
Presidential Alerts - confounded
http://time.com/5397524/fema-emergency-system-trump-text/
======
Buttons840
"Presidential Alerts" is a terrible name in a time where presidents from
either party tend to have about 40% approval or less. The name just
automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who
the president happens to be. Considering that the presidency is a political
position, it's not unreasonable to expect "Presidential Alerts" to be of a
political nature, even though that is not how the system is intended to be
used.

How about "National Alert System" or just continue calling it the "Emergency
Alert System" (except now with new abilities). Put a procedure in place to let
the president use it if needed.

~~~
gbrayut
From
[https://twitter.com/dmelvin3737/status/1047557154729840646](https://twitter.com/dmelvin3737/status/1047557154729840646)

The "Presidential" alert is the level of alert. It's been named this for over
a decade, but none have ever been sent.

The levels are :

AMBER alert

Severe alerts

Extreme alerts

Presidential alerts

~~~
kibwen
I'll bikeshed this; I'd rather see the latter ones titled as "Local
emergency", "State emergency", "National emergency". What sort of intuition
are we supposed to have for the difference between a severe and an extreme
emergency?

~~~
umvi
Same intuition needed for differentiating telescope aperture sizes

(context: [https://xkcd.com/1294/](https://xkcd.com/1294/))

------
gumby
Regardless of what it's called (let's say, "nationwide alert") is it possible
to imagine _anything_ that is 1> immediately actionable and 2> must be known
by every person in the country?

I cannot think of a single thing. Even "nukes incoming" \-- well what
precisely should you do in this situation? If it's not actionable, no matter
how important, it's not urgent.

I had to switch off the FEMA alerts -- which _are_ a good idea! -- because I
was getting spammed by spurious alerts about things hundreds of miles away (I
re-enable them when I travel and when I am near my vacation house which is in
a fire zone). An earthquake down south or a fire 8 hours' drive north do not
require my immediate attention.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_" nukes incoming"_

People who live in big cities or live near high value strategic targets
wouldn't survive for long anyway. Maybe some of those people wouldn't want to
know that they will be dead in 5 minutes or in 5 days. Nevertheless, I expect
that _many_ if not _most_ people would still want to know!

There are also literally millions of people in the USA who live in remote
areas and who would survive the blast and radiation effects of a nuclear war.
Giving those people some warning could make a big difference in their survival
rates. Those people probably wouldn't enjoy living in the dystopian post-
nuclear landscape, but that's a topic that's been amply covered by Sci-Fi
movies.

 _I had to switch off the FEMA alerts_

What is a FEMA alert? Is that something regional or something on Android?

My iPhone running iOS 11.4.1 has two different "GOVERNMENT ALERTS" (found
under Notifications). These are AMBER Alerts and Emergency Alerts. I have them
both enabled and I don't think I get even one per year.

~~~
gumby
The regular FEMA alerts are things like wildfire or tornado alerts, or what to
do after an incident (e.g. post earthquake). Excellent if you don’t spam
people.

------
robszumski
Currently reading this book about continuity of government [1] and many
Presidents have done the full exercise, including activating the older
emergency alert systems in over the air TV. Other parts of these exercises
include the emergency evac from White House to bunker or flying command post,
testing comms with subs and other command authorities, and walking through
response plan selection, and last, the process of launching the weapons. I
don't believe it ever worked fully, and I hope that this test was part of one
of these exercises. The book makes it clear that these plans are only updated
every 10-15 years and almost never tested end to end, especially now that the
cold war is over.

1:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010MHAG72/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010MHAG72/)

------
mortenjorck
I still don’t understand the actual point of this, beyond the optics of a
vaguely-defined “emergency preparedness.”

Emergencies are inherently local. Even if smartphones had been widespread in
2001 and the presidential alert system had been active on 9/11, what purpose
would a nationwide alert have served?

~~~
bliblah
The most obvious example is the Hawaii Nuclear Scare that just happened in
January [1]. Obviously it was a false alarm but I would like (or should I say
dread) to be alerted of a crisis of that magnitude the moment it occurs.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert)

~~~
orev
There are plenty of ways to be notified of breaking news if you so choose to
use them. Why should an alert about something that happens in any state have
to be broadcast to the whole country with no means of disabling it? What could
possibly require every person in the US to need to know about some event
immediately?

~~~
fivefive55
Nukes? There are such a thing as nationwide emergencies.

