And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 10:11:35 -0800
From: Jon Roland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Testimony on Y2K before Oversight Hearing of CA Legislature Feb. 24,
1999
Testimony
of
Jon Roland
before the
Oversight Hearing on Year 2000 Preparedness
of the California Legislature
Wednesday, February 24, 1999
For further information see the WWW page at
http://www.constitution.org/y2k/y2k.htm
The Year 2000 problem ... is going to have implications in the world
... that we can't even comprehend. ... If we built houses the way we
build software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy
civilization.
-- U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John J. Hamre, in testimony before
the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, June, 1998.
1. Introduction
In this testimony I will be focused on Plan C. Plan A is remediation of the
Y2K problem. Plan B is replacement of non-compliant systems. Plan C is about
what we do if Plan A and Plan B don't work. It is also about what we do if
public anticipation of the failure of Plans A and B results in disaster,
something that now seems likely to occur even if Plans A and B do work.
While Y2K is in many ways unprecedented in human history, the potential
scenarios stemming from public loss of confidence in the monetary system and
in the delivery of vital products and services do have precedent in history.
We need to study those precedents.
First, we need to plan for the collapse of the world monetary system. It is
essentially fragile, a gigantic Ponzi scheme to which we have become
addicted. The Y2K problem doesn't have to be very severe to trigger a world
depression worse than that of the 1930s, and at this point it seems likely
that Y2K will be severe enough. We have started too late, put too much
emphasis on remediation instead of on replacement, and there is no longer
enough time to either remedy or replace everything. People know that, and
knowing that, they will do what they have to do to protect themselves, and
the result will be a cascade failure of the division of labor.
The onset of economic collapse is likely to occur before the worst of the
computer problems do, and make it more difficult to deal with them when they
do. But when they do, the failure of many systems is likely to compound the
depression with effects that most nearly resemble those that have come with
civil wars and natural disasters. But whereas most natural disasters have
been confined to small areas, this will be global, depriving us of the
relief that would be available to disaster areas from unaffected areas.
At its worst, Y2K could be very bad indeed. As bad as a civil war following
a depression. Everything depends on how long essential supplies and services
are disrupted. If it is only a few weeks, we could avoid major public
disorders, but if it goes into months we could have a major loss of life.
We need to keep in mind, however, that while Y2K may provide the occasion
for this systemic failure, there are many other things that could trigger
it, and probably will during the years to come. Therefore, the Plan C
preparations we contemplate today are likely to be needed even if Y2K
effects turn out not to be as great as they could be. They are like
preparations for an earthquake. We may not know when it is coming, but we
know it will come eventually, and almost anything we do to prepare for it is
likely to ultimately be a good investment.
We'll reach the end of the century still using software that will crash
when it has to handle years starting with "20", and people won't get
excited until it's too late to do anything about it.
--Jon Roland, in a talk before a chapter of the Association for
Computing Machinery, 1978
2. Preparing the public
The dilemma for public officials has been to try to prepare the public
without causing them to panic and thereby precipitate an economic collapse.
They have therefore been underplaying the severity of the Y2K problem, while
at the same time advising people to take precautions. This approach won't
work. The people are too smart for that. And if they feel that they are
being deceived, the result will be worse than it would have been if
officials play it straight.
At this point I am recommending the public be advised to stock up on a
month's worth of supplies, in anticipation of a failure of most services and
supplies, including electric power, water, fuel, food, and medicine. More
than that would create a demand that can't be met anyway, and any less is
likely to leave them short. Most suppliers don't have storage facilities
that can handle more than that, so we need to get people to store what they
will need in their homes and places of work.
The people also need to be told, bluntly, that they cannot expect normal
police, fire, and emergency medical services, that they will be on their
own. The lesson of South Central Los Angeles is clear. If there are riots,
the police won't be there, and there will not be enough National Guard or
military personnel to cover ever city, much less the countryside, and
involving the military, besides being a violation of law, would be a
fundamental mistake, leading to a police state and civil war. The people are
going to have to provide their own police, fire, and emergency services in
their neighborhoods. That means they need to be told to get together with
their neighbors to organize, train, and equip themselves to do so. The main
job for regular police, fire, and emergency personnel will be to assist in
the organizing and training of citizens, who will need to supply their own
equipment.
The people also need to be told that evacuation to the countryside is not a
viable option. There is no way that hoards of refugees from the cities can
sustain themselves there, without housing or other facilities, and they are
likely to meet armed resistance if they try to seek refuge on private
property. People might have been able to feed themselves by hunting during
the Great Depression, but that is no longer possible. There are too many
people now, and not enough game.
They also need to be told that families and households are not viable under
such circumstances, even in a remote area. Only neighborhood groups of at
least several hundred persons can effectively meet one another's needs. Each
such group needs to have a mix of skills not unlike those needed by a
military unit in the field. Everyone needs to do his or her part. There must
be no free riders. And groups having a surplus of supplies, equipment, or
persons with some skills need to be prepared to trade with those lacking
those supplies, equipment, or skills.
