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New FCC Rules Will Require Wireless Companies To Deliver Emergency Alerts More Accurately (recode.net)

Posted by msmash on from the up-next dept.

The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to update the country's wireless emergency alert system, aiming to ensure that local officials only sound alarms on Americans' smartphones when those citizens are truly in harm's way. From a report: The system, implemented in 2012, allows first responders around the country to dispatch short, loud, text-message-like bulletins to warn mobile users about inclement weather, abducted children or criminals at large. But public-safety leaders long have complained the alerts are inaccurate, rendering it difficult to use them in times of disaster without creating undue panic. And they fret that "over-alerting" has proven so frustrating to smartphone owners that they've simply turned off the alarms entirely -- rendering it even more difficult to communicate in times of an emergency.

36 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. WARNING WARNING WARNING by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    EMERGENCY ALERT VERY IMPORTANT BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

    It's 3AM and it's *snowing!* In upstate New York! There's white stuff! Coming out of the sky! We're all gonna die!

    EMERGENCY ALERT VERY IMPORTANT BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

    *smashes phone with hammer and goes back to sleep*

  2. Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by BeemanIT · · Score: 1

    Just Saying, not going to stop real alerts like "MISSLE ATTACK". Oooops didn't know that button was there.

    1. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      The employee who did that didn't even get fired either, just assigned to another job pending an investigation.

      http://time.com/5103320/hawaii...

      Richard Rapoza, spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management System, confirmed that the employee was temporarily moved to a new role, NBC News reports. However, he declined to say what the worker's new tasks are.

      "All we will say is that the individual has been temporarily reassigned within our Emergency Operations Center pending the outcome of our internal investigation, and it is currently in a role that does not provide access to the warning system," Rapoza said.

      People across Hawaii received an emergency alert on Saturday warning them to seek immediate shelter for a ballistic missile threat coming to the state. "This is not a drill," the alert said, causing immediate terror.

      And they've refused to co-operate with an FCC inquiry into what went wrong, even though the Hawaii EMA said it was hoping they would cooperate and was encouraging them to do so.

      http://time.com/5119618/hawaii...

      The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said Thursday it hoped its employee-who has already been reassigned-would decide to cooperate with the investigation.

      "We share FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Lisa Fowlkes's disappointment. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has encouraged its employees to cooperate in all ongoing investigations, and while each individual makes a personal choice, we hope anyone who is not cooperating will reconsider and help to bring these matters to a satisfactory conclusion," Richard Rapoza, the agency's public information officer, said in a statement.

      Despite the employee's lack of cooperation, Fowlkes said the FCC's investigation has made progress. She told to the Senate committee that officials in Hawaii have begun to change their procedures to ensure a similar mistake does not happen again.

      "The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tells us that is working with its vendor to integrate additional technical safeguards into its alert origination software, and has changed its protocols to require two individuals to sign off on the transmission of tests and live alerts," she told the committee.

      You have to wonder what it would take to get fired if you work for a government agency in Hawaii.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Yeah, because clicking the wrong button *once* in a horribly designed user interface is totally a fireable offense where you work, right?

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    3. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Uh yeah, it kind of is. I've known people get fired for deploying stuff to a production system by mistake when they thought they were deploying to a test system because they didn't know what the hell they were doing and causing chaos. But then again they were contractors who were actually accountable for fuckups. Permanent employees usually get moved. The whole contractor thing is that you get paid more than the permies if you're any good and unceremoniously fired if you're not. There is much to be said for this for both the employer and the contractor.

      And if it really were "a horribly designed user interface" where clicking one button is the equivalent of falsely crying fire in a crowded theatre it sounds like something it would be good to bring up and the investigation. The one the employee in question has refused to cooperate with despite being asked to. That's another sign the employee has too much power in this relationship.

      If people know they can't be fired for fuckups of this magnitude and don't even need to cooperate with an inquiry, those fuckups will happen more frequently.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    4. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There is a witch hunt that wants somebody's head. I would not cooperate either.

