Slashdot Mirror
Trump Will Get Power To Send Unblockable Mass Text Messages To All Americans (nymag.com)
President-elect Donald Trump will have access to a system which can send unblockable texts to every phone in the United States once he becomes the president. From a report on NYMag: These 90-character messages, known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (or WEAs), are part of a program put in place after Congress passed the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act, in 2006. WEAs allow for targeted messages to be sent to every cell phone getting a signal from certain geographically relevant cell towers (or, in a national emergency, all of them). While it'd be a true nightmare to get screeching alerts from your phone that "Loser Senate Democrats still won't confirm great man Peter Thiel to Supreme Court. Sad!", there are some checks and balances on this. While President-elect Trump hasn't shown much impulse control when it comes to his favorite mass-messaging service, Twitter, the process for issuing a WEA isn't as simple as typing out a 90-character alert from a presidential smartphone and hitting "Send." All WEAs must be issued through FEMA's Integrated Public Alert Warning System, meaning that an emergency alert from the president still has at least one layer to pass through before being issued. While FEMA is under control of the executive branch (the head of FEMA is selected by the president, and reports to the Department of Homeland Security), the agency would have a vested interest in not seeing their alert system bent toward, uh, non-emergency ends.
What the fuck is this? I don't like Trump because I have a brain cell, but this is bullshit garbage. msmash/manish needs to go.
There's plenty Trump is actually doing that will have drastic consequences over the next few decades to be concerned about. Lets not start worrying about a power he hasn't abused yet, has made no comments that show he will abuse it, and if abused would be more an annoyance than a crisis. Priorities people.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This is nothing new
Trump will soon have the power and authority to launch a Preemptive Nuclear Strike and you are worried about the misuse of the WEA's Text Messages?!
Why is this news? Obama has the power now. I trust Obama, as a professional Chicago-machine politician, even less than Trump.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I hate pointless fear mongering articles. Best example of fake news there is right here on slashdot.
Trump isn't likely to abuse the alert system but leave it to slashdot to make an issue of it.
Trump won. Get over it already.
What the fuck is this? Seriously? What. The. Fuck. Taco must be turning in his grave/money pit at what the various owners of Slashdot have done to it since he sold it on.
As the old adage goes: "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it"
Can we stop complaining about things that may possibly is some crazy parallel universe happen?
I didn't vote for the guy but can we at least wait until he is in office and doing stuff before we jump off the deep end?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
All of a sudden, the left and the media are afraid of the powers that have been given to the president...
Correct. This is a totally sensationalist story.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Agreed, when I first read the article I asked myself "And?". Why is this even showing up on a tech forum?
Time to move on to technical discussions and move away from the politics that have been a major distraction this past year.
I have been woken at 2am by idiotic Amber Alerts about incidents hundreds of miles from my home. If there was some way to block these messages, I would do so.
Blocking Amber Alerts on iOS is simple. Go to Settings -> Notifications, scroll down to the bottom of that page, unselect "AMBER Alerts" (and/or "Emergency Alerts"). I assume it's equally easy on Android.
But back to the subject at hand... I held my nose and voted for Hillary, but I'm getting really tired of these "Trump may do this" and "Trump might do that" propaganda pieces that are spewing forth across the web. I'm nervous about his presidency; but the election is over - let's see what he actually does, and then react if necessary.
I'm old enough to remember similar hysteria from back when Reagan was elected. Early on, his administration tried to do some pretty darn stupid things, like attempting to let ketchup count as a vegetable in school lunches. I remember Bill Clinton's early day missteps as well ("Sorry, we don't talk to the military"). But between the politics of Washington DC and the court of public opinion, the initial lunatic fringe crap gets self-corrected pretty darn quickly. The Republic will survive.
#DeleteChrome
Some of us cannot turn off our phones at night. I had to deal with my Father dying of leukemia for 3 years or so, then an over-anxious Mother who was having panic attacks and then we found she was developing Alzheimer's. For 10 years, I had to be on call 24/7 because I never knew what would happen or if that out-of-town phone call was a friend or an EMT or someone calling on their cell phone to tell me she needed help or was in serious trouble.
It must be a wonderful privilege to live in a world where it's easy to imagine not having to be on call 24/7.
So... in other words, the Democrats are now going to do what the Republicans have been doing for the past 8 years.
In many cases, wait until it was too late.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-