The EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center)vs. DHS ruling on SOP (Standard Operation Procedure) 303.
In EPIC v. DHS, DC Circuit Backs Agency Secrecy on "Internet Kill Switch": The federal court of appeals based in Washington, DC has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security may withhold from the public a secret procedure for shutting down cell phone service. EPIC pursued the DHS policy after government officials in San Francisco disabled cell phone service during a peaceful protest in 2011. EPIC sued DHS when the agency failed to release the criteria for network shutdowns. A federal judge ruled in EPIC's favor. On appeal, the D.C. Circuit held for the DHS but said that the agency might still be required to disclose some portions of the protocol. (Feb. 10, 2015)
Electronic Privacy Information Center.orgShortly after the horrific explosions that interrupted the Boston Marathon Monday, the Associated Press reported that the government had shut down cellphone service in the area. That wasn't true—but it's not impossible.
"No one in Washington or in any statehouse or bunker anywhere can press a button and shut down phone service," explains Harold Feld, vice president at Public Knowledge, an advocacy group focused on communications and technology policy. But although there's no physical kill switch, there is Standard Operating Procedure 303, a secret agreement between telecommunications giants and the government that outlines "a shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during national crises," according to a government report on the subject. The government can shut down cellphone service—but it didn't do so in Boston on Monday.
Because SOP 303, also known as the Emergency Wireless Protocols, is classified, the public doesn't know under which specific conditions a shutdown could occur. But in 2006, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), a group of major telecom company executives and government officials, issued a report that revealed some details about SOP 303. The committee's report explained that the National Coordinating Center for Telecommunications (NCC), an emergency telecom coordination body set up by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, would serve as a clearinghouse for requests to shut down wireless networks "within a localized area, such as a tunnel or bridge, and within an entire metropolitan area." The NCC—which includes representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Security Agency, every important cabinet department, and a few dozen big telecommunications and defense companies—would take shutdown requests from state and national Homeland Security officials, verify whether they are "necessary," and pass those requests on to wireless carriers in the affected areas. The same process would happen in reverse once the NCC determines the shutdown is "no longer necessary..."
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Mother Earth article by Adam Serwer & Nick Baumann