~~~
gumby
Honestly how could that be actionable in a short timeframe?

~~~
danielvf
It's about a 30 minute travel time for land-based ICBMs to reach the US from
Russia or China. Let's say 10 minutes to get through the chain of command, and
5 minutes to send out the alert, so you might have a 10-15 minute warning.

As absolutely mind-boggling as nukes are, I think people today credit them
with more destructive force than they really have. For one thing, blast force
goes down with the inverse square of of the distance. There's very much a
diminishing return to bigger nukes, and the area of total destruction will
always be much smaller than the area of sorta-destruction.

So if you have a 15 minute warning, you can get away from windows or perhaps
go to a basement or subway, There are plenty of ways to drastically increase
your odds of survival if you are in the middle-zone of a nuclear strike.

Any all out nuclear war is going to have a lot of people die. The purpose of
national warnings and preparedness is to just make that number be smaller than
it otherwise would be.

~~~
gumby
There are 330M people in this country. How many of them have any idea what to
do if an ICBM is on the way? I would be shocked if the number exceeded 330K.
If anyone thought there were a credible thread of nuclear attack they would be
taking steps of which a warning system like this would be a _late_ step, not
the first one.

The local FEMA alert system is a good idea; the last time I personally found
it useful was in 1989 (Loma Prieta earthquake) though I hear it works in more
dangerous areas (e.g. tornado alley) and am not surprised by that. However
here in the Bay Area its link to phones was ruined by spam (pointless
interruptions sent to my phone) so I disabled it. This new system is worse.

(BTW I wouldn't classify the false missile alert in Hawaii "spam". It was
simply an error. But here I got messages that should have been on the news).

~~~
danielvf
There are 20.4 million veterans in the US, so on that basis alone I'd guess a
little higher for the number of people who had an idea about what to do.

------
gavreh
Why can't I disable or opt out of this?

~~~
evan_
on the iPhone there's a setting for "Emergency Alerts" at the bottom of
Settings -> Notifications.

edit: apparently "Presidential" alerts will override this setting, so I guess
you can't disable it after all.

~~~
gavreh
>apparently "Presidential" alerts will override this setting, so I guess you
can't disable it after all

That is my point. Not sure why I'm getting downvoted.

------
euroclydon
I can't think of an important message that could go over this channel that
would not cause more panic than if it were not sent.

Unless it's some good thing, like "we landed on the moon" or "victory in
Europe"

If it's about a natural disaster or threat that affects the whole country,
forget about it...

~~~
gumby
Those would be worse as they are not even actionable alerts! True spam.

------
kibwen
Not sure why these need to be billed as "Presidential alerts" if they're for
national emergencies, which is already the domain of FEMA. Call them "National
emergency alerts". Presidential addresses (which the name suggests these are
in the age of cord-cutters and smartphones) are for sympathy and calls for
unity in the aftermath of disaster; if there's a hurricane or tornado bearing
down on me, all I want is info straight from FEMA or the National Weather
Service without having to be routed through the president first. Not to
mention that referring to the president in any capacity is a great way to get
half the country to dismiss a notification without reading it.

~~~
throwaway5250
Could it be because the message is literally from the President, in their ex
officio role as the President?

------
cassandrajam
Just received one. It shows up as one of those "emergency notifications" you
usually receive when a flood is happening nearby, except here it's titled
"Presidential Alert".

------
theshadowknows
So what system allows them to jack into every mobile network in the country at
once? Or do I just have an extremely poor understanding of how these things
work?

~~~
waterphone
The Wireless Emergency Alerts system, authorized in the 2006 Warning, Alert,
and Response Network (WARN) Act.

[https://www.congress.gov/109/bills/hr5785/BILLS-109hr5785ih....](https://www.congress.gov/109/bills/hr5785/BILLS-109hr5785ih.pdf)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts)

------
chrissnell
I accidentally swiped it on the iPhone lock screen and now it's gone. I don't
see it in my notifications. Is there a way to find it?

~~~
Rebelgecko
Dunno if it's the same on an iPhone, but on Android it shows up in my texting
app

~~~
jpindar
Not on mine.

