According to The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) is a new system that allows users who own an enabled mobile device to receive geographically-targeted, text-like messages alerting them of imminent threats to safety in their area. The alerts, currently being rolled out in New York City and Washington D.C. and expected to be in place in those cities by the end of 2011, would be done through a special chip to be installed on new handheld devices. It will use GPS technology and will send some of the alerts based on the location of the phone user. The alert system is expected to be instituted in rest of the U.S. by April 2012. Certain high-end cell phones are PLAN-enabled, but starting next year, all cellphones will be required to have the chip that receives alerts.
The Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act requires participating wireless carriers to activate PLAN technology by a deadline determined by the FCC, which is April 2012. Participants that will offer PLAN ahead of schedule include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
How Does PLAN Work?
• Authorized national, state or local government officials send alerts to PLAN.
• PLAN authenticates the alert, verifies that the sender is authorized, and sends it to participating wireless carriers.
• Participating wireless carriers push the alerts from cell towers to mobile phones in the affected area. The alerts appear like text messages on mobile devices.
These “text-like messages” are geographically targeted. For example, a customer living in downtown New York would not receive a threat alert if they happen to be in Chicago when the alert is sent. Similarly, someone visiting downtown New York from Chicago on that same day would receive the alert. This requires a PLAN enabled mobile device and participation by the wireless provider in PLAN.
Users are automatically enrolled, as PLAN allows government officials to send “text-like messages” to all subscribers with PLAN-enabled devices if their wireless carrier participates in the program. Users do not sign up for this service. Users do not pay to receive “text-like messages” from PLAN which will be accompanied by a unique attention signal and vibration, which is particularly helpful to people with hearing or vision-related disabilities.
According to FEMA, users will receive three types of alerts from PLAN: (1) alerts issued by the president; (2) alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life; and (3) Amber Alerts. Participating carriers may allow subscribers to block alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life and/or Amber Alerts, but not presidential alerts. Presidential alerts are required of cellphone users and cannot be turned off.
MacDailyNews Take: We get “text-like messages” all day long; no “special chip” required. What else, if anything, does this “special chip” do? Is it just us or did the slope just get slipperier?
Yeah, yeah, we know: This is for our protection. It’s only for public safety. The government chip is “special.” Take off the tinfoil hats. This is a “Good Thing™. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
We have to wonder, though. What’s next? Maybe we’d all be “safer” if the government could use their federally-mandated “special chip” to turn on your cellphone cameras in “an emergency” in order to get a look at what’s going on around you? And your phones’ microphones, so the government can hear, too? How else could government-mandated special chips be used to make us “safer?”
Has anyone read Nineteen Eighty-Four recently?
You know what? The world is a dangerous place and you can’t protect everyone from everything. We’d rather retain what freedoms we have left and take our chances than to be forced to carry special government-mandated chips and receive presidential “text-like messages” that we can’t turn off, if we simply want to carry our cellphones.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
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Apple, Google detail mobile privacy policies before US Senate subcommittee – May 10, 2011
Recap of Apple and Google’s testimony before Senator Al Franken’s mobile privacy hearing – May 10, 2011
Apple, Google to face U.S. Senator Al Franken’s subcommittee in mobile privacy hearing – May 9, 2011
Apple’s Bud Tribble to testify in U.S. Senator Al Franken’s Judiciary Subcommittee hearings on mobile privacy – May 6, 2011
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Apple sued for privacy invasion, computer fraud over iOS location data collection, storage – April 25, 2011
Steve Jobs on iOS location tracking: We don’t track anyone, but Droid does – April 25, 2011
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U.S. Senator Al Franken demands answers from Apple’s Steve Jobs over iPhone tracking – April 21, 2011
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‘untrackerd’ jailbreak utility blocks iOS from storing recorded iPhone location data – April 21, 2011
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Why an additional chip? Why not just require the feature and have the cell phone maker implement it in software? The chip method is still going to need the services of the phone’s processor and software to display the message so why not do it all in software?
