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The FCC Is Changing Up the Country's Emergency Alert System (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cry-wolf dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The FCC announced today that it'll bolster the country's Emergency Alert System to prevent unexpected false alarms, like the one that happened in Hawaii earlier this year. State and local officials will now be able to conduct "live code" tests that'll use the same alert codes and processes that would be required in an actual emergency. The idea is that officials will better learn the system while the public will get used to responding to alerts and know what to expect. Everyone in the area will get a test message, like a real alert. The agency also says that public service announcements about the Emergency Alert System will now be able to use the same alert sounds as an actual emergency. (The alerts will include a disclaimer about what's happening, and officials will have to actually tell people beforehand.) Finally, anyone who uses the emergency system will be required to tell the FCC if it accidentally triggers a false alert.

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Desensitized by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This will just train us to ignore the real alerts

    1. Re:Desensitized by JohnVanVliet · · Score: 1, Insightful

      the first Tuesday of the month at 1pm the sirens go off

      this IS expected so why not do the same at the same time with the sms system

       

      --
      "I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
  2. Sigh, More Control less annoyance per alert FIRST by mysidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The BS alerts of various sorts are already annoying, and i'm basically ignoring them already... Bl**** Hell;
    during the summer there is a Severe Thunderstorm every other day; I know that, you know that -- we can hear the thunder well in advance, and by looking at the cloud formations in the sky and the Radar app it is obvious what will be going down.... more alerts are not the answer

    Especially if you're going to test the system by generating alerts: first let me control HOW I receive alerts, and make them less intrusive --- If I hear part of an alert and don't want to listen to the rest, then I should be able to dismiss it.

    I am sick of having Television and Radio programs disrupted --- I'm on cable, and if I so choose: what my DVR is recording should NOT be fscked up, because someone sent an EAS test while I was away. Also.... My TiVO has a defective response to even the "test" emergency alerts... It winds up LOCKING the tuner on a specific channel, that's presumably supposed to receive the alert, but it never RELEASES the tuner back to my control. Also; What the hell.... If I know very well what the emergency is, I should be able to tune my preferred news channel that generally provides BETTER more-local more up-to-date information than any EAS junk does... with no "Eas LOCK" preventing me from changing the channel on my own frickin' TV.

    There should be thus: (1) No interruption of the transmission of programming; ENCODE the information and cause a "message" to be saved to the TV and/or DVR --- recordings should be unaffected;
    (2) Better User-Interface Design; Play the alert but provide a Popup window that allows Acknowledging/Dismissing the alert.

  3. Yo da FCC iz Changing Up da emergency alert system by najajomo · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "The FCC Is Changing Up the Country's Emergency Alert System"

    Does 'Changing Up' have the same meaning as improving and why is slashdot now writing its titles in ebonics?