Amber Alert

Even though I received warnings through this system when FEMA warned us east coasters of Hurricane Sandy, I didn’t really give it much thought until I received an Amber Alert through the same system while in California this past week.  If you haven’t already received one, the alerts I’m referring to are administered by FEMA via smartphones in an opt-out program and have in their short history been used for severe weather warnings and to provide information on child kidnappings as they are unfolding.  I am both impressed that the government and private companies are able to orchestrate this deployment of information and thankful they have put this opt-out program in place.

One thing I found particularly interesting in the Take Two article “Were you awakened by the Amber Alert? Here's why and how to turn itoff” was that there are local alerts, statewide alerts, and presidential alerts and, according to the article, we do not have the option to opt out of the presidential alerts.  I would never want to opt of any of these alerts, but find it interesting that I don’t even have the option to do so.  I imagine that there are many people that take huge issue with this.

I’m even more interested to see who the first person or group will be to hack this capability and what message they will send.  Perhaps they will be able to send an image, not just the current 90 characters of text.  Maybe a damning photo, real or not, during presidential election polling hours.  Maybe false news of terrorist activity to invoke widespread panic.  I think it’s not a questions of if, but when, this will happen.