Government May Block Websites During Pandemic
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Securities exchanges have a sound network back-up if a severe pandemic keeps people home and clogging the Internet, but the Homeland Security Department has done little planning, Congressional investigators said on Monday.
The department does not even have a plan to start work on the issue, the General Accountability Office said.
But the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth.
Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake.
H1N1 swine flu has been declared a pandemic but is considered a moderate one. Health experts say a worse one -- or a worsening of this one -- could result in 40 percent absentee rates at work and school at any given time and closed offices, transportation links and other gathering places.
Many companies and government offices hope to keep operations going as much as possible with teleworking using the Internet. Among the many problems posed by this idea, however, is the issue of bandwidth -- especially the "last mile" between a user's home and central cable systems.
"Such network congestion could prevent staff from broker-dealers and other securities market participants from teleworking during a pandemic," reads the GAO report, available here
"The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for ensuring that critical telecommunications infrastructure is protected."
BLOCKING WEBSITES
Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce.
The Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security, a group of private-sector firms and financial trade associations, has been working to ensure that trading could continue if big exchanges had to close because of the risk of disease transmission.
"Because the key securities exchanges and clearing organizations generally use proprietary networks that bypass the public Internet, their ability to execute and process trades should not be affected by any congestion," the GAO report reads.
However, not all had good plans for critical activities if many of their employees were ill, the report reads.
Homeland Security had done even less, it said.
"DHS has not developed a strategy to address potential Internet congestion," the report said.
It had also not even checked into whether the public or even other federal agencies would cooperate, GAO said.
"The report gives the impression that there is potentially a single solution to Internet congestion that DHS could achieve if it were to develop an appropriate strategy," DHS's Jerald Levine retorted in a letter to the GAO.
"An expectation of unlimited Internet access during a pandemic is not realistic," he added.
(editing by Philip Barbara)
|
Spread the word  Stumble It! -  Digg it!
-  reddit
Latest Articles in: Big Brother/Orwellian
- NSA Is Giving Microsoft Some Help On Windows 7 Security
- Apple Patents Technology That Would Force Users to Interact with Ads
- Law & Order Shills for Obamacare
- Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power
- Council recruits army of snoopers to spy on Londoners
- Police prepare drill for plague at school
- Pupils terrified after arriving at school to bloody crime scene… which was lesson on ‘problem solving’
- State to 'spy' on every phone call, email and web search
|
PLEASE NOTE
|
Please read our About Page, our Disclaimer, and our Comments Policy.
Please note: InformationLiberation is neither liberal or conservative. When one takes the time to research the "liberal elite," whom the conservatives oppose, and the "conservative elite," whom the liberals oppose, one finds both "elite" are one and the same. "Liberal" or "Conservative" is not a substantive choice, it is only the carefully crafted illusion of a choice, for both parties come together when they are instructed to.
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."
A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, 1933
"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure."
Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, in the July 26th, 1936 issue of The New York Times.
If you care to know who runs the world you live in, view these films. If you care not then I leave you with this quote to ponder:
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution."
Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
Audio - Transcript
|
|
|
FAIR USE NOTICE
|
|
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
|
About Us - Disclaimer
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill |
The Century of the Self: The Untold History of Controlling the Masses Through the Manipulation of Unconscious Desires
Operation Gladio: "One of the most secret programs that ever existed"
The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Print
Shocking H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Miscarriage Stories From Pregnant Women
Unbelievable: Government Hijacks Kids TV To Propagandize For Swine Flu Shots
Government Propaganda To Infest Network TV Shows 
One bank to rule them all: UN wants new global currency to replace dollar
The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb
German health expert's swine flu warning: Does virus vaccine increase the risk of cancer?
The Pentagon Wants Authority to Post Almost 400,000 Military Personnel in U.S.
Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder