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Senate Wants Netflix, Spotify To Send Out Federal Emergency Alerts (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the public-service-announcement dept.

Senators in Hawaii and South Dakota have introduced a bill, called the "Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement (READI) act, that would "explore" broadcasting alerts to "online streaming services, such as Netflix and Spotify," amongst other changes to the Emergency Alert System. TechCrunch reports: Some of the other things the bill touches on:
- Users on many phones can currently disable federal alerts; they want to get rid of that option
- Building a better system for reporting false alarms and figuring out what happened
- Updating the system to better prevent false alarms, and to better retract them when they do happen

6 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. It's my phone! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I want to disable the alerts, I ought to be able to. It's bad enough that I can't disable the "Presidential Alerts" on my Samsung, but it ought to be caveat emptor if you do. Just like enabling wifi calling and knowing you could have an issue with dialing 911 not having your physical address...

    We already have emergency sirens all over the place that ought to be good enough.

    The fact that I DON'T get the alerts on the streams is a good thing from my perspective. Every week or month or whatever they test the EBS, with some hellaciously loud sound, and it's usually at 3AM when I have the tv on i the background and that tone wakes everyone up up if I don't go cancel it right away.

  2. Oh hell no! by tippen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is all...

  3. It swhould work both ways ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... so I could push notifications back at the bastards, or bitches as may apply, when I get a goddam 4 am (CST) Amber Alert about a kid missing in Oregon and I live in Texas.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:It swhould work both ways ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This x100. I got an alert in California about someone missing near mexico (south of san diego). Alert is north of San Francisco. Turned off alerts immediately.

      Seriously, why not work to earn users trusts rather than jamming this crap down our throats? For example my local city has great alerts, I'm signed up. Gives a nice short alert when a bridge will be closed overnight for repairs and other major local issues. It works great and they seem to be smarter about it then the national idiots.

      When more than half your users turn off the alerts - you know you are f'n it up!

  4. Stop making me pay to spread your fear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Having sirens is enough. We live in a society of over 300 million where more than 100,000 children disappear every year. Only the tiniest fraction of those get Amber alerts. They are completely ineffective for anything except reminding people of how much they need their government to protect them (NOT given that they have never managed to do so). This mechanism is effective only for keeping taxpayers minds on the danger so that they will give up more freedoms and allow the government to give their cronies more money for nothing.

  5. Pretty much all people have a celphone by ZorinLynx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Pretty much all people have a phone, or are near someone with a phone.

    Why is this necessary at all? Right now, Netflix doesn't need to know where you are. A system like this would require them to collect location information, which is a privacy issue.

    Concentrate on making phone emergency alerts reliable; that should be enough.