[SBE] Conalrad, EBS, EAS, CAP... "Whatever"

[Edwin Bukont]

Russ

 

In response to what you wrote, in your Orwellian application of the fudicary functions of a benevolent Utopian central authoritarian government, I have to ask this question:

 

And who gets to decide who gets to decide when to pull the trigger?  

 

It's similiar to asking who gets to decide who gets to decide who gets to die.  Even the Russians realized that making such final decisions of quantam importance is Kobayashi Maru.

 

You are imparting a rational model, a logical model, which itself requires a set of knowns, onto a system whose very existence is based upon emotion, best guesstimates and a fear of the unknown to direct how government should calm public fears. 

 

  In the end, going in the past back to Tesla's energy weapons, the technology is not the issue.  How technology is used is the issue.  Making it work is a technical role, our role.  Using it is a managerial role.  You might put a career soldier in charge of the button.  It is however highly unlikely that the soldier will be an engineer.  The soldier will use rules of engagement, not truth tables.  In the case of emergency communications for the protection of the masses, it becomes a political (management of the public) role.  Not our role.  

 

All politics are local.  The locality concerns become the reason for having communities of license, and points to why a national emergency alert system is somewhat counter-productive when conveyed through the commandeering of broadcast media.  AM Radio at one time was not the dominant media, it was the ONLY  real time mass media.  The early implementations of emergency communication required shutting down the very TV and FM stations that are now integral to the system.  The early systems were designed more to control radiation with messages being short.  The early systems were not designed as a broadcast platform at all, but rather as a telco line network to provide multiple points of ingestion to local radio transmitters.  The transmitters were not supposed to stay on.  Really very cumbersome.  And designed to limit radiation so as to mitigate its use as a beacon for inbound planes

 

That I think is key to understanding part of the problem in how we got to the current confused purpose.  Government does not realize that the transition from ConelRad to EBS was a paradigm shift.  It was not evolutionary.  EBS was a whole new animal.  And it changed about 4 times during its life.  EAS may be considered evolutionary.  CAP is starting to sound like another paradigm shift that will avoid big picture means such as radio.

 

There really is no purpose to a national EAS system.  This encumberance should be done away with.  An Ad-hoc system would suffice.  While it may be argued that coordination of wirless to mitigate interference needs national oversight, emergency content does not.  A national EAS is a panacea.   Some of you may be aware of the information learned from Russian files, whereby ConelRad was to be used to our disadvantage.  The Russians understood that many radio stations would be off the air.  There would be a limited number of channels, emanating from a sequenced number of sites.  What a great way to assist in direction finding.  Rather than have to monitor many channels from diverse sites, and have exhaustive lookup tables, just have two channels, a stop watch and a map!!  Given the predicatable hopping nature of the system, it would take only about 20 minutes to triangulate on the cities.  I have been told that the files contained detailed information on WSM, WBT, WLW and other stations of similiar service.  The intent of ConelRad appears to have underestimated the intelligence of the adversary.

 

ConelRad was based on several fallacies of governmental and American superiority and an expectation, perhaps more accurately an assumption of an apple pie loving obedient populace that would be listening or immediately tune is as directed.  Yeah, right.  Maybe in a James Dean movie.

 

Forget national forced insertion and control of emergency content. Is EAS even constitutional?  Let the states decide what they want.   A national plan serves to organize an enemy.  Local control and the uncertaintity of which station might even be broadcasting or have listeners serves to disrupt coordination among engaging forces.  It is the very predictable nature of 'making sure the trains (planes) run on time" that allowed the 9/11 hijackers to prepare and manage their way onto the planes uncontested.

 

Do not forget that at one time, Ham operators were expected to cease operation if a primary AM station was not on the air.  Even now, the RACES service operates according to fairly strict rules.  The intent of emergency communications is to limit false information and chatter, not to provide immediate broadcast of information.  That is why EAS was not used on 9/11.

 

 Since the divestiture of AT&T and the shutdown of robust wireless means such as GWEN, and with the continuing deterioration of usable AM reception, the critical backbone incorporated into the design and necessary to make EAS work as an evolution of the EBS system in the PEP and other national daisy chain methods does not exist in a reliable form.  Ironically, the Internet actually does perhaps achieve this ibiquitous purpose and could attain a web of ingestion points.  That is why CAP seems to be heading toward a locally aware GPS enabled cell fone product rather than an SCPC broadcast product.

 

EAS is no more useful to a national security goal than was Strategic Defense Initiative, though both grew from the same seed of addressing a great unknown for a fearing public.

 


Edwin Bukont CSRE, DRB, CBNT 
V- 240.417.2475; F- 240.368.1265 

 
 		 	   		  
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