Intel Update - October 12 - Domestic Instabilities

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is the Intel update for October 6th through the 12th 2024 definitely a busy week as we continue on through the election season so let's get right to it starting with the Northeast region we have yet another Cyber attack that uh impacted quite a few customers. Even though it may not have impacted Services uh the American Water Company in New Jersey uh reported that they experienced a Cyber attack or rather more accurately a data breach with regards to customer data and Account Details and things like that uh for an unknown number of customers. But probably a pretty good chunk of people uh the American Water Company is the largest uh water uh utility provider in the United States and and they also do things like um sewage and water treatment as well so again cyber attacks are kind of the flavor of the week when it comes to the election season and this really interesting threat environment we find ourselves operating in. But the key takeaway for this is that the American Water Company while it's largely centered in New Jersey uh they do own a lot of other companies or rather they offer services in many different states so so you may have a Cyber attack hit the main headquarters in Camden. But uh it's going to affect somewhere else around the country so a very sharp reminder to understand where your water comes from and the companies that manage your water if you're on City water for instance uh you may not be getting water from the city in terms of like a local company you may be uh getting it locally. But that company that provides it locally might be a larger conglomerate yeah definitely some homework for later uh for a lot of people who may not have understood that their billing data may be held by a different company uh than say the the company that they pay the bill to right so again something to keep in mind moving down to Washington DC uh this is really more of a national concern. But I'll mention it in the context of uh the nation's capital uh yesterday mainstream media reporting uh began to circulate that Donald Trump has requested as the election gets closer and in light of Iranian threats or alleged Iranian threats uh he has requested to uh use military aircraft that have counter missile capabilities so again this kind of goes back to that special report I I wrote uh what was it last week I think and this does Grant some Credence to that possib ility uh of of man pads potentially being used in the United States since that report came out and since that sort of rumor hit the internet there's there's really not been a whole lot of amplifying information really it's all just been unconfirmed you know talk by people who are allegedly in the know you can't really work with that too much. But from a risk management perspective you can work with it a little bit this adds a lot of credence to those uh potential threats right so if Trump is actively saying hey my plane might get shot down and he's continuing to travel in unmarked small you know like business uh style aircraft instead of his you know main Trump force one kind of aircraft um this really does start to add up in terms of indicators now again I just want to State for the record uh this is my opinion and it's not really based on anything solid so it's really just a gut feeling right. But I don't think Iran is behind any of this uh I think that the um Obsession by the feds and federal agencies with Iran you see this in a lot of different Publications coming out it's like Iran Iran Iran it's just like Russia Russia Russia again Iranians don't really have the capabilities in many cases that we think they do could they do something like this yeah sure I mean any Somalians could could do this too it's not that hard um. However I just don't think the motivation is there I i' really truly do not think Iran is behind this uh I think that if anything this is probably the worst camouflaged most obvious false flag attempt in the history of mankind I think everybody's trying to point the finger at Iran because they want war with Iran and you know Iran's refusing to play ball right now with regards to the conflict in the Middle East they're really not responding to whole to a whole lot so we see them we see the Western World try to push Iran into making some sort of um you know big mistake right so again I I don't want to downplay uh the Iranian connection. But I just don't think I just don't think so I mean it's I think it's overblown I don't think the Iranians are behind this I think it's the people who want to get us into a war with Iran I think that's who's behind this so. Anyway I know that's a lot of rumor conjecture doesn't really help anybody uh but I just feel like it needs to be said so yeah I just wanted to put that out there uh in case something happens later on um the reason that I say it now is because if Trump's plan get shot down if something horrendously bad like that happens uh you're going to immediately see a switch to Iran right you're going to see immediately we're probably going to have like a a 911 response to Iran right um that's one of the things that would probably kick off a war with Iran more directly like we have a a an invasion of Afghanistan just like we did uh in the