Why cell phone service is down in Maui — and when it could be restored

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August 10, 2023 | By Samantha Murphy Kelly | CNN |

Thousands of people in Maui are without cell service as the wildfires continue to rage out of control on the island, preventing people from calling emergency services or updating loved ones about their status. It could take days or even weeks to get the networks back up and running.

“911 is down. Cell service is down. Phone service is down,” Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke told CNN on Wednesday morning.

Although strong winds can sometimes threaten cell towers, most are strong enough to handle the worst that even a Category 5 hurricane can bring. Fire, however, complicates the issue.

“When the fires get too close to cell sites, they will obviously burn equipment, antennas, and feedlines,” said Glenn O’Donnell, VP of research at market research firm Forrester. “In extreme cases, they will also weaken the towers, leading some to collapse. The smoke and flames can also attenuate signals because of the particulate density in the air.”

If a tower collapses, cell networks could take months to restore. But if carriers are able and prepared to do restorations with mobile backup units, it could bring limited service back within hours, O’Donnell said. Wireless carriers often bring in COWs (Cells On Wheels), COLTs (Cells On Light Trucks), and GOaTs (Generators on Trailers) in emergencies to provide backup service when cell towers go down.

Power outages are also a threat to cell phone towers. The Maui disaster has already wiped out power to at least 14,000 homes and businesses in the area, according to PowerOutage.us. Many towers have backup power generators, but they have limited capacity to keep towers running.

Cell towers have back-up technology built in, but this is typically done through optical fiber cables or microwave (wireless) links, according to Dimitris Mavrakis, senior researcher at ABI Research. However, if something extraordinary happens, such as interaction with rampant fires, these links may experience “catastrophic failures and leave cells without a connection to the rest of the world.”

And, in an emergency, a spike in call volume can overload the system – even if people are able to get reception.

“Even cells that have a good service may experience outages due to the sheer volume of communication happening at once,” Mavrakis said. “Everyone in these areas may be trying to contact relatives or the authorities at once, saturating the network and causing an outage. This is easier to correct though and network operators may put in place additional measures to render them operational quickly.”

A T-Mobile spokesperson said its cell sites are “holding up well during the fires” but commercial power outages may be disrupting the service for some customers. “As soon as conditions allow, our priority is to deploy teams with portable generators that will bring temporary power back to our sites,” the spokesperson said.

An AT&T spokesperson said it is assessing the impact to its wireless network and “will continue to coordinate closely with local utility companies on restoration progress.”

Meanwhile, Verizon told CNN on Thursday its teams are currently deploying the first batch of satellite-based mobile hotspots at evacuation sites in areas of greatest need, particularly the west side of the island, west of Maalaea, Lahaina, and Northern Kapalua. Verizon’s larger equipment, which is being barged over from Honolulu, is expected to arrive later in the day. This includes COLTs and a specialized satellite trailer to provide service to a cell site that has a damaged fiber connection.

AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon said they are waiving talk, text and data overage charges during this time.

The hope of satellite networks
Satellite networks continue to operate regardless of what’s happening on the ground. This means satellite phones, which often feature large antennas, can help provide voice, SMS, and data services anywhere on Earth, even without cell service.

Satellite phones have been popularized over the years by hikers, emergency responders and intrepid travelers, but they are expensive and are not mainstream products. However, some newer smartphone models – including the latest model iPhone 14 and some phones built by Motorola and Huawei – offer built-in satellite connectivity, which allows the sending of SOS messages via satellites.

Apple’s free Emergency SOS via satellite service has already helped at least one family get in contact with first responders during the Maui wildfires. The service, which launched last year, allows iPhone users to contact dedicated dispatchers in emergency situations via satellites. When a user attempts to call 911 and is unable to get on a cell network, they will be automatically redirected to the service’s dispatchers where they can answer a questionnaire with short multiple choice questions to share information quickly. The dispatchers also receive their coordinates, medical ID and emergency contact information.

