
The Presidential Text Alert Has a Long, Strange History - kposehn
https://www.wired.com/story/presidential-text-alert-fema-emergency-history/
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jasonjayr
If the system had been called a "National Alert", since most other alerts are
typically "Regional Alerts", then I suspect a lot of the sour taste and
politics in this would neatly go away. Calling it a "Presidential Alert"
suggests it's a direct line of communication with the President, when the
system is clearly managed by an agency with the authority to issue these
alerts.

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mattbierner
Some additional information about PERKI:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20060401172542/http://www.geociti...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060401172542/http://www.geocities.com/radiojunkie3/WGU20.html)

(also, "HFR till end of the world confirmed" is amazing. Must add that sort of
thing to a software project sometime)

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jyrkesh
I don't know why everyone got so angry about this. I don't like Trump in the
slightest, but it seems like we should test, at least _once_ , any emergency
broadcasting system that we think could be important/useful in the event of a
national disaster.

And it's not like this is classified or secret, either. Go into the settings
on any smartphone, and you can see that this is implemented.

:shrug: I don't know, just doesn't seem like a big deal

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CharlesW
> _Go into the settings on any smartphone, and you can see that this is
> implemented._

Not on iOS. Out of curiosity I'd turned off both "AMBER Alerts" and "Emergency
Alerts", and still received the "Presidential Alert" alert. It's a different
class of alert.

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bradknowles
Whereas I disabled Amber alerts but not emergency alerts, and I also did not
get the alert from the Orange Volcano of Hate.

Dunno.

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shagie
This could have been where you were located.

My parents have a nano cell (live in the country out of tower range). And
while they were on network, they were not connected to a proper cell tower.
The alert wasn't conveyed to nano cells and the like that were wifi connected.

I am not sure how that would affect amber and emergency alerts and if they get
them.

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aogl
What's the bet that Trump will start using this in-place of his Twitter
account..

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garmaine
The "Presidential Alert" is not actually managed by the president. And I don't
mean that he delegates it or something--the whitehouse doesn't run it.

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alistairSH
All of the agencies involved in running the various alerts are part of the
executive branch and ultimately report to the WH.

