Another reason to become an amateur radio operator...

[alexpgp]

Via Yahoo!News:

Emergency alerts may soon be delivered by more than just your television set or old-fashioned radio: The federal government is considering alerting you via text message should a possible natural disaster or terrorist attack directly affect your area.

Incredible! These bright bozo legislators want to increase load on the communications infrastructure and push a huge wad of SMS messages through the network, during a time when the ability to communicate may mean the difference between life and death!

(During such stressful times in my experience, I seem to recall public announcements asking people to not make unnecessary calls, y'dig?)

It'd be like a cyberassault, combining the best features of SMS spam and a denial of service attack, except it'd be self-inflicted and paid for by tax dollars.

I wonder if legislators were this stupid back in the pre-Cold-War days?

Cheers...

UPDATE: Maybe I was a little harsh with my initial assessment, but I still think this is a typical example of Grandstanding Congresscritters With Too Much Idle Time On Their Hands™.

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Actually, experiences during the NY and London attacks showed that while cell phones often didn't work because of overload in the system, text messages got through. I'm not sure why - maybe because of reduced bandwidth requirements or something. I'm not sure what purpose general system-wide government alerts would serve, though.

[eastexpert.livejournal.com]

Amazingly, recently I have subscribed to a certain service here, which notifies by text messages (= called SMS in States) if there is something happening in the vicinity of your postcode. The price is minuscule about £1.50 per year, so I didn't think twice.

It already has worked several times: during incidents on M4, the motorway connecting us with London, during bombings in London as well. Considering that on 21 July I was in Scotland on holiday, it urged me to check the BBC News to understand what's happening.

[skipperja.livejournal.com]

Sounds like "typical grandstanding" to me.

Now that I'm back on the government network, I've received a notice to look at the White House proposed "Working for America Act." At first I thought it had something to do with incentives for civil servants to do volunteer work, but it's a revamping of civil service laws to reward the best workers and make managers do a better job.

[kf6gpe.livejournal.com]

I like the idea that one of the repliers has access to, that is, getting information for your region. Otherwise, it's a horrid waste of money, and yes, I agree it's a whacked idea.

Interestingly, as carriers like VZW and Cingular adopt support for cell broadcast (basically the notion of multicast for SMS), the impact on the network would be negligible... hmm.. I wonder if that's where the idea came from? Carriers lobbying for money to defray the cost of getting cell broadcast supported?

*shudder*