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New Yorkers Sue Trump and FEMA To Stop Presidential Alert (cnet.com)
Not everyone is pleased to hear that President Trump has the power to use communications systems in case of an emergency. According to CNET, three New York residents recently filed a lawsuit against President Trump and William Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to halt FEMA's new Presidential Alert messaging system.
The lawsuit reads in part: "Plaintiffs are American citizens who do not wish to receive text messages, or messages of any kind, on any topic or subject, from defendant Trump. [Trump's] rise to power was facilitated by weaponized disinformation that he broadcast into the public information sphere via Twitter in addition to traditional mass media." From the report: Presidential Alerts are similar to Amber or other emergency alerts on your phone -- you hear a loud noise comes along with vibration. The messages come from the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), which attempts to send the alert to every cell phone within the U.S. operating on a network run by a carrier opting into the Wireless Emergency Alert system. IPAWS is used in the event of natural disasters, acts of terrorism or other disasters or threats to public safety. The plaintiffs' main complaint is that Presidential Alerts are compulsory -- there's no way to opt-out of receiving them. They argue that under civil rights law, government cannot use cellular devices to compel listening, "trespass into and hijack" devices without a warrant or individual consent.
The plaintiffs are also concerned Trump might use the alerts to spread disinformation because IPAWS doesn't regulate the content of the messages. That means Trump may be free to define "act of terrorism" and "threat to public safety," and may broadcast "arbitrary, biased, irrational" messages to "hundreds of millions of people," the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit reads in part: "Plaintiffs are American citizens who do not wish to receive text messages, or messages of any kind, on any topic or subject, from defendant Trump. [Trump's] rise to power was facilitated by weaponized disinformation that he broadcast into the public information sphere via Twitter in addition to traditional mass media." From the report: Presidential Alerts are similar to Amber or other emergency alerts on your phone -- you hear a loud noise comes along with vibration. The messages come from the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), which attempts to send the alert to every cell phone within the U.S. operating on a network run by a carrier opting into the Wireless Emergency Alert system. IPAWS is used in the event of natural disasters, acts of terrorism or other disasters or threats to public safety. The plaintiffs' main complaint is that Presidential Alerts are compulsory -- there's no way to opt-out of receiving them. They argue that under civil rights law, government cannot use cellular devices to compel listening, "trespass into and hijack" devices without a warrant or individual consent.
The plaintiffs are also concerned Trump might use the alerts to spread disinformation because IPAWS doesn't regulate the content of the messages. That means Trump may be free to define "act of terrorism" and "threat to public safety," and may broadcast "arbitrary, biased, irrational" messages to "hundreds of millions of people," the plaintiffs say in the lawsuit.
> [Trump's] rise to power was facilitated by weaponized disinformation that he broadcast into the public information sphere via Twitter in addition to traditional mass media.
This is rich considering the objectively lopsided reporting by the media who did their best to elect Hillary. You can't complain about Russian trolls when you have the power of mass media and tech companies behind you.
Amazingly they still don't understand why Trump won. The fact is, Hillary was an awful candidate, and no propping her up by the powerful elites was going to change that.
Look, I hate Trump probably as much as anyone. But this lawsuit is dumb.
It's just an emergency alert. The weather service can issue weather alerts, emergency services can issue alerts for wildfires and earthquakes and such. They're an obvious public good - informing the public of imminent dangers to life and limb.
Could it be abused? In theory, yeah. Not quite sure how you'd do it in practice - it's not like there's a special console in the Oval Office that controls it, any message has to pass through lines of people before it goes out, any one of which would be required to refuse it. I'd be more worried about some FEMA staffer accidentally running something in prod instead of test and spamming the country than the Tangerine Toddler using it as an unblockable twitter.
More to the point, if you're worried that the President is likely to abuse a top-level emergency warning system to shovel propaganda at an unwilling public... the solution is not "don't let the president do that", it's "don't let that person be president". Such an untrustworthy person should not have been elected in the first place, and such a breach of public trust is cause for immediate removal from office, whether by impeachment or 25A or any other means necessary.
After all, we trust the president with nukes. If we can't trust someone with an emergency broadcast system, how the hell can we trust them with thermonuclear weapons?
Trump may be a jackass, but this is his job. If he abuses the powers and access of his job, then people have a right to be pissed, but you can't preemptively take the tools of his job away.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You don't get it. Trump is that badly distrusted.
But yes, we remember your hysterical anti-Obama actions. Birtherism, Jade Dragon, FEMA in general, and even a letter to Iran from members of the Senate. So sow what you reap.
The bad thing for you is that Trump has a record of needing adult supervision. His own staff documented it.
It's sad that people even give a flying fuck about this message. Oh, test message. Not an Amber Alert, no hurricane or earthquake.
The EAS has messages at least once a week on your favorite radio station. No one gets outraged. Same principal.
The electronic trespass rubric seems like a sham to me. If there were a tornado coming through, you'd want to know. A national emergency like some fool N Korean lobbing stuff at the USA, yeah, a real one (not the stupid fake one of recent memory) is important.
Gonna be earthquake? Sunspots of biblical magnitude (just before most transistors get clobbered) would be nice. I'd break out the candles.
Of many things to give a crap about, this is not one of them.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
And when it was signed into law under Obama, I think I remember the Republican-leaning part of the population being equally outraged at it.
Really? I don't remember any outrage about it at all. It was an extension/upgrade to the existing EAS system and back then people understood that a notification system was a Good Thing. Of course there were people who don't want to get any messages they don't want, like the presidential alert, and are unhappy that there is no way to turn them off. (I am one of those.) It's hardly "outrage" at "Obama" or "Trump" to feel that way. I feel the same way about useless Amber alerts, and even the Everbridge calls that our local Sheriff's office sometimes send out.
The only thing that's changed is who is being outraged.
No. There were no lawsuits from morons who wanted to predict all kinds of nonsense about how it would be misused when it was created. This is a lawsuit that is many years too late, because nothing has changed about the system itself. It's only who is now authorized to send the message, and that message is not coming straight from the cellphone of the President, it's coming through FEMA.
This lawsuit nonsense is a whole 'nother level of derangement. No, Trump is not going to declare a national emergency just so he can trigger a national alert. It just ain't gonna happen.
What the hell makes you think that just because we hate president Dumpsterfire that anyone likes the Democrats a ton better? They're all awful, which is how we got this orange orangutan in the first place.
I think most of us would be thrilled with a "Fire them all" button where we could start over with all new people. The corrupt bastards from my state are some of the worst. I vote against them every 2 years, and nothing ever comes of it.
- Vincit qui patitur.
This is why I fucking hate the Democrats. It's not a "good thing" or "bad thing" with them. It's a bad person, and EVERY SINGLE THING HE DOES is resisted and casted in the worst possible light, every time. It gets old.
This isn't really a "Democrat"-specific thing. A lot of Republicans treated Obama like the boogeyman, and everything he did was somehow nefarious. They tried to roadblock everything he did. They spent years hammering the Affordable Care Act-- which was largely a Republican bill, put forward as a compromise.
And not to say that Obama was perfect, but his behavior was, at the very least, much more in line with normal, respectable, Presidential behavior. Trump is a legitimate problem. He's a criminal and a walking disaster who has abused power at every turn.
You say you're not a fan, but I don't believe you. You say you don't care, but then you hope he "crushes them". If you're a Trump fan, at least admit it. Maybe you don't want to because you yourself know that he's a legitimate problem.