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The FCC Is Changing Up the Country's Emergency Alert System (theverge.com)
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.
Sounds confusing to me. Hope it makes sense.
This will just train us to ignore the real alerts
"Had this been a real alert, you would all be dead by now" "Had this been a real alert, the sound you just heard would be followed by screaming, wailing, and the sounds of vehicles rapidly leaving the area" "Had this been a real alert, do you really think we'd warn YOU?"
Additionally, each test of the alert system will be able to have corporate sponsorship. Citizens will feel safer knowing that a major corporation has a vested interest in their survival. Fewer words will be more comforting than "This test of the Emergency Alert System has been brought to you by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company--have a Coke and a smile!"
When someone says, "Any fool can see
"Live tests" will be performed every week in order to keep the populace continuously scared while simultaneously conditioning them to feel like it's "just another alert" when a real disaster happens.
A death spiral of disasters and acceptance, until the world ends and everyone just shrugs and says "it's fine".
Most are familiar with warnings, watches, and amber alerts but little has been done to explain newly overhauled codes for programmers dealing with EAS beacons. The following can be expected to show up in data streams soon.
Amberish alert: a little girl hasnt been abducted but a local law enforcement agency also needs to justify their next years budget. this code is issued for 5 hours, broadcast on news outlets, and then the girls actual location with a family member is revealed.
The amber alert, Sponsored by AT&T: a major telco carrier has intentionally kidnapped a preteen and, if you find her, you receive a coupon for a free large soda with any papa johns pizza order of a large pizza.
Amber alert pro 2005 millennial edition: this is an alert sent from stations running an old copy of windows. no one knows how to turn it off.
uncomfortable disaster alert: issued during slow-rolling man-made disasters for which no accountable agency or individual can be found. School shootings, the Flynt water crisis, honeybee extinction, and collapsing roads and infrastructure are defined as triggering this alert, however the content of the alert is simply an escapist series of movie previews and trailers for upcoming video games.
presidential alert, the best: Get ready for this one because its yuge, really. Awaken at odd hours of the night to rambling screeds such as "jeb is a waste" and "the wall is the best, because america is the best, and, you wouldnt believe it but its gonna be great, trust me." Boggle as congress has legislatively redacted any ability to disable this alert.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They don't do ANY tests now. It will be good for people to know what an emergency alert looks and sounds like so that they realize when one is coming in.
The tests should be infrequent, though; at most twice a year, and at a well-known time when people are unlikely to be asleep.
If a kid gets lost at 3 am 25 miles from me, I'm unlikely to be able to find them. If a storm is coming, not like I can do much about it.
I apparently can't turn off "Presidential alerts," but my phone is in airplane mode (not receiving data) when I'm asleep. If an ICBM is coming to my home, please don't wake me up -- I'd rather be vaporized in my sleep than have to deal with 15 minutes of panic, waiting wide awake to be blown to smithereens.
> Everyone in the area will get a test message, like a real alert.
No. Just.. just no. It's the kind of crap they do in asian countries and it's moronic. If you're emergency plan requires a fucking text message you're doing it wrong especially when you're relying on companies like ATT who can't even keep 911 up.
We're already programmed to respond to certain buzzer / alarm sounds (your alarm clock, a fire bell, etc). I grew up in an area that had airraid sirens, they worked just fine. The Government of course pulled the funding for them. This is more about mandating phones be usable by the Government to broadcast whatever the hell they want. I don't care about Amber alerts either.
Thank you
In October, the FCC will introduce a mandatory advertising channel that you cannot turn off.
In March 2019, they will add thirty minutes daily of poetry and songs celebrating beloved leader Donald J. Trump that you cannot turn off.
Six months later they will commandeer the cameras and microphones in all mobile devices.
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As an American I found that weird as well. I might say "change up" in local dialog but would never write it out. I would also say "slow down" and "speed up" but would be 50/50 on writing it out.
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.
Some localities get real value from alerts, such as citywide tornado warnings. But those are local value only. There is no value at all in large scale alerting, as you say. What sort of alert would have any value at non-local scale? North Korean invasion? How would anyone's behavior change as a consequence of the alert? For instance, if there were wide scale evacuation due to flooding or weather, by the time they get around to saying 'use route 5 to get out of the area' route 5 will already be at a standstill.
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What we actually need is an emergency broadcast system that respects urgency, priority, and relevance to its audience. We have the technical capability to target an ad to me here on Facebook that knows I was shopping for a Microsoft Surface earlier this week, but somehow this is how our emergency alert system actually works:
Some grumpy old guy 200 miles away storms out of a family meal to walk to the bar. They call the police. Then they find the guy at the same bar he always goes to when he is mad at them. Then the police issue a Silver Alert to cover the entire state, just in case an elderly jerk is healthy enough to walk 200 miles across open prairie but somehow will be in a health crisis when he gets to my town. My phone and all those around me make annoying sounds. Everyone thinks there's an active shooter at the local post office and, since we all hate our local post office for losing mail and lying about it, everyone gets their own guns and heads to the post office. Two days later, the evening news (that nobody watches) reports that the Silver Alert had been issued after the guy was found at the bar, just trying to have a beer in peace away from his annoying family.
The TV alerts always occur during an important plot clue or ending to a movie. I mute the TV and goto IMDB or another site to read what I missed. My cockatiel was injured flying around in his cage.
Am also American and it doesn't sound weird to me at all. "Hey man, this playlist is boring, change it up!" It's a bit dialectal I guess, but it doesn't sound any weirder then something like dude or pal.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
"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?
if I see too many 'testing' messages, they become useless because I will likely stop paying attention to them.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Then the police issue a Silver Alert to cover the entire state,
This is an example of abuse of the emergency broadcast capability.
The purpose of an emergency broadcast is supposed to be to Alert everyone to a public danger that
is relevant to many people in an area since it
affects the public at large NOT to try and deputize the public to assist authorities in stopping an incident affecting 1 person.
The Silver Alert is essentially a non-emergency for 99% of the population, some of whom will be roused from their sleep by spurious messages they can do nothing about --- First thing is respect people's sleep and don't issue a load alarm waking them up for this: the nature of the allerts certainly don't warrant interrupting broadcasts. For the most part only people awake and outside their home or with plans to go out in public have any chance of being able to spot the person the alert is about... Cell phone messages: Maybe on opt-in basis.
There should be another type of channel for these kinds of messages that is targeted as selectively or as broadly
as those willing to participate would choose.
I would suggest encouraging heavy media attention. And distribute Mobile Apps that can be used to receive FYI / Public Help Wanted Alerts with detailed scheduling, prioritization, and filtering controls.