3. Community organizing
The first step in community organizing is to divide the state into
neighborhoods. These will vary in size, and the boundaries will need to be
somewhat flexible, but in cities people need to be organized down to the
level of the city block. A meeting site needs to be designated for each such
neighborhood, such as a school, church, office, or warehouse, and the people
asked to meet together and elect a neighborhood commander and
vice-commander. Existing political divisions, such as voting precincts, may
serve as the basis for this division, and existing community leaders, such
as party chairpersons, neighborhood watch coordinators, or ministers, might
be asked to lead the organizing effort, going door to door to urge everyone
to participate.
The key to making this work is to make it socially acceptable for organizers
to approach their neighbors for this purpose. One of the main impediments to
such neighborhood organizing is the anonymity of most neighbors today. Too
many people live next to one another without knowing one another, and most
people feel awkward approaching strangers. If this effort accomplishes
nothing more than getting neighbors to know one another, and become friends,
it will be worth a great deal to the future of this society.
While we must try to get the people organized voluntarily, we must not leave
it entirely to volunteer action. In case volunteerism fails, we need to have
a backup.
The legislature needs to adopt legislation authorizing local magistrates to
impose fines and jail time on non-exempt persons who fail to respond to a
community call-up, in the same way they may be imposed for failure to
respond to a notice for jury duty, and penalties for failure to obey lawful
orders of the neighborhood commander or his elected superiors, who shall be
designated constables. The sheriff shall be the commander of each county.
Exempt persons would be those with disabilities or who have official or
professional duties that take precedence over their community duties.
Such penalties should be imposed only as a last resort, after voluntary
methods fail, and after repeated and willful resistance. The people in this
country have lost the tradition of such community participation and
discipline, and it will take some time to get them used to it again. If it
is done right, they will embrace it rather than resent it, and develop a new
community spirit that will sustain community participation and service
voluntarily.
People should be asked to meet on a regular schedule, at a regular location,
for preparation and training, more frequently as the end of the year
approaches. They should be urged to follow a regular program that covers
every aspect of the preparations that need to be made. The program should
also include preparations to deal with such eventualities as nuclear and
biological attacks, toxic chemical releases, and other disasters that might
require evacuation, and each neighborhood should have an evacuation plan to
a designated evacuation site, with at least two backup sites. They should
rehearse their responses to a variety of possible threats, including
injuries to community members.
4. Communications
One of the critical services threatened by Y2K is electronic communications.
We have seen how during disasters either phone lines go down or are tied up
as everyone tries to call one another at the same time. The advent of
digital communications like the Internet has brought a more efficient use of
available bandwidth, as messages are broken up into digital packets, which
are routed from one node to the next, perhaps along multiple paths, until
they are reassembled at their destination. The Internet was designed to
survive a nuclear attack on the United States, but the reality of the
Internet today is that, while local subnets might survive calamity, the
Internet as a whole depends on long-distance, high-bandwidth backbones to
carry the major part of the message traffic. Therefore, it is dependent on
"wires", that is, fixed channels that require more power than batteries can
supply, including fiberoptic cables and microwave satellite links. These are
subject to disruption.
The traditional answer to the problem of emergency communications has been
the amateur radio community. The current system it offers is the National
Traffic System, which supports a cooperating network of radio operators
using a variety of equipment and transmission protocols. For more details
see http://www.arrl.org/field/pscm/sec2-ch1.html Unfortunately, the number
of participants in it are few and scattered, and while this system may be
helpful for localized disasters of short duration, it would almost
certainly be overwhelmed by a worst-case Y2K scenario.
The ideal system would be a wireless Internet, consisting of a nationwide
network of independent portable, battery-operated handheld or wearable
computers, linked together by high-bandwidth transceivers, that could relay
digital message packets along a route to their destination, without ever
having to go through a fixed station or backbone. I have been advocating
such a system since 1994, and my latest short version of the proposal, which
I call the WIPnet, for Wireless Internet of Portable Nodes, is at
http://www.constitution.org/wipnet/wipnetprop.htm
The good news is that the hardware components needed to build such a network
at a low unit cost are now becoming available, just in time for Y2K, and the
software needed to make them work could be developed during the next few
months, if a focused effort to do so were being made. The bad news is that
the hardware manufacturers, many of which are based in California, are
mainly focused on niche commercial markets in which they can tie their
transceivers to base stations and charge usage fees. Research on something
like a WIPnet is being left to poorly-funded amateurs.
Perhaps the single most important thing members of the California
legislature could do would be to put personal pressure on the manufacturers
of the components needed to build a WIPnet to focus their companies on
developing the essential hardware and software, and on marketing the units
at a low cost. The legislature might budget for the purchase of some number
of such units, at a fixed cost, as an incentive to the companies to do so.
