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FEMA and FCC Plan Nationwide Emergency Alert Test for Oct. 4
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wcarss 3y agoI really hope to see someone trace and deconstruct the level of bizarre conspiracy theory generation around this event. For those not aware, I've seen (mostly through semi-related posts on e.g. Reddit) a lot of people forwarding and subscribing to all kinds of absolute nonsense ideas about this event "broadcasting a signal to activate the Marburg virus" or "being particularly painful for the vaccinated to hear", or "likely to start many small fires in modern devices". I bet that kind of stuff goes around about lots of events -- but I am curious if this one has become so popularly expected to result in bizarre catastrophes just because it's national? Or are people just _much_ more gullible this year?
- derelicta 3y agoTime to mass-send "Over-the-air vaccination successful. Remain calm. -CDC" per SMS
- pard68 3y agoYa it's weird, but it's largely a rehash of the same things that come up every time an amber alert or emergency tone is played.
- lawlessone 3y agoAlso weird, it's the same people who complaining a pizza shop has a secret underground child prison that are upset by actual attempts to quickly save children.
- GenerocUsername 3y agoThe conspiracy is that the alerts are mostly used to catch escaped children
- CalRobert 3y agoThe only concern I've seen is people who might have reason to keep a phone's existence secret. Those with abusive partners, parents, etc.
- LinuxBender 3y agoThey might consider setting airplane mode or powering it off when not in use.
- wcarss 3y agoI saw this one too, and it's an interesting point to consider. I would imagine those people's phones would mostly already be usually concealed, because e.g. an amber or a weather alert with similar effects and consequences could come in at any time.
- hiatus 3y agoUnlike those alerts, the FEMA alerts cannot be disabled.
- coldpie 3y agoHm, really? On my up-to-date iPhone 13 Mini, I have all of AMBER, Emergency, Public Safety, and Test alerts disabled. Seems like this would fall under at least one of those. I guess we'll find out :) I don't mind a text alert, but I'll be pretty pissed if it makes a bunch of noise.
- skilled 3y agoThose aren't even that far-reaching theories... Apparently, Russia also did a test for this same exact thing today, so you can image the parallels that drew from a select few communities. 'Attention - remain calm': Russia tests public warning system (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-conduct-emergency-public-warning-tests-wednesday-2023-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-conduct-emergenc...)
- blumomo 3y ago[flagged]
- galangalalgol 3y agoThis is getting voted down, I bthink because of the texture of the comment, but put another way I got upvoted recently for the same sentiment, so I'll echo it. We were told masks didn't work, so we wouldn't buy too many and short the people who needed them most, so people kept believing it after the well meant lie. We were told it wasn't a pandemic and that we could still stop it, so that people would continue the practices that would ease the burden on our nurses. The severity of the flu has been exaggerated (on average, there have been really bad years) so that people would get vaccines even if it might not be that important for them individually. If you manage the truth, you havebto keep doing it more and more. If you treat your citizenship like children, you'll get childish behavior. You can't wait for people to behave responsibly to give them responsibility, it works the other way around. Responsibility and accountability produce responsible behavior. As things stand, people expect that if something wasn't safe to eat it wouldn't be legal to sell it...
- walls 3y ago[flagged]
- lawlessone 3y agoOK what does that have to do with this text message you'll get?
- believecty 3y ago[dead]
- ghaff 3y agoSo much current conspiracy stuff is so wild that it's essentially impossible to distinguish conspiracy theories that people deeply believe in from sarcasm and for the lulz postings.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoSame thing happened last time.
- zbrozek 3y agoI heard on NPR this morning that the test will be of an alert level that cannot be squelched by settings on the handset. Is that true?
- aae42 3y agoI'm not sure, but i've had my handset set to what i felt were pretty reasonable yet safe settings for emergency alerts, and got enough of them at 2 and 3am that i had to disable it. I don't like this, i would prefer leaving emergency alerts on, but why are we testing it in the middle of the night? That's encouraging people to disable...
- sunbum 3y agoIn what world is 2:20pm the middle of the night.
- CP3f6kMA 3y agoThe comment said am
- tekla 3y agoAnd the article said 2:20 PM ET.
- firtoz 3y agoAnd the comment said " got enough of them at 2 and 3am that i had to disable it." not directly referring to the article.
- cgriswald 3y agoAnd the comment also said: > …but why are we testing it in the middle of the night? Referring to the test occurring at 2:20 pm ET, leading the other poster’s question which wasn’t about the part you are quoting.
- Traubenfuchs 3y agohttps://support.apple.com/en-us/102516 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102516 > When your iPhone is connected to a carrier in the United States—using a U.S. SIM or while roaming in the U.S.—you can enable Test Emergency Alerts. By default, this is turned off. > Turn Government Alerts on or off Seems like test alerts are turned off by default and real alerts can be turned off for iOS?
