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.