Slashdot Mirror
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."
Yes, Officer, I was just reading this text while I was driving because it might have been from the PRESIDENT!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
actually, I fully expect the system will be hijacked to disseminate spam within hours after going live.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
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.
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?
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.
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"
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.
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
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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.
Be seeing you...
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.