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Cellphones Across the US Will Receive a 'Presidential Alert' at 2:18 pm Eastern Today (nytimes.com)
At 2:18 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, cellphones across the United States will emit the ominous ring of an emergency presidential alert. From a report: It will be the first nationwide test of a wireless emergency alert system, designed to warn people of a dire threat, like a terror attack, pandemic or natural disaster. There is no opting out, which has already prompted a lawsuit. "THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System," it will read. "No action is needed." Two minutes later, televisions and radios will show test alerts. There is no notification plan for landlines. Officials say they believe that the wireless test will reach about 75 percent of the cellphones in the country, though they hope the number is higher. It could take up to 30 minutes for the alerts to be transmitted to all devices.
Some things that could interfere: ongoing phone calls or data transmission, a device that is turned off or out of range, and smaller cellphone providers that are not participating in the program. The test, originally planned for last month but delayed by Hurricane Florence, is the culmination of many years of work. The federal government developed a system to issue the alerts, which are scripted in coordination with numerous government agencies. They are limited to 90 characters, but will be expanded to 360 in the future. The Communications Act of 1934 gives the president the power to use communications systems in case of an emergency, and a 2006 law called for the Federal Communications Commission to work with the wireless industry to transmit such messages.
Some things that could interfere: ongoing phone calls or data transmission, a device that is turned off or out of range, and smaller cellphone providers that are not participating in the program. The test, originally planned for last month but delayed by Hurricane Florence, is the culmination of many years of work. The federal government developed a system to issue the alerts, which are scripted in coordination with numerous government agencies. They are limited to 90 characters, but will be expanded to 360 in the future. The Communications Act of 1934 gives the president the power to use communications systems in case of an emergency, and a 2006 law called for the Federal Communications Commission to work with the wireless industry to transmit such messages.
This was implemented during under Obama:
WEA was established in 2008 pursuant to the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act and became operational in 2012.
Let's hope it works better than the Hawaii test.
covfefe
Remember when in 2006 the law was updated every was certain Bush would use to spam their cellphones with unblockable political spam? Then when cell companies started turning on the feature, how Obama was certain to use it for political spam?
/. Keep the dream alive!
Don't disappoint me
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Have you ever noticed that when you turn your phone on after it has been off all day, you receive texts that were sent hours earlier? That's because the carrier doesn't just send it out to you and hope that you got it, the phone acknowledges receiving the message. Until the message is acknowledged as received, the carrier keeps it to retry later.
So what exactly is causing you issues with this? Local TV stations have been doing this for years for severe weather situations. Now if they start broadcasting baseball scores or election results, then I will be with you on the objections.
If the president is able to use this at his discretion, without supervision, we all need to prepare ourselves for a whole lot of pain. That orange buffoon won't be able to resist the urge to constantly inundate all cell phone users with an endless stream of what he deems "important information" but is really just a constant spouting of nonsense.
You realize this is a test of an existing system, right? The alerts have been around on radio and TV going back to before most of us were born and on cell phones since 2013.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
cellphones across the country that run stock roms will receive this alert. anyone running lineageOS or other roms can disable the presidential alert.
And im sure ill get a shitstorm of people telling me this isnt wise, but let me clarify. after Amber alerts basically turned EAS into a carnival of CYA by local cops hoping to keep their budget another year, I decided to disable them on my EAS receiver, where I can also disable presidential alerts.
Good people go to bed earlier.
> The GSM protocol includes a broadcasting feature that overrides all other transmission
> in order to deliver emergency messages to all cellphones simultaneously.
> Why then the delays?
Because roughly half the cell phones in America have historically been CDMA devices, not GSM. CDMA generally had comparable functionality (on paper, at least), but wasn't literally identical.
Compounding the problem, major parts of CDMA's functionality was officially "optional" & left up to the carrier to pick & choose. Qualcomm intentionally allowed Sprint & Verizon to implement CDMA in slightly-incompatible ways... and Sprint & Verizon liked that, because it meant that even a theoretically-unlocked phone from one network would be forever crippled & dysfunctional on the other, EVEN IF a user managed to get it activated somehow.
Ultimately, it was (mostly) Apple & Google who put an end to much of the silliness. Blackberry & Sidekick mitigated it... but only for THEIR devices... and used their mitigations as a way to try and lock out Palm & Microsoft. The main thing that saved Apple & Google was Microsoft's purchase of Danger & subsequent willingness to license out their patent pool on fair & non-discriminatory terms (and why Microsoft makes more in profits from the sale of an iPhone or Android phone than it ever did from the sale of a Windows Mobile phone).