days after 9/11 small scale to at first right. But you're going to see this again uh I definitely think that's going to happen and I don't think Iran is a culprit um so I think we're we're lining up they're they're using the the early 2000s Playbook yet again and I'm I'm I'm so confused as to why people do not see this that I'm thinking maybe I'm missing something so again I just want to point that out there that I think this is a fairly obvious false flag attempt to point the finger at Iran now the event was probably is is probably a real threat. But isn't the Iranians I I don't know I don't think so but I don't know no one can know right we don't even know if this is a real threat really we just have indications and warnings so again sorry for the conjecture. But it's kind of getting to be a spicy election season so we have to kind of consider these things before something bad happens because something's going to happen we're immediately going to get passports from the rubble if you know what I mean and there we go so again something not great. But something to consider moving down to the southeast we have two big hurricanes uh we have the recovery from Hurricane Helen and down in Florida we have the recovery from Hurricane Milton so let's start with the more severe of the two hurricane Helen volunteer work continues as before uh most of the work is still being done by volunteers uh Logistics efforts are smoothing out things are becoming a lot easier. But in some regards challenges are are becoming more significant so again like I mentioned last time you you you really only have interpersonal stories to kind of go with he said she said kind of thing uh so when you see someone hop on social media and say oh we've had nothing. But trouble okay and then we've got this other person in the same area working maybe with the same agencies they say oh what are you talking about we have no problems at all well they can both be right uh because it turns out that interpersonal relationships matter and being being uh able to kind of mitigate and and reduce conflict uh conflict resolution is definitely a huge thing in this in this uh Disaster Response and sometimes not a lot of people are very good at that we've got a lot of people who are maybe not used to working in public service or with volunteer groups and things like that they show up they try to be the big dog in town and they run into barriers they don't know how to greas the wheels with the feds in the state and local authorities they don't know how to massage the egos of people involved to get things done um I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying that a lot of people don't understand the very unique Dynamic of how a lot of this works that's where a lot of the conflict's coming from now overall most of the conflict that in general seems to be coming from FEMA which is no surprise to anyone maybe Americans around the country are now finding out that FEMA is largely uh the DMV at scale uh so you know take that for how it is right so again FEMA is is largely uh their number one priority on their own website is Dei and Equity right so that's their their number one priority not Readiness Readiness is third so so yeah I mean I would think you know maybe just me thinking. But I would think that a federal agency whose job is it to manage emergencies would would want to put the Emergency Management number one but again uh this is caused for a lot of concern. Moving forward and it's it's causing a lot of problems because FEMA people PE people who work for FEMA well let's just say a hammer don't fit their hand too well so again is one of those problems where we've got Federal bureaucracy of the highest degree involved in an agency where bureaucracy is not really needed and you see this because a lot of Emergency Management agencies for the first time that I have seen are putting out misinformation articles and doing rumor control why would you need to do that if your response is adequate you know or satisfactory in any way so we've got a lot of Emergency Management agencies just go to their Twitter page or their social media pages and you'll find like oh this is misinformation misinformation we're really doing our jobs well you know if you were doing your job would would you really need to spend an awful lot of money to produce counter propaganda videos either way you see how this is kind of snowballing so again I I have lessons learned for this I'm writing right now I will talk about some here in a moment with regards to radio stuff because um I feel like that needs to be talked about sooner rather than later I I don't have time to wait for that uh. But largely we're going to keep an eye on the hurricane Helen thing because it's not just that this recovery will take years it's because this recovery is an allegory for civilization at large I think and we can get a lot of lessons learned from this not just in terms of preparedness. But in terms of society so I think that's very very helpful uh so I will talk a lot more about that uh in due time. Moving on to Florida hurricane Milton bullet dodged that's the general theme uh hurricane Milton instead of uh hitting Tampa headon like it was supposed to it made a last minute uh turn to the South by a few miles which meant that the rotation of the