A nationwide test of the emergency and wireless alert systems will be conducted Wednesday at 2:20 p.m. ET, when a message will be sent to all cellphones, TVs and radios.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a news release in August that a message that reads, “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed,” will be sent to all phones. A Spanish version of the message will be displayed depending on the language settings of the devices.
A separate message will be sent to radios and televisions, saying, “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 14:20 to 14:50 hours ET. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.”
The test is a joint operation between FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission, meant to “ensure that the systems continue to be effective means of warning the public about emergencies, particularly those on the national level,” according to the August news release.
A Spanish version of the message will be displayed depending on the language settings of the devices.To me this is the most disturbing line from this post. How can the sender of a message probe your phone’s settings? What other information can be queried from the device this way? Can we now remotely determine someone ethnicity from just a phone number?
Both versions are sent to everyone. Your phone will decide which version to display based on its language setting. You can put the pitchfork down.
If we have to put our pitchforks down, does that mean we also need to rotate our yawforks to the left?
Could be that both texts are provided to the phone, which would then pick the appropriate version. Seems more reasonable than trying to keep track or query millions of phones of different make and manufacturer for a language setting.
Indeed that would make more sense.