Apple told CNN the feature is reserved for connections to emergency services and does not allow users to contact friends and family. For anyone who has access to a Wi-Fi connection while wearing an Apple Watch, the Walkie-Talkie feature could also be used to send messages or make calls. However, Wi-Fi networks can also fail when optical fiber networks are disrupted.

Local radio stations are still on the air and providing lifeline information to residents and visitors.

Although it’s unclear how long cell phone service could be down in affected regions, companies have been able to bring connectivity to disaster regions in the past. In 2017, Google worked with AT&T and T-Mobile to deploy its Project Loon balloons to deliver Internet to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Hawaii’s Red Cross recently tweeted that people can call 1-800-RED-CROSS to see if their loved ones are at a local shelter.

Read the original article HERE.

Congress Could Soon Ban Police From Buying Your Data Without A Warrant

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August 1, 2023 | By Nick Sibilla | Forbes |

Citing a need to close “major loopholes in federal privacy law,” Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) reintroduced the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act last week. If enacted, the bill would ban law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing a wide range of personal—and potentially sensitive—data, including location tracking, social media activity, and search history records. A companion bill unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee last month.

Multiple investigative reports have revealed that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the IRS, to name just a few government agencies, have all relied on private data brokers to purchase records that would otherwise require a subpoena, search warrant, or court order.

“The Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure ensures that the liberty of every American cannot be violated on the whims, or financial transactions, of every government officer,” Sen. Paul said in a statement. “This critical legislation will put an end to the government’s practice of buying its way around the Bill of Rights by purchasing the personal and location data of everyday Americans.”

For instance, in its 2018 decision, Carpenter v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cell-site location information (CSLI), which can track a person’s movements through their cell phones, was protected by the Fourth Amendment. “Before compelling a wireless carrier to turn over a subscriber’s CSLI,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, “the government’s obligation is a familiar one—get a warrant.”

But according to a recently declassified report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), “the same type of information on millions of Americans is openly for sale to the general public.” With a credit card instead of a warrant, agencies can acquire, access, and aggregate those cellular location records, alongside other forms of commercially available information.

By purchasing smartphone location or ad-tracking data, agencies could “identify every person who attended a protest or rally” as well as other “political, religious, travel, and speech activities,” the ODNI report continued. Moreover, while many records are initially “anonymous,” by combining those records with other purchasable data sets, the ODNI report found that agencies can easily “reverse engineer identities or deanonymize various forms of information.”

And since commercially available information “can reveal sensitive and intimate information about individuals,” that data can also be “misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals.” As a comparable example, the ODNI cited “LOVEINT abuses,” or cases where government officials have spied on current, potential, or former romantic partners. “In the wrong hands, sensitive insights gained through [commercially available information] could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming.”

But under the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, law enforcement and intelligence agencies could no longer buy data or force data brokers to hand over records without a court order. The bill would also ban agencies from “illegitimately” obtaining data through deception, hacking, or in ways that would violate a company’s terms of service, contract, or privacy policy. Nor could agencies use purchased or illegitimate data as evidence in court.

The proposed reforms have a broad, bipartisan appeal. A 2020 Harris poll found that 77% of Americans believe the government should get a warrant to access the types of location data harvested and sold by data brokers.

“Americans of all political stripes know their Constitutional rights shouldn’t disappear in the digital age,” noted Sen. Wyden. “The bipartisan Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act puts protections against government agencies purchasing their data into black-letter law.”

Read the original article HERE.

Legislators Vote Forward Bill That Would Turn Tech Platforms Into DEA Narcs

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July 14, 2023 | By Lucas Ropek | Gizmodo |
The controversial Cooper Davis Act has been voted out of committee, meaning it will take another step towards enactment.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted forward a bill that would force tech companies to report web users to the Drug Enforcement Agency if they suspected them of engaging in criminal drug activity. The controversial Cooper Davis Act, named so after a Kansas teenager who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021, has rankled privacy advocates, who see the proposed legislation as a gateway to broad internet surveillance efforts by the federal government. Proponents of the bill say it would help crack down on illicit drug markets that have been proliferating on social media platforms.

