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New FCC Rules Will Require Wireless Companies To Deliver Emergency Alerts More Accurately (recode.net) 57

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to update the country's wireless emergency alert system, aiming to ensure that local officials only sound alarms on Americans' smartphones when those citizens are truly in harm's way. From a report: The system, implemented in 2012, allows first responders around the country to dispatch short, loud, text-message-like bulletins to warn mobile users about inclement weather, abducted children or criminals at large. But public-safety leaders long have complained the alerts are inaccurate, rendering it difficult to use them in times of disaster without creating undue panic. And they fret that "over-alerting" has proven so frustrating to smartphone owners that they've simply turned off the alarms entirely -- rendering it even more difficult to communicate in times of an emergency.
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New FCC Rules Will Require Wireless Companies To Deliver Emergency Alerts More Accurately More

New FCC Rules Will Require Wireless Companies To Deliver Emergency Alerts More Accurately

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  • WARNING WARNING WARNING (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    EMERGENCY ALERT VERY IMPORTANT BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

    It's 3AM and it's *snowing!* In upstate New York! There's white stuff! Coming out of the sky! We're all gonna die!

    EMERGENCY ALERT VERY IMPORTANT BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

    *smashes phone with hammer and goes back to sleep*

  • “When disaster strikes, it’s essential that Americans in harm’s way get reliable information so that they can stay safe and protect their loved ones,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Tuesday.

    There has to be a way to spin this one into a massive giveaway to the cellcos. Don't fail me, Slashdot crowd.

    • They'll claim a need for govt money to help refit their systems, you know, because of their suffering at the hands of Wheeler's NN, but they'll just wind up using to pad their earnings as usual.
  • Just Saying, not going to stop real alerts like "MISSLE ATTACK". Oooops didn't know that button was there.

    • The employee who did that didn't even get fired either, just assigned to another job pending an investigation.

      http://time.com/5103320/hawaii... [time.com]

      Richard Rapoza, spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management System, confirmed that the employee was temporarily moved to a new role, NBC News reports. However, he declined to say what the worker's new tasks are.

      "All we will say is that the individual has been temporarily reassigned within our Emergency Operations Center pending the outcome of our internal investigation, and it is currently in a role that does not provide access to the warning system," Rapoza said.

      People across Hawaii received an emergency alert on Saturday warning them to seek immediate shelter for a ballistic missile threat coming to the state. "This is not a drill," the alert said, causing immediate terror.

      And they've refused to co-operate with an FCC inquiry into what went wrong, even though the Hawaii EMA said it was hoping they would cooperate and was encouraging them to do so.

      http://time.com/5119618/hawaii... [time.com]

      The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said Thursday it hoped its employee-who has already been reassigned-would decide to cooperate with the investigation.

      "We share FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Lisa Fowlkes's disappointment. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has encouraged its employees to cooperate in all ongoing investigations, and while each individual makes a personal choice, we hope anyone who is not cooperating will reconsider and help to bring these matters to a satisfactory conclusion," Richard Rapoza, the agency's public information officer, said in a statement.

      Despite the employee's lack of cooperation, Fowlkes said the FCC's investigation has made progress. She told to the Senate committee that officials in Hawaii have begun to change their procedures to ensure a similar mistake does not happen again.

      "The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tells us that is working with its vendor to integrate additional technical safeguards into its alert origination software, and has changed its protocols to require two individuals to sign off on the transmission of tests and live alerts," she told the committee.

      You have to wonder what it would take to get fired if you work for a government agency in Hawaii.

      • Yeah, because clicking the wrong button *once* in a horribly designed user interface is totally a fireable offense where you work, right?

        • Uh yeah, it kind of is. I've known people get fired for deploying stuff to a production system by mistake when they thought they were deploying to a test system because they didn't know what the hell they were doing and causing chaos. But then again they were contractors who were actually accountable for fuckups. Permanent employees usually get moved. The whole contractor thing is that you get paid more than the permies if you're any good and unceremoniously fired if you're not. There is much to be said for

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            There is a witch hunt that wants somebody's head. I would not cooperate either.

            Firing people over honest error is a stupid plan that degrades trust in an organization. Anybody can fuck something up because humans are human.

          • Not firing incompetent people for high-level fuckups is an example of managerial incompetence. Seems like a flavor of favoritism of some sort. Why do you think a competent manager would be less likely to fire this guy than if he were a contractor? Are you under the illusion that the courts won't allow companies to fire their employees when there's a clear example of failing at the job? Even in the parts of the country where the right to fire hasn't been explicitly and unconditionally protected under the law

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rakarra ( 112805 )

            Uh yeah, it kind of is. I've known people get fired for deploying stuff to a production system by mistake when they thought they were deploying to a test system because they didn't know what the hell they were doing and causing chaos.

            That's too bad. I see it pretty often though -- creating a poorly designed system with a bad user interface, then blaming the operator for a minor slip-up that we ALL make. You can't possibly blame the system set up for people to fail, it's easier to ask for someone's head than to recognize that UI is important, and UI guides actions.

            Everyone makes mistakes. If your standard for an employee is perfection, year after year, then you are in an extremely hostile (and managerially incompetent) environment.

