Over the last few weeks, I became privy to some skepticism regarding the EAS. For those not in the know, the EAS (formerly known as the EBS) is a way to submit warnings over given areas through radio and television.
You’ve probably seen/heard EAS tests before. They have those bizarre, 56k modem-like noises that happen before and after the announcement. They usually interrupt whatever you’re watching/listening to. They’re usually seen as plainly obnoxious, until you actually need them (like when tornadoes touched down in my town).
The stir I recently heard was in regards to the federal level EAS use. Today marked the first time a Federal level EAS test has ever been carried out. The fear was that the government would use this as a way to shut off/control radio/tv/the internet and keep us all in the dark about the occupy protests and whatever else. I can tell you, from experience, that this is not how it works.
NOTE: I will use Radio as my example here because I have actually done work as a board operator and show host for a radio station before - it’s the only system I have any personal experience with.
The system works something like this:
1. Originating station sends out the primary alert broadcast.
2. In the case of Radio, stations in range are always “listening” on that frequency. They have units in-house that determine if the signal they just picked up applies to their area or not. If it does, they switch over to the EAS broadcast - this step can happen many times as stations then act as repeaters for other stations in their areas.
3. The broadcast is given to the public.
4. The broadcast ends.
The EAS setup at a lot of radio stations mostly consists of a rackmounted unit that’s waiting for an alert to come in. If the alert fits in the right parameters, the unit basically hijacks the entire station, switching all outgoing signals from whatever was going on before to whatever signal is coming in. This is pretty neat, because it doesn’t require any intervention on behalf of the board operator. The system does exactly what it needs to do, then shuts off.
Knowing that, let’s look at a theoretical situation where we deteriorated to the point that the Feds decided they wanted to control all media. 24/7/365 government radio, same thing on every station. If that were to happen, the station could override the system and take control back. The only way for the Feds to then override this would be to overpower any other signal at every single entrypoint to each network. In short - it’s not going to happen any time soon.
While this account might only apply to Broadcast Radio, I could see other transmitted media (Satellite Radio, Cable TV) being a least semi-similar in many regard, since the entire system is setup with an assumption that each repeater and endpoint follows the rules.
So the test that was run today - what was the point? Oddly enough, the infrastructure has always been there for federal use, but it’s never actually been activated. Any major national event that would have warranted its use was all ready covered by other media outlets that everybody would have seen/heard. Data moved so fast that the EAS was shown to be completely unnecessary.
And what happened after the test? Well, you can still watch television, listen to the radio, and you’re reading this (which means the internet’s still “up”), so it looks like it came and went without a hitch. We did learn, however, that Oregon’s Federal-level entry point failed to replicate the signal out, leaving the entire state in the dark. Oops! EDIT: Other failure points were noted, as well, and there were some other problems that cropped up.
I could go on and on about the conspiracy theories surrounding this - like the suggestion that it’s easy to “turn off” the internet for an entire nation (hint: we’re not setup like Egypt), but that’s a whole ‘nother rant for some other time.
Remember kids, skepticism is always a good thing. Not just skepticism of things you disagree with, but skepticism of your own beliefs, as well.
