First they declare a state of emergency, and now they start releasing article about how it will be necessary to take certain things from us. All over a mild Flu strain that has killed less people than bee stings. If you think conspiracy talk is nuts, you need to learn to read between the lines. The internet is a thorn in the side of the power structure. They have been trying to censor it more and more over the years and now they want the power to shut it down for normal people.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2620750120091026?sp=true
Click below to read full article
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.
