The FCC Is Changing Up the Country's Emergency Alert System (theverge.com) 92
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The FCC announced today that it'll bolster the country's Emergency Alert System to prevent unexpected false alarms, like the one that happened in Hawaii earlier this year. State and local officials will now be able to conduct "live code" tests that'll use the same alert codes and processes that would be required in an actual emergency. The idea is that officials will better learn the system while the public will get used to responding to alerts and know what to expect. Everyone in the area will get a test message, like a real alert. The agency also says that public service announcements about the Emergency Alert System will now be able to use the same alert sounds as an actual emergency. (The alerts will include a disclaimer about what's happening, and officials will have to actually tell people beforehand.) Finally, anyone who uses the emergency system will be required to tell the FCC if it accidentally triggers a false alert.
re EAS (Score:1)
Desensitized (Score:5, Insightful)
This will just train us to ignore the real alerts
Re:Desensitized (Score:5, Informative)
No shit, everyone will turn off the EAS messages on their cellphones. I already did that since Verizon apparently can't figure out how to limit EAS messages to a few county range and instead floods every severe weather alert to an area about half the size of most states which means my phone wants to wake me up for a severe thunderstorm over 150 miles away.
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the first Tuesday of the month at 1pm the sirens go off
this IS expected so why not do the same at the same time with the sms system
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So, phone goes off, public learns how to shut off the annoyance asap. The first time they may actually read the message in an effort to try to figure out how to make it stop. By the 5th time, muting it or tuning it off will become instinct. Most people will not bother reading a message to find out whether it was a test or not, since every other time it was always a test.
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What has desensitized me is giving me a stupid alert that it is raining. It's North Carolina. It is an early summer storm. It's going to rain buckets (for a few minutes, in a small geographic area). Somebody is going to get flooded. I don't need every phone in the office to tell me that it is raining outside. And if I was in danger from anything to do with the flood, I'd be outside, and be fully aware that it was raining like a MF.
Basically, the "early alert system" is useless from inception.
Disclaimers (Score:2)
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"Had this been a real alert, you would all be dead by now"
"Had this been a real alert, the sound you just heard would be followed by screaming, wailing, and the sounds of vehicles rapidly leaving the area"
"Had this been a real alert, do you really think we'd warn YOU?"
Nah, you'll probably live for several weeks after getting radiation poisoning.
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"Had this been a real alert, you would all be dead by now"
"Had this been a real alert, the sound you just heard would be followed by screaming, wailing, and the sounds of vehicles rapidly leaving the area"
"Had this been a real alert, do you really think we'd warn YOU?"
Nah, you'll probably live for several weeks after getting radiation poisoning.
Just long enough to eat the tasty brains of the people who failed to warn them about the zombie apocalypse. BRAAAAAAINS.
Going by recent decisions... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Going by recent decisions... (Score:1)
There is also an ad-free, subscription based program for the low, low, price of 49.99/month.
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conditioning (Score:4, Interesting)
"Live tests" will be performed every week in order to keep the populace continuously scared while simultaneously conditioning them to feel like it's "just another alert" when a real disaster happens.
A death spiral of disasters and acceptance, until the world ends and everyone just shrugs and says "it's fine".
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"Live tests" will be performed every week in order to keep the populace continuously scared while simultaneously conditioning them to feel like it's "just another alert" when a real disaster happens.
Yeah, that's what I thought when I read this too. To prevent false alarms from testing, they're going to do a lot more testing which is designed to look like a real alarm?
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Parts of the world have testing done often. eg city tornado sirens.
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No, it is designed to look like a real alarm to the participants. You'll be hitting the same button that you would hit to send a "chemical warfare storage depot is leaking" message, but the actual message transmitted will be a test message, just with the same alert sound as a real alert (WHY?).
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They do tests of the EAS on radio this way all the time. Works fine and few people are confused. Sounds like a reasonable model.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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The worst part is that the presidential alert is real and can't be disabled (except on a rooted phone).
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I would unironically love it if Trump used presidential alerts to talk shit about Jeb Bush at 1 am.
They need to do periodic tests. (Score:3)
They don't do ANY tests now. It will be good for people to know what an emergency alert looks and sounds like so that they realize when one is coming in.
The tests should be infrequent, though; at most twice a year, and at a well-known time when people are unlikely to be asleep.
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Test should use a less annoying tone that doesn't scare the hell out of people when driving. So should less-important stuff like weather and Amber alerts. I wonder how many people have been startled into an accident by another Amber or severe weather alert.
The "annoying tone" is actually a data stream that triggers automated equipment. Changing the tone would not trigger (and not test) this equipment. Originally the trigger tone was just two different frequencies mixed together and it turned automated equipment on. Many years ago the trigger tone was updated to be a data stream (think old dial up) that could selectively trigger equipment. I don't know the details, but I assume the data stream contains geographic information as to what physical locations shoul
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You obviously don't watch TV at one in the morning! There are weekly tests.
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Why? What good is the "emergency alert"? WTF are you going to do in the case of a flood alert from a passing thunderstorm? Run out into the rain? Every "Amber" alert I've ever heard has been a child "taken" by its father. Considering the way men are treated by the courts, WTF would I want to get caught up in someone else's domestic arguments? The whole system is a stupid waste.
I turn most alerts off... (Score:2)
If a kid gets lost at 3 am 25 miles from me, I'm unlikely to be able to find them. If a storm is coming, not like I can do much about it.
I apparently can't turn off "Presidential alerts," but my phone is in airplane mode (not receiving data) when I'm asleep. If an ICBM is coming to my home, please don't wake me up -- I'd rather be vaporized in my sleep than have to deal with 15 minutes of panic, waiting wide awake to be blown to smithereens.
