Cellphones Get Government Chips For Disaster Alert

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said the Commercial Mobile Alert System that Congress approved in 2006 will direct messages to cellphones in case of a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or other serious emergency. There will be at least three levels of messages, ranging from a critical national alert from the president to warnings about impending or occurring national disasters to alerts about missing or abducted children. The alert would show up on the phone's front screen, instead of the traditional text message inbox, and arrive with a distinct ring and probably a vibration. People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts."

Comments

No Texting While Driving!

[billstewart]

Yes, Officer, I was just reading this text while I was driving because it might have been from the PRESIDENT!

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[billstewart]

More seriously, it's kind of annoying that the system for telling you to turn around and run away because of tornadoes or nuclear explosions or big car accidents or whatever requires you to read texts while driving. (I can't do that - I need to wear my reading glasses to read texts, and need to not wear them to be able to drive.) I hope they'll also use the Emergency Broadcast System if they're playing games with texts. And it's annoying that you can turn off local emergency alerts (which you might actually need to receive), but can't turn off texts from the President (which are either about Nuclear War, in which case a text message is rather too late, or else they're political spam.)

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[haystor]

The presidential ones could also be about NY, California or DC.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[OrangeTide]

natural selection will solve the reading glasses while driving problem.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot a terrorist announcement asking us all to revolt.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[martin-boundary]

(which are either about Nuclear War, in which case a text message is rather too late, or else they're political spam.)

I thought CAN-SPAM specifically exempts political messages as being spam? Wait a minute...

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[rainmouse]

The presidential ones could also be about NY, California or DC.

Or from a different source altogether. I bet hackers are already desperate to break into this system and issue world wide zombie apocalypse warnings!

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Tacvek]

There is no Emergency Broadcast System, and there has not been one for a long time. It was replaced with the similar Emergency Alert System (EAS) starting back in 1997. The EAS, and the CMAS discussed in the article are both part of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) system that is bing put into place.

After a quick glance it appears the new system allows a single digital message with textual payload to trigger one or all of the EAS[1], the CMAS, and also the NOAA weather radio's alert system[2][3]. This new system should be capable of

[1] Which presumably will deliver the payload via TTS (Text-to-speech).
[2] This already uses TTS.
[3] Although if the EAS was triggered, the stations might use that instead.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[shutdown -p now]

can't turn off texts from the President (which are either about Nuclear War, in which case a text message is rather too late, or else they're political spam.)

It could be just a declaration of war, not necessarily a nuclear one. Or country-wide state of emergency. Many reasons.

And I wouldn't worry about political spam. The first administration that abuses it for that purpose will be thrown out of office in no time at all.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Seng]

I'm going to be pissed when I'm doing something important for work on my phone, when it's suddenly hijacked for 45 seconds while a shrill tone plays, then tells me it was only a test.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[afidel]

This is a good thing! As the Minot Train Derailment showed the current EAS system with the need for live operators (and them doing the right thing) is the weak link in the system.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[kmoser]

And I wouldn't worry about political spam. The first administration that abuses it for that purpose will be thrown out of office in no time at all.

Right. Because even far more egregious abuses of power, such as unconstitutional, warrantless search and seizure, have always resulted in the current ruling party being thrown out in a timely fashion.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[shutdown -p now]

People tend to be lazy and clueless. Warrantless search & seizure is not so routine that every single American is affected by it directly, and in many cases those affected don't even know that. Many don't really care about the Constitution either, or don't understand it to realize that it's being violated.

Unblockable political spam that everyone gets, on the other hand, is very easy to understand as "bad". Don't worry about that.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[houghi]

They are not hackers, they are marketeers.
Also people are confused if you send them messages in a form they are not used to. People tend to get the sms (as that is what it is) to be a line and need to open it. If you send it already open, then people tend to ignore it or are at least very confused.

I tried it with software several years ago with my Nokia. Very easy to do, but when asked why they did not call me or send me a message back, the answer was that they thought something went wrong as the message did not arrive as intended, but directly on their screen.

Als, going on about the war on terrorism, as it is so easy to do yourself, a terrorist could easily do the same to create a panic. Send as much messages to as many people in the area's for the Superbowl during the event telling there is a bomb and they must leave as soon as possible.

See people kill each other by trampling. I am sure others can come up with other ideas.

So download the software and start pranking your friends and see how they react.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[ThatsNotPudding]

Or 'Dirty Bomb!!' during an Ohio State - Michigan football game (~100k population).

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Mikkeles]

I just want a Presidential Fart App!

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Golddess]

There is no Emergency Broadcast System, and there has not been one for a long time. It was replaced [...] back in 1997.

Congratulations on making me feel old. Now get off my lawn.

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[gnapster]

Hands down, the most insightful comment in the thread so far. Where did that (-1,flamebait) come from?

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Agent0013]

Unblockable political spam that everyone gets, on the other hand, is very easy to understand as "bad". Don't worry about that.

You mean like the political phone calls I get on me cell phone that aren't stopped by signing up on the "Do Not Call" list? Yeah, I have heard a lot of people really upset about that!!! NOT!

Re:No Texting While Driving!

[Amouth]

Unblockable political spam that everyone gets, on the other hand, is very easy to understand as "bad". Don't worry about that.

so is that your answer on why they left political campaigns in the exclusion part of the do not call list?

Good

[Haven]

Now I know exactly how I am going to find out about the world coming to an end.

Re:Good

[shutdown -p now]

I knew it all along.

From Slashdot, obviously.

Not long now...

[Narkov]

Not long now until they place that chip in your head.

In other news...tin foil sales have gone through the roof.

WTFBBQ

[Rockoon]

The last thing you read will be "U R WTFBBQ!!!"

What the?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Can't we OPT IN for ANY of the above instead?

Sheesh. I want my cellphone to be a Phone. not an internet device, not a tracker, not a web platform, not an MP3 player, Not a camera, not an OMGODZERS ALERT ALERT ALERT!!!!!! - Just a phone. that's it, that's all.

I do not to be properly alerted when I'm out riding my motorcycle in backwater, USA .

Re:What the?

[jpapon]

Like you, I yearn for the days of yore. Back when men were men, books were made out of paper, and people died from disasters the old fashioned way... surprised.

Re:What the?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Ahh, so it's the men who aren't quite men wanting these alerts.

I didn't ask, so you shouldn't of told. :)

Re:What the?

[whathappenedtomonday]

Relax! Didn't you notice, this time they actually did think of the children!

Granted, not all of them, only the abducted ones, but it's a start, so it must be a good thing.

Re:What the?

[MoonBuggy]

So buy a basic phone, opt out from the alert messages, and you're done. Sure, it sounds a bit unnecessary, but it does no harm if unused and is potentially helpful if it is used - that's better than can be said for a lot of things your taxes are funding. If the 'presidential warning' system gets overused (and I'd estimate more than once every decade is overuse) then you've got a legitimate complaint. Emergency warnings seem to be one of the few areas that the government don't have a history of screwing up, so I'll grudgingly give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Re:What the?

[TubeSteak]

Sure, it sounds a bit unnecessary, but it does no harm if unused and is potentially helpful if it is used

Unless we have the blueprint of the chip and a copy of the sourcode it is running, you don't really know what harm it might do.

Call me paranoid, but after the warrantless wireless scandal, I'm not at all inclined to trust the government when it comes to our communications network.

Re:What the?

[mysidia]

Emergency warnings seem to be one of the few areas that the government don't have a history of screwing up, so I'll grudgingly give them the benefit of the doubt here.

I disagree. The government has failed to give warnings when they should, or as soon as they should.

A fear pervades bureaucrat offices of 'causing a panic'. Oftentimes the warnings are too little too late.

For example... after Usama's death... it took, what, a week before a presidential alert was issued?

Take Katrina... there was no "emergency alert" activation, until mandatory evacuation orders were already being issued. When they could have alerted people much sooner without any fear of a false positive.

Re:What the?

[MoonBuggy]

I'd say mistrust of the government is quite reasonable given their track record! Oddly, the FCC page doesn't mention any chip - it talks about carriers sending out the messages, in which case I don't see why they wouldn't be received by the normal radio in the phone, and simply tagged in such a way that the firmware would display them differently to normal messages. The Boston Globe seems pretty distinct about the fact that it's done in a combination of hardware and software, but I can't possibly work out why; maybe they didn't check their facts, maybe I've missed something, maybe there is something nefarious going on. Any one of the three is plausible, I would think.

Re:What the?

[praxis]

Depends on if you include testing the system a "use". Annoying on the radio...super annoying on a phone.

Re:What the?

[dougmc]

For example... after Usama's death... it took, what, a week before a presidential alert was issued?

Um, what?

Are you referring to Usama/Osama Bin Laden? According to wikipedia the operation to kill him started at 20:00, May 1 UTC (that's when they breached the walls, anyways) and Obama addressed the US at May 2, 2011, 3:35 UTC -- 7.5 hours later, not a week.

And really, that should not be the sort of thing that gets an "alert" sent out at all for anyways. It's news, yes, but we don't need to spam every American with that news.

Re:What the?

[HungryHobo]

a specific government chip would be pointless: your carrier can already probably tell your phone to do whatever they want and they track you constantly and the government can tell your carrier what to do.

They don't need a chip to track you or listen in to your calls since they can already do that.

Re:What the?

[demonlapin]

When they could have alerted people much sooner without any fear of a false positive.

Wrong. False positives happen a lot with hurricanes, because we don't know where they're going to hit until just before landfall. Remember Rita, later that year? People were told to leave about 72 hours prior to landfall, resulting in an enormous traffic jam as the city came to a standstill. Had Rita stayed on course to hit Houston, the dangers of the evacuation would have been considered worth it - but since she didn't, a lot of people started pointing fingers of blame at the officials for not having a perfectly conceived plan to evacuate over 3 million people.

Even on the morning before Katrina hit, the impact point was uncertain - and, as it turned out, New Orleans was actually spared the full brunt of the hurricane (which primarily hit Mississippi). NO was done in by the levee collapses after the storm started dying down.

Re:What the?

[filthpickle]

This is what it did to me on TV the other day....I have a huge buffer built up in the Celtics Heat game. I wasn't recording it, just pausing it when I went to the kitchen, or to do laundry, or when someone calls. In the middle it does the storm alert, and poof...no more buffer. I missed most of the second half.

Not saying it shouldn't exist, just that it really pissed me off that night. I know, all I had to do was hit record and it would have kept everything.

Re:What the?