hurricane uh pulled water out of Tampa Bay instead of pushing storm surge into the bay so again probably divine intervention here uh in terms of the catastrophe that was going to happen a lot of people are saying the media was hyping this one up I mean yeah that's the media's job right just to just be propaganda kind of entities. But this was a pretty severe storm but again at the last minute it turned and it lost a lot of strength so it only made uh landfall as a category 3 the eye collapsed and lost a lot of it its strength so you know thank God for that really seriously so again uh people throughout Florida are still largely without power. But for the most part it's like any normal hurricane that would hit Florida so again localized flooding power outages but things are coming back online very quickly uh one of the big problems with the hurricane Milton situation in in many areas the tornadoes uh did a lot more damage than the hurricane itself um so again just something to keep in mind because those storm bands are going to arrive sometimes couple of days before the actual hurricane gets there and and it creates a lot of uh wind shear and and problems like that so so yeah Florida got really lucky with this one because it was looking to not be super great now it doesn't mean that the situation is is all good there's still millions of people without power. But uh for the most part uh it's it's doing okay moving up to Tennessee uh very unique situation very dangerous situation going on right now in Knoxville so a couple of days ago uh at one of the recycling facilities in the industrial sector of U Knoxville they got they got themselves a a steel box that was dropped off to be recycled right you know sold for scrap kind of thing and uh so you know being the workers they want to know what was in the box so they got a got themselves a cutting torch and cut a hole in the box and found out that on the inside were potentially a few dozen sticks of dynamite and a bunch of blasting caps so their cutting torch set the dynamite on fire and uh uh the workers rapidly egressed from the area and the local authorities put a very very large exclusion Zone around this uh place while they got the EOD guys in there to check it out so uh it looks you can see the images from the Drone that the Knoxville PD put out there uh this morning and it does indeed look like a rather serious situation of course this is not an nefarious thing this is not like an explosive device it's it looks quite literally like an old mining box or some kind of something that was used by a blasting company and they forgot they had a box of Dynamite from many many years ago because um these are like older style Dynamite sticks like Wy coyote style kind of thing so very old kind of stuff and when Dynamite's stored for a long time I mean I'm not an explosive expert. But even I know that when Dynamite is stored for a long time in really bad conditions like it's not taken care of you know humidity is kind of a thing it gets really unstable so very dangerous and it's a little bit more unstable when it's on fire so so local authorities said mandatory Evac uations for 3,000 ft around the area so about a kilometer a little bit more than half a mile radius from the whole facility and that's um that's about right so again when you see a very very large exclusion Zone around or or evacuation Zone around a potential explosive threat and it's like in the middle of a city and it's a big Zone uh the threat is pretty substantial uh that's a pretty pretty big situation so uh you can even see from the photos of the EOD guys taking taking care of this problem here um not wearing bomb suits you know there's there's only one thing scarier than seeing a a guy in a bomb suit if seen a bomb Tech walk toward an explosive without wearing a bomb suit because the suit ain't going to help you any um at least you know that's kind of what I've seen in real life so so a few hundred lounds of dynamite will ruin your day fairly effectively um. But this is also in terms of people who may not be in the area you know of course This only affects a small area of Knoxville but for the rest of you out there not impacted by this it's a good lesson that you may uh Hazmat and things like that are found at uh recycling centers all the time um really catastrophic fires break out at recycling facilities all the time especially now that we've got a lot of these electric vehicles out there with these lithium batteries that catch fire very easily some of the older types of lithium batteries so again if you live near a recycling facility or an industrial sector this could be you you know so having uh the ability to get up and go if you need to is very very important now Knoxville did the right thing and they opened up a bunch of shelters uh for people who were displaced by this because it was um the exclusion zone or the evacuation Zone included residential areas so people had to move into shelters for a couple of days so um uh just in case that sucker lit off and put a hole in the world um. But yeah it looks like they're they're rendering it safe now things are things are working but um as of I'm as of when I'm recording this the the evacuation zone is still in place so you know you may have to evacuate from your house for a couple of days