Should the emergency alert system be modified?

Question

....to include the internet? What about alerts during working hours where people are on the computers and there is no TV or radio. I was thinking in the form of some kind of pop-up or flashing in your icon bar? I would say more people are on the computer at anygiven time compared to the TV.

Answer 1

Wow...that's a good point. Makes sense to me - it should just pop up with a separate IE screen with a tab on the bottom that flashes red, that way it won't pop up smack dab in the middle of, say an online auction, but it will still draw attention.

Answer 2

A good idea.

There may be a couple legal obstacles to making it happen:

- The Emergency Alert System (EAS) currently only utilizes mediums that are regulated by the government in some form & the Internet is not under the regulatory authority of any one federal agency (it goes largely unregulated in general). Consequently, the government cannot easily coordinate such an effort the way they did with TV and radio;

- To get the Internet backbone providers (phone companies, cable companies, etc.) to transmit the emergency messages, it would involve the backbone providers interfering with Internet content in a way they never have before, which could cause lots of problems;

- To get Internet content providers to transmit the message, it would require a common agreement to allow a third party to put something on their websites with little-to-no warning. There's no telling how many websites would be willing to give up that measure of content control.

Those bumps in the road aside, it remains a good idea. Getting the word out to Internet users of an emergency, natural or man-made, is a worthwhile endeavor. Modifying the existing EAS might not work, but perhaps it could be an independent service that sends out the info to major media Internet sites and other popular sites with the hope that the information would be passed along. It might work.

Answer 3

they've come up on reverse 911 calls.
an event happens, 911 dispatch centers record an alert message, then it starts to call in the effected area first, you answer, recordering tells you what's going on. work is in prgress to use this for cell phones too, it can tell which cell tower you are using, to tell if you are close to the event.

Answer 4

yes it should and a great idea