Yes, the additional chip seems only to identify which phones are (who is) where. Otherwise, just let the carriers broadcast area specific (cell tower specific) messages to all in range. Maybe they’ll have to modify their current capabilities to do that, but I’m sure they can figure something else out. Like with Radio broadcasts (emergence broadcast system), the message is sent out and everyone can hear it, but no one knows who exactly heard it.
so now we know why the government wants to know how Apple tracks people. and I don’t believe it. After 9/11 the EPA to NY’ers that the air quality was safe. Years later we find out Christie Todd Whitman -lied. Of course she lied. So why would I believe anything the Government send s out ?
Mmmm. Weird. I always read the MDN take, but this time I didn’t see one until after I posted. (I have ghosts in my house too.)
As long as the Canadian government doesn’t follow suit…
I’m no libertarian or teabagger, but I’m sick of big government from whichever side of the aisle it comes- and both are quite guilty.
I value my privacy and part of that is not to be bothered by commercial interests and another is to not be bothered by any government beyond what is absolutely necessary. This shit smells of someone who stands to make a truckload of money selling the HW and SW supporting the chips. Dig deep enough and you will find supporters/sponsors who get campaign cash from those who stand to profit.
President Eisenhower warned America in his last address of the Military-Industrial Complex. His written remarks stated the Military-Indstrial-Congressional Complex. He never said if he left the Congressional part out intentionally or accidentally, but the sentiment was obviously on his mind. Today we can add ‘homeland security’ to the phrase.
Starting with the failed ‘war on drugs’ (drugs won-btw) to the ‘GWOT’ our Federal/State/Local governments have become ever more intrusive, nosy, heavy-handed and the police have been on a money spree. Despite all the truckloads of money, the trampling of civil liberties, heavy handed police tactics, questionable tactics (entrapment) and all the rest we are no safer. America is one of the most dangerous and violent societies in the developed world.
I’m tired of the paranoia and fear-mongering from those who stand to gain from it within the government and those who profit from it without (private prisons, contractors, private security firms) We the citizens get to pay for it, suffer under it, have our rights trampled by it and benefit NOT one whit from it.
This is just the latest example of the problem. If building more prisons, locking up more people, trampling on civil liberties and buying more guns was working America would be the safest place in the world. We all know that it is not.
Ben Franklin had this one right. We all need to read 1984 again. This is the sort of intrusion into our privacy that is the hallmark of authoritarian government. Jefferson warned us that it is the natural progression of government for authority to advance and liberty to yield. Americans have a choice to make: Do we want to preserve our liberties or do we want to approve the growth of a fortress America in which we are bound into servitude by our own fears?
“We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”
From “your papers, please” to “your cell phone, please.”
NEXT THING – “hey what about just implanting a little chip thing in their head!” yeah that’s it, we will say “it’s for medical records” or something like that.
This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Presidential messages, my ass!
I didn’t know Big Brother had such a heavy tan.
All this boils down too is, Big Government wants to know where your at, at all times of the day and night. IMO, this will be a disaster for me and you the consumer. The Government has been waiting for years to have this kind of technology. Face it people, we are losing our rights and privacy as Big Government tracks our every move.
Mr OBAMA must be having a tingle running up his leg right now.
And once again, MDN rattles the cage and the wackadoodles scream and shout about their constitutional rights being infringed.
It’s truly mind-boggling how people can be so easily led, but let’s deal with each aspect of this new system and expose the alarmist rhetoric from the MDN crew.
This means the government can track my movements
Guess what? They already could and have been able to for years. wireless E911 was announced back in 1998 and has been operational and mandatory since 2005, if I recall. And the FCC fined at least three cellular companies for not complying despite the five-year introduction cycle.
That’s quite apart from the fact that the cellphone registers itself with a base station if available within about 30 seconds of power-up and then just re-registers every time it roams.
In short, there is no abrogation or subversion of any rights except in the imaginings of the tin-foil wearing pointy-head.
If it’s text-like, why can’t they just use SMS?
Well, SMS can be unreliable and have long delivery queues: what happens at New Years’ Eve? You can be receiving texts that were sent at midnight at 6am on New Year’s Day.
Presumably, between the FCC, FEMA and the networks, they thought it would be best if messages about tornadoes, tsunamis and terrorists had an express lane to your phone or mobile device that wasn’t blocked up by messages about people’s social lives. But that simple truth appears to have evaded MDN who are looking for clicks and outrage.