      Firing people over honest error is a stupid plan that degrades trust in an organization. Anybody can fuck something up because humans are human.

    5. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by sabri · · Score: 1

      because clicking the wrong button *once* in a horribly designed user interface is totally a fireable offense

      At strategic missile command, yes.

      --
      I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
    6. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      Not firing incompetent people for high-level fuckups is an example of managerial incompetence. Seems like a flavor of favoritism of some sort. Why do you think a competent manager would be less likely to fire this guy than if he were a contractor? Are you under the illusion that the courts won't allow companies to fire their employees when there's a clear example of failing at the job? Even in the parts of the country where the right to fire hasn't been explicitly and unconditionally protected under the law, that's not true.

      Besides that, "Emergency Broadcast System monitor" doesn't sound like the kind of job where contracting really fits. Contracting is great arrangement if you're opening a new office and need Cat5e installed and a couple of servers built - clearly-defined jobs with a start and a finish. Not where you need people to sit until literal doomsday waiting for the call. Incompetent people may be attracted to that job, but the idea that they must end up there is false. That depends, again, on management. How they hire, how they fire. Setting the employees up as "contractors" won't make a lick of difference, besides maybe being able to wiggle out of giving them healthcare (which shouldn't be something the *employer* is burdened with anyway, but that's another story).

      My hunch - and I won't pretend to know what actually happened, like so many others on Slashdot - is that there were several grunts who made mistakes, and on top of that, there's probably some procedural/technical/systemic issues that contributed. All of those things point to management problems. Assuming my hunches are correct, we need to get rid of whoever handles hiring/firing. We need to get rid of whoever approved the procedures or made the software. And we probably need to get rid of whoever is above them - who is probably a politician of some kind who gave these duties to one of his private-sector buddies. But we don't want to call for that. No, we want to train our tunnelvision on the guy who hit the button.

    7. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      "Bro. I know I caused WWIII and wiped out 90% of humanity but it was an honest error. If you fire me I'll sue for wrongful dismissal. Also I'm not going to cooperate with no damn kangaroo court inquiry. I demand I be allowed to show up for work but not actually do anything for the next thirty years until I retire".

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    8. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Agripa · · Score: 1

      And they've refused to co-operate with an FCC inquiry into what went wrong, even though the Hawaii EMA said it was hoping they would cooperate and was encouraging them to do so.

      That right there tells me they should be fired and persecuted. No employee with the kind of forethought to exercise their 5th amendment rights should be permitted to work in government; they are too good for that and it is a waste of talent.

    9. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Uh yeah, it kind of is. I've known people get fired for deploying stuff to a production system by mistake when they thought they were deploying to a test system because they didn't know what the hell they were doing and causing chaos.

      That's too bad. I see it pretty often though -- creating a poorly designed system with a bad user interface, then blaming the operator for a minor slip-up that we ALL make. You can't possibly blame the system set up for people to fail, it's easier to ask for someone's head than to recognize that UI is important, and UI guides actions.

      Everyone makes mistakes. If your standard for an employee is perfection, year after year, then you are in an extremely hostile (and managerially incompetent) environment.

      Not that this has anything to do with the missile alert incident, it was a lot weirder than that.

    10. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      One of the first things I discovered when I got out of university is that you've got two main archetypes of job

      1) Permanent job. Salary is kind of disappointing but you have job security

      2) Contract job. Salary is pretty awesome but you've got no job security. If it all goes tits up you're first out of the door

