Public Safety Freakout

Welp, like I said in the previous post, this CenturyLink outage would go one of two ways: either CenturyLink would resolve the problem and the hubbub would die down or it would go the route of hearings and investigations.

Now we know which way it’s headed: DO IT FOR THE KIDS AND PUBLIC SAFETY!!!!

Most bad things from the government come wrapped in pretty and shiny packages whilst calling for ‘public safety’ and ‘common-sense regulation’. It is simply a matter of record over the history of humanity that any time one group (read: government) has power over another (read: citizens) it tends to expand said power at great cost to those over whom said power is wielded.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it was terribly inconvenient the outage occurred and has lasted as long as it has, but sometimes things break. It’s incumbent upon the individual to be ready and able to deal with life’s unforeseen emergencies without the safety nets we have come to expect in today’s western civilization.

Moments after the outage began on Thursday, the hilariously cynical users of social media began wondering if this meant The Purge had begun. I’m only partly joking when I say I truly believe if the government safety nets were broken for an extended period of time, a not-insignificant number of people would somehow involuntarily self-purge themselves from society.

Ajit, please take a few moments to assess the actual damage and its causal factors before we go trotting out the #publicsafety tag.

Good luck and hang in there. Keep your data secure and your powder dry.

The text of FCC Chairman @AjitPaiFCC‘s statement can be found here.

The @CenturyLinkHelp Twitter feed.