Such state-purchased computer-transceivers would then be distributed to key
agencies, perhaps even down to the level of local neighborhood commanders
or their designated communications officers.
However, if we could establish a statewide or nationwide network of
computer-transceivers we would still require a way to communicate in
broadcast mode with the general population. For that purpose, since power
may not be available for commercial broadcasting, I recommend that we
encourage the establishment of a network of AM and FM microbroadcast
stations, radiating at 1 to 10 W, to serve as a link between the WIPnet and
the population. The FCC is currently considering granting licenses to
station operators of this kind, but it is being opposed by the commercial
stations, and it seems unlikely that they will act in time to meet the
emergency that Y2K presents unless pressure is put on them. See
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Mass_Media/Notices/1999/fcc99006.txt
The California legislature should address a resolution to the FCC to
immediately grant free AM and FM operator licenses up to 10 W for
non-commercial, public-service microbroadcasting, subject to noninterference
with established commercial stations. It should also ask them to allocate
more bandwidth for spread-spectrum transmission to be used for the WIPnet.
A plan should then be made to get such microbroadcast stations set up in
strategic locations, covering the entire state, and operated by volunteer
operators as part of the statewide emergency communications system. The
frequencies of these stations should be widely publicized, and persons
encouraged to listen to them at regular intervals for important public
information. There should be regular reports on Y2K and other preparedness
subjects, and news of any early difficulties that may arise and responses to
them.
As developments unfold, a regular news service should emerge to keep
everyone informed, provide necessary guidance, and allay public alarm. If
disruptions should occur, people can be warned to avoid the areas of
disturbance, or respond to contain it.
The legislature should budget funds to convert all printed materials
relevant to Y2K and other preparedness matters into digital form and put on
Web sites or otherwise distributed over the Internet.
There is also a need to free up the time of state and local personnel having
special skills that need to be imparted to citizens in training sessions.
The legislature should authorize and direct diversion of state and local
personnel with preparedness skills from their regular duties, and be
allocated travel funds, so that they can travel and provide training to
local citizens preparedness groups all across the state.
5. Other recommendations
Enact greater discretion to department heads to reallocate resources to
solve computer problems. Present legislation tends to micromanage
departments to the extent that they often cannot even evaluate their needs,
much less do anything about them, without an act of the legislature.
Authorize increased pay for programmers, with discretion to managers to pay
what it takes to get qualified personnel. A top programmer may be 100 times
as productive as an ordinary programmer. The state is likely to lose many of
the programmers it needs to solve its Y2K problems to the private sector if
it does not match what the private sector will offer them.
Reorganize departments to have technical decisions made, and technical
personnel hired, by technically trained persons.
Set up a network of investigators, outside the State Auditor's office, to
inquire into how well departments are operating generally, especially on
computer matters, and how well critical private sector providers are dealing
with their Y2K problems. The legislature should not have to rely only on
reports by top officials who may or may not understand what is going on in
their own organizations. Someone needs to talk to the people actually doing
the work. And if some sector like the railroads refuses to testify, someone
needs to be able to find out why and what is really going on.
Put the priority on replacement, not remediation. Most old software and the
machines it runs on are probably long overdue for replacement anyway. And
replacement is the only way anyone can be fairly sure there won't be Y2K
failures, especially in the time available. Mainframes should be phased out
wherever possible, and replaced by networks of supermicros. A regular
schedule of replacement should be adopted when systems are acquired, with
hardware replaced at least every five years and software replaced at least
every seven. It if ain't broke, it will be soon. When in doubt, replace it
anyway.
Break up the 58 existing California counties into at least 200 smaller ones.
Present counties are too large. They are like small states, and have too
much political clout to manage them effectively. Most authority should be
moved down to such counties. They should be further subdivided into wards
and precincts with their own elected officials who enforce the laws at the
lowest possible level.
Forget gun control. What we need to do is arm the good guys and disarm the
bad guys, but everything proposed on the subject so far will do the exact
opposite. The last thing we need during a worst-case Y2K catastrophe will be
for innocent citizens to be unable to protect themselves and their
neighbors, when the police won't be able to do it. Without deterrence from a
well-armed citizenry, we can expect to see the emergence of gangs of looters
seeking easy targets. And the only constitutional way to disable the right
to keep and bear arms, or any other right, is either within the sentence
upon conviction in a criminal trial, or by order of the court in a
competency hearing. The state should maintain a database of such
disablements, rather than just records of convictions or commitments,
disablement on the basis of which are constitutionally prohibited bills of
attainder.
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Constitution Society, 1731 Howe Av #370, Sacramento, CA 95825
916/568-1022, 916/450-7941VM Date: 02/27/99 Time: 10:11:36
http://www.constitution.org/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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