Also, SMS is limited to 140 8-bit characters or 160 7-bit. If you’re issuing a detailed instruction to a couple of million people, you might have to send four or five messages which is 8 million messages.
What’s more, some people have to pay to receive SMS messages and the government would have to pay to send them. As opposed to PLAN messages which are free.
If you’re paying 10¢ to send a message and 10¢ to receive it, an emergency notification with instructions might cost an individual 10¢, but it would cost the agency issuing the warning – which may also be a state government – $800,000.
And finally, what if your SMS inbox is full because you’re running some old POS phone that limits you to 20 messages.
But obviously nobody bothered think about any of that before expressing their outrage.
It’s a socialist plot!
No it isn’t.
The enabling legislation was passed before the 2006 mid-terms by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President as part of the Safe Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006.
But because some of you don’t bother paying attention, you’re only getting outraged now that it’s being put into action under a Democratic administration.
Well said, but as the right wing would say, why let the truth get in the way of a good story
I do not need the government to tell me when a severe storm is coming- nor do I wish to see the effects of a simultaneous nationwide or regional message about something that MIGHT happen.
It’ not the Feds where I see the problem- it’s the state and local cops that conveniently flaunt or disregard the law on a daily basis. The doughnut patrol needs to loose weight, get out of the patrol car, walk the beat, live where they patrol and meet the people who pay their salary.
Community policing beats high tech every time. Besides- cops treat the citizens better when they live where they patrol.
How will you know if a tsunami is coming?
Or if there’s been a release of a poisonous chemical from a nearby plant?
It’s bad enough that in college blew up my phone with text messages that it was raining outside.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories or government paranoia or anything like that, but this is definitely pretty creepy sounding.
Then you should have complained when the legislation was passed in October 2006.
Or were you busy.
y’alls need to relax…we need this
When the Patriot Act was passed ten years ago with Bush in office none of you cared… so why are all of your panties in a bunch now? The excuses you guys gave back then were “If you’re not guilty of anything then you have nothing to worry about!” and “You’re against this? Why do you hate America?” Ta-da!
This ACLU member cared- then and now.
Sheeple say “bah, bah” to personal privacy.
Haha
YAAAE FOR MDN!!!!!
seriously though, this kind of “special chip” really makes me want to move to a different country.
im sure the crackers over at Dev Team or a Cydia contributor will come up with a way to disable the chip. only a matter of time (has it already been done?). NOW it would be interesting if that is then deemed illegal!
Right wing or left wing, D or R, I don’t care what your stripe is, no fee-thinking American should feel comfortable with this. I don’t care whose watched the first versions of this passed on, I don’t care who is updating the timetable, I don’t care who is appropriating the funds, this sort of thing is the antithesis of liberty. The MDN quote from Franklin is spot on.
And DMac, you are on target. lukeskymac, you obviously have no clue why we have been number one for so long. You could call this extremism only if you had no understanding what made this country what it is. Go back and read The Federalist. Or choose to remain ignorant the way so many people accuse Americans of being.
Damn Li*n auto-correction! “Fee”=”free.” “Watched”=”watch”
I don’t get what all the hoopla is about.
How could these new chips possibly allow more invasive surveillance then what the government is already doing?
As I understand it, the government already taps all cell phone and email communication in the world, since 2001 when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) established the Information Awareness Office (IAO). Their only limitation is that they don’t have time/people to sit there and read everything. So they rely on computer programs to parse all the data they collect and bring suspicious communications to their attention.
This just sounds like an alert system, like AMBER but much more efficient.
I suspect the extra chips are to authenticate the alerts, because it would be really bad if fake or forged PLAN alerts could be distributed and appear authentic.
Whenever Obama opens his mouth, it’s a campaign speech. Why should he get this unfair advantage?
Less government, less conservatives, less liberals. Politics sucks, Apple rocks!
http://www.infowars.com/what-else-will-the-governments-special-chip-in-your-cellphone-do/
Oh, let’s all give up and become Fascists! It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s what’s for dinner.
“The answer to 1984 is 1776.”