Down in D.C. on Monday, the FCC held a summit on the state of the country's Emergency Alert System, which many
of
you know as "the annoying beep that interrupts Clifford and makes your toddler cry." 
Well, soon -- remember, we're talking government time here so "soon" means at some uncertain point in the future, if ever -- 90-character emergency text messages could come through to your cell phone, informing you of national disasters, emergency missives from the President, and Amber Alerts.
That is, if the government agencies involved can stop dickering over which one will run the thing, assuming the cost and, of course, the blame if the thing fails. FEMA doesn't want the job.
Under the FCC's guidelines for the system (codename: CMAS), adopted in April, three different types of alerts would be sent from a central messenger to subscriber's text-messaging devices, with a special ring and vibration cadence so you'll immediately know it isn't some jamoke txting you a picture of his schween. The messages would be geo-targeted roughly to the county level (though it's up to the participating cell carriers to send the messages to the right places) and formatted to read a bit like NOAA weather updates, so it won't be like OMG TRNDO!
Sounds convenient, with 243 million Americans using wireless services, and with text-messaging based utilities like Twitter proving themselves more and more useful in a crisis. We already know AMBER Alerts work (of the 261 issued in 2006, 214 kids were recovered and 53 were directly due to the alert, says the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children). But the way it's proposed, incoming alerts wouldn't interrupt ongoing
phone calls or data sessions, which would seem to compromise the value
of instant communication. If it's important enough to tell everyone about, shouldn't it be worth interrupting your call? The system would Though it would re-transmit emergency
messages to ensure they're received broadly, but could that get
annoying even in a crisis?
The FCC's report says the texting plan is part of an "ongoing drive to enhance the reliability, resiliency and security of emergency alerts to the public by requiring that alerts be distributed over diverse communications platforms," a direct outgrowth of lessons learned during "the 2005 hurricanes." Love the government understatement -- Katrina doesn't even have a name.
But it doesn't sound like everyone's learned the lesson: Right now the lack of a federal agency to be the messenger is the single thing that could slow or cancel its creation. In his statement accompanying the FCC report on the text-alert system, Commissioner Michael J. Copps said FEMA's "unwillingness" to act as emergency messenger was "especially disheartening" because FEMA officials had suddenly re-interpreted the agency's statutory powers and decided this wasn't on its job description only after being involved in creating the whole plan.
The FCC has also asked for workups of how streaming audio and video and downloadable media would be used for emergency alerts, and it's not a far leap from there to platforms like Facebook. How will people feel when and if "the government" starts making real forays into social media -- would you 'friend' FEMA? How about the Office of the President -- even if it's your boyfriend Barry? People get freaked 
enough deciding whether to let bosses and co-workers see their social-media selves, I wonder if the desire for direct communication will overcome the inherent trust issues at work.
Still, it's obvious this kind of program is exactly the kind of thing FEMA, and not some other arm of the Department of Homeland Security, should be running, even though information about terrorist attacks and missing kids aren't the usual natural disaster-type stuff people associate with FEMA. It's a natural fit with the Ready.gov program, and would establish FEMA's "brand" as a source of reliable information in times of crisis.
