Should Netflix and Hulu give you emergency alerts?

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/tech/emergency-alert-netflix-hulu-streaming/index.html

New York (CNN Business) The federal emergency alert program was designed decades ago to interrupt your TV show or radio station and warn about impending danger — from severe weather events to acts of war.

But people watch TV and listen to radio differently today. If a person is watching Netflix, listening to Spotify or playing a video game, for example, they might miss a critical emergency alert altogether.

"More and more people are opting out of the traditional television services," said Gregory Touhill, a cybersecurity expert who served at the Department of Homeland security and was the first-ever Federal Chief Information Security Officer. "There's a huge population out there that needs to help us rethink how we do this."

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Sean

I think the cellular emergency alert systems already in place have satisfied this need or should be implemented before forcing streaming services to alter their platforms. Plus they allow the user the ability to disable them if they so choose. If they have the alerts disabled and miss something important, that’s on them.

The world is evolving and I don’t think interrupting streaming is necessary given all the other ways there are to alert a population.

-Matt

3

No. Please no. We need less regulation. Not more.

VoIP started out the same way. Very simple to start offering voip. Worked well. Then the government got involved. Now it’s a mess of requirements, warnings and reporting.

4

No. Please no. We need less regulation. Not more.

VoIP started out the same way. Very simple to start offering voip. Worked well. Then the government got involved. Now it’s a mess of requirements, warnings and reporting.

I was there developing service provider voip from the beginning and I can tell you that we were never unaware that we needed to deal with regulatory requirements from the pstn. e911, calia and all the rest. It was never simple.

Mike

5

What specific regulations do you feel were onerous and unnecessary with respect to VOIP? (This is a legitimate question, not a trolling attempt. )

6

Streaming is probably the least important thing someone could be doing.

A lot of places don’t have adequate cell service.

7

Come on now…what we really need to get everyone attention is air raid sirens coupled with streaming interruptions via a simultaneous reboot of all ‘core routers’ on the internet so people stop surfing facebook and start wondering “what’s up”, followed by the public utilities cycling the nations power grid to the morse code ‘SOS’. Oh, and this all occurs during the monthly test too.

-A

8

I don’t care if Aliens are invading or a blackhole is swallowing our sun, do not… I repeat, do not interrupt me watching GoT’s on HBOGo!

-John

9

Just wait until your connected home speakers, smart smoke detector, smart refrigerator, smart tv, cell phone, IP streaming box, satellite receiver, cable box, home security panel and your Fitbit all go off warning you of the cancellation of an Amber alert at 1:30am, because the good folks at AlertReady.Ca and Pelmorex think that everything needs to go out at highest precedence, because, well, think of the children!

10

Canada made a lot of improvements with its alert implementation. It got to see all the things the U.S. did wrong. Unfortuantely, Canada also copied some wrong lessons from the the U.S. version.

South Korea probably has the most ludicrous emergency alerts in the world.

While improvements are needed, the various alert systems have saved people's lives.

11

Absolutely, we need public emergency alerting. What we don't need is every alert to go out mandatory highest level sound the klaxon, can't be blocked, even when it's an "all clear" cancelling a previous alert, and is being sent in the middle of the night.

That's the system that has been foisted upon us here. I'm all for emergency alerting, but please make sure it's a real emergency.

At least in the US version, they target the region affected, and code it with the appropriate alert level instead of sending alerts to people 1400 km away.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/14/first-emergency-alert-sets-off-phones-ontario-wide-following-thunder-bay-amber-alert.html

12

NO!! But, I would not be opposed to some type of app on the boxes that support it, one that can be dismissed or controlled by the user.

13

I’ve had issues with the amber alerts repeating or coming in from adjacent states because “reasons”. When they repeat for days/hours ugh.

I do agree most people have devices. If there is a reasonable API method to fetch them then great.

14

Software has bugs. If this happens to you (or anyone else), a hard power reset of your mobile phone will clear up the problem.

I have not figured out what causes the repeating duplicate alerts. I've asked FEMA and some engineers at a cellular carrier. It seems to be a "known problem." But I haven't been able to get a technical explanation for the cause.

The duplication happens randomly on both android and iOS phones, and on multiple carriers. So I'm a bit mystified about the root cause.

15

Has the IETF, etc looked into this? This looks like a good thing that could use a good dose of standardization to avoid a complete clusterf*ck.

Mike

16

It can be blocked, FYI. Just... not as easily as it should be. On Android, if you remove the CellBroadcastReceiver service, the phone no longer listens for the alerts.

I rooted my phone specifically to be able to do this after the alerting system rolled out in Canada. The test was bad enough, then within the first week we had several alerts for a single event that happened literally an entire day's drive away from me.

And thus, in the first week the system was alive, alarm fatigue set in, the government confirmed that it cannot be trusted, and I revoked their privilege to use my personal devices for stuff I don't want.

17

Seems a bit extreme…

18

I think the point is they should have built a system that doesn't need to be blocked - it should always effectively and appropriately deliver timely and relevant alert messages.

As taxpayers and citizens, we deserve better.

19

The headline:

TLDR; Technology changes, so should emergency alerts. Think ahead to 2029.

The long story:

Technology changes over the decades. Emergency alerts have changed over the decades. If you think all the other ways are sufficient, remember how long it took to create all those other ways. And how much industry fought
all those other ways at every step.

The U.S. timeline (other countries have state-owned broadcasters, and different timelines):

1950s - AM radio and civil defense sirens

1960s - FM radio and TV broadcasts were included in EBS

1970s - Weather alerts and NOAA weather radio

1990s - Cable TV (not satellite) was included in EAS.

