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

[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.