[PsychoSlashDot]

He shouldn't've ("should not have" or "shouldn't have") told.

I've used compound contractions like that decades now. My favorite is... it'sn't for "it is not". They're fun in sentences. "If he spends his money today, he won't've enough left to pay the bills later." Couldn't've, shouldn't've, wouldn't've... those are just the simple ones everyone uses, even if they won't admit it. It takes a real pioneer to use doesn't've.

I assure the audience, I'm'n't kidding.

Re:What the?

[AK Marc]

I'd see a separate vector against iconoclasts. Imagine if jailbreaking your phone was a federal felony because it could be used to block the required messages. Who needs to persecute some jailbreak groups if you can get the government to bust them for you and put them in jail, in addition to ordering the reparations you wanted.

Re:What the?

[Bacon Bits]

Call me paranoid, but after the warrantless wireless scandal, I'm not at all inclined to trust the government when it comes to our communications network.

You're paranoid, and this is pure FUD.

I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying wait until you have some evidence or you'll have the credibility of Glen Beck or Nancy Grace.

Re:What the?

[aztracker1]

I have to agree, it's like we're all sheeple with ADD, distraxted at the drop of a ... "Ooooh, 'Angry Birds."

Re:What the?

[Mogusha]

I would definitely agree with that.

I remember one of my teachers telling us about a project he worked on where they needed to keep track of the people who were working on it. They came onto the bright idea of just giving everyone a cell phone. Simple, as the employees would be happy to have a cool new phone to use, and they could easily keep track of them.

There was, I believe, a service that you could call that would allow you to get GPS like service before GPS became popular. This service was also used by emergency service to determine where you were as well.

Although I could just be off my rocker.

Re:What the?

[devent]

You mean like the trains, the roads, the airplanes, the military, the police, the schools and universities, the hospitals, electricity, social security, health care, houses, firefighters? But you are right, besides that what ever have the government ever done useful with our taxes?

I'm sure that such a warning system would be useful if it's really restricted to real emergencies. I'm sure you would appreciate it if there was a message 24 hours before a major hurricane hits your city.

Re:What the?

[NiteShaed]

Yes and no. The advantage of a dedicated hardware receiver for these messages is that if the cellular system is overwhelmed or data connections are broken, they can still push the message. I'm thinking it'd be a regular receiver (like GPS or FM), that listens for an alert squawk on the emergency frequency, and if it hears one it wakes up completely and starts displaying the messages. Depending on where they broadcast from, this could also get messages to people who are way outside of normal cellular coverage areas. My big question is; how much power would this draw? I tend to shut off most of the radios on my phone when I'm not using them to extend my battery life (no GPS, 4G, FM, and depending where I am 3G, just the regular phone). I'd rather not see battery life get noticeably worse to support a receiver that, in theory, should almost never be needed.

Re:What the?

[MoonBuggy]

You mean like the trains, the roads, the airplanes, the military, the police, the schools and universities, the hospitals, electricity, social security, health care, houses, firefighters? But you are right, besides that what ever have the government ever done useful with our taxes?

I didn't say 'all taxes are wasted', I said that a lot of things that your taxes are funding are unhelpful and/or harmful. Yes, we need police, but I think it's unproductive, hugely wasteful, and damaging to civil liberties the way they currently operate (particularly the 'war on drugs' and massively overused 'anti-terror' legislation). Military funding is through the roof, public funding for hospitals goes towards private industry profits while people are left without care, and the figures say that the education system doesn't come close to that of many other developed countries. It's not all bad, I readily admit, but the existence of services that barely fulfil their remit and/or cost far, far more than they should does not imply that your taxes are being well handled.

Re:What the?

[lytithwyn]

Amen!

Re:What the?

[sabt-pestnu]

People were told to leave about 72 hours prior to landfall, resulting in an enormous traffic jam as the city came to a standstill. Had Rita stayed on course to hit Houston, the dangers of the evacuation would have been considered worth it - but since she didn't, a lot of people started pointing fingers of blame at the officials for not having a perfectly conceived plan to evacuate over 3 million people.

So... did they just "accept the blame and move on", or did they put their backs into studying the events of the evacuation, and revise their emergency plans so as to break the jams? Perhaps even write a paper about "Practical city evacuation, or how not to turn 2,000 miles of city roadways into parking lots, a case study"?

If the politicians failed to spin the "unnecessary evacuation" into a "yeah, you were inconvenienced, but we didn't have people dying in droves, and look how much more we know now!" then they missed a golden opportunity.

Re:What the?

[demonlapin]

Don't live in Houston, so I couldn't tell you what the local follow-up was. Our friends who live in the area are pretty far from the water and on relatively high ground, so they weren't part of the evacuation.

Re:What the?

[Guy Harris]

a specific government chip would be pointless: your carrier can already probably tell your phone to do whatever they want

Including firing up a fart app?

Surprised

[mosb1000]

I'm always a little surprised when I hear about the government doing something it should be doing. The system works!

Re:Surprised

[Bing Tsher E]

I would be, too.

Re:Surprised

[rubycodez]

you're overjoyed the government has implemented the telescreen of 1984 ?

I'm not, the government need to be reduced to an impotent little entity that has little or no effect on the economy, daily life, my security other than marshalling an army if or when we are attacked (a real war, not these "actions" of the past 50 years). How evil and dangerous, this thing and the monster that our federal government has become.

Re:Surprised

[mosb1000]

Such a notification is intended for exactly that purpose. And you're talking to an anarchist, so you don't need to try to convince me that the government's bad news.

Re:Surprised

[GillyGuthrie]

Holy LOL. If the government were impotent, you'd be murdered for the cash in your wallet by the meth addict down the street. Get real, man.

Re:Surprised

[rubycodez]

Real? The federal government of the United States affords me and you no such protection, more local government handles those issues.. In fact, by the trafficking of billions of dollars a year in narcotics for operations for which Congress denies them funding, they are partly responsible for the rampant drug crimes in this country.

Re:Surprised

[DryGrian]

Actually, if the government were impotent, the price of meth would adjust to meet sane market conditions and the meth addict down the street wouldn't need to commit crimes to afford his habit.

for the children....

[gandhi_2]

it is hard to argue against the idea of the "Amber Alert", but everyone should go read up about the false alarms and abuses of the system.

luckily, we are already getting de-sensitized to alerts from our phones.

Re:for the children....

[BiggerIsBetter]

it is hard to argue against the idea of the "Amber Alert", but everyone should go read up about the false alarms and abuses of the system.

luckily, we are already getting de-sensitized to alerts from our phones.

When I hear about an "Amber Alert" I think Fringe Division had the right idea.

Re:for the children....

[AmiMoJo]

If people can't tell paypal.internetbank2342524.com from paypal.com then it seems safe to assume that they won't be able to tell phone messages sent by scammers from those sent by the president.

Specificity

[timeOday]

I wonder what level of geographical specificity is possible? Hopefully this will broadcast to selected towers instead of selected phone numbers.

And hopefully the President is careful with "Reply All".

Re:Specificity

[KhabaLox]

Given that the Chief Executives of most companies can't seem to comprehend BCC, I don't put much faith in the CE of the country.

Re:Specificity

[mrzaph0d]

I would actually hope this wouldn't be the case, or there would be some way to be customizable. people who have family in certain area might want to know when grandma is in the path of a tsu-nucle-ricane-flood, and for when you're travelling, maybe to know that you shouldn't have put down fertilizer because of the torrential rainstorm heading your way.

Re:Specificity

[cbunix23]

I wonder what level of geographical specificity is possible? Hopefully this will broadcast to selected towers instead of selected phone numbers.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by AT&T, VZW, Sprint, and others. I've been involved with this product since day one. Alert areas can be as small as one cell, or it can be the entire United States. Target areas can be based on geocodes (states, counties, some cities, FEMA regions, NWS regions, and some others), polygons, circles. How FEMA and NWS end up using it is an open question, but I get the impression most of the alerts they will generate will go out at the county level. Just like the "tornado sirens" now. This may get refined over time to smaller areas as they gain experience with the system.

Re:Specificity

[currently_awake]

If the system broadcasts your location to the government (via gps satellite) then they can target you specifically with the most relevant advice. If they tap into your phone's microphone then they can listen for breathing to ensure you're not dead in an earthquake. If the chip tracks the direction you are facing then it can save bandwidth by not sending alerts to the people you are talking to (info also sent to government via gps satellite where system tracks who you talk to).

Re:Specificity

[hedwards]

I give my conditional approval to the notion. It sounds to me like something that should have been done a long time ago. As fewer and fewer people watch TV and listen to the radio, those emergency broadcasts are reaching fewer and fewer people. Plus, with the number of phones out there that support text messages, and will support this the likelihood of ever being somewhere that there isn't somebody else with a phone is going to be relatively low.

The main thing which concerns me about it is if it's over used it could be a very efficient means of spreading FUD ahead of elections.

Re:Specificity

[timeOday]

Thanks for the info. It sounds like it is done geographically, and there's not a big federal list of each person's phone number? I.e. they don't know who they are sending the alert to, except "everybody in this location"?

Re:Specificity

[david_thornley]

Last night, we had a tornado warning here. We found out about it when the sirens went off, and then checked Internet weather sites to see what was going on. We figured we should turn on the radio, couldn't find a radio, and streamed audio from a radio station website instead.

I think I need to get a battery-powered radio, but we'd almost never be listening to it anyway.

Thank god!

[Daneurysm]

Now if only they would legislate a government mandated hand-holder for crossing the street and perhaps under-bed anti-boogyman cameras and I'll finally feel completely secure. Truly a win for safety and democracy.

Re:Thank god!

[Sponge Bath]

...a government mandated hand-holder for crossing the street

There's one of those at the crosswalk near the local elementary school. She's very pretty, with her stop sign and orange vest, but she refuses to hold my hand when I cross :-(

Re:Thank god!

[swb]

That's because she's 11 years old, nitwit.

Re:Thank god!

[hedwards]

I take it from your tone, that whenever you get an extreme whether warning for thunderstorms that you go outside with your lightning rod to prove that the govenrment can't do anything right.

Government propaganda on a chip.

[Anonymous Coward]

And you people still think the terrorists haven't won?

Re:Government propaganda on a chip.

[$RANDOMLUSER]

No shit. We have a "Department of Homeland Security" (without irony) cranking out this kind of shit every day. Because we must protect Der Vaterland from unnamed (foreign and domestic) evil menaces who want to kill us all. Hey, at least the Terror Level is permanently (only) "orange". I'm afraid if it ever gets to "red" we're going to have to start rounding up Japs, Jews and Gypsies - or at least keep a really really really close eye on them.