because explosives were found somewhere you know very rare thing to prepare for. But it's one of those many things that may cause you to to actually bug out right Hazmat Wildfire flooding weather stuff or explosives um not something that's very typical. But again something to keep in mind when you're doing your risk analysis right moving over to the southwest region very interesting case this week a potential potential terrorist was thwarted in Oklahoma City uh who was essentially an Afghan Refugee uh that we brought here uh from Afghanistan during the Cal crisis surprise surprise not all of these guys one turned out to be an actual terrorist this is why this is why that Cobble crisis was such a big problem because at the time just a little bit of history at the time of that Cobble crisis at the time of the Afghanistan withdrawal you got to understand that in in Afghanistan there were a few different factions that were kind of at war with each other you've got the Taliban which controlled most of the country they controlled most of the country for the entirety of the time we were there. But still uh they control most of the country so Taliban is the biggest faction they now control Afghanistan but at the time they were they were taking over the capital right so the other one of the other main factions at play was Isis huge problem right most people think of the Islamic State in the terms of Iraq and Syria and that's accurate uh because Isis the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that's where the acronym comes from really they are in Iraq and Syria or they were mostly well here's the problem uh I Isis K Isis Coran uh set up shop in eastern Afghanistan up in uh down in Nahar out in the East and also up in kunar up in the north uh northeastern part of the country so the cou crisis is going down and you are an Islamic State militant you've been at war with the Taliban for a couple of years you've gotten your your rear end kicked down in Nahar and up in kunar um so you're you're not doing super well um and you hear the Americans are just putting anybody and everybody on a plane to get out of Afghanistan do you see where we're going with this so the theory at the time proven to be quite accurate is that both Taliban members who would not have had a good position in the coming Taliban government they would get on the plane. But also Islamic State militants who might be executed by the Taliban would get on the plane because their lives are at risk right because the Taliban seiz control of the country Taliban now uh controls Afghanistan Isis very much uh being treated a lot more harshly than when the United States was there so that's the situation we're starting with here in Oklahoma City Nasir Ahmad taidi uh again got on a plane came here with his whole family and immediately started his uh Jihad business so the reason that I wanted to spend a some time talking about this one is not because of the incident itself this is not surprising okay there were a lot of problems uh at the Afghan resettlement refugee camps in El Paso uh when the Afghans ended up here um they ended up they were assaulting soldiers they were causing all kinds of problems because shocker uh Afghan culture does not blend with American culture very well uh and it turns out that the people who would be motivated to leave Afghanistan were the people who might have had business ventures that got shut down okay by the Taliban and also criminals that the that the Taliban said were criminals so like Isis right government officials corrupt government officials as well so again none of this is surprising what is surprising is how the FBI handled this this is very very intriguing uh what is surprising is his unsealed indictment which I very strongly recommend all of you read if you are so inclined I will put the link of course in the description and in uh the sources page here. But one of the main things that that kind of caught my eye is this guy is apparently The Village Idiot this guy exhibited every single possible indicator in every government manual that says that he's going to be a terrorist he pledged allegiance to Isis he was communicating on telegram with uh Isis recruiters he he was doing things on social media like I I think it was Snapchat or some other kind of social maybe Instagram I don't know uh he was talking on social media about Jihad of being a martyr um he was looking up things online that obviously will get you flagged right so this dude was doing everything wrong he donated money to like an Islamic State charity like he did every possible thing to show that he's not hiding his support for Isis and here's the interesting part only then only after this guy exhibited every single indicator in the book did the FBI choose to go after this guy and how did they do it how did they do it that's the interesting part they befriended this guy uh because he wanted to start a a gun business right and we all know how that works apparently owning guns in the United States of America is a more egregious crime than terrorism so that's what got him probably flagged the most um. And so what did the FBI do they tried to befriend him and they essentially entrapped him into buying weapons at a gun range uh so that he could commit a mass shooting that's the whole like gist of the story