Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown
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: 3, Insightful) by DavePolaschek on Sunday October 27 2019, @10:24AM (3 children)
Sounds to me like they’re trying to convince people not to use streaming services or cell phones.
I remember a tweet I saw shortly after the first Presidential Alert. It was from a guy in the NYC subway, and he said something along the lines of “I have never before heard simultaneous swearing in so many languages at once. Trump: he’s a uniter, not a divider!”
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:15PM (2 children)
I was convinced long before this. :P
What next, are they going to mandate that Windows Media Player, VLC, and torrent web sites stop everything and issue useless alerts because youcantbetoosafethinkofthechildrentpollywannacracker?
Aw, crap. Did I just give these nazis an idea?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:14PM (1 child)
In the past, OpenSource projects cared nothing for US law.
Now they're filled with white faggots and white women; so they'd probably obey and directive.
All the old hackers have been chased out; even RMS.
And linus is just a faggot too: bows down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @04:16AM
Back in the day many hackers were not as complacent as today, demanding that somebody provide them with a free web browser with updates, that they don't have to lift a finger for.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday October 27 2019, @10:50AM
Last time I checked, Avangard goes at Mach 27. Even with Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement, you rather be a quick eater to finish your popcorn before impact. Or waste no less than fifty SM-3s to intercept one.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:10AM (9 children)
I've endured at least a thousand "emergency alerts," exactly zero of which have been useful in any way. There's a fire 200 miles away! It started raining half an hour ago! There's a missing kid halfway across the country!
Emergency alerts would be great if they actually had something to do with emergencies. Until then, hard pass.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:44PM (2 children)
Yeah, I was particularly disgusted with an Amber Alert for a child last seen in a city 500 miles from my location. The alerts are getting as bad as car alarms.
I have the wrong mindset for that sort of thing anyway. Some people are so sociable they know many of the other people randomly in the grocery store or restaurant at the same time they are. And, if someone famous happens to be there, they might notice. Not me. I don't pay much attention to other shoppers or restaurant patrons. It's possible that a very few times in my life, someone really famous was thinly disguised and sitting at a table next to me, and no one, let alone me, ever noticed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @04:09PM (1 child)
I wish I had the American alert system up in Canada. Last year Canada just implemented the worst stupidly overzealous alert system in the world where every alert is presidential, and every amber alert is sent to everyone is a 800km radius. Many people even way out west in Saskatchewan (north of the Dakotas) get amber alerts sent from places in the east like Toronto (Syracuse NY area)-that's 2000km distance! It's such a stupid, stupid, stupid implementation.
On top of that, We get at least THREE, and sometimes FOUR, alerts for the same single issue, all with the blaring presidential klaxon siren sound.
The first "BLANG BLANG BLANG BLANG" alert is in English and it usually comes around 12AM-3AM. Nothing is more infuriating then being kicked out of deep REM sleep for something you can do nothing about.
The second" BLANG BLANG BLANG BLANG" alert is in French and is sent 15-30 min later, which was just enough time for us to settle down from the first alert and begin to fall asleep again.
The third "BLANG BLANG BLANG BLANG "alert is in English, and is sent out 1-2 hours after that saying alert has been cancelled.
If you are really unlucky you'll get a fourth "BLANG BLANG BLANG BLANG" cancellation alert in French
We call it the 'boy who cried wolf' alert system up here. Since implementation I've received something like a half dozen amber alerts, they all have been from a region 500km-800km away, none were local, and only one was critical. Most of the AA's were sent out because of miscommunication between ex-parents, or the mother wanted to get back at the father and made up a story saying he kidnapped the kids when he actually had legal custody of them. BTW, those women were never charged for making false claims to the police.
The last alert a month ago was sent out something like 4 days after the kids went missing. Guess what? It was another situation where the father took them camping, and the mom knew about it.
The irony is that these Canadian alerts are so invasive, and so unnecessarily if police would just do their job and take some time to check the story out first, that people turn off their phones at night so they wont be disturbed by some shit they can do nothing about that happened six hours away from them, so when a real emergency occurs, like tornado warnings or chemical plant on fire, people wont get the alert.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @12:40PM
As a parent with an infant... can confirm.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:02PM
I have them explicitly and entirely turned off on my phone and I don't watch broadcast television except at the nearest sports bar for the duration of one college football game per year, so the only way they can annoy me anymore is over the radio while I'm driving.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @02:21PM
I've received several tornado warnings. Did the tornado hit me? No. Was it worth getting it? Hell yes.
Do I receive them on my phone? No, I turned all that off. I just have weather receivers in key locations.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:10PM (5 children)
Amazing to me how much bipartisan support stuff like this immediately gets, like the whole country could literally be burning(it is actually) and they have this thousand page prewritten plan to centralize something nationally in an invasive way, for our safety, to fight teh tewwowists, save the children, announced about 5 minutes before it becomes law.