Re:Government propaganda on a chip.

[shutdown -p now]

It'll be propaganda when you get "vote Obama 2012" via that channel. Somehow, I don't see that happening.

In any case, US government doesn't need propaganda - both parties have got their pet networks anyway, so, depending on which one is in power, they use one or the other as the "official" one. And even then they tend to agree on many ways of fooling the voter (remember coverage of South Ossetian 2008 war?)

Re:Government propaganda on a chip.

[DryGrian]

They've recently decided to phase out the color coded system in favor of a two-level system: "Imminent", and "Ongoing".

Abducted children alerts? Yeah right.

[snsh]

Every Amber Alert I've seen was related to simple custody disputes among mothers, fathers, and relatives. The kids are not in real danger, but sometimes on TV they claim danger because the kid is on insulin or Ritalin or something.

Like Japan?

[saikou]

Sounds pretty much like warning system for earthquakes, that shows up as an urgent message on practically all phones in Japan.

The back-end is still probably going to be SMS/MMS based (FCC document vaguely mentions the future ability to send audio/video with these messages).
As long as it's not over-used (say, blasting everyone with "flood warning" messages every time there is a flood warning would be kinda annoying -- I already know that as soon as it rains, everything in my county is under "flood warning") it would be fine.

Re:Like Japan?

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

As long as it's not overused and the phone companies don't charge for these messages it'll be fine.

Re:Like Japan?

[rubycodez]

it could easily be abused for a terrorist attack with a body count thouands, just with a single message

Re:Like Japan?

[kybred]

GSM phones have Cell Broadcast that is similar to SMS. I would expect that CDMA phones have something similar to that.

Re:Like Japan?

[cbunix23]

GSM phones have Cell Broadcast that is similar to SMS. I would expect that CDMA phones have something similar to that.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T, VZW, and others. I've been on it since day one. Yes, CDMA supports this broadcast capability. In some ways I think CDMA supports this better than GSM / UMTS.

Re:Like Japan?

[jrumney]

The underlying back end should be based on cell broadcasts, not SMS. SMS needs to be sent separately to each phone, which ties up the backend infrastructure with unneccesary transactions. Cell broadcasts go to all phones connected to that transmitter as a single message.

Location Services?

[mr100percent]

That's a pretty neat idea, and I can see a lot of great uses for it.

However, it's also worrisome from a privacy perspective. Unlike the EBS/EAS which floods all channels with a warning, this system requires the broadcaster to know a basic vicinity people are in. If there's an announcement telling people below 14th street Manhattan to evacuate (like on 9/11), how will they know who to message unless the phone company or FEMA also has everyone's latest locations already listed in a database? The announcement is short on specifics, whether that will be AT&T or FEMA pushing out the location-sensitive alerts.

I don't quite like the idea; what normally would require a warrant to determine a person's cell tower vicinity will now make it even easier for the government to look someone's location up if they're sharing that data.

Let's hope this stays an Opt-in feature.

Re:Location Services?

[Dthief]

I am completely against this, but they could just have cell tower X send info to anyone who is connected to it. Thus anonymity is mostly maintained and no information needs to be used that would normally require a warrant.

However, I doubt they will choose a method of delivery which minimizes the amount of information they get.

Re:Location Services?

[jpapon]

Just because they can access your location to figure out if you need an alert doesn't mean they can use it to track you as part of a criminal investigation. That's like saying that because the fire department can bust into your house to save you, the police can bust into your house to search it.

Re:Location Services?

[pinkfalcon]

I'm guessing (completely speculation) that it would not be sent to individual phones, but more than likely would be something that would be controlled by the cell tower.

I can imagine a command to all the cell towers in an affected region that says "send this message to every cell phone you can reach." That way you could target a very specific geographical area without keeping track of who is on what network, who is traveling to Georgia for the weekend, etc..

Re:Location Services?

[MoonBuggy]

The limited range of cell towers neatly fulfils the localisation requirement without any need for tracking. Just tell the towers in the affected region to broadcast to all devices in range - if your phone isn't within the coverage area of those towers, you won't get the message.

Re:Location Services?

[icebrain]

The trick is that, like prohibitions on the police busting into your house to search it, prohibitions on the government tracking everyone's location without a warrant are just that: prohibitions that we trust the government to follow, not physical or electronic barriers that actually prevent them from doing those things.

Now, I'd love to get tower-specific immediate broadcast for things like tornado warnings, on an opt-in basis, and administered by NOAA, not Congress or the White House. I really do not want the government demanding access at its will to my phone.

Re:Location Services?

[jonbryce]

Your local cell tower would broadcast it to everyone in range. Sending individual messages to every phone would take far too long.

Re:Location Services?

[mtxmorph]

It doesn't track your location. The system is implemented using Cell Broadcast (CBS), which indiscriminately sends out messages to all users in a particular cell. So if your phone is camping in a cell where a tornado will soon strike, you get the message. In this sense, it works exactly like any other one-way radio broadcast -- the sender doesn't know who received the message or how many received it. They can do this because the cellular provider DOES know the location of each cell tower and the general area the tower covers.

Re:Location Services?

[brian1078]

... and administered by NOAA, not Congress or the White House. I really do not want the government demanding access at its will to my phone.

you do realize that NOAA is the government, right?

Re:Location Services?

[Compaqt]

1-way: so that also means the receiver can't really verify who sent the message, right?

Re:Location Services?

[mtxmorph]

Technically, no. But when you connect your phone to a cell network, you do have some implicit trust that it's really your operator who's providing the service. So if someone could break in to the operator's network, maybe they could spoof a CMAS message. I guess you could make the same argument for all other kinds of broadcast services.

Re:Location Services?

[Baricom]

All this would take is a digital signature. You can ship the public keys with the firmware.

Re:Location Services?

[TuringCheck]

There are already standard systems (pretty obsolete this days as GPS can be even attached to dogs) that use cell specific broadcasts to display your rough location on the home screen of the phone.
A very easy solution is to have all phones sold in US preconfigured to be subscribed a specific cell broadcast topic. If you don't want the alerts just unsubscribe with the phone's standard interface. No need for a special chip (oooh, I forgot that someone has to pay for the personal planes of large companies and decision makers).

Re:Location Services?

[icebrain]

you do realize that NOAA is the government, right?

I do realize that. But notice how I made a distinction between a relatively well-run, transparent, benign agency with a legitimate purpose, and the scheming, sniveling, whoring, corrupt, power-loving political governing branches. The former would be providing a service, paid for by my tax dollars and and at my request. The latter would be saying "we are your lords and masters, and you will listen to us when we talk, subject!"

I'm much more inclined to trust an agency of regular people honestly trying to do a good job than a bunch of *spit* politicians and their henchmen.

Re:Location Services?

[Miamicanes]

With a CDMA phone, you aren't connected to "a" tower. CDMA users all of its towers as a regionally-distributed diversity-tuning network It's a tiny detail that's caused no small amount of grief to Android developers circa 1.5 who were tasked with trying to make CDMA "look" like a fake GSM phone to Android. From what I recall, most algorithms just picked the towerid with the highest SNR and called it a day, occasionally throwing in some extra logic to smooth out moment-to-moment variance and add some inertia. On the other side, CDMA phones in most metro areas have a tower radius of about 2km, and few people would regard the warning of a tornado on the ground 5 miles away as a "false alarm". In fact, one could almost argue that the likelihood of recipients being annoyed if the danger being warned about isn't literally 500 feet away is probably a good litmus test for whether or not the message should be sent via the system. Tornado warnings? Absolutely, this is the gold standard for a system like this (tornadoes can be difficult to spot at night or in driving rain, fast-moving, and are enormously dangerous to the public when they occur). Earthquakes? Even if the message were sent the moment a shockwave were confirmed 10 miles away, you'd barely have time to pick up the phone before it hit anyway. The only real benefit of it in that situation is that you'd be more likely to have the phone in your hand as you got buried under rubble, so you could use it to call for help. Hurricanes? Total, complete waste of time. Even in a pre-technological era, people knew a hurricane was nearby more than a day before landfall. A hurricane "looks" very different from a regular thunderstorm as it approaches, and the prequel is unmistakable to anybody who's been through more than 2 or 3 of them. I'd personally be pissed as hell if I lived on the mainland and got a 2am "Emergency Evacuation" warning for a hurricane making landfall in 24 hours (and only slightly less pissed if I got it at 9am instead). Amber alerts? It's a good thing they can be disabled, because otherwise I'd be voiding the warranty with a soldering iron or hot air rework tool as my first task after buying the phone.

Re:Location Services?

[david_thornley]

This has precisely no privacy affects. If you can receive these messages, your cell phone is on and communicating with one or more towers. In that case, the cell phone provider can tell which tower(s) you're connected to anyway.

If you don't want to be tracked on your cell phone, leave it at home or turn it as off as you can (including removing the battery, if it's user-removable).

Re:Location Services?

[mtxmorph]

A very easy solution is to have all phones sold in US preconfigured to be subscribed a specific cell broadcast topic. If you don't want the alerts just unsubscribe with the phone's standard interface.

Yep, that's essentially what this does. There are thirty topics reserved just for CMAS alerts. Phones will come pre-subscribed to some of those. The main difference here is that the "standard" CBS application isn't used to handle messages received on these topics. The reason is because there are some specific actions the phone must take when receiving these messages - playing a tone, vibra, etc.

But there's no real reason why an old phone which supports generic CBS couldn't receive the alerts, if it was subscribed to them. Part of the problem is that some phone makers limited the range of topic ids you can subscribe to using the UI, and the CMAS topics are outside of that range.

No need for a special chip (oooh, I forgot that someone has to pay for the personal planes of large companies and decision makers).

As I said in another post, this "special chip" stuff is completely bogus. I have no idea where the article got that from. On the phone-side of things, you only need CBS support in the cell modem (which should already be there) and a CMAS application (just software).

Government is PERFECT for the job.

[jaskelling]

If anyone is qualified to tell me about a disaster, it would be the government. Nobody does/is/makes/exploits/advertises/promotes disasters like they do. Personally, I can't wait to hear the tech support calls about why we're getting Kansas' tornado warnings here in Colorado and who will be sued over the mass chaos sure to ensue.

Re:Government is PERFECT for the job.

