Let's have a rant about IN-ter-OP-era-BIL-ity.
That's the a-BIL-ity of various com-MUN-i-CA-tions SYS-tems to communicate with each other.
When the police are unable to be on the same wavelength with the fire guys, and neither of them can communicate with, say, the National Guard, and then the Department of Homeland Security hasn't a clue about how to coordinate services needed during a national emergency taking place in, say, Moosehead, Maine, you know you're living in a country which is either a) poverty-stricken, b) a civilization of people with IQ's below 40, or c) a country riddled with corruption.
The US appears to fall into the third category in spite of declarations of intent starting on September 12, 2001. This morning Al Franken played sound clips from each year's State of the Union address since 2001 and, sure enough, the President declares forcefully robustly that IN-ter-OP-era-BIL-ity is a major priority. Yawn.
Now that the Dems plan to do something about the IN-ter-OP-era-BIL-ity problem, word on the street (and on the Al Franken show) is that there are businesses out there that don't want IN-ter-OP-era-BIL-ity. They want control over BAND-width, and they are (sur-PRISE!) Re-PUB-lican con-TRIB-utors.
Chertoff noted that as urban rescue and law enforcement agencies increasingly use broadband communications such as video streams to coordinate their operations, legislation is an option to secure additional emergency operations bandwidth.
Asked how the report card results would influence the federal government’s progress with its own interoperability project, the Integrated Wireless Network acquisition led by the Justice Department, Chertoff said, “We are going to build our interoperability so it fits into [state, local and regional] interoperability.” [yawn]
Neither Chertoff nor undersecretary for preparedness George W. Foresman responded to requests for opinions on the prospects of the IWN procurement, which calls for a multibillion-dollar federal commitment to a new nationwide voice and data law enforcement net.