            Not th

            • One of the first things I discovered when I got out of university is that you've got two main archetypes of job

              1) Permanent job. Salary is kind of disappointing but you have job security

              2) Contract job. Salary is pretty awesome but you've got no job security. If it all goes tits up you're first out of the door

              And I also discovered I vastly prefer the latter. Tenure is soul destroying - you basically end up with an Office Space type environment where no one does much work, there are loads of simmering politi

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rakarra ( 112805 )

                I did the world of contracting for awhile, and my experience was... well, not dissimilar (when a company started to go tits-up, the contractors were the first to go), but I experienced the negative side of contracting a lot. I went to a number of companies with dysfunctional bureaucracies and worse, employees who were abusive (and not just to contractors). The good news, if I was placed at that company, I knew I wasn't stuck there. If things were really unmanageable, it wasn't hard for me to leave. The bad

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sabri ( 584428 )

          because clicking the wrong button *once* in a horribly designed user interface is totally a fireable offense

          At strategic missile command, yes.

          • "Bro. I know I caused WWIII and wiped out 90% of humanity but it was an honest error. If you fire me I'll sue for wrongful dismissal. Also I'm not going to cooperate with no damn kangaroo court inquiry. I demand I be allowed to show up for work but not actually do anything for the next thirty years until I retire".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        And they've refused to co-operate with an FCC inquiry into what went wrong, even though the Hawaii EMA said it was hoping they would cooperate and was encouraging them to do so.

        That right there tells me they should be fired and persecuted. No employee with the kind of forethought to exercise their 5th amendment rights should be permitted to work in government; they are too good for that and it is a waste of talent.

  • The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to update the country's wireless emergency alert system, aiming to ensure that local officials only sound alarms on Americans' smartphones when those citizens are truly in harm's way.

    If everyone's phone isn't blowing up right now with emergency alerts, then the system's already hopelessly broken.

  • Ajit Pai (Score:1)

    by Nick ( 109 )
    Fuck Ajit Pai.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @12:46PM (#56034143)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Already broken because of Amber & Silver alert (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aqualung812 ( 959532 ) on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @01:46PM (#56034633)

    I've talked to so many people that have already disabled emergency alerts simply because they were awoken in the middle of the night with a amber or silver alert.

    Emergency alerts to phones need to be ONLY for things that require immediate action by the phone's owner regardless if awake or asleep.

    Things like public awareness notices can be sent over SMS and the phone's built-in logic can decide if the user wants to get those in the middle of the night.

    • Things like public awareness notices can be sent over SMS and the phone's built-in logic can decide if the user wants to get those in the middle of the night.

      Agreed, or at the very least they can be managed through more granular controls at the OS level. I may not mind receiving Amber alerts on my own terms, but as it is now iOS only allows for an all-or-nothing with Amber alerts: either you get woken with a blaring alarm or you get nothing at all. This seems like an obvious area for improvement, but I suspect there are regulations impeding their ability to deal with such a well-known pain point.

      Within about a week of Amber alerts being added as a feature, I had

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      A more large concern is lack of respect for government agencies and established organizations. With all the foibles we have seen plus POTUS tweeting bad things about leaders of agencies or agencies themselves (when they are not in full agreement with him), not surprising more and more people becoming disrespectful of the establishment. Now what will happen in event of a major disaster, economic crises, war... many may feel like Puerto Ricans, "It's John Wayne time, you're on your own."

      • Man, I agree that Trump sucks and he is destroying the remaining credibility of the US government.

        That said, THIS issue is one that can be completely non-partisan, or even non-Trump. He hasn't talked about it, and I'd like to discuss at least some issues that have nothing to do with him, Democrats or Republicans. Please let this be one so we can fix it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        If government agencies want my respect, then they can earn it. They do not get the benefit of my doubt.

    • I've talked to so many people that have already disabled emergency alerts simply because they were awoken in the middle of the night with a amber or silver alert.

      Emergency alerts to phones need to be ONLY for things that require immediate action by the phone's owner regardless if awake or asleep.

      Also: During the recent Santa Rosa wildfire, the powers-that-be decided NOT to use the system to alert people at risk, for fear of "starting a panic" and clogging the roads with with people "not at risk" - thus app

  • Not a carrier issue (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is almost entirely a government problem, not a carrier problem. Sending alerts that are trivial or when no one is at risk is what degrades warnings. That's 100% on the government.

    • This is almost entirely a government problem, not a carrier problem. Sending alerts that are trivial or when no one is at risk is what degrades warnings. That's 100% on the government.

      The government issues alerts. The carrier knows where the phones are and can determine which ones are actually in the alert area.

      They don't do that. That's why you get Amber alerts for cities that are 400 miles away. They know you are in Bohoken, NJ and don't need an Amber alert for Forshoken, KY, but you get it anyway because your phone has a Forshoken area code. They need to do better, and limit alerts to a reasonable physical area.

      That's not to say that the government doesn't issue too many alerts, but

  • I thought the new FCC was all about reducing regulation. But this smells a lot like *more* regulation.

    I'm assuming that they're redoing the rules in such a way that the wireless companies can somehow make more profit.

  • So the same agencies which were over-alerting are complaining that over-alerting is rendering the emergency alert system ineffective? Fuck them.

    The obvious solution is to not allow users to disable the alerts so they have to deal with all of them. Also make it unlawful to disable or not carry their phones also, for the children.

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