U.S. astronauts are already blasting off to the International Space Station on Russian rockets. But now the Federal Communications Commission is weighing a plan to use Moscow-based satellites to route America's 911 emergency phone calls. Congressional Republicans, already skittish about trusting the Vladimir Putin regime as it airs its expansionist desires through Europe, fear the Russian leader would gain access to real-time information about emergency responders in every corner of the United States. That data, piped through Russia's GLONASS precision navigation and timing satellite system, already allows police, fire and rescue crews to pinpoint cellphone callers' locations. National security alarms are going off, and they're as loud as fire bells.
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Russia's own GPS system covers more ground than US satellites, so wireless phone companies want to leverage it to help locate 911 callers
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Rep. Mike Rogers, an Alabama Republican, is furious and says the move could give signals intelligence to an antagonistic Russian Federation
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'GLONASS' is a Russian satellite network that has been able to see the whole planet since 1995
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Part of its software crashed for a half-day last April, generating navigation signals that were off by as much as 50 kilometers
Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers is warning the FCC that it shouldn't let cellphone companies route 911 calls through satellites under the control of the @placeholder