      And I also discovered I vastly prefer the latter. Tenure is soul destroying - you basically end up with an Office Space type environment where no one does much work, there are loads of simmering political disputes that everyone pretends to ignore and everyone is chronically unhappy. Meanwhile in the wacky world of contracting if everything is going well you make a load of cash and if there's a roadblock you just get another job. Much less stressful.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    11. Re:Not going to stop the REAL Alerts by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      I did the world of contracting for awhile, and my experience was... well, not dissimilar (when a company started to go tits-up, the contractors were the first to go), but I experienced the negative side of contracting a lot. I went to a number of companies with dysfunctional bureaucracies and worse, employees who were abusive (and not just to contractors). The good news, if I was placed at that company, I knew I wasn't stuck there. If things were really unmanageable, it wasn't hard for me to leave. The bad news -- if I found a place where I really enjoyed the work, and I really enjoyed my co-workers, well, I'd have to leave as well. Contractors are expensive, or my contracting company was. Once I got a taste of that, I couldn't go back to the shitty companies again.

      Eventually I quit the contracting gig and was hired full time by the company I really enjoyed working at, and haven't looked back.

  3. Legislation to the rescue! by nimbius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FCC: you must deliver alerts more accurately, no more blanket warnings for random weather events and such.
    Wireless company: You mean like the random false alarm for thermonuclear war that was issued by the government?
    FCC: ...no see thats different..
    Wireless company: or the hundreds of random Amber alerts we're made to issue every year in the bold, misplaced strategy of assuming the average taxpayer will suit up like Ironman and save the day?
    FCC:...ok, thats probably not..
    Wireless company: Or what about these blue alerts you keep talking about, the ones we might have to issue if theres imminent threat to law enforcement, a career with by its very definition an inherent and indelible risk that no alert will mitigate?

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  4. Re:Ajit Pai by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 3, Funny

    My god -- it's all true! He's personally targeted you and limited your posts to 14 characters. That must be why this is just about the only thing you post anymore. But maybe we can still communicate nonetheless. Can you post it once for "yes" and twice in an row for "no"? Hope springs eternal....

  5. Re:Can't wait to see the conspiracy theories on th by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

    They'll claim a need for govt money to help refit their systems, you know, because of their suffering at the hands of Wheeler's NN, but they'll just wind up using to pad their earnings as usual.

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
  6. Re:Ajit Pai by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

    Fuck Ajit Pai.

    You are either braver than I, or totally lacking in standards of attractiveness. In this case, it's an ugliness of the inside, as he's far from the worst-looking individual in this admin.

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
  7. Re:Yes by sabri · · Score: 2

    Same thing here. While in Socal I got Norcal amber alerts because of my 408 number (wild guess). I turned all of that shit off until they figure out how to differentiate between a real emergency and a mehrgency.

    --
    I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
  8. Re:Yes by hawguy · · Score: 1

    They did the same thing here regarding Amber alerts. The public doesn't need to know every time there's a custody dispute.

    I turned off Amber alerts the time I was woken up for an alert for a missing child 400 miles away. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with the alert -- am I supposed to call the police every time I see a "Blond girl, 90 lbs, white or grey Toyota, heading north"?

  9. Re: Yes by bobmajdakjr · · Score: 1

    aye. mine are off because here in dallas i was getting amber and silver alerts at least once a day at like 3 am, which seemed to not only be the most grating (therefore best) alarm sound but it also it ignored the mute switch. i feel bad for all those kids and old people but there is seriously nothing i can do about it an hour before work in my underwear. look if someone brings a kid to my place ill call the cops regardless kidnapped or not, ive never owned one it shouldnâ(TM)t be there.

  10. Already broken because of Amber & Silver alert by Aqualung812 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've talked to so many people that have already disabled emergency alerts simply because they were awoken in the middle of the night with a amber or silver alert.

    Emergency alerts to phones need to be ONLY for things that require immediate action by the phone's owner regardless if awake or asleep.

    Things like public awareness notices can be sent over SMS and the phone's built-in logic can decide if the user wants to get those in the middle of the night.

    --
    Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
  11. Not a carrier issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is almost entirely a government problem, not a carrier problem. Sending alerts that are trivial or when no one is at risk is what degrades warnings. That's 100% on the government.