now I have a lot of questions and I am definitely no attorney right. But it's interesting to me that the FBI went after this guy and tried to get him and got him to buy guns for a terrorist attack when the only part that was illegal about that was the reason behind it so why did they do this they could have arrested him for donating money to Isis people have been thrown in jail for that okay so they could have got him on that alone they could have made a conviction stick easily just with that they could have made a conviction stick easily with him he even had his Jihadi picture taken you know with the Islamic flag and all that kind of stuff so why go after him using something which is legal it private gun sales are legal in Oklahoma so they're trying to get him to buy a gun from somebody in Oklahoma and the only part that's illegal about it is what he was trying to do with the guns isn't that interesting isn't that a little bit interesting how the FBI wanted to make a conviction stick. But they did it in such a way if I was his defense attorney my argument would be well your honor they unrapped him also how did they know that he was going to commit a crime with these you know with these guns gun private gun sales are legal so the FBI made it easy for this guy to have a criminal defense fairly easily maybe I'm missing something maybe I'm just stupid I don't know. But it seems to me like out of all the evidence they had stacked up against this guy but what did they do they went after him using the only tool they know how to use entrapment using something that's legal right like what is going on here I guess the FBI is in the stage where if all they have is a hammer that every problem is a nail the FBI only knows how to ENT trp people using legal means so they convinced him to do something that's legal the only part about the whole Arrangement is that he told the undercover agent uh this is what I'm using the guns for. But if you read his indictment there like every detail of it he want private gun sales are legal okay the guns themselves at least according to the indictment were not illegal they were like legal variants of the guns is is I mean that's an unknown. But I figured if they would mention that if he was trying to buy illegal guns it sounds to me like the FBI entrapped the guy using something that's legal the only thing again that was illegal that is illegal in every gun store in America is buying a gun for you know terrorist purposes that's why you fill out the gun form right you go to any gun store and the gun owner and and the gun store owner says oh hey I see you'd like to buy this rifle what you what you're trying to use it for you're trying to go hunting with it and you and the answer is no I'm going to conduct Jihad well the gun store owner is not going to sell you that gun right and they're going to report you like that's that's basic basic stuff here so I find it very interesting that out of all the little tricks in the FBI toolbox they had to go with the method that does two things one it makes it the most likely that this guy will actually get off the hook okay for one and two it it further chips away at what private gun sales that's what it does it further chips away at that and tacitly implies that he was doing that he was committing a crime by purchasing the guns no the the gun purchase according to the indictment I mean maybe I'm reading it wrong. But the gun purchase was the legal part of this whole Arrangement it the only part that was illegal was his intent which he expressed right so of course they're going to throw him in jail. But they had to go through the effort of entrapping this guy a legit terrorist wannabe at least and they did it using something that's legal again maybe I'm missing something. But I think there's more to it than than than what the story is and I think this is a very important thing to consider I mean I don't know maybe I'm just again maybe I'm missing something. But it sounds to me like it's pretty interesting and you know this guy was an idiot like you know that something's going on either this guy was a like one of the biggest idiots on the planet or there's something else going on because in his indictment in the post arrest interview taidi stated that he wanted to send his family back to Afghanistan so they could live in a place where pure Islam can flourish okay here's the problem with that for anybody who spent 5 Seconds in Afghanistan this guy pledged allegiance to Isis okay if he were to send his family back to Afghanistan okay after he committed a terrorist attack in isis's name his family would have been executed by the Taliban the very minute they landed in cabal they wouldn't have even made it off the tarmac like that's the level of of hatred the Taliban has for Isis and I wonder I wonder if the FBI just wants us to kind of gloss over that because you wouldn't know that you would think if you didn't know that Isis was at war with the Taliban you might not think anything of it. But if you do know that Isis K and the Taliban they do no no get along right you might question this because it doesn't make it why would he send his family why not send them to Syria or Iraq where Isis well granted their presence there is kind of diminished too. But Isis has really like not had that much uh