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FEMA, FCC Hope To Forestall Panic Over National Emergency Alert
Ars Technica has a piece on the "first-ever nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS)," slated for this Wednesday at 2 p.m. EST. An excerpt:
"This national system will look and sound much like the current (and local) emergency warnings often seen on TV or heard on radio, but the scope is larger and it can be put under the direct control of the President. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Weather Service (NWS) will all coordinate the test, but it's FEMA that actually transmits the alert code. Concerned that such a test might alarm people, the agencies are going to extraordinary lengths to provide a heads-up. I first heard about the test in an e-mail newsletter from my city government, which told residents last week, 'Do not be alarmed when an emergency message will take over the airways... this is only a test.' The test will display a warning message on TV screens, though as my city helpfully noted, 'Due to some technical limitations, a visual message indicating that "this is a test" may not pop up on every TV channel, especially where people use cable to receive their television stations.'"
perfect time for my invasion fleet to make their move!
COBRA! COBRA! COBRA! COBRA!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Who is watching TV and listening to the radio these days?
How will the system reach those of us that get 90% of our content online?
I guess it would work during a sporting event, but what about the rest of the time?
TV and radio? That's it? I do not have it at home and the radio channels in my car are unworthy.
I am already subscribed to a bunch of alerts from my county (text, email notifications) and it works already just fine.
Given that I am spending about 1 hour every day in my car, 8 hours at work (email access), and the rest at home (6 hours sleep - no access to email, texts + access to email and text for the rest of the home time), I would prefer text messages as the basic alert media. With the noted exceptions I always have access to my phone, so I would prefer "text" as a media.
I could not find any comparison in numbers between TV subscriptions and cell phones, but I suspect that more people nowadays have access to text messaging.
Another thing is that TV should be on when the emergency broadcast happens.
From the other hand, cell phones are more easily disrupted (voice, don't remember the anekdotes on messaging) during emergency situations...
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The real story here is that Fed.Gov can take over control of any media outlet without the consent of the media outlet.
Controlling the media is 90% of any coup...so who else is thinking of skipping an occupy rally today to hack this system?
Weather radio stations are not participating.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Or they could just download a manual.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
My understanding is that millions of twits will tweet in terror and be suddenly silenced...
If our government really wants to reach the people, just take down Facebook for a 30 second window and watch the panic ensue. There is a mass of the population who will see this Nationally broadcast message, but unless they hit the internet and key sites, this is not broad enough to reach a majority of the people.
Just send a Tweet. I understand that Tweets actually beat the aftershock waves along the Eastern seaboard when the quake hit Virginia a few months ago.
And a free Text message broadcasted to all phones would also work, but you know they won't do that, it shows how much power our government has and they don't want to tip their hand too early with that one.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
On September 11, 2001, the Emergency Alert System (that replaced the Emergency Broadcast System in 1998) did not alert anything. NYC and DC were under multiple attack by planes that immediately crippled the country, surging panic throughout the nation and the world, and driving the USA down the path of ruinous war. But there were no announcements, no sirens, no alerts. Emergency, but no alerts. Precisely the kind of emergency the system was sold to the public to address. After decades, finally needed, useless.
The official explanation is so much media coverage that it wasn't needed. As if any event requiring the system to work is going to go uncovered by the commercial media. That means the policy is for the system never to actually be used.
All those years of "testing" the system, all the money spent, all the alternate preparations ignored in favor of that one - all a total waste.
The weirdest thing is that it took years before I even heard someone mention that it didn't work. A forgettable comedian in about 2004-2005 had about 45 seconds about it
Now they'll spend a load of money on something else. It might even work. But since nobody even noticed, there'll be no reason for this new one to work. Except for those annoying tests that interrupt us. And leave us expecting we've built something necessary in an emergency, when we've just wasted more money on military contractors who delivered nothing.
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make install -not war
Is it not the same down there in the US? The fact that this might not pop up "THIS IS A TEST" on the majority of home TV systems would be enough for me to consider the entire system completely broken. There is no point in having a warning system that causes as much panic as a real event its intended to help warn against if you choose to test it.
Its not broken, its just that some people are really, really dumb.
Not only will the actual audio of the alert be there saying that its just a test, there should be no panic at the presence of an alert if it were real. Every broadcast station here is required to activate the alert system for a test once a week and its used for real whenever there is severe weather.
There doesn't need to be a graphic "this is just a test" message, the emergency alerts in our country are audio-based with a bit of textual metadata (which is really only necessary for the broadcaster). The audio recording will say its a test. Some TV stations just have their audio signal overridden and continue displaying program video. Yes, its because they're too cheap for a character generator, but its not really a failure of the system to deliver a message. Perhaps a failure of the FCC's requirements and they should mandate video to be overridden too, but the message is still delivered fine.
exactly this is just the test so that they can do it in 2012 with out flaw
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Someone posted most /. readers don't use TV or radio, but they already are aware of the Nov 9 drill (hey, that's what we all are screaming about right now). Someone else mentioned this is a test, first exercise to see how this works then make corrections as needed (if possible).
I was thinking all this illustrates a paradigm shift. People calling 911 may not do in tradition POTS, many do cellphone (which calltakers are getting a better handle on location), but 911 calltakers (actually these are the real "first responders") need to accept text messaging.
Another paradigm shift is television. 85% of US gets TV from cable but more and more are watching streaming video or youtube (as many of you slashdot people have said current programming is really crappy, i.e. syfy channel). Another thing I'm seeing is a shift away from live television, almost all TV is pre-recorded including news and sports (this may be debatable but that's for another thread). I have experience this with amateur television as all non-hams say they can do the same with their cellphone/iphone cam, and more amateur radio people including those that (used to) do ATV are doing it by iphones (i.e. ustream). Take a look at almost all DVD players have no RF input as more and more people watch movies on DVD, regular stations, OTA, no longer show movies (they used to back in the 20th century). So...... I can see broadcast TV will go the way of REACT (group that used to work CB and GMRS).
Then there is radio but since vast majority of stations are managed by Clear Channel and programming done by some elusive demographics studies (the DJ is dead) so much of the programming is the same ol' crap heard over and over. So like broadcast TV why have it when you can tote your 100,000 songs on ipad (or whatever).
An interesting situation, let's see how this all works out. For some disasters they are self alerting i.e. earthquakes. Some have advance warning i.e. tornados and I would rely on weather radio setup to receive NWS alerts. Tsumani warnings, hurricanes... NWS alerts for those in such regions? Emergency Broadcast System, predessessor to what we have now I believe was instituted for alert in event of nuclear attack which is dated. If one were to occur, it would be like an earthquake, a self alerting system.
Maybe what should be discussed is preparation, do you have supplies to sustain yourself for a number of days? Besides food and water, can you continue deal with taking a bath for two weeks? What about taking a shit? For most live in cities (apartments, condos), you can't flush the toilet (no running water) so where are you going to put "it?"
mfwright@batnet.com
It's not a joke if it's not funny. And certainly not when it's what millions of Republicans say every day to deny their giving us Bush/Cheney made the worst president of all time their fault.
I suppose that you're now using my logic to continue talking like a Republican. Not funny either.
BTW, they're not funny not because the truth is so bad, but because what you're saying just has no humor to it. If you can't tell, your sense of humor isn't up to the task of posting in public.
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make install -not war