- jaywalk 3y agoAlthough this is a test, it is not being sent as a test. It is being sent as a Presidential Alert, which cannot be disabled on any phone running stock firmware. It's literally illegal to sell a phone that allows Presidential Alerts to be disabled.
- lxgr 3y agoThank you for this – I've been wondering how this would work with inbound roaming phones! I think visibility of this setting used to be tied to the phone's configured region, but the new behavior makes more sense for inbound roaming users.
- throw0101b 3y agoFor the Canadians in the audience, we have our tests in November (and May): * https://www.alertready.ca/testing-schedule/ https://www.alertready.ca/testing-schedule/
- Scoundreller 3y agoAt least Canada still has 3G. I had my phone set to “downgrade” itself to 3G overnight so I can sleep soundly through amber alerts and nuclear incineration. Canada sends our amber alerts at the “presidential” level. I think Ontario tightened up its criteria for these alerts. Haven’t gotten one in a while. They were mostly joint custody disputes where it’s highly debatable anyone was in danger. There was the one where the father already murdered the kids at home. Police could legally light up 11m phones but couldn’t legally kick down his door.
- mholt 3y agoThis will be fun for my wife who's in the hospital right now. And everyone else in hospitals trying to rest. Also, will this go off on cellular watches? I'm sure schoolteachers are going to LOVE this... :-/
- jjulius 3y ago>This will be fun for my wife who's in the hospital right now. And everyone else in hospitals trying to rest. That this will be happening today has been publicly communicated for at least a few weeks (as far as I've noticed) now. If that's not enough time for people to realize that, if they want rest, or silence, or whatever, they'll need to turn their phones off around this time, then I don't know what to tell ya. >Also, will this go off on cellular watches? I'm sure schoolteachers are going to LOVE this... :-/ Same sentiment as above. This isn't just happening to kid's devices, it's happening to teacher's/administrator's phones, too. It'd be no different than a timed emergency drill that folk in schools are anticipating; everyone knows it's coming, there'll be a few minutes of mild commotion, things will die back down.
- Uehreka 3y ago> they’ll need to turn off their phones Apparently if you turn off your phone, the alert will play when you turn it back on. So if everyone in a hospital wing turned off their phone, the alert would “happen” multiple times as people turned their phones on later.
- jjulius 3y agoThe idea in my post is that you know it's coming when you turn it back on. Someone who wants to sleep can turn their phone off, sleep, and then turn their phone on when they wake up and are expecting it, in the privacy of their own room. Edit: Not entirely true - it won't receive the emergency signal so long as you keep it off during the 30 minute window[1]. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37766253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37766253
- mholt 3y ago
- cypherpunks01 3y agoThere is an interesting 2019 academic paper out of CU Boulder, on the topic of spoofing 4G WEA alerts. I wouldn't recommend doing this, but it's very interesting to understand the technical aspects of WEA, CMAS, and other non-standard mobile comms channels that are involved. "This is Your President Speaking: Spoofing Alerts in 4G LTE Networks" [PDF] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3307334.3326082 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3307334.3326082
- 0xbeefcab 3y agoCrazy that theres no cryptographic authentication. I get the whole point is rapidly informing, but there should still be some trivial barrier to sending out an alert
- onthecanposting 3y agoA surprising amount of important systems work because nobody can he bothered to mess with them. I think the takeaway is that most people are good, but perhaps also a bit lazy.
- lxgr 3y agoExactly. Another recent example: https://www.wired.com/story/poland-train-radio-stop-attack/ https://www.wired.com/story/poland-train-radio-stop-attack/
- lxgr 3y agoCryptographic authentication means somebody needs to require a set of trusted keys (or a PKI or similar), and I could imagine that during an actual emergency, availability might be a higher priority than non-spoofability.
- throw0101b 3y ago> 2:20 p.m. ET Amused at "ET". I guess they didn't want to confuse people with EDT (which we're currently 'in') and EST ('winter time', which will be 'entered' on November 5).
- xeromal 3y agoI've never been able to remember which time we're in so I always just use the two character version. It's not like it actually matters except when planning a meeting after a transition will occur.
- cypherpunks01 3y agoThis is the standard way to refer to the eastern US time zone, exactly to reduce the confusion you mention
- pnpnp 3y agoSeconded. For normal conversation, I started using PT/MT/CT/ET. I can’t ever remember if it’s daylight savings or not, and people generally understand what you mean.
- runarberg 3y agoI wonder how confusing this is for residents of areas that don’t observe daylight savings, such as Arizona, Puerto Rico or the Hopi nation.
- Turing_Machine 3y agoI expect they're already used to dealing with it. At one time, Indiana residents could be in four different de facto time zones (Eastern/Central, did/did not observe DST). It's been simplified a lot in recent years.
- macintux 3y agoI’m kicking myself for losing track of it, but I bought an old booklet that described changes in Indiana time zones in the 50s and 60s. Different communities would observe different time zones, and sometimes a community would change zones between years.
