The NWS Duties Act of 2005 (S. 786) - IMPORTANT

[dhweather]

Everyone needs to take note of this and write your respective legislator.
I've included a writeup provided to me by ham radio friends at SkyWarn
and the letter I wrote to my senator, Trent Lott.

If you would like to cut and pase my letter and send it to your respective
legislator, then please feel free to do so. This bill needs to die.
It will kill great innovations by folks, such as what grlevelx does with
radar or new innovations by NOAA, such as RSS feeds.

------------

Lately there has a lot of grassroots banter about Senator Rick
Santorum's bill, the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005
(S.786). I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

What would this legislation really do? First of all, this bill is vague
except on two points: creating and protecting a few major private
franchises and preventing the NWS from favoring one customer over
another. However, the language of this bill is so broad that the NWS,
the Hurricane Watch Net and SkyWarn COULD conceivably be
prevented from reading any "predictive" warnings or bulletins over the air. Although
there is an exemption for information regarding information designed to
protect life and property and comply with international aviation
accords, this bill is so broad it could prevent hurricane and tornado
forecasts from being broadcast for free. The end result of such badly
written, vague and broad legislation is usually arguments and
lawsuits.

Essentially, this bill is designed to prevent the NWS from providing
free daily forecast information and competing with AccuWeather and the
Weather Channel. Yes, as a taxpayer, you'll pay for your information
twice and the NWS wouldbecome an active player only in certain
circumstances. The NWS websites would go back to "pre-internet" days
(or dark altogether). The NOAA Office of Legislative Affairs has been
silent regarding this legislation, but Ed Johnson, NWS Director of
Strategic Planning and Policy, stated the problem this way: "you don't
plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is." If you've
ever used your weather radio or the NWS office website when there
WASN'T athunderstorm or tornado warning--that's what the bill really
seeks to silence.

What prompted all of this? In December 2004, NOAA, the parent agency of
the NWS, formally repealed its 1991 noncompetition policy and
implemented a new policy that promises to give "due consideration" to
the abilities of the private sector. This created a threat in the
private sector's view--after all didn't you notice the difference? This
past summer, the NWS established a free data stream in XML and
XML-based RSS format with hourly METAR observations through the
National Digital Forecast Database SOAP server. In spite of its ominous
technical description, this was a powerful experimental product offered
for free. Since then various services including the Storm Prediction
Center have added RSS feeds for watches and mesoscale discussions. The
private sector's response via Sen. Santorum has been a "cannon to kill
a mosquito." In his opinion, the NWS cannot be trusted any longer to
provide the public with information and the NWS shouldn't duplicate any
services provided by the private sector. In the words of Barry Myers,
VP of AccuWeather, this issue has been brewing for ten years.

"We don't want any special treatment," Myers said. "What private
weather companies want," he said, "is for the NWS to continue to
provide free public weather information -- as it has always done -- but
to curb efforts to provide specialized data and forecasts that are the
bread and butter of the private weather industry."

Quite a jump from here to the "end of SkyWarn," right? Still, the bill
is disturbing for other reasons unrelated to SkyWarn. This bill would
restrict the free flow of information and market innovations and
protect the interests of "infopreneurs" that have already profited from
the NWS's other overriding policy of "timely and public" information.
Want to know the seven-day forecast?
Want to know what the temperature is right now?
Are you using the NWS data stream? Under this bill, the NWS couldn't
give it to you--go to WeatherChannel. Most disturbing, SkyWarn-type
information COULD be restricted to only this private enterprise
consortium, massively curtailing or ending the
Amateur Radio Service portion of the SkyWarn program. Also, pilots
could find themselves without free or low-cost NWS-FAA weather
products.

I cannot support this legislation in its present form. I DETEST THE
LEGISLATIVE CREATION OF ANY EXCLUSIVE CLOSELY-HELD PRIVATE
FRANCHISE BASED ENTIRELY UPON PREVIOUSLY-FREE AND PUBLIC
ACCESS TO TAXPAYER-FUNDED PROGRAMS AND INFORMATION--LET
THE COMPETITIVE FREE MARKET DECIDE IF YOU ARE TRULY BEST
PRODUCT. I would urge anyone to consider this issue carefully before
offering any support. Currently the bill has been assigned to Senate
Commerce Committee.

The Committee members include:
Ted Stevens - Alaska
John McCain - Arizona
Conrad Burns - Montana
Trent Lott - Mississippi
Kay Bailey Hutchison - Texas
Olympia Snowe - Maine
Gordon Smith - Oregon
John Ensign - Nevada
George Allen - Virginia
John Sununu - New Hampshire
Jim DeMint - South Carolina
David Vitter - Louisiana
Daniel K. Inouye - Hawaii
John D. Rockefeller IV - West Virginia
John F. Kerry - Massachussetts
Byron L. Dorgan - North Dakota
Barbara Boxer - California
Bill Nelson - Florida
Maria Cantwell - Washington
Frank Lautenberg - New Jersey
E. Benjamin Nelson - Nebraska
Mark Pryor - Arkansas

There are plenty of sites offering the full text of the legislation and
commentary. The current NWS policy is located here:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/partnershippolicy/

===========================================

Below is my letter to Senator Lott regarding this bill

===========================================





Senator Lott -

I am writing to voice my opposition to the National Weather Service
Duties Act of 2005 (S.786). This bill would ban the National Weather
Service (NWS) from "competing" with private entities by restricting its
ability to communicate with the public. S.786 would make it unlawful for
the agency to publish user-friendly weather data on its website because it
might draw people away from the offerings of companies like AccuWeather or
The Weather Channel. S.786 would also bar NWS experts from granting one-on-one
interviews with press organizations to offer analysis of weather data.



Ultimately, the National Weather Service is funded by the taxpayers
of the United States. The service provided by the NWS is broad-spectrum
for Americans, often providing life or death information. The NWS
is not a crtuch to be used to support private industry. The recent
innovation by the NWS to distribute its products via the internet
has proven to be extremely popular, and certainly makes taxpayers
feel they are actually getting a valuable service for their tax dollars.

As an amateur radio operator and a volunteer member of NWS SkyWarn
weather spotter program, it is vitally important that we can operate
these networks with unrestricted access to the NWS weather products
including predictions, statements and current digital images. Private
companies simply do not provide the level of service essential to our
mission. Without the NWS data available on the internet, lives WILL be
lost because the tools that we need to help provide good reporting to the
NWS will not be there.

I believe this vague and overly broad bill should be killed.
A valuable public service should not be dismantled simply to
ensure that companies like AccuWeather make more money repackaging
and reselling weather data to taxpayers, especially when we are the ones
who funded its creation. Also, such a change in policy could severely
restrict or end the participation of the Amateur Radio Service in the
SkyWarn spotter program. As a lifelong constituent and supporter of
yours, I hope you will join me in opposing the National Weather Service
Duties Act of 2005. Thank you for your time.

[dhweather]

bump

[Brett Adair]

I say screw the Bill. My congressman is already hearing about it. All chasers and weather enthusiasts alike should have a rally reguarding this.

[dhweather]

Indeed! Thank you for contacting your congressman hear about it
and spread the word!!!!

[mitchell]

Rick Santorum is an idiot. If he sponsored it, it stinks.

[dhweather]

therefore, it stinks!

Let your representatives know you want this bill KILLED!
KILL BILL!!!! wait, that's a movie. ha ha ha

[HurricaneBill]

KILL BILL!!!!

NO!!!!!!

[dhweather]

Bump, but we won't kill our bill