[Zugok]

This says it all:
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/demotivators/governmentdemotivationalposter.jpg

Presidential Alerts?

[mr100percent]

Smacks of V for Vendetta to me. "You designed it, sir, you wanted it foolproof. You said every television in London!"

Re:Presidential Alerts?

[Eightbitgnosis]

Oh Jesus...

I can just now see Anonymous bringing havoc to the alert system with announcements from President Pedobear

Re:Presidential Alerts?

[Professr3]

I would buy a phone for this.

Re:Presidential Alerts?

[ImprovOmega]

Or for maximum lulz announce that we are at war with the martians

hackable?

[pinkfalcon]

Wait until the spammers find a way to spoof messages from the president.

you'll find out a lot more than you bargained for

[Lead Butthead]

actually, I fully expect the system will be hijacked to disseminate spam within hours after going live.

What else is in the chip...

[girlintraining]

I have only one question: Will this standard be open for public inspection?

Re:What else is in the chip...

[Bucky24]

Of course not. The majority of the public either won't care about the standard itself or will not have a clue what do to with it even if they got to look. Those who both care and can understand it are in the minority, and politicians never cater to a minority.

Re:What else is in the chip...

[cbunix23]

It sounds like an excuse to keep the cellular system proprietary to me. Radio communication is being cloaked in secrecy. As a hobbyist it is not easy to tinker with. It is disturbing to me that there is some information about how things are done that is entrusted to manufacturers but not the general public.

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T, VZW, and others. I've been on it since day one. Take a look at 3GPP TS 25.419 (SABP for UMTS), this is the interface from the CBC to the RNC. There are other standards for the radio interface, sorry i don't know about those, but they are published 3GPP standards.

Re:What else is in the chip...

[microbee]

The standard might be, but the implementation may not.

Re:What else is in the chip...

[scottbomb]

Which begs the question: WHY do they need a "special chip" to receive text messages?

Re:What else is in the chip...

[YoopDaDum]

Talking about "the chip" as if there were a separate dedicated chip for this is very likely a misleading oversimplification. This simplification comes from the article itself:

A special chip is required to allow a phone to receive the messages, and soon all new phones will have the technology. Some smartphones already have the chip, and software updates will be available when the network goes online later this year, Genachowski said.

Such alerts are typically handled by your cell phone baseband chip. For example since the beginning in LTE there is the ETWS (Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System) that is made to send such alerts. You can see from the name why it was designed, but it could support any kind of alert really. It's just a specified protocol to send urgent alerts to terminals. In release 9, this idea has been extended into CMAS (Commercial Mobile Alert Services, 3GPP spec TS 22.228, publicly available at 3gpp.org). Really the same idea, but more flexible and easier to monetize for the operators... I'm talking about LTE here but I guess equivalent systems exist for 3G and other mobile communication standards.
A national alert system would simply be built on top of these tools. In this case it's just an upgrade to cell phones base-band chips software to support these protocols, and the the cell phone application CPU software to make use of it and handle the final display to the end user. As the article mention support is mostly a software upgrade for a lot of devices, it's safe to assume this is what will be done. No dedicated chip.

Ultimate hack target

[RockMFR]

I wonder if they have thought out the security of this system. Sending a message to nearly every person in the United States at the same time would be an amazing hack. Is it supposed to be all automated, or does each provider have to get the message from FEMA and then manually send it out on their network?

Re:Ultimate hack target

[PRMan]

Waiting for the first (of many) Anonymous alerts, just for the lulz...

Re:Abducted children alerts? Yeah right.

[pinkfalcon]

99% of the time you are right, but there was one a couple of months ago where the boyfriend (not the child's father) drove into the delta with kid in the back seat. Amber Alert was active on him, just not fast enough.

two bad aspects of this idea

[ChipMonk]

One: a single point of failure. One evil-doer + one compromise in the system = panic from false alarm = ignoring future alarms.

Two: replies to that many messages will turn into a back-jam on the SMS.

Does Washington DC care how badly they cock it up? Of course not.

Re:two bad aspects of this idea

[kst]

Two is not an issue; there's no way to reply to these broadcast messages (at least not directly).

Will txt and data rates apply? roaming?

[Joe The Dragon]

Will txt and data rates apply? roaming fees?

Re:Will txt and data rates apply? roaming?

[Ruke]

No, of course not. Your cell provider already sends you alerts that you're not being charged for; why would this be any different?

Re:Will txt and data rates apply? roaming?

[rbphilip]

My cell phone provider doesn't send me text alerts after I turned off texting on my account because I was getting $0.20 random crap text. It wouldn't bother me to get the occasional alert from Verizon when there's a legitimate reason, but not at the expense of paying for text spam.

Re:Will txt and data rates apply? roaming?

[PsychoSlashDot]

No, of course not. Your cell provider already sends you alerts that you're not being charged for; why would this be any different?

The difference is that the texts they don't charge you for are about them selling you shit you don't want and these texts aren't. Also known as: one is a profit-stream and the other isn't.

I can just see it now...

[__Paul__]

...in times of financial difficulties: "This Presidential Alert brought to you by Coke!"

propaganda in your pocket!

[decora]

those terror alerts are so useful... i am so happy that i will be forced to answer them now on my cellphone.

also, id love it if the TSA could blast-email us with photos of 'suspected persons'.

maybe we can even 'crowdsource' the body scanners at airports, and make a face book 'app' out of it! wouldnt that be fun?

Re:propaganda in your pocket!

[whathappenedtomonday]

Volksempfaenger, anyone?

Re:propaganda in your pocket!

[inputdev]

wow, scary, thanks for the history lesson, I knew Hitler was big into TV, etc., but I didn't know about this. The link didn't work for me, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempfanger
I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesn't think this is "good for the people"

Re:propaganda in your pocket!

[decora]

thanks for the link! it reminds me of a quote about how "technology only allows us to regress faster" or something. . . was it aldus huxley? i cant rmember.

thanks again

Re:you'll find out a lot more than you bargained f

[Anonymous Coward]

Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption...

Presidential Alert

[olsmeister]

Please Vote for me in 2012. Thank you. I'm Barack Obama and I've approved this text message.

Disable it

[sv_libertarian]

Wonder if there will be an easy way to disable the chip without ruining the whole phone, or perhaps in Android at least a software hack to completely turn it off. I don't want to get messages from .gov on my hardware without consenting to it.

Re:Disable it

[mr100percent]

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment; the Emergency Broadcast Network routinely cuts into all broadcast TV and radio channels and does weekly tests. People, including myself complain that it interrupts regularly-scheduled programming for about 30 seconds, but it happens every week anyway. This is supposedly the same thing just put onto cell phones.

Re:Disable it

[assemblerex]

Well import an unlocked phone from europe, or a cheap chinese phone.
Of course they would have to make imported unchipped phones illegal, for safety of course.

Re:Disable it

[sv_libertarian]

Difference is, my phone is a two way communications device that can be uniquely linked to me in various ways. My TV or radio is not. To me this is akin to being told I can't stop a government agent from knocking at my door with a message for me. I don't want them knocking at my door with an important message, and I don't want them sending a message to my phone. Go away. I'm quite capable of opting in for alert services if I want. This is just a form of feel good security theater.

Re:Disable it

[tweak13]

Weekly tests are run individually at each station, and are not required to be automatically triggered. Programming should never be interrupted by a weekly test unless the station operator chooses to interrupt programming. At the radio stations I worked at, it was always placed into a regular break specifically to not cause an interruption.

Re:Disable it

[Ruke]

I'm curious, why are you so opposed to receiving messages about emergency conditions in your area? Is there a pragmatic reason that you don't want to receive earthquake warnings, or are you just opposed to this in particular because you think that you should oppose the government in general?

Re:Disable it

[sv_libertarian]

I'm opposed to be told I *must* receive these messages. I am opposed to having to opt out of having someone contact me via my two way communications device that I may not want to be contacted over. I am opposed to being compelled to pay extra for compliant hardware, and that my provider may charge me extra to recoup costs associated with participating in this program. It's the loss of *choice* I oppose. But some people prefer to have choices made for them. I prefer to make them myself. And I would prefer to *chose* what messages I get, how and from whom. I can block callers and people attempting to reach my phone that I do not wish to communicate with. I cannot block this. Personal choice, personal freedom and personal responsibility. It has nothing to do with "opposing the government" or "being opposed to receiving messages about emergency conditions." It has everything to do with being told I may have no choice in receiving certain types of messages.

Re:Disable it

[mtxmorph]

I don't know where the article gets this "chip" idea from -- that is completely bogus.

The system uses the standard cell broadcast system (CBS) as its backend, and most phones have supported that forever. It is basically an application which sits on top of CBS.

Re:Disable it

[Bucky24]

I imagine there will be, especially for Android. Of course anyone actually downloading and using it will be considered unpatriotic....

Re:Disable it

[rubycodez]

Your cell phone can track and be remotely activitated to monitor your conversations. A message appearing to be sent to all could be sent to a few to manipulate them. This is the Telescreen of Orwell's 1984 False flag attack enablement, is what this is.

Re:Disable it

[PRMan]

And it wasn't even used on 9/11... If that wasn't the time to use it, I really don't know what is. The system has gone off in error more times than on purpose.

Re:Disable it

[green1]

Interesting, my perspective is as a Canadian, so our system may be different from yours... The system where I live is mostly automated in that the government triggers it and all the participating stations broadcast at the same time. The station doesn't pick when to run the test. That said, the weekly test is at exactly the same time every week (If i recall it's Wednesday at 1300hrs) so stations can schedule around it if they so choose (and many do).

That said, the emergency warning system here is optional, each TV and radio station decides if it wants to participate or not, I'm not sure on the TV side of things (don't watch much local TV) but on the radio it appears only about half the stations bother (all the stations geared to the older generation seem to, but few of the ones gearing to youngsters)

Back on the top of cellphones. The biggest thing that strikes me is how the government is never content using an existing, and perfectly valid, way of doing things, they always have to do it "different" and thus incur all sorts of extra costs that we eventually all pay for, while at the same time mangling the existing method to make it worse for subscribers. What I mean in this case is, why a "special" chip/protocol/dialog/anything else instead of simply a text message? Had they chosen simple text messages people could set up their phones to accept or deny at will, they could do it on any old (within reason) or new hardware, and no new changes would be needed to make it work. Instead they come up with a "different" way of doing the same bloody thing for no good reason other than to do it differently.

Re:Disable it

[green1]

but why do we need a new application? why can't they save a few million dollars (or likely more) and just send text messages??

