Senate Wants Netflix, Spotify To Send Out Federal Emergency Alerts (techcrunch.com) 107
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
Re:Bad Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
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If I could trust it to be used wisely and I could set the warning tone to one of my choice it might be tolerable. But as the alerts are continually misused, no way, this needs to be shot down.
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This is a bunch of crap. If your head is so far up your butt that you don't realize the end of the world is happening, then there is no saving you anyway. WASTE OF MONEY.
Weren't Hawaii the dumbasses that told their citizens that an incoming ICBM was happening.
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This is a bunch of crap. If your head is so far up your butt that you don't realize the end of the world is happening, then there is no saving you anyway. WASTE OF MONEY.
Weren't Hawaii the dumbasses that told their citizens that an incoming ICBM was happening.
Sometimes it's helpful to know in advance -- like if a derailed railcar is spewing toxic chemicals in the air, it'd be nice to know, so instead of going outside to sit on the back deck, I know I should shelter in place or head out of town.
Though I don't really need (or want) my TV to tell me, I think enough people have a cell phone nearby that there's no reason to make every single online content provider do it.
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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.
Yeah, I don't want to see an amber alert during my morning news on the telegraph. God forbid, if the government ever wants to waste my paper and ink using my fax machine...
Conventional TV and radio as a technology to supply entertainment services are becoming less and less popular as the internet becomes easier to access. Services like netflix, youtube, spotify (among many others) are providing these alternitives, so it makes sense to expand to them if the currently existing systems are falling in popularit
Re: Bad Idea (Score:1)
It's my phone! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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there are only so many manufacturers and so they can be forced
It has nothing to do with how many manufacturers there are, the law covers them all. One or one hundred.
That's harder to do when you get to really small form factors like phones, though. You can still do it, but your phone would be huge.
It would also not be allowed to talk to the cell network and would be completely illegal. Building your own phone is not like building your own ham radio.
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You can buy stand-alone baseband controllers, which are perfectly fine to incorporate into a build and use. What you can't do is sell a finished product without a battery of tests and approvals. Building and using one is just fine as long as you aren't spoofing anything.
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We already have emergency sirens all over the place that ought to be good enough.
No, WE don't. You might. YMMV.
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It's bad enough that I can't disable the "Presidential Alerts" on my Samsung
You could just uninstall twitter.
Oh hell no! (Score:4, Insightful)
It swhould work both ways ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
Re:It swhould work both ways ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This x100. I got an alert in California about someone missing near mexico (south of san diego). Alert is north of San Francisco. Turned off alerts immediately.
Seriously, why not work to earn users trusts rather than jamming this crap down our throats? For example my local city has great alerts, I'm signed up. Gives a nice short alert when a bridge will be closed overnight for repairs and other major local issues. It works great and they seem to be smarter about it then the national idiots.
When more than half your users turn off the alerts - you know you are f'n it up!
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The not-so-secret fact of the matter is AMBER alerts are completely pointless and a giant waste of time and money.
https://www.researchgate.net/b... [researchgate.net]
However, "think of the children" and all that.
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This is the problem. You want to know why people turn these alerts off? Because they get woken up at 3AM and get told to look out for a gray car that's in the other side of the state. Yeah, sure, I might do that. Or I might turn the alerts off entirely and then miss one I might have been able to help on.
Beyond that, the effectiveness of Amber alerts is highly debatable. According to Engaget, less than 5% of mobile Amber alerts led to a rescued child [engadget.com]. Even then, it's unclear that any Amber alert has ever act
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The problem is twofold. ie. when an amber alert sounds, you're either:
1) Driving. In which case, you should be driving and not... stupidly, irresponsibly, and in many states illegally... screwing around reading messages on your phone. And you also have an unusual screeching alarm going off to distract you from driving itself, actively making the roads less safe for everyone. And then add the extra distraction from the instinct to find and silence the source of the noise.
or
2) Not driving. In which case
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You insensitive clod!
I was drinking coffee.
I waterboarded myself.
That is funny.
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including Presidential alerts from that orange thing
You get French alerts [wikipedia.org] on your phone?
This is bullshit! (Score:5, Funny)
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.! ;)
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Maybe not so bad? (Score:2)
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Here in Canada we only get amber alerts (which I donâ(TM)t mind) and as a cord cutter, the zombie apocalypse could begin and I would have no idea lol
The zombies can wait. I need my sleep now.
Having solved all other problems.. (Score:1)
Your tax dollars at work!
Bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
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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
Yes, there should be a consistent API so that all services disseminating alerts talk to one local demon that can identify and manage them all. Further, alerts should be coded like the SAME message for NOAA weather alerts.
BUT, every service still needs to be able to disseminate the alerts since not every device will be running every service. My daily-carry tablet isn't a phone, it can't show Amber alerts or any phone-based alerts. My phone will never be used for Netflix so it would get only phone-based aler
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> I'd be careful parsing those alerts. Just sayin'.
What harm could a memcpy do? We'll just read the length from this here 64 bit signed integer that the remote packet conveniently had as the third field. No problems at all.
Netflix is not a device (Score:2)
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Why should Netflix be delivering alerts?
Because that is how alerts are delivered to the device. Something has to, the device doesn't make them up on its own.
What if the device is offline,
Hmmm, let's see, that's a tough one. If the device is offline then it isn't receiving the service which is delivering the alerts, so ... ummm, can anyone help here? I'm stumped. I know if my TV is not connected to cable or broadcast TV I don't get any of the EBS alerts. I'm going to go out on a very long limb here and guess ... THE DEVICE DOESN'T GET THE ALERT?
should it show pre-scheduled test alerts?