presence in Afghanistan like there war still going on but you can't fly into Afghanistan without going through Taliban Customs you know without going through getting checked by the taliban's uh intelligence Services yes the Taliban has an intelligence uh agency uh quite a few actually and not to mention Pakistan's isi is standing right beside them too so the very minute that a passport gets scanned you know in Cobble they're they're getting wrapped up right because they know like wait a minute hey you just committed a terror attack in America we know you your family's name has been leaked to the Press I don't know maybe I'm reading more more into it than than is intended I don't know. But it it sure just doesn't add up this whole incident doesn't add up because yeah sure this guy is definitely a terrorist I mean that's I mean that's easy right arrest him you know whatever clearly a terrorist. But he did everything so ridiculously comically bad that you have to wonder why did they go after this guy using the way using the vectors that they did I don't know I thought it was strange so again I thought I would mention it. But yeah weird stuff going on very weird stuff going on so that's pretty much all I have uh for today uh I do want to talk briefly uh using the ghost net kind of as a way to talk about it uh some of the problems that we've been having uh in Western North Carolina and sometimes down in Florida as well with regards to the storm recovery uh I am working on a dedicated video several dedicated videos right now on some of the lessons learned from Helen uh and some of the uh everything from gear to mentality to Doctrine all kinds of stuff I'm working on it so just give me some time on that. But I did want to briefly mention some of these problems that we've been having or that I have observed myself I'm compiling evidence I am I'm documenting all of this and I would urge everyone uh out there to document this as well because when I I had my little you know mini rant about ham radio stuff last week I was inundated with hundreds of messages of people saying yeah I have the same experience here's what I here's what I have happened to me kind of thing um and I wanted to kind of go over some of those today for the ghost net stuff. Though this week was a wash so let me start with that uh just right to start with uh this week Thursday uh Thursday night occurred right at the very moment that um the solar weather was not doing so good so you look up and you see Aurora in the sky you know the Northern Lights you're probably not going to get very good HF uh transmission and that's exactly what happened so what does this tell us this tells us that HF radio high frequency radio shortwave radio is not an end all Beall okay you might have a a disaster occur at the peak of the solar cycle which is what we're at now right and you've got really strange solar weather occurring you know we've got the Earth's magnetic field shifting kind of thing going on as well and more of the long term. But you know the solar weather really kind of prohibits in some cases prohibits HF radio transmission so for me I hop on JSA call at the time window and or shortly before it and I basically get like two heartbeats from people that are very very close to me and I hear nothing else it's just complete static again because the ionosphere is doing some tricky space weather stuff up there and it's hard to get messages across right so the space weather drowns it out you can't get messages across you can try js8 call in particular is a lot more resilient than you might want to imagine it to be. But it's still hard to do so again what does this tell us it tells us that HF isn't the only solution and during times of increased uh space weather HF radio is going to generally be affected uh the most now there are ways around it there are other bands you can choose to mitigate this a little bit better and some bands open wide open right so again maybe this is the argument for Al a little bit you know automatic link establishment. But again advanced stuff we'll get into uh in due time for now let's switch gears and talk about some of the problems that that I have seen with regards to Hurricane Helen recovery I again I want to mention them now uh in the interest of saving some time um because this might this might matter to people on the ground right now so so right to start with I just want to say that a lot of hams are doing very good work okay and I really do appreciate the guys that are running networks and they're trying to do the best they can um. But some some behavior is getting worse okay as the disaster goes on you know a cheerful happy to help Ham on day one might not be the same cheerful and happy ham on day six or seven and that's kind of where we're at so one of the problems that kind of keeps coming up is Ham's getting all upset that the repeater is actually getting used so I I don't know why okay I would assume that hams would be happy that their equipment is being used. But they they're not uh in many cases some cases it's not so bad but in a lot of cases some of the smaller repeaters that aren't like part of the formalized emergency net they're all upset a lot of hams are upset that their repeaters is getting used you're using it too much well who says I do okay well all right