They have the reigns so they are ramming as much through as they can. In order for this to work they have to have a real location from teh network distributing the content, so netflix gets all this extra tracking and geoloc backdoor.
Then once it is in place en mass, they can send individual messages if they want with all the new bells and whistles. Next step, national streaming channel for required viewing, next step...use your imagination.
What would you do if you could inject something into anyone's viewing screen any time you wanted?
Slimy lateral power grab, into your house, into your brain.
Can someone look up for me the physical location of the companies and the backgrounds of the executive staff who will be operating this program?
All this stuff looks like dark foreboding shadows of epic bullshit headed our way.
Also, streaming itself is an unintelligent way, and centralized, way to distribute content. And all of the streaming services have awful selections, which is actually the new form of censorship and book burning.
If amazon and netflix dont have you, you dont exist and never did. Now they will be able to broadcast directly what you need to know is important, right alongside the avengers.
The kids will be impressed with Trump's power, he will be like a big brother to them.
thesesystemsarefailing.net
https://archive.is/10owR [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @02:21PM
Get help. A psychiatrist now is cheaper than a team of lawyers later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @02:50PM
Cannot be big brother without a mustache. Creepy Uncle Joe for big brother 2020!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:14PM (1 child)
Streaming sites already have your IP address and rest assured most of them were already looking it up in a geoloc db. There'd be nothing new going on except the annoying interruptions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday October 28 2019, @02:28PM
Might be nothing new still, depending on your location, but I've frequently gotten geoloc errors thinking I was up to 300 miles away from where I am. (Thanks $bigcorp vending me my IP!)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:18PM
streaming itself is an unintelligent way, and centralized, way to distribute content. And all of the streaming services have awful selections, which is actually the new form of censorship and book burning.
:-) "censorship", eh? Then use bittorrent. Problem solved.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:44PM (3 children)
Nothing enhances the movie-watching experience like an Amber Alert from three states away. Fuck off and die, lawmakers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:35PM (1 child)
Netflix and kidnapping and chill
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 28 2019, @12:39AM
Amber Alert will be just another Netflix "Original".
*sigh* We need a VH1 Classic for movies. They can play back the old EBS test broadcasts.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @12:45PM
However, if this goes out, what it will eventually be used for is this:
Watching Netflix ...
AMBER ALERT: Be sure not to miss the new Netflix original series, The miss-use of Amber Alerts, next Friday at 8pm ... we now return you to your original program, already in progress.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @02:30PM
Info: Hawaiian sovereignty movement [wikipedia.org] - A Practical Guide to Hawaiian Secession [mises.org] - Hawaii's struggle for independence [hawaii-nation.org] - The Kingdom of Hawai'i Nou Ke Akua Ke Aupuni O' Hawai'i Announces Secession From the United States of America [nativevillage.org] - Learn Hawaiian through conversations [mangolanguages.com]
Fake emergency alerts on streaming services, Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, Kenyan Mooooslem Baraq Hussein Soetoro, threats of collective punishment for all people without menstruation over Kavanaugh (recommend religious persecution instead and official declaration of war (jihad?) against Christmas since there's a higher margin there at CNN's 2016 exit polls [cnn.com]). Let them secede. Secession is a right!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday October 27 2019, @08:40PM (1 child)
In the sense that people should be informed in an actual emergency I approve. Unfortunately, given the track record of "emergency" alerts, it's just a nuisance. I can think of one or two instances where an emergency alert on my phone was actually somewhat relevant and an actual emergency for at least some people in the area. There have been many more alerts that were not really relevant to anyone in the area. I can also thing of a number of cases where weather alerts probably should have gone out but didn't.
Apparently what's needed is a lot more reliability and some definition of what constitutes an emergency and what should just be a notice or advisory (no blaring klaxon for those please). Let's reserve the klaxon for situations where the life and limb OF THE RECIPIENT are likely in danger.
Amber alerts should just have a distinctive chirp. They should not go out on netflix or TV crawlers since if I'm watching TV, I am not out and about where I might see anything. There's no point in waking me up for them, if I'm asleep, I won't be seeing anything relevant.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 28 2019, @02:09PM
I wish I had mod points to give.
Emergency Alerts need to be fixed to be sent only when important to the recipient.
As someone who does not tolerate Cable TV, and only uses streaming services (Netflix, Prime, HBO, Starz, Hulu, Showtime, etc), this could be useful -- as long as the alerts are relevant.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 28 2019, @02:12PM
Subscribe to the POTUS on Twitter.
Climate change is a hoax. But the need to build a wall is a true national emergency! ALERT! ALERT!
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.