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Or it was during the cold war. It may be different now - but if so, no one has bothered to tell us.
* In Yorkshire, you can have a nice cup of tea instead.
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And go outside and enjoy the view and just this once don't try to get a selfie.
I've never seen an ICBM in flight or detonating up close before.
Good thing I still have my eclipse glasses.
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I apparently can't turn off "Presidential alerts,"
Before I upgraded to Oreo I was running a custom rom that let me turn them off. No such option even exists to be disabled in Oreo, though, AFAICT.
Can we PLEASE STOP THIS? (Score:1)
> Everyone in the area will get a test message, like a real alert.
No. Just.. just no. It's the kind of crap they do in asian countries and it's moronic. If you're emergency plan requires a fucking text message you're doing it wrong especially when you're relying on companies like ATT who can't even keep 911 up.
We're already programmed to respond to certain buzzer / alarm sounds (your alarm clock, a fire bell, etc). I grew up in an area that had airraid sirens, they worked just fine. The Government of
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If you're emergency plan requires a text message you're doing it wrong especially when you're relying on companies like ATT who can't even keep 911 up.
Text messages can work, most people use this on their phones as audio quality is superbad. Problem is getting alerts from places far far away or child kidnapping from a different part of city (not applicable to anyone except family members that are in custody dispute). Like just about all others, I disabled alerts on my phone because annoying loud sounds that when alerts happen, it is always at 2 am (and for an incident beyond my influence).
I grew up in an area that had airraid sirens, they worked just fine. The Government of course pulled the funding for them.
But these days would anyone understand them? But then large area si
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Glad your friend made it out OK.. That is basically the scenerio I fear: We become desensitised to the point we're fighting technology because it's abused so damn much. At least some areas still have things like CANWARN and SKYWARN which are run by volunteers (Amateur Radio).
The reason most radio stations don't offer useful information in a disaster is that they are owned by megacorps and run by computers. Megacorps don't care about you even slightly. These are not really local radio stations, they are glorified repeaters.
Amateur radio is cool, and necessary in an incident, but the masses won't receive it unless you mean pirate radio...
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> At least in Canada it's my understanding these will soon become mandatory.
They already have. The first live alert was May 14th https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] It covered the entire province of Ontario, which is mid-way in size between Alaska and Texas. The alert was about a custody dispute in Thunder Bay. Shift workers in Ottawa, a 16-hour drive away, got woken up 3 times in a couple of hours...
1) The original alert
2) Half an hour later, someone said "Oops, Canada is officially bilingual. Let's send
Next Phase (Score:4, Funny)
In March 2019, they will add thirty minutes daily of poetry and songs celebrating beloved leader Donald J. Trump that you cannot turn off.
Six months later they will commandeer the cameras and microphones in all mobile devices.
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In 2023, the Two-Minutes hate will be lengthened to 90 seconds.
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Have you seen CNN since 2016? It's the 24-hour hate now.
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As an American I found that weird as well. I might say "change up" in local dialog but would never write it out. I would also say "slow down" and "speed up" but would be 50/50 on writing it out.
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Sigh, More Control less annoyance per alert FIRST (Score:4, Insightful)
The BS alerts of various sorts are already annoying, and i'm basically ignoring them already... Bl**** Hell;
during the summer there is a Severe Thunderstorm every other day; I know that, you know that -- we can hear the thunder well in advance, and by looking at the cloud formations in the sky and the Radar app it is obvious what will be going down.... more alerts are not the answer
Especially if you're going to test the system by generating alerts: first let me control HOW I receive alerts, and make them less intrusive --- If I hear part of an alert and don't want to listen to the rest, then I should be able to dismiss it.
I am sick of having Television and Radio programs disrupted --- I'm on cable, and if I so choose: what my DVR is recording should NOT be fscked up, because someone sent an EAS test while I was away. Also.... My TiVO has a defective response to even the "test" emergency alerts... It winds up LOCKING the tuner on a specific channel, that's presumably supposed to receive the alert, but it never RELEASES the tuner back to my control. Also; What the hell.... If I know very well what the emergency is, I should be able to tune my preferred news channel that generally provides BETTER more-local more up-to-date information than any EAS junk does... with no "Eas LOCK" preventing me from changing the channel on my own frickin' TV.
There should be thus: (1) No interruption of the transmission of programming; ENCODE the information and cause a "message" to be saved to the TV and/or DVR --- recordings should be unaffected;
(2) Better User-Interface Design; Play the alert but provide a Popup window that allows Acknowledging/Dismissing the alert.
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What we actually need is an emergency broadcast system that respects urgency, priority, and relevance to its audience. We have the technical capability to target an ad to me here on Facebook that knows I was shopping for a Microsoft Surface earlier this week, but somehow this is how our emergency alert system actually works:
Some grumpy old guy 200 miles away storms out of a family meal to walk to the bar. They call the police. Then they find the guy at the same bar he always goes to when he is mad at them.
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Then the police issue a Silver Alert to cover the entire state,
This is an example of abuse of the emergency broadcast capability.
The purpose of an emergency broadcast is supposed to be to Alert everyone to a public danger that
is relevant to many people in an area since it
affects the public at large NOT to try and deputize the public to assist authorities in stopping an incident affecting 1 person.
The Silver Alert is essentially a non-emergency for 99% of the population, some of whom will be roused fr
I'm ALERT already (Score:2)
Yo da FCC iz Changing Up da emergency alert system (Score:2, Insightful)
Does 'Changing Up' have the same meaning as improving and why is slashdot now writing its titles in ebonics?
sounds bone headed. (Score:2)
if I see too many 'testing' messages, they become useless because I will likely stop paying attention to them.