there you go um sort of along the same lines are our hams refusing to to change or um shift around their um localized uh Communications Nets to help uh First Responders on the ground so there's this General is kind of a an aside there's this General theme throughout radio and and I'm sorry I didn't articulate this very well last week I was just too angry um there's this General thing and ham right down I think a lot of hams are going to jump into this thinking okay so emergency use is okay you know LIF limb property that's okay fine the hams that say that emergency use is not okay they're in the wrong and that's the rule okay they can be right you know it is it FCC has regulation there's a very big regulation that says you can use ham radio in an emergency without a call sign here's the problem. Though that definition of emergency is not good enough it is not good enough for this instance so you've got people who are you know say for instance they need to say hey Bob I need you to bring a chainsaw I'm stuck in my driveway I can't get out uh can you bring a chainsaw to come help me and they're unlicensed well hams would say rightly or wrongly hams would probably say that's not an emergency it's not a life-threatening emergency you know again I'm going to touch on this in a more deliberate video. But for now you know um the Ham's uh definition of emergency lifel property that's not good enough okay because you've got chainsaw teams on the ground you've got people running Logistics they need to use the freaking radio and hams are not letting them or they're giving them a hard time because it's not an immediate life or death oh my gosh I'm going to die unless I use the radio you know right now kind of situation so one of the things that's kind of come up with this is Nets so you've got people who are moving into a neighborhood they're trying to clear debris they need to talk with each other to coordinate things they need to get equipment that they need to communicate and they need to use a repeater for something more important than a weekly net where the the hams do nothing. But talk about their health problems and the types of radios that they're that they're talking about everyone has heard of this in ham radio it is the majority by far most ham radio Nets on a repeater or something like that there are weather reports that you could have gotten from anywhere else like the National Weather Service they are talking about chronic health conditions that have nothing to do with any sort of life saving whatsoever or three they are just talking about the radios that they're calling into the net on as well like that's what most ham Nets are and I have seen quite a few ham ham radio Nets not move off of their time slot and repeater because we've done it this way for 30 years and we're not moving for nobody you know bro you're you're you're H you're you're holding up the people who are trying to cut you out of your own Street you know you know with with chainsaws and stuff like that so this has become a problem again I'll talk more about it in a more deliberate video another problem is hams not understanding that their way is not the only way so I've seen quite a few problems with hams um with tactical call signs being used like you know Bravo 23 or something like that or you know Valkyrie 57 or something like that you know somebody you a rescue team using their emergency responding agency's call sign stuff like a search and rescue team they're not going a search and rescue team is not going to use their hand radio call sign they're going to use their agency's call sign and hams get upset about that because apparently with hams the FCC is the only Federal agency that exists okay so that is something that has become a huge problem uh Ham's also not allowing pseudonyms over the radio so again hams get really really really upset for people who don't want to put their entire social security number full birth name and birth certificate driver license number all this pii over the radio hams get really upset when people don't want to do that so again problems uh I have heard I've heard reports of hams deliberately saying call signs only over the repeater or um over the airwaves basically as a quasi legal way of discouraging emergency traffic we don't want your unlicensed traffic here um. But they can't can't say that so they're kind of they're kind of circumventing the fcc's rules themselves right it's okay when hams do it but you know there you go so again saying call signs only on a repeater or something like that that is IM that is meant to discourage unlicensed use um and I've seen that quite a lot uh cutting emergency traffic short uh hams saying that your emergency is over like I pointed out last week your emergency is over it's gone on for too long um so we're just going to say this is not an emergency anymore that's been a problem uh and emergency responders having to justify their presence on the radio to the hams U that has become a problem as well uh because news flash for anybody out there not every search and rescue team not every Police Department okay well maybe every police department. But most people who are volunteering do not have access to $10,000 Motorola p25 radios they have to use what they can get and I am literally seeing you know people using