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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

"Presidential Alerts" is a terrible name in a time where presidents from either party tend to have about 40% approval or less. The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be. Considering that the presidency is a political position, it's not unreasonable to expect "Presidential Alerts" to be of a political nature, even though that is not how the system is intended to be used.

How about "National Alert System" or just continue calling it the "Emergency Alert System" (except now with new abilities). Put a procedure in place to let the president use it if needed.

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From https://twitter.com/dmelvin3737/status/1047557154729840646

The "Presidential" alert is the level of alert. It's been named this for over a decade, but none have ever been sent.

The levels are :

AMBER alert

Severe alerts

Extreme alerts

Presidential alerts

I'll bikeshed this; I'd rather see the latter ones titled as "Local emergency", "State emergency", "National emergency". What sort of intuition are we supposed to have for the difference between a severe and an extreme emergency?

Same intuition needed for differentiating telescope aperture sizes

(context: https://xkcd.com/1294/)

> The name just automatically angers a significant portion of the population, no matter who the president happens to be.

I think that pretty much speaks to how shamefully bad politics has gotten here in the US. I see a couple of comments that jump to speculate that it could be used as a tool of politics, or that they would rather opt-out of knowing about an imminent threat to themselves and/or their fellow American's lives. I think it's selfish, considering smoke and CO2 detectors can't warn you of nuclear attacks. If an office of the state was responsible for calling out a fire in the building, I would want every chance to be informed, regardless of whether or not they were my prefered elected official. Obviously, if the system was abused I would want it to be fixed.

Here's a good example. This tweet from a respected Dr. is really unfortunate.

"But it’s called the Presidential Alert because Trump has a huge ego. And he loves his intruding into our lives without consent."

https://twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1047562343503122432

He states it as though it's fact. Now many of his 200,000+ followers also think that, if they didn't already.

I might've also believed that if I didn't do the work to look it up.

> If hackers got into the system or Trump decides to become a dictator, this #PresidentialAlert system could be used to brick all 300 million phones in America. https://twitter.com/eugenegu/status/1047565946527744000?s=21

Do we consider this fake news?

So I don't know why but when the alert when off in my office several people simply got a generic "This is an emergency test system" and not once did it say "Presidential".

I wonder if it has to do with the fact that: A) My area code isnt from a US State B) Some of my coworkers are not US Citizens C) Network Infrastructure from my phone / provider

Either way it seems like a lot of people have been negatively impacted by a single word but I doubt anyone will actually go ahead and change it.

Specific presidents generally have low approval rating, but the idea of the office of the president has a high approval rating(which is why people care so much that their person gets put there).

I don't see the connection. Even if everyone hated the idea of having a president and we were in the process of amending the constitution to eliminate the office entirely, we'd still care about who had the position until that happened as they have a great deal of power.

Used correctly, these should be so infrequent that there's no legitimate reason to disable them. This is a broadcast, not a data collection, and if a missile is headed in your general area, literally every capable device should be telling you about it.

How are you opting out of the air raid sirens?

You don't own air raid sirens, and you can't stop others from installing them.

You do own your phone (in theory, at least). You should have full authority over what that phone does or doesn't do.

With all due respect, this seems like a pretty lame hill to die on. Consider the potential harm that might come from allowing people who don't fully understand what the implications are of opting out of a "presidential alert". In theory, this feature is only supposted to be used for the worst of the worst situations and if poeple disable it.... bad things might happen.

Consider if a whole bunch of people are supposed to evacuate and some don't get the message because they opt'd out without knowing all the risks. Now you are in a situation where rescue workers are risking their lives trying to save people.

There is no absolute right to freedom because "freedom" is an abstract concept that is fuzzy and full of edge cases and what-abouts. If your "freedom to opt out" of a possibly once-in-a-lifetime message puts rescue workers lives in danger... well that really isn't cool, now is it.

People aren't required to carry phones, so mandating a required alert message still doesn't guarantee reach.

The way I see it, now comes the time to eliminate cell providers, same as the "cut the cord" movement was adopted by people seeking to eliminate cable TV service for a wide variety of reasons.

There are at least two straws this week, that threaten to break the camel's back. Mandatory noise alarms like this, and mandatory password seizure at borders and airports in places like New Zealand.

Sorry, make noise and vibrate in some other pocket. And oh yeah, here's a password to a blank burner phone I never even used once. Throw it in the garbage for me, I bought it at a pawn shop for a dollar, instead of paying thousands to refuse some draconian policy.

Time to drop cell phones. Large faceless groups of people don't seem to grasp that they might be pushing it too far.

You make a good point about endangering rescue workers. That complicates things.

Maybe those who disable such an alert should be exposed to liability for harm brought to others as a result of their choice? I realize that doesn't help the hypothetical dead rescue worker, but it's more of a middle ground between personal freedom and minimizing harm.

You're free to disable the alerts by installing a custom OS on your phone where you have disabled the feature.

Your argument makes it sound like, say, Google owes you infinitely customizable software if they are going to provide any software at all, when they have no such obligation - just like you have no obligation to buy their phone, or use their software.

Please don't do this. If you're not ready to post, don't.

Meh. Ban me if you don’t like it. The discussion ended up being about politics. Not interest in participating in politics or having my comments be misunderstood as political comments.

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