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!

[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!

[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!

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

[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.

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?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[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

[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

[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:propaganda in your pocket!

[whathappenedtomonday]

Volksempfaenger, anyone?

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.

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.

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.

RAGE

[OrangeTide]

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

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"

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

[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.

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

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.

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:Thank god!

[swb]

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

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.

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: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: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.

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: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.

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).