“Per the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the FCC is investigating redefining parts of the national Emergency Alert System, or EAS, and Wireless Emergency Alert System, or WEAS, including developing alerting requirements for online streaming platforms.”
An emergency 9/11 Act has been transformed into a 2021 privacy destroying act. The Feds want the public’s opinion on what they think about allowing government agents access to what Americans are watching on streaming services.
“The commission issued a notice of inquiry this month and will publish an official request for public comment Tuesday in the Federal Register to determine “whether it would be technically feasible for streaming services to complete each step that EAS participants complete under the commission’s rules in ensuring the end-to-end transmission of EAS alerts, including monitoring for relevant EAS alerts, receiving and processing EAS alerts, retransmitting EAS alerts, presenting EAS alerts in an accessible manner to relevant consumers, and testing,” according to the notice of inquiry.”
NextGov claims that the FCC has a lot of work to do because it needs to overcome defining what constitutes a “streaming service”, as you will see it really won’t be much of a hurdle to overcome.
Apparently the Feds want to use something similar to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project which will allow authorities to play synchronized media streams like audio and video streams in a continuous way while those streams are being transmitted to the client over a data network.
TITLE XCII–Communication Matters of the 2021 NDAA Act gives the Feds immense leeway to broadcast government propaganda to all social media platforms. Section 9201 allows the FCC to create a “reliable emergency alert distribution improvement.” (use keyword search “alert” to find the section.)
The new changes allows the President and the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Administration to issue government safety alerts. It also allows the government to create the State Emergency Communications Committee allowing state officials to issue local government warnings.
Section 9201 allows the president to disseminate, notify or alert the public of missile threats against the United States, or threats to public safety. (Whatever that might be.)
Where it starts to get interesting, or disturbing depending on your point of view, is section 9201 “Internet and Online Streaming Services Emergency Alert Examination”
It appears that government officials are worried that people are tuning out the mass media and watching less cable TV, thereby missing out on much of the government’s version of events.
So how do they reach these people?
By designing a new Emergency Alert system that can interrupt streaming platforms of course.
“Study.–Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, and after providing public notice and opportunity for comment, the Commission shall complete an inquiry to examine the feasibility of updating the Emergency Alert System to enable or improve alerts to consumers provided through the internet, including through streaming services.”
Giving government official’s the ability to interrupt streaming services opens up a world of privacy concerns.
Let’s imagine a worse case scenario: let’s say that a year from now you connect to the internet to have a web conference, or text someone on your phone when all of a sudden you are interrupted by a “government safety alert.”
Instead of being able to watch whatever you want, talk with whoever you want, or text with whoever you want, now you’ll have to worry that Big Brother is looking over your shoulder.
If the Feds can interrupt streaming services one can assume that they could also have backdoor access to what Americans are watching in real-time.
As America enters the second year of the pandemic, our government thinks now is a great time to find out what people are watching and who they are texting. It’s been 20 years since 9/11 and instead of rolling back government surveillance, the Feds want to increase it.
Related posts:
Views: 0