2000s - Satellite TV was added to national EAS alerts, i.e. there has never been a national EAS alert. But Satellite TV do not get state or local weather alerts on most channels.

2012 - Mobile phones were included with WEA expansion

If streaming is how the public gets their information and entertainment now, that should also be how they can get emergency alerts.

Almost no one under the age of 30 has a working AM radio in their homes or apartments anymore. Few people listen to FM radio outside of their cars, and "cord-cutting" means fewer people get local and weather alerts watching entertainment programs on cable TV. Cities have been eliminating outdoor warning sirens due to budget cuts since the 1990s (i.e. end of the Cold War, and no more FEMA funds for sirens).

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), i.e., mobile phone alerts, are less than 10 years old. And mostly on the high-end expensive cell phones and the most expensive carriers. People on NANOG may use mostly expensive smartphones, but not everyone can afford smartphones. Only about 100 carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, carrier have WEA working. In some U.S. territories and rural areas, no cellular providers have WEA working. The largest cellular carrier in Alaska only activated WEA in the last 6 months. Puerto Rico's largest cellular carrier activated WEA just last month.

The mobile cell phone industry fought Wireless Emergency Alerts for over a decade, from the 1990s until 2012 when it was implemented. Of course, now the wireless industry claims it was all their idea. Both are true. The cellular industry engineers made it happen, at the same time the cellular industry lobbyists were fighting it.

If emergency alerts didn't change with the technology, it would still be only AM radios. It usually takes at least a decade after technology changes to make changes to the emergency alert parts of those systems.
It took more than 10 years after the 9/11/2001 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, which were the motivating factors for government, to get WEA working.

If you think WEA is sufficient, just remember how long it takes to change. In 2029, what communication technology will be the dominant way people get entertainment and information?

As I've said before, I think emergency alerts should be part of the platform, not the add on service. Netflix and Hulu are the wrong layer for emergency alerts. Emergency alerts should be part of the Smart TV and Smart Speaker operating system platforms, i.e., at the Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, etc. level.

If you are streaming Netflix or Hulu on your mobile cell phone, the cell phone OS should be responsible for handling local emergency alerts. If you are streaming Netflix or Hulu on your Smart TV, the Smart TV OS should be responsible for handling local emergency alerts. If you are streaming Netflix or Hulu on your Smart Speakers (ok, you can't but lets say streaming an Audible book), your Smart Speaker OS should be responsible for local emergency alerts. Your alerting opt-outs, geo-targeting, and other preferences shouldn't need to change depending on which App you are using on the platform.

NOAA Weather Wire and FEMA IPAWS emergency alerts, which are the alert aggregation points for most U.S. alerting systems, include geographic alert polygons within 0.1 mile. Emergency alerts can be very localized. Although training for local government officials is skimped, underfunded, ignored, etc.; so many still send alerts for entire jurisdictions, such as statewide in the U.S. or province-wide in Canada instead of geo-targeting specific areas.

Cell phones have ATIS and 3GPP standard for emergency alerts. Cable set-top boxes have SCTE standards for emergency alerts. TVs with antennas have ATSC standards for emergency alerts. Analog radio still relies on broadcasters transmitting emergency alerts, i.e. that triple burst of modem noise.

ISPs are also part of that, since ISPs know where their subscribers are geographically located.

And yes, I'm a big believer in personal choice. Individual alert
opt-outs and geo-targeting is critical. I think Canada (and New Zealand, and some other countries) are making a mistake by using the "mandatory" alert setting for all alerts. I also believe emergency alerts should be accessible to everyone, not just rich people with the most expensive smart phones and carriers.

20

Cell phones have ATIS and 3GPP standard for emergency alerts. Cable set-top boxes have SCTE standards for emergency alerts. TVs with antennas have ATSC standards for emergency alerts. Analog radio still relies on broadcasters transmitting emergency alerts, i.e. that triple burst of modem noise.

Any reason the ISP has to be directly involved in this? The relevant government organization originating the alert could easily have a service to make that information available to the public via some standard API (maybe they do)?

Does it have to be push and application-agnostic? Maybe that's (gasp) a reasonable application for Internet multicast. Operators could help, here, by making sure that particular application of Internet multicast actually works even if other applications don't, and governments originating alerts could help by making that straightforward.

Is it sufficient for the streaming services to simply include this information in their streams? Heck, they could just include all of them and let the device that's accessing the stream figure out which ones are relevant. After all, it's the streaming service that knows the user is consuming content suitable for inclusion of emergency alerts. The network operator rarely knows this directly (though we're pretty good at inferring it).

ISPs are also part of that, since ISPs know where their subscribers are geographically located.

Do they? They know where the account is geographically located, but they don't necessarily know that the device consuming the media is located at the account address.

Again, operators could help here by providing some sort of service to say "Where is my account located?", but many consumers of streaming media have far more accurate information based on mobile network geolocation information, Wi-Fi mapping, or outright GPS.

I think the solution to this is perhaps maybe that network operators could "help" by building in some useful features to their network without explicitly supporting EAS or otherwise. After all, we (or at least most of us) already run pretty content- and application-neutral (and even -unaware) networks.

Whether it's a good idea or even necessary to make those "helpful" features mandatory is perhaps a good question. At this stage, I'd probably lean toward no and see whether things resolve themselves on their own. The Internet, et. al., is pretty good at adapting to use cases like this without heavy-handed intervention it seems.