Occupy EAS or.. is this test wise?

Mods...this forum seemed appropriate because of the political nature of this. Feel free to move if necessary....

There have been a wide number of posts about tomorrow's FEMA/FCC EAS test. Everyone here knows by now when it is and the nature and scope of it. However, something entirely different occurred to me a bit ago and I just thought it would be something worth sharing and thinking about.

We are going to be subject to this same signal from one point, as I understand how this system works and the whole point of having it accessible for a White House broadcast in a 'real emergency'. Now I am absolutely serious about personally giving my computers and electronics about a 30 minute break around the time this is scheduled and just turning everything off. How many people will though? I'll bet there are a large % who won't do that at all and among the general public, this will be the most watched test in history because of the all encompassing nature of it.

So, with all that in mind......Wouldn't it just be something else if a group like Anonymous popped up with a way to 'borrow' or ..ahem... Occupy.... that 30 seconds. Talk about the audience of a lifetime. I hope they have thought out all the implications of what they are going to do by running this test. This government's simple track record for screwing up the most basic of tasks doesn't leave me the best feeling on this whole thing.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Wouldn't it just be something else if a group like Anonymous popped up with a way to 'borrow' or ..ahem... Occupy.... that 30 seconds. Talk about the audience of a lifetime.

Going by past experience, I wouldnt expect the systems to be that tightly integrated. I expect a lot of manual intervention.
I mean Radio and TV stations with a prerecorded message ready to go when the producer hits the "play button".
Wouldnt even surprise me to know that there will be government websites with a programmer manually loading a special home page for 30 seconds, then manually putting back the normal home page afterwards.

Cant see how anyone could intercept the top level control of it all.
Cause there isnt one.

There has to be some high degree of reliance on local and regional networks and providers with this EAS. We've got one hell of a squall kicking up in Western Alaska tomorrow and they have already announced that the national level EAS test has been entirely called off for Alaska. They need to keep the EAS on standby if needed because of this storm (which is predicted to be a record breaker). For them to be able to do that, I have to believe that the feds were depending on a lot of local cooperation/control rather than simply hitting a switch in DC and taking control of the entire information grid.

This also makes me think there is really no national grid to hack into.

reply to post by alfa1

The instructions/handbook out to the broadcasters indicates they need to manually switch control of the feed from their side to the government side through the EAS/EBS equipment they have there. That means they can manually turn it off was well, of course. It has to be a live feed or at least capable of going live though. The whole purpose as they're stating is for the President to address the nation in time of crisis without having to ask the networks, but simply to reach out through EAS to all media at once and in a hurry. That is what got me to thinking...there has to be points from his voice to the networks where that could go wrong.

Oh well.. it's nothing suggesting a signal that couldn't be stopped by flipping physical switches in a broadcast center though. There just seem to be a dozen reasons that pulling this mid-day and in the way they are...with such advanced notice and press about it, is odd enought to really wonder about.


Interesting on that bit about Alaska. The handbook they put out is no nonsense about absolute 100% "voluntary" compliance, so it is good to see they are still human and can think in not giving Alaska a bad time. Good luck up there BTW. I hear that is quite a storm AK is enduring.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Good luck up there BTW. I hear that is quite a storm AK is enduring.

Thanks. So far it looks like the storm will have little to no effect on the Anchorage/Mat-Su area, so I'm good. I'd take the foot and a half of snow without worry, but I'm damn glad we're not getting those 80 MPH winds right now.