- olkyts 3y agoLast year, here in Ukraine, we had something like that. A couple of times, I saw those alerts on my phone. At some point, they stopped doing it. Maybe it didn't work out as the government planned.
- bloopernova 3y agoThe number of coworkers who had no idea this was happening today is really strange to me. It's been publicized quite a bit!
- baumy 3y agoFor what it's worth I'd consider myself to be a moderately above-average news reader (Reuters and WSJ most days with misc other sources irregularly), and the first I've heard of this is just now
- ghaff 3y agoThe driver I had from the airport mentioned this last night and I didn't immediately know what he was talking about. Then I vaguely remembered having previously heard something.
- runarberg 3y agoI watch the news daily, and am active on social media (including following some government agencies and politicians), I only heard about this from a friend of mine who is deep into conspiracy theories. That was the only time I heard about it until now when it made it to the front page on HN (which is also the first time I see it on social media). Whichever publicity they did, didn’t reach me at least.
- lawlessone 3y agoYeah all the conspiracy people are going nuts about it. I have a family member thought an amber alert like system being introduced to the uk would bug her smartphone... my response "why would they need to, you already have the smartphone lol"
- runarberg 3y agoThe way I understand it, this will send a signal across the 5G network which will somehow cause a storm of covid (or worse) raining from the sky. It is definitely one of the more out there theories, but does seem to affect quite a number of people. My friend actually believes the signal today is a test, but the real signal will be sent on the 11th of October, and that will be the beginning of the end of the world.
- mikewarot 3y agoIf you live in a situation where the presence of your phone needs to stay secret, turn it OFF, really OFF... now. I wonder how many battered women will die because of this test.
- k310 3y agoTurning completely off for the duration should work. Quote: If a phone is off before the test alert is sent and not turned back on until after the WEA Test expires (approximately 30 minutes), the phone should not get the test message. Unquote Late notice, though I saw the same concern mentioned yesterday or earlier, but not in widespread media.
- 0xbeefcab 3y agoThe alert is not received at all if phone is disconnected to network for the 30 min test period
- snake_plissken 3y agoI must admit, it is slightly unsettling knowing that there is a communications side channel out there which could effectively DDOS every mobile phone. Not for nothing, I understand why it is useful to be able to broadcast messages/alerts like this and you can just click OK, the message goes away and you get your phone back. But people are really bandying about conspiracy theories that this will activate Marburg virus (what is this, the X-Files?) or be painful if you're vaccinated? FEMA (more X-Files!) is going to literally demonstrate its capability to control your phone. I need to hang up this tin foil hat.
- imchillyb 3y agoI wonder how many illicit prison phones this alert test will discover.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoI wonder if some day a zero day will be snuck in that bricks every phone. How chaotic would that be!
- endisneigh 3y agoIt's not clear to me how they assert the success of their test from reading. If some large percentage, say a percent, didn't get the alert would they know? Didn't see anything on IPAWS from a quick search, but maybe someone here knows? Are there read-receipts for these alerts?
- orev 3y agoThe process of sending an alert like this is very likely to have numerous steps in the process, with the actual alert delivery being only the final one. This kind of alert would involve multiple agencies, communication channels, coordination, approvals, etc., all before the actual alert goes out. A test like this is designed to make sure all of those things are working. And yes, there’s definitely a log somewhere showing if delivery was successful, and collecting and analyzing that information after the alert is also probably part of the testing.
- nerdjon 3y agoI would assume that they could pull the numbers from the amber alert on what sort of numbers they should be seeing. Then I would also assume that part of the system would report back saying "delivered" and they could just compare those numbers?
- nerdjon 3y agoI am very surprised to find out that people are still unaware that this is happening, I had to mention it to my partner this morning who had no idea (or forgot) since he mentioned having a call 10 minutes after it was supposed to happen. This seemed like one of those things that has been communicated extremely well? Or am I being shocked by being in the tech bubble once again? Also I just don't get all the conspiracy theories about this. I mean how long has Amber alerts existed? Or whether emergency alerts existed? This really isn't that much different but is just national instead of more locally based. As long as it isn't abused I feel like this is a good thing to have in place. One of those, well hope we never need to use it but if/when it becomes a necessity we will be glad it exists.
- nathancahill 3y agoIf only there was a way to send a mass message to everyone to tell them this was planned..
- ceejayoz 3y agoIt'd be really nice if the emergency alert system had pre-test non-emergency push notification functionality built into it.
- xoa 3y agoThat actually seems like a good potential addition. 72/48/24/12h beforehand everyone gets a regular text or notification, no priority, no noise, doesn't bypass quiet/sleep/focus modes, but there that says there is an upcoming test of the real deal.
- nerdjon 3y agoI was actually kinda surprised all of the cell phone carriers didn't send out a text like "just FYI". No link or anything, just to let anyone know that doesn't know.
- jedberg 3y ago
- Ajay-p 3y agoNoted. I will turn of my phone from 2pm ET for a while.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]