Re:Disable it

[Ruke]

This simply seems like an overreaction to me. You can block all of the messages that this system is capable of receiving except those that are only sent out in the case of a national emergency, and you're perfectly free to ignore those. Could such a system be abused? Certainly. They could send out mandatory terror alert warnings every hour on the hour. They almost certainly won't.

As for the price, this system is proposed as a matter of public safety; do you feel as strongly about your lack of freedom to purchase a car without seatbelts or airbags? Do you understand why you're not free to choose to purchase a car without these extra features? A car without these features would be cheaper to manufacture; however, as a society, we have decided that the benefit of mandating public safety is worth the negligible cost.

Re:Disable it

[sv_libertarian]

A lot of things are proposed as a matter of public safety. The TSA is all about "public safety" I suppose you sing the Star Spangled Banner as your equipment gets felt up? Salute the flag while your six year old daughter is felt up too, all in the name of "public safety?" My phone, my choice. I don't want .gov alerts on it of *any* sort, I should be free to not get them. Fairly simple. I do not understand the mindset of people who think that if you put the right buzzwords of "safety" on it, that it's ok to put up with any sort of intrusion on devices you own.

Re:Disable it

[mtxmorph]

Text messages are, in a general sense, point-to-point. When you're trying to notify thousands of people at the same time (an emergency situation), you want as little overhead as possible. So, broadcasting makes the most efficient use of network resources. The expense here is largely in handsets (software support) and for the operators (alert gateway). They are trying to re-use existing technology, where appropriate..

Re:Disable it

[TheSync]

Actually all broadcast stations MUST transmit on-air required weekly test and must re-broadcast on-air required monthly EAS tests they receive from upstream.

Weekly tests can be audio-only though, but the required monthly test must include video information about the test message.

Your radio station was breaking the law. For example, here is a station that was not re-transmitting the required monthly tests: http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-305160A1.html

Re:Disable it

[AK Marc]

Then you want complete anarchy. Because the point of government is that if a choice is common enough and not a burden on others, then it is forced on everyone. Sometimes it results in things like marriage being defined to exclude gays. Sometimes it results in alcohol or marijuana being banned. Other times, it means that the emergency system gets forced on phones because more people have phones than other traditional communication.

It has nothing to do with "opposing the government" or "being opposed to receiving messages about emergency conditions." It has everything to do with being told I may have no choice in receiving certain types of messages.

You have no choice in the gender of who you marry. You have no choice in buying alcohol on Sunday mornings (in most, if not all locations in the US).You have no choice in smoking marijuana (even if your state legalizes it, you can still be prosecuted in federal court, so it's still most certainly illegal, even where explicitly legal - and that includes medical use being completely illegal in the US). You get no choice in proving liability coverage before piloting an automobile. There are piles of things you get no choice in. If you don't like it, then you need to find some uninhabited island so that no one will ever tell you what to do again.

Re:Disable it

[green1]

Then come up with a backend system that instead of point to point, can send an SMS to everyone on a tower at once (I'd be shocked if such a feature didn't already exist considering the origins of SMS messages being for communications control signals), no need to modify/replace every single cell phone out there on our dime.

Re:Disable it

[mtxmorph]

That's exactly what this is. CBS is already part of the standards for GSM and CDMA. Wikipedia describes it pretty well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast

What is being added here is "special handling" for specific CBS messages. In other words, when you receive a CMAS message through CBS, your phone handles it differently than a "normal" CBS message by playing an alert tone, etc.

Re:Disable it

[green1]

And why on earth does ANYONE want their phone to handle it differently?

Differently means it is more likely to piss people off
Differently means that existing hardware/software may not handle it properly
Differently means we spend a LOT of money to implement changes to software and hardware to accommodate something that didn't need to be different in the first place.

OR we could simply send text messages, save a boatload of cash, and not piss people off in the process...

Re:Disable it

[mtxmorph]

I agree, you could argue those points. But consider the end goal here - to make an effective emergency alerting system. If the user doesn't notice the alert because it's handled like every other text message, then you've lost some of the effectiveness. Plus, there are some tangible benefits in this system, which you don't get with regular text messages, like location-based alerting and broadcast alerting.

Sure, it will piss some people off. Sure, there is a lot of money being spent to implement it. However, compared to most government initiatives, this is probably one which people will find helpful.

By the way, my extent of involvement is implementing this application on a handset. I didn't come up with the standards, but I think they're pretty reasonable. Only time will tell how the system is (ab)used.

Re:Doing what now?

[mosb1000]

I think they're meaning to bring the emergency broadcast system to you phone. I certainly hope they wouldn't be sending out anything other than disaster alerts. You should be able to opt out completely. Still, I'm impressed that they're rolling this thing out. I'd be even happier if they could set up a website so you can file your 1040 online without going through some shady business that's trying to screw you, but I suspect that may be beyond their level of technical competence.

This requires a chip?

[HermDog]

Why can't Obama just get a twitter account?

So is this going to show up on my pager?

[amanicdroid]

Lots of hip, important people like me need to know.

Tinfoil hat time

[Dunbal]

I wonder what other "features" this chip will have. In the land of the free, you are free to do as you are told.

Re:Tinfoil hat time

[moortak]

Why would they bother slipping in extra secret features. It is a chip being put in a device that can already track you and listen in on you. Adding any extra bonus rights infringement just increases their costs and risk of being caught.

NL has this on standard text messages

[QuasiSteve]

The Netherlands has such a system on standard text messages. The broadcasting agency in question simply selects what region to broadcast an SMS-alert to, and all cellphones within that region (basically the ones currently registered to given towers) get the SMS if the user signed up for the type of alert in question (though some can override, i.e. in case of major disaster.. say a chlorine spill).

Before the text messages, they used a different system - the SMS-cell broadcast channels. Many older phones are capable of receiving these, but most users aren't signed up for the channels in question. Many newer phones don't even offer an interface to this anymore. Hence the switch to SMS.
Most of the channels are also not used by providers in NL. They figured out that they could get more money by offering information for-pay, or letting for-pay SMS operators pay them, than giving the information for free. I.e. current local time, weather, etc. The only one that seems to be consistently available is channel 050; area code. Even though NL hardly has area code segmentation anymore, and certainly not for cellphones, it's still reported, and crossing into some other municipality does cause a cell broadcast notification on my older phone.

Long story short - why do they want a separate chip, exactly?

Re:NL has this on standard text messages

[AndroSyn]

Long story short - why do they want a separate chip, exactly?

Nowhere on the fcc.gov site linked in the story does it say anything about phones requiring any sort of chip. Basically the important part of the system is the secure interface between government and the wireless providers. In short this is more like the EAS system, but for mobile phones. Chances are most network carriers *will* implement this over SMS.

Re:NL has this on standard text messages

[cbunix23]

Long story short - why do they want a separate chip, exactly?

It's a different broadcast message signal from the usual SMS message you can get now, so it requires different hardware to pick up.

Re:NL has this on standard text messages

[cbunix23]

Chances are most network carriers *will* implement this over SMS.

SMS is too slow, and logistically backwards. The idea is to reach all the phones in a targeted area immediately, not to send an SMS to each and every phone one by one that signed up for notifications. Even if they did sign up they might be hundreds of miles away where the alert is not relevant.

Re:NL has this on standard text messages

[AndroSyn]

I meant SMS as in, the end user will see it as simply an SMS. The implementation on the network level of course will be a fair bit different I'm sure.

Even if they did sign up they might be hundreds of miles away where the alert is not relevant.

That isn't necessarily true, as you may have family/friends/property etc in that region as well, all things that alerts could be relevant for as well...

Re:NL has this on standard text messages

[cbunix23]

Sure, but if friends/family are in the targeted alert area they'll get the alert if they phone is new enough, etc. etc. Inbound phone calls to a disaster area are unlikely to work due to network throttling, and so on.

I hope it is a good design

[wkk2]

The messages need to be digitally signed or we are going to get spam claiming to be from the president. It also needs to be better designed than weather radios. For example, I can turn off thunderstorm watch alerts but not tornado watch alerts. I might understand requiring warnings but not watches. It cries wolf, in the middle of hot muggy nights, so often it gets turned off.

Re:I hope it is a good design

[mysidia]

The messages need to be digitally signed or we are going to get spam claiming to be from the president.

You think digital signing of messages will stop that?

I already sometimes get spam "claiming" to be from the president or from/sanctioned by some other gov't official, and they didn't even have to implement this chip system for me to get that spam.

RAGE

[OrangeTide]

If they start testing it on my cellphone that often I'm going to pretty much go berserk.

Re:RAGE

[cbunix23]

If they start testing it on my cellphone that often I'm going to pretty much go berserk.

Test messages will not display on phones other than test sets owned by the phone company.

Re:RAGE

[OrangeTide]

right, what does that even mean? Will Verizon customers get a test message every month at 2am from Verizon?

Re:you'll find out a lot more than you bargained f

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam? It's the perfect terrorism tool, after a small quake, spread the news about a deadly virus in the air, large fires, etc and order an emergency evacuation.
It doesn't matter how many believe those, but if just one tenth acts on those messages it will be a disaster.

Oh yeah, as long as the hardware can be examined, someone will find a way to crack it sooner or later, if not by the bad guys, then by some hobbyist or "well intentioned security researchers".

Cell Tower Pushing

[KhabaLox]

Given the speed in which /. as identified cell tower pushing as the best way to implement this idea, we can be assured that the government will do something else.

No legitimate use

[The Man]

Can anyone come up with an example of a "national disaster" (i.e., a disaster affecting most or all of the contiguous United States) in which any significant part of the telephone network would still be functioning? Because I can't. All sub-extinction-level disasters are inherently regional and nearly all are local. As an example, Japan just suffered a colossal earthquake and 15-meter tsunami... and yet despite the catastrophic loss of life and property, nearly all major damage is confined to a few prefectures; many parts of the country didn't even feel it. And Japan is about the size of California.

But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.

Re:No legitimate use

[physicsdot]

Melt-down of a reactor spreading fallout over the states?

Re:No legitimate use

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone come up with ... a "national disaster" in which ... the telephone network would still be functioning?

Biological. A truly deadly flu (unlike the recent swine flu) or a biological attack could warrant national warnings on prevention & quarantine.

Re:No legitimate use

[kyle5t]

Sure, I can think of plenty. "Imminent eruption of Yellowstone Caldera is predicted: ash set to spread over large area and disrupt food supplies." "Russia just launched its nukes: remain inside and get your fire extinguishers ready." "Cubs win world series: stay on the lookout for flying pigs." Okay, maybe not that last one.

