrote:
> There's been -nothing- from the Brits to say that cellphones were
> involved in their explosions;  And DHS says they haven't made any
> recommendations one way or the other;  And there's no reason to 
> believe that the threat to the New York subway system is any higher
> than usual;  And yet someone at the Port Authority has made a
> unilateral decision to shut off the cells, and now if there -is- a
> real emergency nobody can call 911.

Basically it's damned if you do take action, damned if you don't.  Once
again we see that you can't please all the people (yes, even those not
using NYC tunnels) all the time.  

I think the world has shown that cellphones have been used over and over
to detonate explosive devices.  Why wait for it to be proved again
before doing something?  AFAIK "Emergency Only" mode allows for 911
calls, just not inbound/outbound calls.  Besides, the US (at least) is
full of a lot of people who need to hang up the phone and start driving
good again.

-Jim P. (who is tired of being caught in traffic behind weaving,
slowing/speeding, hand-waving and head-shaking, cellphone "drivers")





home help back first fref pref prev next nref lref last post