cheap battel fangs as part of very large organizations even like official government organizations they're using cheaper analog radios because that's what they they need stuff to work now we cannot you know delay so you know when you're doing that you have to you know have to kind of plate the HS to some degree and it's causing problems because CU you don't want a first responder who's literally got a like you know a uniform and working for a professional Aid agency or a subcontractor or something underneath the umbrella of an authority you know you don't want them having to justify their presence on the radio that's ridiculous that's why the whole commercial World exists to get away from hams to get away from the ham world so that people can just work do important stuff and leave the hams to kind of their own devices so again this crisis has done two things for the ham ready Community it has shown the people who are willing to put in the work when the chips are down so it has it has separated the wheat from the chaff it really has it has shown the people who are willing to do good work uh and use their skills for good fantastic. But it's also shown us the chaff now hasn't it it has shown us um the bad side of ham radio and it has caused a lot of problems that that that have been very Illuminating uh to people who might not have known the ham radio world is about I can tell you right now I'm kind of sick of it um and I'm sure many others are as well uh which is why people are willing to go with a very very expensive commercial option just to stay away from the hams you know it hasn't really been that much of a problem before. But at this scale and also you got to remember this this crisis is largely volunteer okay so you know for all the hams out there saying well why don't the federal or or the agencies use their use their commercial radios because they're not responding that's why you know that's why we're having to use hand radios because there people like me out there you know trying to just do the best you can there's really what what response you know so again a lot of problems um I'm going to go into it in a little bit more depth a little bit more articulately and I'm going to show some ways around some of this stuff because I think that right now for the most part in some areas I can't even say for the most part Ham's doing good like I can't I'm not that confident I can say some areas yeah ham is doing more good than bad. But in some areas ham is the hams are doing more bad than good uh in some areas okay so we need to prepare for this now there are um more malign actors in the field of ham radio than I think people understood uh there to be before this crisis at scale so now we have to really start deliberately planning for hams to cause US problems uh when a disaster strikes now I know a lot of people are going to say out there just like screw them right and just kind of ignore them okay you can do that that's fairly easy to do when you're just a small team right. But if you're an organization let me tell you something the airwaves I mean hams can jam you up you know I I saw last week you know after you know I said what I said about HF radio I saw jamming on the ghostnet um and for those of you who don't know what jamming looks like this is what it looks like now I haven't talked about it cuz I don't know if it was deliberate jamming or not um some people said it was solar weather because I've got a lot of people saying hey I heard this too it could be I will say it could have been the solar weather. However it stopped and started for me so this is what jamming looks like on js8 call and I don't know if it's I would assume that it's probably military some kind of Over the Horizon radar or something um. But I thought it was pretty interesting and it's a very good reminder that um not everyone with a radio um is a good guy right and you may have to use something that is a little bit more expensive when the chips are down and you do not have time to mess around with somebody who thinks they own the airwaves okay so again when lives are at risk you know you've really got to make some tough calls um now we don't want to go all willy-nilly and just try to make problems for ourselves we don't we don't want to try to be antagonistic like that that's not the whole goal here the whole goal is to save lives and do good and if people are getting in the way of that we need to find out ways of circumventing that so I'm going to talk about that at Great length in due time so here are the sources for today that is pretty much all I have uh again very busy week I've got a lot of stuff coming up this next week that I'm I'm trying to work on and get through again time is very short uh time is very short Tor as we're coming into this election season so I had planned to do several election Readiness videos I might only do just one now uh in terms of last minute preparedness this this hurricane kind of threw me off it's kind of put me back a couple weeks uh in typical fashion. But uh either way I'll work through it um I'll get back on a schedule here pretty soon and uh we'll see what next week brings so thank you guys all for watching thank you again for all of your support I really do mean it and we will. See you next time so as as always fight in the shade.