The committee, which had been debating the bill for weeks, voted to advance it 16-5. The proposed law now heads to the Senate floor, where it could soon be subject to a debate and a general vote.

Numerous advocacy groups that had warned against the passage of the legislation released statements on Thursday condemning the committee’s decision. Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the following:

“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote today to advance the Cooper Davis Act to the Senate floor is a misstep. The bill will expand law enforcement’s access to user data, undermine the protections of Constitutional statutory warrant requirements, and exacerbate existing racial disparities in criminal drug enforcement. Platforms are not equipped to be deputized as DEA informants, and this bill will likely cause more harm than it heals. We urge the full Senate to reject this approach.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another organization that has lobbied against the bill, shared a statement with Gizmodo from the foundation’s Surveillance Litigation Director Andrew Crocker. Crocker said:

“We’re disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a bill that would weaken already inadequate privacy laws and threaten the encryption we all rely on to stay safe online. Its vague requirements and criminal penalties would result in companies over-reporting users to the Drug Enforcement Administration for innocent, protected speech. And because the bill encourages companies to undermine encryption out of fear of liability, it could lead to dragnet scanning of private user communications. This bill contains no warrant requirement, no required notice, and limited user protections, and deserves to be defeated on the Senate floor.”

The Cooper Davis Act would force tech platforms to report users for perceived drug infringements. If web users were suspected of criminal activity, platforms would be obligated to send detailed reports directly to the DEA that included personal information on the user. Platforms that did not comply with this regulation could face steep fines and would open themselves up to liability.

Critics have said that the legislation would be a disaster for internet privacy and could lead to broad surveillance programs that sidestep Fourth Amendment protections for web users. Due to the bill’s inclusion of liability for tech companies that “willfully blind” themselves to drug activity on their platforms, critics also worry that the legislation could dissuade companies from providing privacy protecting services, like end-to-end encryption.

The ACLU’s Venzke told Gizmodo that he hopes the Senate leadership will have the wisdom not to advance the bill. “The Senate is only in session for a few more weeks before they go on their August recess,” said Venzke. “There’s a lot of pressure to get a lot of things done in the next few weeks here. We’ll see if they have the capacity” to pass it, he said. “My hope is that even if this bill goes to the floor like others before it, Senate leadership will be wise enough to recognize that this is not the right balance between the goals of the bill and our privacy and freedom of expression online.”

Read the original article HERE.

How Verizon Connect GPS tracking helped Texas construction fleet recover stolen backhoes

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July 12, 2023 | By Cris Beaulieu | Fleet Maintenance |

Recovering their stolen backhoes might’ve been like finding a needle in a haystack, but one Texas-based concrete construction fleet has all eyes on deck with Verizon’s GPS tracking software installed on their assets.

J&M Contracting, a construction fleet in Huntsville, Texas, had three backhoes stolen between 2014 and 2018. These could range from $52,000 (used) to $85,000 (new) and perform various highway-based construction tasks. After yet another backhoe was stolen in January 2019, the company’s safety and fleet manager, Garland Spivey, knew something needed to be done.

To better secure the fleets’ 28 Ford Super Duty trucks and 33 backhoes and front-end loaders, Spivey called on Verizon Connect and its GPS fleet tracking software, which provides fleets with information on vehicle location.

Because the fleet already lost more than $200,000 worth of assets, Spivey said “monthly rates (for the devices and service) are well worth it.”

In addition, the fleet management solution provides data on speed, mileage, idling, and fuel usage, allowing customers to reduce fuel consumption and maintenance costs. As a bonus, fleets can monitor fuel card usage to prevent theft and misuse, seeing when a fill-up exceeds the assets tank capacity, or comparing the asset location against where and when the card was used.

Spivey also said he can also track employees’ time on the job, the routes they’ve traveled, and any hard braking or speeding incidents. And the substantial discount on insurance, of course, doesn’t hurt either.

Dude, where’s my backhoe?
Only eight months after contacting Verizon Connect, in Fall 2019, another backhoe turned up missing.

