Big brother: it’s every where you want it to be
And where you don’t.
A new national alert system is set to begin in New York City that will alert the public to emergencies via cell phones.
It’s called the Personal Localized Alert Network or PLAN. Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts would appear on cell phones equipped with special chips and software.
You pay for it and are forced to be bombarded with messages from your betters. But you can opt out of some things and most people will:
Consumers would be able to opt out of all but those presidential messages.
May 11th, 2011 at 9:11 am
IF and ONLY IF the originator of the messages is a clearly identified individual, who is elected not less than every two years by a majority of the US population (not voters, but entire population) to the position of approving the messages sent out. And who can be recalled with a petition signed by any 10 US citizens.
May 11th, 2011 at 9:37 am
Interestingly enough both Stalin and Kim Jong Il both mandated that a radio receiver that could not be turned off be placed in every home in the Communist Dictatorship.
Of course this was taken by Orwell to make the Telescreen.
May 11th, 2011 at 9:37 am
Still a violation of my rights. We have a President not a Dictator. He can talk all day and I don’t have to listen to him.
May 11th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Just in time for those URGENT messages during the 2012 campaign.
May 11th, 2011 at 11:15 am
“Consumers would be able to opt out of all but those presidential messages.”
We’ll have an app for that!!
May 11th, 2011 at 11:26 am
It’s called Reverse 911, it’s been in existence for years, it is controlled by the Local Emergency Agency, and it works just fine. But those Friends of Barry in Silicon Valley will help the DHS bring it about. This makes it easier to rally the Masses to take on any Counter-Revolutionary Forces that might be gathering, because they’ve been tracking their Movements via their Smartphones for a few years now. But it’ll probably come about, because the Republitards in the U.S. House of Representatives are FRACKIN’ CLUELESS!
May 11th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
They are going to start manufacturing new cell phone with a micro chip in them to facilitate this. So……
1. It soon wont be voluntary
2. The Feds are going to put a chip in your cell phone
May 11th, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Don’t they sell cell phones with no text function?
I mean, they still exist, right?
May 11th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Great…… now the dipshit in chief can remotely set off as many IED devices as you can afford cellphones for .
May 11th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
So now Dear Leader will be the won to set off the explosive device. Nothing you can do to stop it. Well played sir, well played.
May 11th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
“Special chips”? Why would there need to be “special chips”?
Using the existing towers and showing text messages?
No new hardware needed. Software update for the custom alerts.
(From the FEMA announcement they link to: Participating wireless carriers push the alerts from cell towers to mobile phones in the affected area. The alerts appear like text messages on mobile devices)
The CBS report of “new chips” (which are present in “high end phones” now, they say, without any specifics) is unsupported by any of their linked sources.
I suspect it’s just idiot reporting – nothing in the actual capability report suggests the need for new hardware.
It’s possible they want a sideband that won’t be overwhelmed by traffic, but I suspect even that might not need new hardware.
In any case, “zomg a CHIP!@!” is a ludicrous reaction; all it means is hardware, and your phone is already full of government mandated hardware… like the radios, whose channels are controlled by the State, and the GPS system for emergency services location, mandated by the State.
May 11th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Texting…what’s that? My cell phone is from 2003. And it’s usually turned off. Its on when I want to talk on it. Everyone else can call me at home.
May 12th, 2011 at 4:23 am
The system is called PLAN, and it was signed into law by Bush in 2006 as the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act.
They are alerts designed to save lives, not campaign messages, and are part of the nations emergency alert system. The President has had the ability to send emergency messages into your home via your TV since the Emergency Alert System was created in the 1950’s, but it’s never actually been used by a President to send a message. PLAN is simply a modern version of EAS, and the messages will be sent by state and local officials on a geographic basis as needed for emergencies.
It’s an optional service for the carriers. By law, you don’t pay for PLAN messages – they look like SMS but they are not. The law states:
(C) NO FEE FOR SERVICE- A commercial mobile service licensee that elects to transmit emergency alerts may not impose a separate or additional charge for such transmission or capability.
Sigivald, your assumption that it is SMS, and that the existing system can support massively broadcast SMS in parallel to a geographic area is incorrect. PLAN system is designed to scale. For a start, there is no mechanism to identify phones by location for SMS. Secondly, if there was, it would still jam the network if first responders attempted to use SMS to notify people. Hence the special hardware and firmware.
You may think its Big Brother, but lack of ability to warn people about natural and man-made disasters is a real problem for our first responders, and PLAN will save lives. I wonder if the folks who died in the tornadoes last week would have appreciated some warning?
May 12th, 2011 at 4:33 am
For the geeks, the technology used for PLAN and CMAS is called cell broadcast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast
Older GSM chipsets (phones) don’t support Cell Broadcast.