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US lawmakers want streaming services like Netflix to issue emergency alerts
A bipartisan bill reintroduced in the Senate by US Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) and John Thune (R-S.D.) could lead to emergency alerts issued through online video and audio streaming services like Netflix and Spotify. The Senators originally introduced the bill last year after that infamous false missile alert text went out across Hawai'i. Called the Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement (READI) Act, it would prevent the same thing from happening while making sure that more people receive real and relevant alerts.
In addition to exploring ways on how alerts can be issued through streaming services, READI Act would eliminate the ability to opt out of receiving certain federal alerts, including ones for incoming missiles. Alerts issued by the President or by FEMA would also have to be repeated -- at the moment, it can only be played once on TV and radio stations. It would compel FEMA to prevent false alarms and would establish a reporting system for false alerts that the FCC can track, as well.
Senator Schatz said in a statement:
"When a missile alert went out across Hawai'i last year, some people never got the message on their phones, while others missed it on their TVs and radios. Even though it was a false alarm, the missile alert exposed real flaws in the way people receive emergency alerts. Our bill fixes a number of important problems with the system responsible for delivering emergency alerts. In a real emergency, these alerts can save lives so we have to do everything we can to get it right."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:23PM (3 children)
This, exactly this
These politicians have forgotten the fable of "the boy who cried wolf". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf [wikipedia.org]
By miss-using the existing emergency alert systems for so many non-emergency alerts, no one wants, nor cares, about their emergency alerts anymore. On my phone, I've got every single one of these alerts turned off other than the one it will not let me turn off, the "presidential alert".
The work laptop has a work level emergency alert system installed by the powers that be. Thankfully they start it as the logged in user when one logs in, so I'm able to go into task mangler in W10 and kill off the process that receives the alerts, resulting in no alerts.
What kinds of things did they consider alerts, that pushed me to discover that I could kill off the alert process as myself? Oh, well, stuff like: "weather prediction for two days from now is for a heavy snow" (note, not "in the last 10 minutes a sudden sleet has turned all roads and sidewalks into an ice coated nightmare" -- that might be actually useful, but no, a weather update for something two days in the future is deemed an "emergency"). The one that pushed me over the edge, however, was the emergency alert that a package they had shipped to me at home was scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Umm, no, the fact that the package you shipped is scheduled to arrive tomorrow is not, in any way, an emergency.
And this is why any politician that proposes anything other than a dismantling of the emergency alert systems should be voted out of office. Once they have a mandatory channel, they will always miss-use it for some kind of pet communication of the day that they think is important (usually it is not) but that is not in any way an emergency.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:38PM
The problem is that nobody in charge cares. It's all about the theater. They look like they care. That checks the box as far as they're concerned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)
I have an old phone and I haven't ever had one of these alerts. When eventually I am forced to buy a new one once this breaks, can I still turn the alerts off? On android or iOS? Even presidential alerts? Custom firmware required?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @12:39PM
The answer is going to be it depends. And what it depends upon is how much control the phone maker provides to you, so the answer also depends upon which makers phone you buy.
I've got a Lenovo Moto E4, and Lenovo, since they are the old Motorola, ship a very clean Android (very few to no custom mods away from AOSP). With Lenovo's version, I can turn off every alert except for "presidential" (and that one is because the congress critters wrote a law saying that "presidential" alerts can't be disabled).
Other manufacturers will likely vary, a lot.
As for a replacement ROM, well, if I've rooted my phone and installed LineageOS or the like, and am root, I fully expect to also be able to disable even the presidential alerts. To do otherwise means I'm still not in full control of my hardware. And, no, I don't care about the congress critters desire that presidential alerts be "non-ignorable", if I choose to ignore them, I'm going to ignore them, congress critters be damned.