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November 9, 2011
Jun. 19th, 2011 10:52 amIt has been announced that the first ever national test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) will take place on Wednesday, November 9. Essentially what is being tested is the federal government's ability to take control of every radio and television station, cable system, and satellite radio and television service in the country, ostensibly for the purpose of alerting the public in the event of a national emergency.
As someone working in radio, I've long been familiar with the EAS and its predecessor, the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), which was created during the Cold War to alert the public in case of an imminent nuclear strike on the United States by the Soviet Union. In college, Professor Albert Carnesale taught me that an ICBM takes about thirty minutes to deliver its payload, while a submarine-launched missile may take as little as ten minutes to do so. For this reason, and because there's little an informed public can do against an imminent nuclear strike, the EBS was little more than a joke. As the EAS still does, it relied on a "daisy chain" of radio and television stations relaying messages from the White House to local communities all across the country. While in the EBS each link required human intervention, the EAS is automated; when someone in the White House presses a button, codes are transmitted to take control of "national primary" stations, which then relay the same codes to state and local primary stations. At the end of this process, every station in the country is either broadcasting programming from the White House or shut down for the duration of the emergency, after which a second set of codes is broadcast to relinquish control.
While the EAS is still considered something of a joke, it has been used on a state or local level from time to time during emergencies such as floods, tornadoes, and the like. But on a national level it has never been activated. It is difficult to conceive of an emergency for which such a response would be appropriate. I can think of only one: a coup such as the one launched in the Soviet Union on August 19, 1991.
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was folded into the Department of Homeland Security a few years ago, proposals were made to improve the reliability of the EAS by replacing the "daisy chain" with something more direct such as a satellite or Internet-based network. A new system called Common Alert Protocol (CAP), which will be in place by September, will allow the immediate assumption of control of any radio or TV station, cable system, or satellite channel by federal or state authorities via the Internet, with the old "daisy chain" system being retained as a backup. My radio station clients, along with all the other stations in the country, will have to have new CAP-capable EAS gear installed (at their own expense, naturally) by September; two of them already have it.
The November test will be unusual in that for the first time stations will be required to report their test results to the FCC instead of merely logging them in their official station logs, as is done with the weekly and monthly EAS tests they are required to conduct individually. The FCC's Enforcement Bureau will no doubt be inspecting and fining stations that fail the test, of which there will likely be hundreds.
As most of you know, I am extremely suspicious of Homeland Security and anything it does; it resembles nothing more than the old Soviet KGB, and all such creatures thrive on fear and have a vested interest in finding terrorists behind every bush and monsters under every bed. Because of these people we no longer live in a free country, but under something that each year looks more and more like a police state. Homeland Security is probably the greatest danger to the Republic as we have known it that has ever existed, and I do not want these people arrogating to themselves the power to control what we see and hear. The EAS should be broken up and placed under the control of states, whose agencies actually cope with real emergencies, not centralized under an antidemocratic federal bureaucracy whose raison d'etre is the accumulation of power through fear mongering.
As someone working in radio, I've long been familiar with the EAS and its predecessor, the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), which was created during the Cold War to alert the public in case of an imminent nuclear strike on the United States by the Soviet Union. In college, Professor Albert Carnesale taught me that an ICBM takes about thirty minutes to deliver its payload, while a submarine-launched missile may take as little as ten minutes to do so. For this reason, and because there's little an informed public can do against an imminent nuclear strike, the EBS was little more than a joke. As the EAS still does, it relied on a "daisy chain" of radio and television stations relaying messages from the White House to local communities all across the country. While in the EBS each link required human intervention, the EAS is automated; when someone in the White House presses a button, codes are transmitted to take control of "national primary" stations, which then relay the same codes to state and local primary stations. At the end of this process, every station in the country is either broadcasting programming from the White House or shut down for the duration of the emergency, after which a second set of codes is broadcast to relinquish control.
While the EAS is still considered something of a joke, it has been used on a state or local level from time to time during emergencies such as floods, tornadoes, and the like. But on a national level it has never been activated. It is difficult to conceive of an emergency for which such a response would be appropriate. I can think of only one: a coup such as the one launched in the Soviet Union on August 19, 1991.
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was folded into the Department of Homeland Security a few years ago, proposals were made to improve the reliability of the EAS by replacing the "daisy chain" with something more direct such as a satellite or Internet-based network. A new system called Common Alert Protocol (CAP), which will be in place by September, will allow the immediate assumption of control of any radio or TV station, cable system, or satellite channel by federal or state authorities via the Internet, with the old "daisy chain" system being retained as a backup. My radio station clients, along with all the other stations in the country, will have to have new CAP-capable EAS gear installed (at their own expense, naturally) by September; two of them already have it.
The November test will be unusual in that for the first time stations will be required to report their test results to the FCC instead of merely logging them in their official station logs, as is done with the weekly and monthly EAS tests they are required to conduct individually. The FCC's Enforcement Bureau will no doubt be inspecting and fining stations that fail the test, of which there will likely be hundreds.
As most of you know, I am extremely suspicious of Homeland Security and anything it does; it resembles nothing more than the old Soviet KGB, and all such creatures thrive on fear and have a vested interest in finding terrorists behind every bush and monsters under every bed. Because of these people we no longer live in a free country, but under something that each year looks more and more like a police state. Homeland Security is probably the greatest danger to the Republic as we have known it that has ever existed, and I do not want these people arrogating to themselves the power to control what we see and hear. The EAS should be broken up and placed under the control of states, whose agencies actually cope with real emergencies, not centralized under an antidemocratic federal bureaucracy whose raison d'etre is the accumulation of power through fear mongering.
