Public emergency alerts to be sent to all UK mobile phones

[Bigjawa]

Feck me!

Yer all a bunch of paranoid feckers, ain't ya?

[mangocrazy]

Yeah, I understand all that, but I'm still not convinced that all the necessary agencies and data providers are as joined-up as they might like you to think they are. I spent most of my working life in large companies and trying to get other departments to do stuff for you was always a pain. Most departments operate like little fiefdoms, jealously guarding their territory and knowledge base. And if you then need to reach out to other comapnies, as I often had to do, it was that level of difficulty squared or cubed.

Yes, all the data is out there but trying to coordinate it all and make sense of it would be the real obstacle. Herding cats comes to mind...

[Mr. Dazzle]

Having the data is worth fuck all unless you can put the peices together.

Better hope nobody connects this system to ChatGPT!

[Cousin Jack]

Is this just importing an existing system, or is this a new gubermint developed one?

If the latter, I doubt that it will work. Remember the Covid Tracing debacle?

[Skub]

I wonder if the rate of accidents will increase around the time and date?

I'm picturing Father Ted phoning Father Larry Duff.

[Count Steer]

I worked for an outfit* that had a 'security practice'. A couple of their people came to talk to me about 'processing vast amounts of small data' because I had experience of billing systems. It was all a bit awkward because they couldn't/wouldn't provide any information on the type or size of data elements. They muttered a bit about SMS and that was it. They were also working on facial recognition...and I know this because they had to tell us that we, the employees, were being scanned every time we walked over the quad. They reckoned you could put a few nails through a hard disk etc etc and they could recover most of the data. Fire (v hot) is safest if you want to destroy a disk drive.

* We also had the interestingly named 'Space and Defence' people who, technology-wise, were 10 years behind everyone else...because you can't send a tech out each time to fix things so they only used technology that was 'proven'. Their catch phrase was, 'Well, it's not rocket science. Ooh, hang on, it is!'

[Supermofo]

Government can do one of they think they are putting a siren on my phone. Hack me all they like, but I'd rather be killed by the meteorite, earthquake, avalanche etc than them alerting me

[Count Steer]

Government can do one of they think they are putting a siren on my phone. Hack me all they like, but I'd rather be killed by the meteorite, earthquake, avalanche etc than them alerting me

LOL. You don't think they'd actually alert you in any of those situations do you?

[demographic]

Weird eh, bit of fearmongering going on?
Duck and cover .

[Mussels]

I saw talk of it being used for weather events, I really hope that doesn't include Met Office warnings of a warm summer's day.

[Yorick]

I saw talk of it being used for weather events, I really hope that doesn't include Met Office warnings of a warm summer's day.

That'd be every day here

[Supermofo]

I saw talk of it being used for weather events, I really hope that doesn't include Met Office warnings of a warm summer's day.

Yup yellow weather warnings for bloody pollen!

[Horse]

I saw talk of it being used for weather events, I really hope that doesn't include Met Office warnings of a warm summer's day.

Yup yellow weather warnings for bloody pollen!

'Yellow snow' warnings? Does anyone still need warning not to eat the yellow snow?

[the_priest]

Turned off on my phone. I'm taking a service on that day at that time....

[mangocrazy]

Yeah, I understand all that, but I'm still not convinced that all the necessary agencies and data providers are as joined-up as they might like you to think they are.

They're hardly joined up at all, that's not how it works, specialists need to be tasked to harvest the data from the various agencies because they're not fully joined up, as far as I know there isn't a giant super computer where you just press a button and your inside leg measurement comes out.

So basically you're agreeing with me. But in a rufty-tufty manner.

Surveillance is a skill, but even untrained teenage scammers in internet cafes in Africa can clone you, they know who you are, where you live, where you work, where you shop, etc.

Give me a break. Your paranoia is showing. And you have no idea what my digital footprint looks like, and neither does your mythical African scammer.

[cheb]

Having looked into how to disable this on my phone it seems I don't have the options suggested. If it's important enough to get that high through the system I'll probably have been told by the coastguard anyway and probably indirectly by the local health board.

It's all very well saying that these systems are in place in other countries but how well they work and what the residents think of them is rarely commented upon in the same article.

[weeksy]

Having looked into how to disable this on my phone it seems I don't have the options suggested. If it's important enough to get that high through the system I'll probably have been told by the coastguard anyway and probably indirectly by the local health board.

It's all very well saying that these systems are in place in other countries but how well they work and what the residents think of them is rarely commented upon in the same article.

Is it a big problem that your phone has the facility/ability to do this though ? I can honestly say i simply don't care either way.

[KungFooBob]

I assume it's going to use Cell Broadcast. Which has been a staple of mobile phones since the late 90's. It's nothing new, it's just not been used much by the UK service providers.

[Felix]

Phone users will have to acknowledge the alert before they can use other features on their devices.

So they can fuck my phone unless i agree to something i never asked to participate in.

[Felix]

Having looked into how to disable this on my phone it seems I don't have the options suggested.

Android 12 here