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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.
how clueless, President Barack Obama signed the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Modernization Act of 2015.
And the messages are from FEMA.
Beside this fools in major media outlets are embarrassing themselves with their ignorance, spewing about "Trump's messages"
...because it is idiotic, and could apply to EAS, or EBS before it, delivered via any medium, including radio and TV, or even warning sirens.
https://nypost.com/2018/10/03/...
One of the chief purposes and reasons for being for EAS (and EBS) is for the President to get a message directly to the American people in the event of a major national emergency.
It's a system that is desperately needed, and was expanded to include Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) via the IPAWS legislation signed into law by President Obama.
And though we hope the system is never used, it does need to be tested.
https://slate.com/technology/2...
I want to know why alerts don't go into a history like text messages. Personally I think they should just go into the normal SMS history.
When I clear an alert to make the phone be quiet I lose the ability to see the alert. That's some of the dumbest planning I've seen.
I refuse to sign
...you guys are still butt hurt over the 2016 election.
But really, you don't want FEMA messages because they "come from Trump"? You know this system was authorized by President Obama, right?
-Styopa
Yeah, no shit. I recall this being set up during the Obama Administration, and I also remember how badly it failed due to problems integrating it into the larger national alert system.
The original bill that created this national FEMA alert was passed in 2006. Bush then signed a bill that modified it in 2008. The original test was scheduled to happen during the hurricane Florence. So it was moved to today. Just another opportunity to smear 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.
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?
"Presidential" alerts actually go back to the 1960s when people were afraid of nuclear attack by Russia. It gave the president (Kennedy) the power to alert Americans "We are under attack. Held to your shelters."
Fast-forward to now, it's still the same system to provide Fast warning to the citizens, but expanded from TV and radio to include cellphones.
Big deal.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Grow the fuck up. It's the Presidential Alert system, and only for the brief moment is The Trumenfuhrer occupying that seat. Someone else will be President soon enough and we can all luxuriate again in alerts about how many billions of dollars we're shipping in the middle of the night to terrorist supporters.
I think the plaintiffs should have to present some evidence why they believe it is likely the President would abuse this forum to broadcast "arbitrary, biased, irrational" messages.
I received the following alert this morning, just before noon PST.
"Presidential Alert
THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.
Christine Blasey Ford is a skank."
#DeleteChrome
They are buried to be sure, but on my Android Pixel 2 running 9.0 Pie I can find them here:
Apps & Notifications -> Emergency Alerts -> Emergency alert history
I would be totally onboard with this if they added a Reply button and now that I think about it, a Reply to All button would be even better.
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.
This group of people want to avoid "arbitrary, biased, irrational" messages by filing an arbitrary, biased, irrational lawsuit.
I am not a lawyer, but there is something called a "declaratory judgement". You could think of a declaratory judgement as being about something that could happen but hasn't yet.
Wikipedia:
A declaratory judgment, also called a declaration, is the legal determination of a court that resolves legal uncertainty for the litigants. It is a form of legally binding preventive adjudication by which a party involved in an actual or possible legal matter can ask a court to conclusively rule on and affirm the rights, duties, or obligations of one or more parties in a civil dispute...
I'm your neighbour, and for years I've been yelling at you about how your driveway goes over my land, and that I'm going to sue you one of these days sonny boy see if I don't. You think I'm full of crap and would have no case. Now you want to do an expensive paving job on your driveway. The scenario you fear is: you pay lots of money for the job, then I get annoyed and actually get around to suing, and to your surprise I win, and you have to tear up the expensive job and have it redone. If you could be guaranteed I'd sue you in the near future, it would be fine: you'd fight the case, and at the end you'd know exactly what you could or could not do. But I'll probably never sue, so you face the prospect of never paving your driveway.
The declaratory judgement allows you to force this case into court, even though you are not the putatively wronged party. You ask the court to make a declaratory judgement that your driveway is not on my land, and then the court finds either for you or for me, and either way you have clarity.
So rather than waiting for Trump to use the text alert and then sue him for inappropriate use, you might seek a declaratory judgement as to what an appropriate use is. As mentioned above, I am not a lawyer, so I don't know whether this falls within the stuff you can get a declaratory judgement over.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Because he is using the federal emergency system to test.... the federal emergency system?
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.
Besides, you can't sue the president for something the law essentially requires him to do.
I'd understand if people hated some of the things he says or does, and I've been a supporter of democratic candidates, but such unbridled hatred towards him has made me so fed up, I hope he just crushes them in the mid terms, gets his judge appointed, and is re-elected in 2020. Not because I am a fan or care, but because I think it's not as bad as the democratic behavior which is purely obstructionism and hatred at this point. I want to see them lose just because of the vitriol they spew.
Ultimately, he won the election. No matter who does, I want them to succeed, because success is success for my country.
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.
I say let him. When people are woken up at 3AM with a message from FEMA reading "CROOKED HILLARY BENGAZGATE ROBERT MUHLER IS FIRED" , the straight up outrage that'd cause against him would be worth the price of the interuption alone.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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.
Doesn't matter who signed it, I actually think it was a good bill, until the individual mandate entered into it. And I don't care which political party you say you are, no one gets to tell me I have to buy anyone's product by force. And I'm sorry, it's by force. If I don't I get fined. If I don't pay or agree to pay it, it's prison. If I resist prison, I get killed by police.