That incident ended up being merely an unauthorized use. An employee took it home over the weekend to do personal yard work. An alert was sent right to Spivey’s phone and he knew right away something was up, because the backhoe should not have left J&M’s yard on a Saturday morning when crews were off the clock.

But the thefts to come in the months ahead, were a little less benign.

Spivey describes one theft as unique and also beneficial to local law enforcement. He set up alerts for equipment usage on nights and weekends, but he wasn’t prepared for a backhoe to be stolen at 8 a.m. on a Monday, right under the crew’s noses.

With a quick GPS map check, Spivey was able to give law enforcement the exact location of the stolen backhoe. It was about 5 miles away, being used in broad daylight.

But the real kicker, Spivey said, is that because of the alerts he set up and the asset’s GPS tracker, law enforcement was able to bust up the criminal construction ring. And J&M’s backhoe wasn’t the only asset the thieves swiped.

“This guy was digging a pond for a customer, and he was using all stolen equipment,” Spivey said. “He had [another] backhoe that had been reported stolen, and the utility trailer was stolen. The truck he had was reported stolen two years before.”

Several arrests have been made and after the six incidents, each stolen asset was recovered, Spivey said, adding that he gets no resistance when working with sheriff’s departments from start to finish.

Hardware at a glance
Mathew Long, Verizon Connect sr. manager of product marketing, said the vehicle transmitter unit (VTU), about the size of a ’90s flip phone, simply plugs in under the dash into a port that is “usually pretty accessible and easy.”

The 4G signal inside the VTU connects to a variety of servers that send information from the vehicle into a piece of software with both web and mobile capabilities, Long explained.

“Somebody like Garland could ultimately leverage insights about the vehicle from either their mobile device, a laptop, or a desktop back at the office,” Long said. “They would essentially have access and visibility on a live map of all of their vehicles and where they are at any one particular moment in time.”

Spivey said the Verizon Reveal App he uses on his phone to track each asset is easy to navigate for someone who is not tech-savvy.

“It was overwhelming to me to know that I could actually pull up the map and see where everything was,” Spivey said. “All of our equipment was in real-time.”

Fleet managers can hit the replay button on the Verizon Reveal app and see little dots on a map that showcase a caterpillar approach to where a particular asset traveled on any given day.

Read original article HERE.

Injured San Diego hiker rescued by iPhone SOS feature

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July 2, 2023 | By Amber Frias | NBC7 San Diego |

The feature can be used to communicate to emergency services if you’re in an area outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage

Many people claim they can’t live without their phone, but that has a whole new meaning for Rancho Bernardo hiker Juana Reyes.

Last week, Reyes and her friends were hiking in the Los Angeles National Forest when she lost her balance and fell.

“All I can remember was yelling, ‘My foot,’ and trying to get up, but I couldn’t,” she said. “The pain was just so unbearable.”

Reyes felt a crack and landed on the ground. She said her leg was contorted in a way that was not its natural state.

Her friends immediately picked up their phones to call for help — but there was no cell service in the remote terrain.

“How are we going to get out of this?” Reyes asked herself. “That was the biggest thing on my mind.”

But then she got help from an unexpected source: an SOS feature on her iPhone.

How the iPhone SOS feature works
The feature can be used to communicate to emergency services if you’re in an area outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage.

“If you just try dialing 911 on an iPhone 14, just like you would normally, if you’re not in any cellular coverage, it will convert it to a satellite activation,” Mike Leum with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team said.

When the service is activated, it asks the user a series of questions about their condition and location. It even gives directions on how to position the phone to find the nearest satellite.

Leum said his team received an alert from Apple when Reyes used the feature.

“Our station notified us of an activation of an injured hiker up the trail near the waterfall,” Leum said.

He says it’s the third Apple SOS call they’ve received since the service launched back in November.

“It’s very helpful for us, and the call goes immediately to the nearest 911 call center,” he said.

This advancement in technology not only makes life easier for first responders but also for those in need of help — like Reyes, who broke her ankle.

“For me, it was my leg,” she said. “It could have been a different situation for somebody else, and it would be lifesaving.”

Read the original article HERE.