    1. Re:Not a carrier issue by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      This is almost entirely a government problem, not a carrier problem. Sending alerts that are trivial or when no one is at risk is what degrades warnings. That's 100% on the government.

      The government issues alerts. The carrier knows where the phones are and can determine which ones are actually in the alert area.

      They don't do that. That's why you get Amber alerts for cities that are 400 miles away. They know you are in Bohoken, NJ and don't need an Amber alert for Forshoken, KY, but you get it anyway because your phone has a Forshoken area code. They need to do better, and limit alerts to a reasonable physical area.

      That's not to say that the government doesn't issue too many alerts, but they're doing what the people want. The people who say "I don't care about your kids being abducted and can't help" are a minority.

      I can beat all of you as for distance out of area alerts. It was only a test, but I got a test alert from TAIWAN while I am in OREGON. Talk about useless. The phone was intended for Taiwan so it was configured to get Taiwan alerts, even when it was used on an US carrier in the US. That was my unwelcome introduction to the alert system.

    2. Re:Not a carrier issue by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      Somebody further upthread was saying that alerts get transmitted based on cell tower,

      Well, that certainly explains why I got an alert for Taiwan while I was in Oregon. Certainly I was receiving a Taiwanese cell tower from a location that has some pretty high mountains to the west -- right in radio line of sight to Taiwan. Maybe it was EME? Earth-moon-Earth radio bounce. Meteor scatter? I don't know, but certainly we must accept what someone "upthread" said about things and I must have been receiving a cell signal from thousands of miles away.

  12. Re:Already broken because of Amber & Silver al by businessnerd · · Score: 1

    Yes. On my Pixel 2, there are 3 toggles for Emergency Alerts: AMBER alerts, Extreme threats, and Severe threats.

    --
    "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
  13. Re:Already broken because of Amber & Silver al by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

    Things like public awareness notices can be sent over SMS and the phone's built-in logic can decide if the user wants to get those in the middle of the night.

    Agreed, or at the very least they can be managed through more granular controls at the OS level. I may not mind receiving Amber alerts on my own terms, but as it is now iOS only allows for an all-or-nothing with Amber alerts: either you get woken with a blaring alarm or you get nothing at all. This seems like an obvious area for improvement, but I suspect there are regulations impeding their ability to deal with such a well-known pain point.

    Within about a week of Amber alerts being added as a feature, I had multiple rude awakenings in the middle of the night for missing children in Houston (1.5 hours away by car) and San Antonio (3 hours). Given that Dallas is a comparable distance to San Antonio from where I live, I wouldn't be surprised if I would have eventually received alerts for them as well, meaning I'd have been receiving alerts for 3 of the top 10 largest cities in the nation, almost none of which would likely be applicable to where I live.

    Thankfully, iOS breaks the Amber alerts out separately from weather alerts, which is the only reason I still receive weather alerts, and the weather alerts where I live have actually been used wisely by whoever is making the calls. We've only been seeing them for major events in our immediate vicinity, such as for flash flood and tornado warnings within a few miles. And a tornado approaching my home is definitely something I want to be woken for, so I've been glad that I've been able to keep the weather alerts active.

  14. Re:Already broken because of Amber & Silver al by k6mfw · · Score: 1

    A more large concern is lack of respect for government agencies and established organizations. With all the foibles we have seen plus POTUS tweeting bad things about leaders of agencies or agencies themselves (when they are not in full agreement with him), not surprising more and more people becoming disrespectful of the establishment. Now what will happen in event of a major disaster, economic crises, war... many may feel like Puerto Ricans, "It's John Wayne time, you're on your own."

    --
    mfwright@batnet.com
  15. Re:Already broken because of Amber & Silver al by Aqualung812 · · Score: 1

    Man, I agree that Trump sucks and he is destroying the remaining credibility of the US government.

    That said, THIS issue is one that can be completely non-partisan, or even non-Trump. He hasn't talked about it, and I'd like to discuss at least some issues that have nothing to do with him, Democrats or Republicans. Please let this be one so we can fix it.