Besides, I think that is actually the point of having a separate chip. If you use a different channel for these alerts, AND if the system is implemented well, you could have the electric grid and phone networks wiped out and all the cell phones with battery power left will still get the alerts.

Re:No legitimate use

[macshit]

Tornado party?

Re:No legitimate use

[HFShadow]

There's a pretty simple example that proves you wrong, you even mentioned it in your post: Japan's warning system.

Here's a pretty good article about it: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2059780,00.html

In principle, I think this is a very good idea. I'm not American and I wish we (Canada) had something like this in place, I think it's stupid the US doesn't yet. Everyone here is raging about the privacy / spam concerns, but do you really think that'll end up being a problem? It'll be a one way push and they'll use it for emergency services (I hope). You don't see people turning on the old school TV emergency tone / message for political spam do you?

In today's world of instant communications, it seems silly to not have a way for the government to send out emergency notifications quickly.

Re:No legitimate use

[Anonymous Coward]

But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.

The Doritos factory explodes?

Re:No legitimate use

[pleb1024]

Crap - Forgot to login...

Re:No legitimate use

[Rakshasa Taisab]

You mention Japan, and couldn't figure out a proper example of legitimate use?

Just to point out how shortsighted you are; tsunami warnings and seconds-before-earthquake-strikes warnings. (I've gotten a few magnitude 6 warnings after the Touhoku quake, before they all downgraded due to being false positives information)

Re:No legitimate use

[SPrintF]

Zombies?

Re:No legitimate use

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft buys Skype?

Re:No legitimate use

[Grogan The Destroyer]

Yep, there's no reason they can't be more specific and just cover the area that's going to be subjected to mayhem. Dunderheads.

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

The irony of this example is that in the truly devastating 1918 outbreak, the government actually had all the communication ability it needed to prevent and contain the disease: it began at an army base in Kansas, and the government's refusal to limit troop movements despite full knowledge of the situation is what allowed a small outbreak to become a global disaster. Having special chips in every phone, or for that matter irresistible obedience implants in everyone's brain, would not have helped. In fact, it's very possible that had the national communication network been shut down, the government's orders would never have been received and the outbreak would have ended a few weeks later with a death toll in the dozens. By the time an epidemic of contagious disease becomes relevant to the entire nation it's far too late to do much about it, so your example not only supports my point, it also emphasises that if anything the federal government is actively harmful in containing such outbreaks.

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

Yes, I read about this. The science is solid and there are plans afoot to build a similar system in California, using state funds. But that's not what I am challenging here: why would someone in Indiana care that a quake is occurring in Arkansas? This was the point I was trying to make: all useful warnings are for events that are inherently local or at most regional. Even Japan's; as I pointed out, the entire country is about the size of California, so even if the seismic detectors can't determine the affected area any more accurately than that, it's still silly for a detector in Berkeley to set off cell phones in Boston. It truly strains credulity to assert than any warning of disaster relevant to a majority of US residents will be receivable or actionable. We're talking about places separated by 1/6 of the earth's circumference. So back to my point, the "presidential" warning level should be eliminated from this system if it's kept at all; it is not useful and at best serves only to feed conspiracy theories. Local and regional agencies already have effective mechanisms for predicting and disseminating information about emergencies. Keep the federal government out of something that's already working quite well in most places. If something needs improvement here, it's in places with ineffective local disaster management agencies (New Orleans, I'm looking in your direction).

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

Radiological "Dirty Bomb"

Significant impact is limited to the immediate area of detonation and a limited distance downwind. This is unlikely to be important to people in more than a handful of states.

contaminated water supply

Intensely local. Most water supplies serve only a few hundred thousand people. Worst case, this is a regional disaster (like we're seeing with flooding in the Mississippi basin, actually).

biological or chemical attack

Unless I've missed something in weapons development, there's no way such a weapon could affect millions of square miles. Though a biological attack could lead to...

pandemic

...which develops slowly enough that existing warning systems are sufficient, though as I noted in a previous comment by the time a pandemic is under way it's really too late to do much about it. Highly communicable diseases saturate their host populations very quickly once critical thresholds are crossed. Note that in the 1918 flu pandemic, Gunnison, CO had more than enough warning to isolate itself entirely and avoid a single case, despite communication networks that were primitive at best. Everyone else read about it in the newspapers and then got sick a few weeks or months later anyway.

rioting

Perhaps the most localised example of them all. Even the largest riots cover only a few square miles. Even if, as has occurred a few times, there are riots in several cities at once, the vast majority of US residents are completely unaffected. Those who are affected would be much better served by local warnings than some generic nationwide one.

Not sold, sorry.

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.

The Doritos factory explodes?

ZOMG, I didn't think of that! I'm sure the next time I'm stoned out of my mind this will seem really important, and the president's personal message of reassurance (and maybe a suggestion that I just go get a burrito instead?) will convince me that the whole thing was worthwhile after all.

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

Good points all, but maybe the point of my assertion was lost. New Zealand is smaller than the US state of Nevada. It's conceivable that a major disaster could affect much or all of the country, so a national-scale warning system makes some sense. My contention was not that improving emergency communications is a bad idea, only that the useful scale for such a thing is local or perhaps regional. In the United States, that would mostly mean at the county or state level. For perspective, if such a thing is useful, then the messages disseminated near Christchurch should also have been sent to the residents of Perth, Australia. Silly, but directly comparable.

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

Man-made disasters. Like declaring war. Or some idiots flying a pair of jumbo-jets into the twin towers.

What, you meant disasters that you had to be notified of immediately for safety reasons and coordinating emergency responses, and not merely for propaganda?

This, exactly.

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

Obviously a coordinated, country-wide Zombie attack.

Yes, this was the obvious answer I overlooked. It's also the best answer I've seen in this thread so far. Winner!

Re:No legitimate use

[The Man]

9/11

For the purposes of public safety and emergency response, this was a local incident in a single city. There was nothing useful or actionable for anyone outside New York.

Re:No legitimate use

[thegarbz]

But go ahead, prove me wrong: come up with a disaster that takes out Miami and Seattle but leaves the phones intact.

If a disaster takes out Miami and Seattle, then the residents of Miami and Seattle will likely no longer need to be warned about the formerly impending disaster that was at a time bearing down on Miami and Seattle. If on the other say a severe weather warning was known about for example an impending storm in New Orleans then I see no reason why the phone system wouldn't be functioning.

This is kind of the fundamental principle of an "Alert" system is that the message gets out before the disaster hits. Think Tsunami alert.

Re:No legitimate use

[Xacid]

Mandatory hurricane evacuations.

Re:No legitimate use

[Al Al Cool J]

Disease, as in the movie Outbreak.

Widespread acts of terrorism (we could well have seen such a system used on 9/11).

Why a chip?

[zAPPzAPP]

Why does a mobile need a chip to do this? Any provider can send me messages. They do that when I go to another country, or when their prices change for example.
Why not simply set up a server somewhere with "urgent messages" and let the providers broadcast them to every phone currently logged into their network?
They seem to have the infrastructure to do that already.

Actually the link in the OP doesn't mention a chip, only a network. What's up with this?

Re:Why a chip?

[jonwil]

Its not necessarily a chip per se, its a new data method that is intended to be more reliable and timely than regular SMS along with requirements regarding what mobile device manufacturers must include in their device to respond to these messages (including not being able to block the "national emergency" alert level and playing the special ear-piercing sound when a message comes in)

Potentially Good

[borrrden]

The basic premise of this idea is not a bad one. Japan already has a similar mechanism in place for earthquakes. All Japanese-made cell phones are embedded with an alarm that is triggered by the early earthquake warning system (It only sets off the alarm for the people in the area expected to be affected). However, I think the reason it works is because it has a distinct alarm noise that is built in, not able to be disabled (even in silent mode), and there is no text to read. It helps give people a few moments to prepare or get to cove because they know immediately what it means. In those cases, quick conveyance of messages is key, as pointed out. Getting a text on a tiny screen is very useless for people with impaired vision or people who are driving. Perhaps a better solution would be to have the alarm indicate that they should quickly listen to their nearest source of the emergency broadcast system (radio, television, internet). The information is still passed on more quickly than before, but with much less risk, and much less annoyance if people don't care or are unable to read the messages they receive. That being said, Congress needs to carefully think about what messages are worth triggering the alarm for, or people will simply look for ways to disable it once they get too many messages that are not important. The Japan example is easy, earthquakes are universally feared and an early warning is highly desired. A message about the change of our terror alert might not be as welcomed.

Yeah, fixed that for ya...

[Panaflex]

First off, there are no new chips required... this standard is designed to operate off existing 3gpp type interfaces over gsm/cdma/etc.. The standard is pretty open ended on the handset as far as protocols, only specifying that the message be presented in a an attention getting way.

The interesting thing I think is how to secure the federal gateway... I'm guessing they'll use a dedicated frame relay from the federal CMAS system to the commercial gateways.

These standards are being published by ANSI, they are J-STD-100, J-STD-101, J-STD-102. You may be able to find some of the documents on the 3gpp2.org web site.

If you've got $850 bucks laying around, you can read all three interface specifications yourself below:
Device presentation specs:
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-100

Federal CMAS gateway specification (http specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-101

Federal CMAS gateway specification (testing specs):
http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=J-STD-102

Re:Yeah, fixed that for ya...

[Guy Harris]

First off, there are no new chips required...

Didn't you get the memo? Any new technology involves adding a "chip" to your {cell phone, table, computer, server, ...}. After all, it's not as if you can add new capabilities to a machine by updating its software....

Re:Yeah, fixed that for ya...

[Guy Harris]

...Any new technology involves adding a "chip" to your {cell phone, table, computer, server, ...}...

s/table/tablet/

But we've already got helicopters for that

[jedwidz]

It's a major botch if there aren't already ample features in the mobile phone infrastructure to meet the same requirements.

I kinda assumed emergency broadcasts were already possible, but collective incompetence of government and telcos meant that they weren't used in practice.

I mean, here in NZ we've had authorities flying over the beaches in helicopters with bullhorns issuing tsunami warnings. Helicopters I tell you!

Re:But we've already got helicopters for that

[rossdee]

That does make sense - who carries their cellphone when swimming or surfing (the real kind)

Re:But we've already got helicopters for that

[jedwidz]

Fair comment, but I still consider scrambling helicopters for this is the kind of thing you do in a panic in lieu of real disaster response.

