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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.
Journalists, be careful what you publish. Don't give donald ideas!
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?
And Obama had this power too. Don't remember quite how far back this goes, but pretty sure Bush was able to do it too.
And EVERY president going back to the start of the Emergency Broadcast System, since 1963, has had the ability to commandeer all airwaves as well. It was accidentally set off once, in 1971.
Meh.
Next story.
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?!
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...
Well, I assume you don't trust Trump to tell the truth - since it must be obvious even to you that he lies more or less constantly. So you trust him to be 'different', I suppose - with some kind of faith that 'different' in his case will turn out to be better. All very optimistic of you.
But have you considered that, for example, there was nothing stopping Trump from developing (or adopting) a coherent plan for, say, 'repealing and replacing Obamacare' sometime in the past 6 years. To me, the fact that he hasn't done so, and campaigned (and won) on a promise of 'something better', implies that he didn't have something better to offer - or he'd have offered it. There's no need to play political chess in pursuit of a popular policy, so let's assume his eventual 'something better' won't be better for enough voters for him to have presented it to them...
Yes, Obama is a politician - and a bit of a disappointment at that. 'Chicago-machine', I guess, carries a lot of specific negative meanings to you, but I'll assume it's is essentially code for 'Democrat' or 'urban' or something. But as far as 'trust' is concerned, Obama governed pretty much like he said he would - way to the right of where people (and the Nobel committee) 'hoped' he would, based, I guess, on their projections of what the first black President would do. But he was pretty trustworthy in the sense that he didn't misrepresent his policies much. Trump, on the other hand is claiming he's going to restore middle-class factory jobs by, what? Cutting taxes, mainly. Well, if you haven't figured out that 'tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves and help the middle class' is a lie by now, you're just not paying attention - or you've chosen sides and don't care about the truth.
Well, we're all about to see your assumptions and your faith tested. And I predict a continued rise in income inequality, with some various uglinesses on the side. If that happens, what will your reaction be?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I've got "Trump sends nation goatse SMS" as the center square on my bingo card.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because Donald Trump is technically a sociopath?
You are welcome on my lawn.
So... in other words, the Democrats are now going to do what the Republicans have been doing for the past 8 years.