Sep. 12, 2006

As the US remembers the tragic events of September 11 five years ago, a transcontinental flight was diverted when an unclaimed BlackBerry was found on board, according to several news organizations.

The flight traveling from Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport to San Francisco landed safely in Dallas.

The grim reminder of the high jacking of Sept. 11, 2001 came as remembrances were occurring at Ground Zero, Shanksville, Pa. and at the Pentagon in suburban Washington, D.C.

The solemn ceremonies stood in stark contrast to the sharp rhetoric by both political parties using last week to accuse the other of not keeping Americans safe.

The Democrats, in several press conferences last week, said they have a “real-security” plan and that it will be their top priority if they are able to take control of Congress in the November mid-term elections.

The Republicans, with President George W. Bush leading the charge, gave details of what they have done in the half-decade since Sept. 11, 2001.

On the issue of public-safety interoperability, the assessments were equally stark.

“We watched in full color people running into buildings that they should have been running out of because the radios didn’t work.

Five years after 9/11, we still don’t have radio interoperability,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “Right now people could still be running into buildings that they should be running out of.”

Stabenow added that first-responder grants have been cut by 59 percent but it is unclear whether all of that grant money would have gone to interoperability.

“We have put considerable effort and hundreds of millions of dollars into interoperability,” said Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, at Georgetown University Friday.

“We have the technology and the equipment that allows agencies to talk to each other even if they don’t have the same radio frequencies. The obstacle is not technological. The obstacle is procedural.”

The rhetoric will continue to be heard this week as Chertoff is expected to appear before the Senate Homeland-Security Committee tomorrow to discuss “the next five years.”

The House infrastructure-protection subcommittee and the House telecommunications subcommittee each are scheduled to meet Wednesday to examine the future of cyber and telecommunications protection.

Although the Department of Homeland Security hailed its progress in critical-infrastructure protection, none of it seems immediately aimed at telecommunications or cyber protection.

Source: RCR News