Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5918, the Emergency Reporting Act, which was introduced by Representatives Matsui, Eshoo, Thompson, and Huffman. Today's legislation will allow 911 centers across the country to have access to confidential information on potential 911 outages, subject to appropriate safeguards. In times of disaster, 911 public safety answering points do not always know that 911 calls may not be going through. The FCC currently collects information on the status of communications infrastructure and communications network outage information. They make that information available to the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate overall emergency response efforts within a State between State and local first responders. Given the sensitive nature of this data to both national security and commercial competitiveness, this information is confidential. However, as first responders work to ensure the 911 system can seamlessly get back online and route calls to neighboring call centers, access to this confidential information is important. This bill would help make timely outage information available to help first responders on the ground restore service as quickly as possible.…”