Civil defense sirens and mobile phones get the message out much faster, and helicopters have other uses in disaster scenarios.

If the the earthquake triggering the tsunami is nearby, maybe people in the water wouldn't feel it so still need to be warned to get away from the coast.

I read that as dissenter alert !

[JonySuede]

I read that as Cellphones Get Government Chips For Dissenter Alert. I briefly tough that the American government was now openly fascist. Happily it was just a case of beer based dyslexia.

Tornado Warnings

[billstewart]

A few decades ago I was driving across the country, and there was a bad thunderstorm while I was driving through Iowa. The radio was saying "tornadoes sighted in this county, run away!" "tornadoes sighted in that county, run away!". Did my AAA road map have county names on it? Nope :-) Eventually the rain got heavy enough that we pulled over because we couldn't see the road well enough, but it was kind of annoying.

Re:Tornado Warnings

[demonlapin]

Corollary: traffic alerts that include only exit names, not numbers. I don't expect commuter reports to cater to out-of-towners, but I wish that "turn-around-there's-a-herd-of-cattle-in-the-freeway" alerts (especially on overhead signs) did.

Re:UNACCEPTABLE opt-out constraints

[Bucky24]

Some cell phone manufacturers (Apple, probably others too) would like to say that it's not in fact your device at all.

Re:Doing what now?

[Fjandr]

I'd be impressed if they open the spec of the mandatory ICs they'll be using to operate this system, so that they're transparent and everyone knows ALL of the technical capabilities being given to the government regarding what they can remotely do with your phone.

Somehow, I don't see that happening.

But you can't opt out.

[nuggz]

But you can't completely opt out of the Presidential level alert.
Don't worry, I'm sure that nobody will bother investing the time or energy to crack a system that would allow sending out of spam without any way for the users to screen it. Like that sounds totally useless, I can't imagine ANY way to make money with such a system.

Subby is wrong ... no govt chips.

[raindog21]

Headline is wrong and misleading. CMAS is just an emergency broadcast message originating from the cell networks similar to SMS/text messages today but for broadcast rather than P2P. As stated in summary there are three alert levels of which the user can opt out of the two lower levels. This will be used for things like amber alerts (lowest level) up to high priority presidential alerts. It takes some time to get into phones as the baseband chip makers need to implement the protocol stack (Qualcomm, et al) and the mobile makers need to implement the UI layer. The carriers need to put the hooks in for message delivery and similarly the infra companies must implement the protocol stack in the core network/cell controllers. This is nothing but the equivalent of the TV/Radio emergency broadcast system that exists today updated for the times. Take your tinfoil hats off people.

Re:UNACCEPTABLE opt-out constraints

[Holi]

They can say what ever they want, doesn't make it true.

Re:UNACCEPTABLE opt-out constraints

[Holi]

To elaborate, they could shut down your access but if they tried to actually take the device from you they would be arrested for theft.

1984

[Runaway1956]

"People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts."

And, the officer responds, "You damned well BETTER read/listen to the President's message! Have a good day, Citizen!"

I can't be the only person here who thought "Orwelle" when I read that quoted sentence.

Re:1984

[realityimpaired]

Orwell, perhaps.... but my first thought on reading that was "thank heavens I have an unlocked phone from Canada". :)

Re:1984

[Joce640k]

Next step is to make it illegal to turn off your phone (in case the President has anything to say).

After that the 'freedom from terror' tracking system is fully enabled...with automated speech recognition enabled on all calls.

Re:1984

[AmiMoJo]

with automated speech recognition enabled on all calls.

This probably already exists. It is called Echelon. Allegedly monitors all phone conversations using speech recognition for key words.

Re:1984

[Amouth]

but at what point will it start without a call being placed?

Re:1984

[rpresser]

Unless they make it illegal to opt out of owning a cellphone, this is meaningless.

Can you say "mission creep"?

[MoxFulder]

This sounds just like security cameras designed to thwart terrorists being used to catch stop sign violators instead. Or federal agents looking for illegal immigrants busting people for possession of small quantities of pot instead.

Lame.

I predict this plan will fail like the V-chip...

Re:More Government in your pocket.

[JustOK]

fly much?

Re:UNACCEPTABLE opt-out constraints

[Hognoxious]

I must be able to opt out ALL special messages I don't want to receive, including presidential alerts

So turn the damn thing off, you teabagging loon.

Advertsing

[nzNick]

So how long will it be before someone sells this service for Advertising - or add a banner "this broadcast was brought to you by...."

No Cracking Allowed

[njhunter]

Signed: the government

I'm in my 40's and I remember getting

[Nyder]

no messages from the president that took over TV & Radio. Closes I've ever seen was when Reagen was shot, but that wasn't a message (well, it was a message to Reagen) to the people.

Shit, the first Gulf War is probably the only thing I've ever seen that took over almost all the TV Stations.

No, the president doesn't need a direct communicans with me. Never has, never will.

If he needs me to fix his computer, he can call me like everyone else.

AreaMail

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh,, hello area mail.

This is standard in japan... and has been for SO many years... disaster info / warnings are confined to affected areas..
and quite shocking if you are in a public place when you and everyone around you's phones alarm at once :D

No opt out?

[YrWrstNtmr]

People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts.

I can't even opt out? How about you kiss my large brown ass.

Extraordinary claims....

[westlake]

it is hard to argue against the idea of the "Amber Alert", but everyone should go read up about the false alarms and abuses of the system.

I thought it worthwhile to search Google News for "Amber Alert." I can see very few signs that the system is bring abused.

Re:Extraordinary claims....

[gandhi_2]

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=2045

The Amber Alert system has been used many times by one parent who didn't want the other parent to take little Johny for the weekend.

Re:Extraordinary claims....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amber Alert system isn't being "abused"; the system IS abuse. It is a system that from time to time gets a child returned from her mother to her custodial father (or vice versa) and once in a while saves a kid who's been grabbed on the street. In the process of doing that, these inescapable chronic alarms have convinced most of the American population that there is a child-abduction epidemic going on, leading parents to take ridiculous precautions that are detrimental in the long run to their children's development (e.g. Jonny doesn't learn how to find his own way home from three blocks away, Susie is taught to be suspicious of every adult she encounters), and meanwhile scaring the crap out of the children who see and hear the alerts too, and are even less-equipped than their parents to understand them and put them in perspective. They are harmful to our society.

Re:Extraordinary claims....

[westlake]

The Amber Alert system has been used many times by one parent who didn't want the other parent to take little Johny for the weekend.

The Scripps-Howard story is six years old.

"Code Amber" itself archives alerts back to September 2003. Code Amber News Service ---

and once again I see no evidence that there has been any significant abuse of the system.

The Yellowish Orange Dusk Alert

[magusxxx]

So, while we're all suppose to be looking for a late model Ford, will we be getting an ad for the new Lexus? Will the flood warning be sponsored by Gary's Sump Pump? I miss the days when the stuff we needed to know was sponsored by the letter S and the number 3.

Re:Useful but invasive

[YrWrstNtmr]

People must think carefully about the power the government is giving itself there. I'm not saying people should be against it, just that if they approve of it they should at least realize the implications of this.

The problem is...whatever power you give to this current government you like, you also give to the next government you don't like.
And governments evolve and change. In the US, lately we've had Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama. Give Clinton some power, and its still there for Bush the Lesser to abuse. Grant Bush something, and its still there for Obama to use/abuse as he sees fit.

Be wary of giving too much power to whatever current guy you like. The next guy may not use it to your liking.

Re:you'll find out a lot more than you bargained f

[R3d M3rcury]

Mine is the last text you will ever read. Do not be alarmed.

Re:Abducted children alerts? Yeah right.

[MimeticLie]

How are you able to tell that from the "Blue sedan with plates 123-ABC"? That's generally all we get on the Artemis signs around here.

But regardless, the system is used for "real" disappearances as well. I've seen alerts for missing adults on several occasions.

Soviet jokes seem more like a warning

[AHuxley]

In Capitalist West Politburo texts you.

Tinfoil hat time

[cbunix23]

I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T, VZW, and others. I've been on it since day one. A friend asked me today if there are any privacy concerns with these broadcast messages. It would depend on the phone implementation, but you know how that goes. Here's one way this could be abused. The fed.gov sends a broadcast message once a day and has it repeat say once a minute for the entire day in some large area. Phones pick up the broadcast message and save everything associated with the broadcast, but do not display it to the subscriber. This could be an innocuous "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System" message that you wouldn't think anything of. The data saved includes the date/time, cell identification, the broadcast message itself, signal power, whatever. Basically you're location gets saved once a minute. Then if the fed.gov gets a hold of your phone they could grab all that data and see approximately where your phone was and when. Then your phone will upload it automagically to the NSA. Get out your tinfoil hats.

Re:Abducted children alerts? Yeah right.

[R3d M3rcury]

Interestingly, the statistics don't bear you out.

In 2010, there were 173 Amber Alerts nationwide. 80 alerts--46%--were for "Family Abductions," where the initial suspect was related by blood or marriage whereas 74 alerts--43%--were for "Non-Family Abductions." So they run about even.

That said, 12 of those Amber Alerts were determined to be hoaxes and 10 of those were determined to be "unfounded" (as in the child was never really missing).

Statistics found here: http://www.amberalert.gov/pdfs/10_amber_report.pdf

Re:Abducted children alerts? Yeah right.

[lothos]

In Minneapolis here, we had a stranger abduction Amber Alert a week or two ago.

Re:Background on the system

[cbunix23]

Lucent did not exist in 2007, maybe you meant Alcatel-Lucent. I have been working on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by AT&T, Sprint, VZW, and others since day one. It can indeed target down to individual cells, or areas as large as geocodes, polygons, circles, etc. I'm not familiar with the CDMA work you are discussing. The trials we have done with Sprint and FEMA prove this works well with CDMA. There are prototype CDMA broadcast capable phones we have been testing with. Same for UMTS and GSM phones from various manufacturers. I won't name names but they are the usual suspects.

They got me once

[jcohen]

I remember the first time California used the Emergency Alert System to broadcast the "Amber Alert" child abduction notices. When I was a kid, I had dreams of hearing those tones, followed by the announcement that a nuclear war had just begun. Now, my heart leapt into my throat -- we were all going to die. When the voice came on to say that there had been a child abduction, I was partially relieved -- by comparison to the prospect of nuclear annihilation -- but also royally pissed off. Really. Earthquake. Tornado. Nuclear war. Broadcast those on the Emergency Alert System. Not the other stuff.