    --
    Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
  16. Re:Already broken because of Amber & Silver al by sound+vision · · Score: 1

    It's been a while since I've seen any such alerts, but Android did give me options along the lines of "Stop all alerts" and "Stop only alerts of this kind". Whether or not the alerts get sent with the proper flags is another question, and it sounds like that's maybe what the FCC is trying to standardize and fix here.

  17. This can't be right by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    I thought the new FCC was all about reducing regulation. But this smells a lot like *more* regulation.

    I'm assuming that they're redoing the rules in such a way that the wireless companies can somehow make more profit.

  18. So why can't they by en/disabled on a SCHEDULE? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    I've talked to so many people that have already disabled emergency alerts simply because they were awoken in the middle of the night with a amber or silver alert.

    Emergency alerts to phones need to be ONLY for things that require immediate action by the phone's owner regardless if awake or asleep.

    Also: During the recent Santa Rosa wildfire, the powers-that-be decided NOT to use the system to alert people at risk, for fear of "starting a panic" and clogging the roads with with people "not at risk" - thus apparently causing substantial loss of property and possibly loss of life. (This reminds me of the mass deaths at the Krakatoa island explosion, due to the island's powers-that-be deciding to keep the population on the island despite the volcanic rumbles, to avoid swaying an imminent election if the well-to-do disproportionally decided to take a short vacation.)

    There are alerts I'd want to see if I were awake but wouldn't want to be awakened for.

    (Also, I'm not on a day-people schedule. {This morning I got four landline and one cellphone unsolicted advertisements about two hours before my wife and I would normally be awake. I decided that ONE MORE landline call and I'd leave it off the hook, and look into disconnecting it entirely.})

    Seems to me they need a feature like this:
      - Alerts would be labelled with a position in a two-dimensional matrix: Type of alert, and severity. (They might also be labelled with location and/or area of significance.)
      - Users could define THEIR OWN SCHEDULE and disable various classes/severities/distances of alert, not just totally, but optionally in time periods of their own choice.

    Why don't we have ANYTHING like this already?

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  19. Re:Yes by tgeek · · Score: 1

    WEA (aka CMAS) alerts are delivered to geographical areas via cell broadcast. They are NOT directed to particular handsets. If you received an alert, it's because you were within range of a tower that was instructed to broadcast that alert. Whether that cell *should* have been broadcasting that particular message is another story. It's not unheard of for a carrier to have inaccurate maps that causes such mis-broadcasts (I operate the WEA system for a carrier)

  20. Re:Yes by Dayze!Confused · · Score: 1

    For me it was the sudden jarring alarm that comes out of nowhere and demands attention, not the best thing to have going through heavy traffic with lots of people merging. Perhaps having the alarm start softer and escalate over time would limit that issue, like a 10 second build up to the blazing alarm. This, combined with restricting it to real emergencies would make it a much better emergency broadcast system.

    --
    "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
  21. Over-alerting? by Agripa · · Score: 1

    So the same agencies which were over-alerting are complaining that over-alerting is rendering the emergency alert system ineffective? Fuck them.

    The obvious solution is to not allow users to disable the alerts so they have to deal with all of them. Also make it unlawful to disable or not carry their phones also, for the children.

  22. Re:Already broken because of Amber & Silver al by Agripa · · Score: 1

    If government agencies want my respect, then they can earn it. They do not get the benefit of my doubt.

  23. Re:Yes by Rakarra · · Score: 1

    I turned off Amber alerts the time I was woken up for an alert for a missing child 400 miles away. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with the alert -- am I supposed to call the police every time I see a "Blond girl, 90 lbs, white or grey Toyota, heading north"?

    The Amber alerts I've gotten have been more detailed than that (they always had an actual license plate number), but I got sick of getting a loud alert at 4am for an abduction that happened 21 hours earlier 400 miles away.