------
daeken
The moment I saw this pop up on my screen, all I could think of was the
destruction one could cause via fake alerts. For instance, a warning of
incoming nuclear warheads like what happened in Hawaii a few months ago. Sure,
news stations might rapidly debunk it, but how many people wouldn't see it?
Cell towers would be overloaded with calls and data, preventing the
dissemination of info to many. Radio would be the best bet, but how many
people would go out to their car (likely the only place they have a radio)
when they think an attack may be imminent?

A centralized system like this seems like an extremely dangerous thing to
have.

~~~
amysox
FEMA has established that two officials have to sign off on the alert text
before it goes out. This is to _avoid_ the situation we got in Hawaii.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Political appointees or non-political employees?

------
cirgue
Only about half my office got one. Anyone know what that's about?

------
unstuckdev
The TV (even streamed) was 5 minutes late due to the standard delay.

------
jobigoud
So as a test of the system how did it fare? How do they measure success or
failure of the test? What percentage of devices were actually reached?

------
tlb
My iPhone X with iOS 12 made the siren noise, but no message appeared on the
screen and I can't find any alert message in the notifications page, messages,
or elsewhere. So I only got 1 bit of information :-(.

~~~
tlrobinson
> So I only got 1 bit of information

Be careful. That's basically how the family in the movie "Blast from the Past"
ended up locked in their bunker for a few decades.

------
stephengillie
The alert didn't shut off until you pressed the button. Many devices were
making noise for minutes around me.

How many car crashes were caused by people startled by the sudden, continuous
alert?

~~~
wlesieutre
Really? It sounded like all of the phones in my office alerted once and then
stopped (though not all simultaneously, some took longer to receive it). What
kind of phones are people using?

My ringer was off so I can't say personally.

~~~
stephengillie
I was at a car dealership. I didn't take a poll of devices used by employees
and other customers.

------
confounded
Anyone know anything about the underlying tech? Is it related to E911, e.g.
any privacy implications?

~~~
jpindar
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2016/09/19...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2016/09/19/confused-about-those-emergency-cellphone-alerts-heres-
how-they-work/?utm_term=.d9a5f5e389b7)

------
protomyth
It was a bit odd to have every cellphone in a hallway go off with the same
tone. I guess some folks weren't watching the news and didn't get word before
hand.

~~~
valbaca
> I guess some folks weren't watching the news and didn't get word before
> hand.

How would have knowing about it changed anything if you can't opt out?

~~~
protomyth
Well, they probably wouldn't have that TV disaster momentary panic. It is
really not normal to have a bunch of devices go off at once.

------
IronWolve
This has nothing to do with POTUS Trump, its been out for years, even under
Obama. You can disable all alerts EXCEPT the Presidential alerts, due to
extreme emergencies which its used for. And I don't think its ever been used.

But as alerts go, I had to shut off the Amber alerts, the local Seattle and
King county was spamming my phone and even getting amber alerts for other
counties hundreds of miles away. I carry 2 phones, work and private, double
annoying on these alerts.

~~~
amysox
"Presidential Alerts" don't actually originate from the President. They come
from FEMA, which selects one of several pre-written messages that fits the
current situation, customizes the text as necessary, and sends it out to the
phone carriers. One FEMA official has to actually write the message, and then
two others have to sign off on the wording before it can go out.

So, no, you're not going to be getting mandatory Trump tweets on your phone.

~~~
zrail
"So, no, you're not going to be getting mandatory Trump tweets on your phone."

I think you seriously underestimate how much of the government is run by
convention, "norms", and regulations that are easy to change.

------
noncoml
.

~~~
jpindar
You couldn't opt out of the Emergency Broadcast System alerts on TV either,
did they scare you?

~~~
noncoml
.

------
newnewpdro
Why are these labeled as "Presidential"?

The combination of being impossible to configure as filtered and naming leaves
me with the distinct taste of living under an aspiring dictatorship in my
mouth.

------
Millennium
Only one person at my office even got the alert. I'm going to have to call
this test of the system a failure.

Dammit, and I'd even queued up Orff's "O Fortuna" to go with the rising
crescendo of Emergency Alert System tones.

~~~
umvi
> Only one person at my office even got the alert. I'm going to have to call
> this test of the system a failure.

At my office, I heard a propagation of what I thought were amber alerts
rippling up the hallway, and sure enough, my phone got it too, except it
wasn't an amber alert.

