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Senate Wants Netflix, Spotify To Send Out Federal Emergency Alerts (techcrunch.com)
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
- 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
We already have alert systems for phones, TV, and radio. We don't need everything to be an alert system client, or we would force browsers to push alerts as well.
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.
Given that they are trying to override the behavior of operating systems on phones, it's a good bet this is actually on their list.
That is all...
... 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.
If I'm about to be hit by a nuke then I don't want to be interrupted while I'm watching the new season of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If emergency alerts are to be rolled out in these sorts of situations, and if alerts should be able to reach us in more situations, then the only proper way to do it is on a per-device, basis, not a per-service basis.
The device can provide consistent alerts across ALL services it can run, without forcing each of those services to implement support for the alert system (plus, many of these devices are from manufacturers who make phones, so they already know how to support the alert system). The device can determine its own location and select the relevant alert channel without needing to provide your geolocation to anyone or anything else, meaning that maintaining your privacy is actually possible (though obviously not probable). The device can provide you with alerts even when you're not streaming via a service, meaning they can reach you more reliably. The device can continue to provide alerts so long as it can talk to the alert system itself, without the need for any third-party servers or ongoing infrastructure costs. The device can provide users with a centralized place where they can control and customize all alerts that might appear on the device, rather than needing to play whack-a-mole with dozens or hundreds of services.
Most importantly, the device provides me with a single thing that I can smash if the powers-that-be actually decide it's a good idea to make it impossible to disable the various ridiculous alerts that they are foisting on us these days (e.g. like the 2am amber alert I once received for a kid who had gone missing in a city that's four hours away from us by car).
Mistakes aren't even the problem, turns out that people don't like it when you alert them at 3 AM about an amber alert nowhere near them.
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.
Most likely, this will cause a device handling Netflix/Spotify to have the basic cell phone alert, followed by Netflix/Spotify giving out an alert as well. This simply causes an alert to be an annoyance rather than being useful.
They should have easily learned from what happened in Ontario: A province wide amber alert (played with an alarm at full volume), an amendment to the province wide amber alert (also played at full volume), and finally the cancellation of the amber alert (again, full volume.) If anything, one is likely to get six notifications instead of what should be one, which makes it more annoying than those apps that want their daily attention.
So instead of jamming alerts everywhere, perhaps they could focus on a standard way to make sure alerts are properly handled so that people don't get constant unnecessary alerts.
morning prayers? Tell the government to f off.
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.
The current alert systems are tower-based. A particular set of towers are told to transmit the alert and that determines the area it covers.
Netflix doesn't know where I am. My IP appears to be near Seattle instead of San Francisco (my ISP is small and happens to be based in Seattle). My Apple TV doesn't have a GPS chip AFAIK. I pay for Netflix through iTunes so Netflix also doesn't have a billing address. I don't use Spotify.
So what are they going to do? Ask for my Zip code so I can receive alerts?
What's the Zip of that town that has 1 resident?
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.