I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used. Surely many people don't have the app installed? I'd never heard of it and I've lived in this country the whole time it's been available.
Because of utterly dumb people in charge: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/warntag-zum-ziv...
> Unger: Ja, die Niederlande zum Beispiel setzen auf dieses Cell-Broadcast-System. Wir haben davon Abstand genommen, weil die Mobilfunknetze - wie man etwa an Silvester sieht - im Fall der Fälle nicht ausreichen. Hinzu kommt ein datenschutzrechtliches Problem. Wenn man direkt die Handys ansteuert, werden auch Bewegungsdaten erfasst. Wir setzen daher auf die App...
To roughly translate: cell broadcast has a data protection problem, because directly notifying cellphones leads to movement data being recorded. Also cellphone networks don't have the capacity, as can be seen every new year's eve.
Just... what the fuck! What an utterly incompetent idiot.
Basically, we don't have a warning system anymore, because the pieces that are left are mostly being dismantled (sirens, tv and radio) and all they seem to want to replace it with is an app that doesn't reliably work when the network is fine.
Lets be honest, if catastrophy should strike here, we would be last to know.
And then the whole radio clusterfuck. AM radio got totally torn down years ago to "cut costs", there's always discussions to dismantle plain old FM radio too and only serve DAB+ instead, which doesn't have nearly the buildout level compared to plain old FM radio.
I'm sick of this shit. Three decades and all what we had went down the drain. It's the same for coronavirus response - back in cold war times we had massive rolling stockpiles of everything, especially of PPE... but again, it all got eliminated to "cut costs".
What would you use it for? And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?
What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.
Radio is important because it's so widespread and low-tech. Pretty much every car has a receiver that can run for ages, there are inexpensive emergency ones that can be powered by crank and solar, so even in prolonged power outages, as long as the stations remain powered, and someone in your neighbourhood has a working receiver, it's still useful and pretty low-cost, since the infrastructure is already there.
Many young people don't even own a radio or TV any more, and even more own one but don't use it regularly.
> Websites will have notices
That assumes that a) the Internet is still up everywhere (by the way, same problem with the apps crap) and b) that people are 24/7 surfing on news websites.
> I'm entirely unclear why you'd need an emergency broadcast system? Or place so much emphasis on its importance?
To announce there is something going on and people to have a look at the TV/radio for more information. That's all.
> And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?
AM radios are incredibly cheap to build - all you need is a loop, a tunable capacitor, a diode, a fixed capacitor and an earphone. When I was a kid I had one as a "build it yourself" kit for children. FM radios are more complex but are literally everywhere - many cellphones have them, virtually every car built after the early 50s, kitchen appliances, bathroom radios, classic radios... DAB/DAB+ radios are relatively new, in fact they are only required to be present in cars after end of this year. And in contrast to AM/FM it is almost impossible to build one out of basic components yourself.
> What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.
There's more need than just a war for an EBS. Stuff like "the power plant nearby is leaking radioactive gas", "the industrial plants are on fire, close your windows", "there's an earthquake predicted, cover yourself", "flooding immanent" or "active terrorist case with a shooter on the run, stay indoors" is some things that I can easily imagine.
Total communications collapse - It would have to be over night and total for there to be ANY worth to FM/AM radio. It won't be. It's seems unrealisitic to pretend some sort of Walking Dead scenario would ever be real. If it did happen, the government would also somehow have to still be magically in control of the FM/AM broadcasters.
Urgent Alert - The governments around the world have been organising nationwide lockdowns virtually overnight using existing channels. I just don't see much value even if there were something 'urgent', as it's clear people get alerted pretty quickly about this stuff.
Just how often did we have widespread Internet outages because someone fucked up a BGP entry again? It's incredibly easy to barf up the Internet, all you need is a way to put crap in the global BGP database. Terrorists, nation-scale actors, cybercriminals all have this ability. In contrast, an emergency AM/FM radio service can be done without anything connected to the Internet - plug a microphone in the input line of the radio signal generator and you are on air.
Also, power outages are not unheard of, even in Germany. As said, FM radio does not require much power to receive it.
AM even more so, although AM transmitters can be really power-hungry if you want to cover an entire country with one of them.
East Germany had a fully working siren network as well. And it was tested every Wednesday at 1pm.
Sure looks like they take data protection seriously by including advertising trackers...
They basically revoked this comment about capacity. The new reason is that mobile service providers don't offer this type of broadcast in Germany and that it's checked whether this can be implemented in the future.
Why is it checking who gets the message?
(Yes, Yes, I know, the German service providers (allegedly) didn't implement it so far, therefore we(allegedly) can't do it. It's not like a superspecial Extrawurst, since it's in use in many other places. I guess, depending on the vendor of the equipment it would be nothing more than a configuration flag to enable, since it's already there, just needs a license for the feature, or something like that. /ENDRANT)
Jeez. No need to resort to far-right vocabulary!
As for the rest of your point, I'm sure you remember "die Antwort auf diese Frage könnte die Bevölkerung verunsichern"...
(Echt jetzt? Ich verbitte mir diese infame Unterstellung aufs Entschiedenste! Das geht ja so gaaaaa nich!)
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.materna.bbk...
Edit: As a commenter pointed out, it has 1M+ downloads. But I'm still unsure why is there is even an app, when you can use the cell broadcasted warnings, which everyone with a modern phone get, regardless whether they have an app installed.
Cell Broadcast/EU-Alert is the way to go for this and I have no idea why they thought an app would be better.
Maybe the telcos aren't ready? But they wanted to start practicing the other parts of the system?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert
There are a few implementations, but not as many as I would have assumed:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast#Public_warning_...