Emergency Alerts?

[arabstar1982]

Ok, anyone else think this is a bit ridiculous - that article states that someone visiting the area of an active alert will not receive the alert, but if a person lives in an area with active alert but is out of town at the time the alert is needed, they will still get it... so, wouldn't it make more sense to find a way that anyone in the area via their cell service, regardless of their home area, could receive the "special" alerts.... since we all have to deal with this app unless you are rooted and have blocked it?

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums

 

[dandv]

Ok, anyone else think this is a bit ridiculous - that article states that someone visiting the area of an active alert will not receive the alert, but if a person lives in an area with active alert but is out of town at the time the alert is needed, they will still get it...

You got it backwards. From NY Times:

A New York City resident who is traveling in Chicago at the time of an emergency in New York would not receive a message; a Chicago resident who is a customer of the same phone company would see the text alert while in New York City, officials said.

Anyway, there are other problems with this PLAN initiative, the first one being the dire lack of technical details. Is there a special chip required? Will it use GPS? And more...

Concerns with the PLAN chip

1. The cited reason for having an extra chip embedded in each cell phone is that the current SMS infrastructure can get congested in times of emergency. However, PLAN still uses wireless carrier cell towers to push messages (as opposed to a different frequency, like the ones used for radio clock synchronization or GPS). The GSM standard already supports Cell Broadcast (CB) messaging. What is the exact justification of the extra chip?

2. Why limit the system to 90 characters of text, instead of relying on the existing multimedia message infrastructure, which can be used to send, for example, such critical information as a photo of an evacuation map? Also, the system is not backward compatible with the over 300 million mobile phones already in place in the United States, while using SMS is. (More on these issues at elerts.com)

3. Does the technology use GPS, as BBC mentions? The battery drain and surveillance implications are major.

4. Users can't opt out of “Presidential” messages. What safeguards are in place that would prevent an oppressive government from abusing this technology?

5. The design of the system is not available. How can the users know that it won't be abused? The chip could be programmed to snap a picture from the phone's camera, or to covertly record audio, upon receiving a certain signal. Remote activation of a phone's microphone has already been done by the FBI using the so-called roving bug.

6. What is to prevent the government-required software from receiving a certain signal or message which would disable the cell phone or its Internet access (useful in times of civil unrest, as has been seen in the Arab Spring revolts)?

7. Will rooting phones or custom ROMs become illegal, especially if one modifies the function of how the PLAN network interacts with the smartphone?

 

[igknight]

All I know is that when we have had amber alerts in my area it never went off, so I just froze it.

 

[Backnblack]

All I know is that when we have had amber alerts in my area it never went off, so I just froze it.

Why? Did it show as using battery?

 

[igknight]

No, but it wont show in my app draw either. I'm a bit anal about organization on my phone.

 

[peterpressure]

This went off on my phone 3 times yesterday for a flood warning (it barely rained)

My coworkers black berry and Droid 4 also alerted at the same time.

What APK can I delete to get this off my system. 3 Alerts and its barely raining!!! Talk about government "crying wolf"!

 

[peterpressure]

Ok, found it:

/system/app/cmas.apk
rename to cmas.bak and reboot, no more presidential alerts or any government alerts for that matter. Cannot believe I had to do this...

This went off on my phone 3 times yesterday for a flood warning (it barely rained)

My coworkers black berry and Droid 4 also alerted at the same time.

What APK can I delete to get this off my system. 3 Alerts and its barely raining!!! Talk about government "crying wolf"!

 

[JayAaroBe]

Ok, found it:

/system/app/cmas.apk
rename to cmas.bak and reboot, no more presidential alerts or any government alerts for that matter. Cannot believe I had to do this...

Does this solution require a rooted phone? If so, is there a solution for non-rooted Droid Bionics? Thanks

 

[leftspin]

Does this solution require a rooted phone? If so, is there a solution for non-rooted Droid Bionics? Thanks

You need to be rooted to delete or modify files from /system/app, there's no way around it