What a stupid question. How woul
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Netflix doesn't need to know your location today, nor does it require the device to be connected to watch content - it can pre-cache of even download full content for offline viewing.
I don't use Netflix so I don't know (or care) if that is true. The answer is, if the device is not STREAMING, then there is no DELIVERY OF ALERTS possible via that stream.
When I said device, I meant your cell phone for example,
Cell phones are not the only "devices" that Netflix shows up on, so limiting your argument about who sends what alerts where based on having a cell phone is self-defeating.
and has the ability to alert you to low battery, incoming call, so why not an emergency alert?
The first two are local events. The latter is something it already does. Your question about "why not emergency alert(s)" is, umm, what is the word for a meaningless que
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Why isolate netflix or music streaming, instead of going after anything that people pay attention to?
Because many people are MOVING from broadcast TV/radio or cable to Netflix or Spotify, thus LOSING an existing alert mechanism. Perhaps you see them here? They're the ones who, in every mention of cable TV, proudly announce they've "cut the cord", even if the article has nothing to do with cutting the cord.
Stop making me pay to spread your fear (Score:2, Insightful)
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Having sirens is enough.
You hear a siren. What does it mean? What is the correct course of action for you to take?
1. It's a tornado warning, seek shelter in the basement. Exposed high ground makes you a target.
2. It's a tsunami warning, get to high ground. You'll drown in your basement.
3. It's an earthquake warning. Get outside away from buildings. You don't need to take the time to get to high ground, and you better not hide in the basement that will have your house collapsed on top of you.
And what about the vast spaces in t
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Frankly, I do nothing - same as I do with the alerts on the smartphone.
As a child, we had a tornado go over our house. There was no need for a siren. The freight train sound the tornado makes on approach is pretty unmistakable if you don't live next to tracks. We went to the basement. While in the basement as the tornado passed over, lightning struck a tree right outside the house and travelled through its roots to the basement. The fireballs racing all over the concrete floor shredded the carpet in front o
Duplicating alerts (Score:3)
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.
Re: Duplicating alerts (Score:1)
Alarm fatigue is a thing. If they're really concerned then why not mandate klaxons be installed in all rooms of all houses and on all street corners? Any attempt to silence them would be willful damage to federal property punishable by infinity in jail and an infinite fine. That could also fix up our national debt.
What's next (Score:2)
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Pretty much all people have a celphone (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Make sure there's an opt-out capability (Score:1)
Sounds fine, as long as there's an ability to opt-out. Too many of these systems become catchalls for some bureaucratic busybodies or people who don't know what they are doing. Not too long ago in my area there was a potential chemical leak and someone either messed up or didn't know of the limitations of the system so an alert that was only intended to be sent out to people (text message via phone) within a half mile of the area in question instead told an entire city to evacuate. Luckily everyone who d
The world has moved on... (Score:2)
local weather forecast cut off by 1950 text to spe (Score:2)
local weather forecast cut off by 1950 text to speech read out of alert
disable alerts may = can't turn off roaming or txt (Score:2)
disable alerts may = can't turn off roaming or txts.
Location Data (Score:4, Informative)
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?
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That's fine as long as you aren't watching Netflix on a mobile device. If you don't use a VPN it won't need to ask you for your Zip code because you IP will tell the app where you live.
Alerts get broadcast out to everyone. The app can ask to get the location of the device. When sending out the alert they send out the area that they want it to take place. The app sees if the location is in the area of the alert and if it is then shows the alert. Requires you to grant access to the GPS/location services in or
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Making the assumption that you're watching Netflix on a mobile device is a bit strange - there's already an alert system for cell phones.
If you're watching in a browser, the next frontier for ad blockers will be bl
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Making the assumption that you are watching Netflix using Chrome is a bit strange. And no, I didn't see that your IP-based location is wrong. I don't make the habit of finding out the IP and address of people I'm replying to and see if they match up.
It's not that uncommon to see people using their phones to access Netflix or some other streaming service when I take the bus. And I didn't assume, I dealt with the non-mobile user in my first paragraph. The article is about how two States want Netflix to delive
go ahead (Score:2)
Look at a country like Japan where they voluntarily all prepare with annual earthquake drills, evacuation drills, tsunami drills, etc.You think anyone in the US would tolerate being told to do that stuff?
Sure, send the alert, require by law that everyone get it. It'll be chaos all the same, without the fundamental responses ingrained into people to follow the i
The boy who cried wolf (Score:2)
Kiss my ass with all your heat advisory alerts, amber alerts, silver alerts, flash flood alerts, dry weather alerts, wet weather alerts, what the hell ever. You figure out a way to show me alerts that are local to me, that may affect me, or close enough that I may affect it, then maybe I'll pay attention to them. You start showing me alerts for some kid or grandma halfway across the country, and you bet your ass I'm going to ignore all the alerts.
Same thing happened with a friend of mine on Facebook who ins
How Many False Alarms Would This Generate? (Score:2)
Governmental agencies ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS whatever power they have. If governmental agencies manage to force cell carriers or Netflix or Spotify to carry their alerts, you can count on the fact that some of those "critical alerts" will be things that are only critical in the eyes of government flunkies.
We need to have iron-clad penalties for abuse or misuse of any governmental alert system, without any "good faith" exceptions when they abuse that authority. Because in general, governmental agencies
Language matters. "Alert" is advertising-talk (Score:2)
The folks pushing the message want to call it "an alert", which makes it sound important (sometimes it is), official and mandatory.
A more neutral term is "message", as in "The Feds want to send you a message". We have a long history of people with power trying to force users to listen to or view a message. Corporations embed spam messages in devices ("Your operating system is out of date" and "You haven't backed up your IPhone in four weeks"),. Governments... remember when Amber Alerts were sold as a wa