"Governments and industry can do more” to tackle cyberattacks, European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) Executive Director Udo Helmbrecht said in an interview Wednesday. ENISA’s interim threat landscape review for mid-year 2013, an analysis of 50 reports covering the first half of this year, to be published Thursday, will show significant changes since its last full report in 2012, it said. Among those are the growing shift from botnets to malicious URLs, and the use of peer-to-peer and TOR-based botnets, it said. This first “taste” of current developments is intended to warn stakeholders as early as possible so they can take countermeasures, Helmbrecht said in a press release. In addition, he told us, a bit more regulation is needed because industry self-regulation isn’t working.
Extending the New York Public Service Commission’s comment period on Verizon’s request to serve Fire Island, N.Y., solely with its fixed wireless product from July 2 to Sept. 13 helped the commission receive more than 1,000 public comments from state legislators, town governments and local fire departments. Meanwhile, Verizon agreed Sept. 10 to install fiber on Fire Island (CD Sept 11 p3), but many industry observers and state regulators said the telco’s decision does not extend to areas of New Jersey also affected by Hurricane Sandy (CD Sept 12 p3). The commission is now asking for comments by Sept. 30 on Verizon’s tariff amendment filing to withdraw a provision to use Voice Link as the sole service on Fire Island (CD Sept 16 p18) .
Cellphone users caught up in an emergency should use text messages rather than phone calls to let their loved ones know they're OK, said Len Pagano, president of Safe America, a nonprofit preparedness organization (http://bit.ly/P1plTA) working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). Pagano spoke at a “strategic discussion” meeting Tuesday at FEMA about the nonprofit’s work with IPAWS. Text messages take up less bandwidth than phone calls, so widespread use of texting during emergencies could help alleviate the “communications logjams” that make calls difficult during incidents like the Boston Marathon bombings or the Sept. 11 attacks, he said. “Text first, talk second,” said Pagano, repeating Safe America’s motto for its emergency texting program. “In an emergency you shouldn’t expect to get on a cellphone and talk for an hour, you should be an efficient user of the space,” he said.
As the fight continues over Verizon’s plan to rebuild its network on Fire Island destroyed during Superstorm Sandy using wireless infrastructure, one big question that arises is what’s wrong with wireless anyway as an alternative to the plain old telephone service. With small carriers across the U.S. deploying wireless-only systems and larger carriers making wireless a big part of their IP transition plans, some industry observers are asking if the FCC needs to change its regulatory worldview of wireless substitution. Last week, the FCC Wireline Bureau opted not to “automatically” grant Verizon’s Communications Act Section 214 petition (CD Aug 15 p1) to discontinue domestic phone services, but to instead request additional data from Verizon.
Public outreach is necessary for wireless emergency alerts in California, said Karen Wong, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CAL OES) assistant director-public safety, at a hearing Tuesday. The California State Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management held a hearing, broadcast on The California Channel, on the state’s emergency response capabilities to learn more about the interoperability, fire, law enforcement and health efforts in emergency situations. Wong said CAL OES has four pilot programs for next-generation 911 in the northern part of the state and is looking into a pilot program in Ventura County for Phase 2 information to provide location-based routing. Through NG-911, citizens will get “robust support” and first responders will be able to get text messages, photos and video, she said. In its pilot programs, CAL OES has saved 29 hours in call times between September and December 2012 through location-based routing calls. Committee Chairwoman Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D) asked Wong how much the network would cost and when the system would be operational statewide. The system would be a joint project with providers, and it would cost “$2,000 to $3,000 for each initial hook-up” to the service,” said Wong. While this technology is available now, Wong said the system should be available within five years. Committee Vice Chair Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal (D) asked Wong if CAL OES had enough funding to implement its NG-911. Wong said costs still need to be identified and the State Emergency Telephone Number Accounts fund might need to be used. “We need to look more into using this technology on any device,” said Wong. The SETNA fund may help sustain the project in the long term, said CAL OES Director Mark Ghilarducci who also testified at the hearing. “Right now, we are figuring out the costs through our pilot program,” said Wong.