Proposed design

[currently_awake]

1-To be useful in a disaster it should use satellite broadcasts direct to your phone. The local towers might be down or the generators under water. 2-Presidential warnings are worthless, but STATE warnings might actually be relevant, as disaster relief is mostly state controlled. 3-If i was a cell carrier I'd want to incorporate this into one of the existing chips- I'd need the design. Adding a single chip is a huge hassle and might cause issues with other parts of the phone. I'd certainly want my existing (low power) processor to handle the overhead, not some foreign power sucking lowest bidder POS.

This was used after the Haiti earthquake

[Phoenix666]

i was centrally involved in relief efforts after the earthquake in Haiti. We worked with the good folks at Ushahidi to implement crisis mapping and the cell provider in Haiti, Digicel, to push important news to the people affected (like where to get first aid, distribution points for food & water, etc). The thing that really blew me away was that we started getting crowd-sourced reports from people buried inside the rubble, calling for help. The US marines operating from the ship offshore later told us they watched the ushahidi crisis map religiously because it was the only source of actionable information available in the entire theater of operations. Having something like this in the US could save a lot of lives if we have another 9/11 or Katrina.

Tinfoil Hat Time

[Grogan The Destroyer]

Gentlemen, get out your tinfoil hats.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[FSWKU]

...but isn't this what Cell Broadcast messaging is for? Why do we need special government mandated chips?

mod this up

[decora]

this needs a score of at least 3

Re:Terror

[timeswindmill]

The message should be 'Don't Panic'

Special chip for "messages"... yeah, right

[sigmabody]

If anyone believes that the government needs to install a special chip in all cell phones so they can send you alert messages, I've got some prime beach-front real-estate which is totally immune from all housing bubbles you can invest in.

On the other hand, I have to at least acknowledge that the US government is getting out ahead of any potential anti-government organizing using cell phones and other mass communication devices which bypass traditional media outlets (which can be tightly controlled as necessary). If Egypt had a chip in every phone, Mubarak would still be running the country: he could just have tracked the leaders organizing the resistance, used their phones to pinpoint their locations, and have had them executed. Not that I think the US would stoop to executions to quiet dissidents, but making key people "go away" would do wonders for any regime, and what regime wouldn't jump at the chance to monitor and track all the people they ruled?

It's really a natural extension of other systems already in place (eg: telematics as standard, non-removable features of cars coming out of Government Motors, with well-documented third-party listening and tracking capabilities). After all, if you have nothing to hide, why would you object?

I'm sure they will

[Sycraft-fu]

The problem with the Emergency Alert System is that more and more Americans don't have ready access to it. I'm one of them. I have no radios that I use. My car has one, but it is never on. I do not have TV at all, not cable, not an antenna, nothing. All my information comes through other channels (the Internet mostly). So they have no ready way to broadcast a warning to me. I mean it can be put out on the Internet, of course, but if I'm no looking that doesn't do any good.

Well, happens I DO have a cellphone. So an alert sent to it will get to me. I almost always have it with me and unlike an Internet connection it is designed to receive data at any time and be able to get it to me. As such it makes sense to target it for a new generation of EAS.

I don't imagine it will be abused simply because we have a history and the existing system never has. In all it's time, it has never been used for a national notification. It has only ever been used for local stuff. So it seems the federal government does not abuse this, probably because there'd be big backlash.

FAIL in so many ways

[bradley13]

This is fail in so many ways. Why do we want to allow an extra chip in our phones - as one poster points out, this is (or ought to be) totally unnecessary. What else does that chip do?

Why do I want to get these alerts? Do I trust the government to use them responsibly (answer: "no")? Anyway, why can't they just send an SMS to every phone in a certain area - why does this even need to be a special protocol?

Finally, and I know I am going to get flamed for this, but: what is it with the children? There is simply no sense to having a special announcement system for missing children. Look at the statistics: several hundred thousand children are reported missing each year in the USA. Of these, about 3/4 are totally harmless - kids who got temporarily lost in the shopping center, who were pissed at their parents and "ran away from home" for an hour, etc. Almost all of the rest are "abductions by family members", meaning marital strife. Something like 100 kids per year truly go missing. Just to put that in perpective, twice that many kids die every year from being circumcised, and yet somehow we survive without a special federal program for that.

Wow yet another invention from the history book

[yacc143]

A combination of cell broadcast (address all mobiles by area via the cell tower) and FlashSMS (an SMS that pops up on the screen directly).

Both stuff from the 90s (FlashSMS can be easily sent by normal users, with the right program, OTOH, never seen Cellbroadcast here around.)

It's sort of like Rule 34.

[mgbastard]

What's the next hottest crack target? THIS. Obviously it will be owned, and abused for spam.

Either that, or it will be owned by a ~11yo and everyone, everywhere will get "an urgent message form the president" which is actually a picture of his thing. * or hers; equality.

Is there a rule # for this? Surely there is? If it has eyeballs, it will be spammed, or porned.

And somewhere is Rule #1337: If you build it big enough, it will be cracked in an inversely related fractional amount of time it took to 'perfect'.

multimedia support

[egor.alexeyev]

It would be more usable if along with text there was a possibility of sending multimedia. It can be, for example, photo of lost or abducted child.

protocols

[cbunix23]

That's correct, it's done geographically, there is not a big federal list of each person's phone number. For example, take a look at 3GPP TS 25.419 (SABP). This is the interface between the CBC and an RNC (UMTS). http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/specs/html-info/25419.htm The broadcast request message is called Write-Replace. There are similar protocols between the CBC and BSCs (GSM).

I work on the CBC part of this, questions ?

[cbunix23]

As I mentioned before a few months ago when this first popped up in the news I work on the Alcatel-Lucent product being used by Sprint, AT&T VZW and others. What do you want to know ? I have to leave for work right now so I'll get back to this later tonight but you can "leave your questions in the box below".

Chips & Dips

[Comboman]

I suspect the wording is intended for the general public who believe any new functionality in an existing piece of hardware requires the addition of a "chip". All of the hardware necessary for this system is already on every phone (even low-end feature phones).

Re:you'll find out a lot more than you bargained f

[gx5000]

You are so right............Doomed to fail. Who thinks up this nonsense anyways ? It's not as if we're two thousand people living in a small community, we're talking Nation, heck, continent wide... I don't care for information this is forced on me, I don't care. I don't have it now, I don't need or miss it.

so you cant opt out of Presidential alerts eh ?

[Nightjed]

i dont know about you guys but i live in Argentina and our president LOVES... LOOOOOVEEEEEES to use official communication hijacking to talk about nonsense and personal political agendas (as an example she used one to say that "Pork improves sex life" ... yeah wtf), last thing we need is to lose the ability to shut her up

9/11

[tekrat]

I don't know how many New Yorkers are on Slashdot, but I was living in Jersey City during 9/11, and the one thing I can tell you is that when there is a disaster, the President is aware of it later than the people suffering the disaster, and by then, the phone network is USELESS.

On 9/11 I was unable to make a phone call for 12 hours. Things started going bad by 8:30am, and it wasn't until almost 9PM that I was able to get through to my family. They knew I took the PATH train through that area and thought I was a dead.

But I was late getting into work that day. Also, my clock radio was set to 1010 WINS (news radio), so I was smart enough to turn on my TV to see the "light commuter aircraft" that might have hit the twin towers...

The rest of the day I caught the entire event live from the rooftop. But the point is: Phones just gave a busy signal. Nothing worked. Actually, that's not true, the internet worked. But my family members didn't have email back then.

When zillions of people clog the phone network, it bogs down from oversaturation - try getting a signal during any major event. I attended the Stewart/Colbert rally in DC, and I was able to get a signal until the crowd started to get really big. After that, nothing worked.

This plan is doomed to failure because there isn't enough infrastructure.

Who pays?

[gstoddart]

So, the obvious question is how much is this going to affect the cost of a phone?

The manufacturers won't absorb it, the carriers won't absorb it, which means the consumers will be paying for this.

I suspect this will add to the cost of a new phone. And, as a Canadian, I fear that since our phones are largely imported from the US, we'll end up paying for a feature which we won't even be using.

Drunk Obama's a Dick!

[DarthVain]

President Obama: "Whatzuppppppp!"

Re:THIS IS AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE PRESIDENT

[anegg]

Due to emergency I have temporarily invoked martial law. Trucks will be dispatched to the homes of registered firearm owners to secure them for the safety of the people We urge parents to keep their children indoors as unregistered protests will be seen as violation of martial law

You raise an important point.

What types of government-initiated actions will become possible when the government believes that a means to communicate immediately to all citizens exists?

Without such an emergency communications system, the fact that a message could not be sent to a broad cross-section of the population with any level of assurance of reception has some inhibitory effect on attempted control actions by government representatives against the population. With such an emergency communications system, will there be an increase in situations where the government attempts to "take control" (with dire penalties for disobedience) made possible by the existence of the emergency communications system?

Changes in technology often remove undocumented "governors" from processes that have unforeseen (usually unintended) consequences. Will this be one of them?

Exploits

[xyourfacekillerx]

Won't be long till someone figures out how to exploit this. Or at least abuse it possibly.

Re:Abducted children alerts? Yeah right.

[gknoy]

We activated it 173 times last year. That's about three to four kidnappings per state. Six of those were hoaxes, and ten were considered unfounded, so 157 kidnappings activated the system.

I'm not eager to have my kid kidnapped, but it sure seems like more kids would be saved (from other dangers) more efficiently by spending the money differently. Then again, how much DO we budget for the Amber Alert system? I couldn't find it on the web with some meager searching.

Re:Useful but invasive

[riondluz]

Great Comment! Easy points to deliver, hard to argue (IMO).
Maybe the upside of this will be the driver for more opensourse iron-n-wire, boards and components.
Support for Buglabs and kindred ilk.

OK, so they renamed it

[billstewart]

I'm still talking about having the alerts interrupt the radio, so when you're driving you don't have to get out your cell phone. (And hey, I remember when it was still named CONELRAD...)

I do remember the first time I heard the Emergency Broadcast System come on the radio and say it was not a test. Apparently they'd started using the system for flood warnings and other realistic emergencies, but having grown up in the Cold War, the Emergency Broadcast System only meant two things to my generation, either "This is a test, it is only a test" or "There's a nuclear war, kiss your ass goodbye."