California residents shouldn’t opt out of getting AMBER alerts on their cellphones, said Bob Hoever, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children special programs director, in an interview Wednesday. Officials sent out an AMBER alert through cellphones for the first time Aug. 5 (CD Aug 8 p12). When the customers got multiple messages, late messages, messages which later disappeared from their phones or alerts lacking specific information, people wanted to opt out of the service, said Hoever. “Unfortunately, people did not understand what these messages meant and their purpose,” he said. “It’s critically important the public does understand, and we get their eyes and ears if there’s a dangerous situation to help find and rescue that child.” The AMBER alert program relies heavily on public participation, with 676 children rescued to date from the program, said Hoever. Opting out of the system could mean opting out of all emergency alerts for some carriers, which “could be a matter of life or death,” said California Assembly Speaker John Perez during a news conference Monday (http://bit.ly/14EHVKU). The Assembly is in discussions to start an educational campaign with the California Emergency Management Agency to allow the Assembly to fund outreach efforts through savings in its operating budget, said Perez. The Assembly will hold a special hearing this fall to examine additional ways the wireless alert system can “work better in California” and ways the Legislature can “facilitate that happening,” said Perez.
Officials in California sent out an AMBER alert for the first time over a cellphone through the Wireless Emergency Alert program. Police in Southern California broadcast the alert as police searched for a man suspected of killing a woman and kidnapping her children (http://lat.ms/1314kDR. The system requires cellphone customers to opt out if they do not want to receive alerts.
"Since it appears that the smaller spectrum slice of 1755-1780 can be cleared without any need to impact BAS operations, we have no idea why DOD is making clearing those 25 megahertz contingent on ’sharing’ 85 with us,” said NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan, former chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau. “Moreover, in NTIA’s spectrum report released just last year, DOD asserted that nearly all of its operations could not share spectrum with broadcasters in the BAS band. No new testing has been done, so it’s unclear what has changed. The only thing that has changed recently is that we just finished shrinking our BAS allocation from 120 to 85 megahertz to make way for mobile broadband.”
The FCC Public Safety Bureau denied several requests for waivers of its requirement that Emergency Alert System participants be able to receive Common Area Protocol (CAP) messages, the commission said in a public notice Monday (http://bit.ly/15z062m). Southern Communications Volunteers, Applegate Media, New Wave, Lakeview Cable, RB3, and Reach Broadband had requested waivers of the commission’s June 30, 2012 deadline for EAS participants to “have installed operational equipment that can receive and process EAS alerts” in CAP, and all have been denied, the PN said. SCV, New Wave, Lakeview, Reach, and Applegate all said they could not meet the deadline because of “vendor delay” preventing them from getting the needed equipment, the PN said. However, the Public Safety Bureau denied their waivers because their waiver requests “show that they chose to wait until very close to the deadline to order equipment, and thus any delay in receiving equipment was entirely attributable to each company’s business decisions,” the PN said. The Bureau also said by failing to order the equipment on time, the companies had let the public down. “The Commission implemented the June 30 deadline for CAP compliance in order to ensure that ‘Next Generation EAS’ would be transmitted in an efficient, rapid, and secure manner over a variety of formats” said the PN. “We find that the lack of due diligence shown by the Petitioners to obtain the required equipment in a timely fashion is inconsistent with the public interest.” However, New Wave and several of the other companies have additional CAP waiver requests before the FCC that cite other waiver justifications -- such as a lack of broadband internet access -- and this order does not affect those petitions, the PN said. “We're reviewing the order,” said Cinnamon Mueller attorney Scott Friedman, who represents New Wave, Reach Broadband and Lakeview Cable.
A chain of truck stops can’t start a wireless TV service that would require waivers to operate in a band used by broadcasters, cable programmers and the federal government, said the FCC. The “entirely new use” of the cable-TV relay service band to run a multichannel video distribution system at Flying J truck stops throughout the U.S. shouldn’t be pursued by a waiver, said an order approved by commissioners and released Tuesday. It said such a change is “the province of a rulemaking.” Since 2006, when Clarity Media Systems first requested the waivers that were a year later denied by the Media Bureau, that company’s owner, Flying J, has filed for bankruptcy and in 2010 combined with another truck stop chain.