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Government Emergency Messages On Your Cellphone: Valuable Information, or an Attempt to Scare You Into Submission?
As I explained
Monday, the Neoconservatives used fear to scare people into submission.
Obama used the emotions of "hope" and "change" to rally his base, but
has now largely abandoned those themes in favor of fear.
Indeed, as the Boston Herald notes, President Obama will soon be able to reach out and scare the dickens out of you wherever you are:
President
Obama could soon have the ability to personally text message every
single cell-phone-toting American -— whether they like it or not — with
“critical emergency alerts” under a new federal program that civil
libertarians and political opponents say is a Big Brother-like
intrusion posing a high risk of political abuse.
Federal
officials in New York yesterday unveiled the three-tiered emergency
alert system that would blast messages about Amber Alerts, impending
weather disasters and terror threats to mobile devices.
Cell-phone users could opt out of most alerts if they want to, but not the texter-in-chief’s presidential pages.
“It’s
like the state rep sending out mailings about how wonderful they are,”
said Tad Kasperowicz of the Quincy Tea Party. “President Obama
says,’Here come the high winds and the thunderstorms’ and it’s not
really an emergency, but, hey, he gets his name out to every cell phone
in the area. I can see that. Absolutely. There’s potential for abuse
there.”
A special chip, which some smartphones already have,
allows the phone to receive the messages. All phones will be required
to have to the chip by next year.
***
Officials hope to have the
alert system up and running in New York and Washington, D.C. by the end
of the year and ultimately installed throughout the country.
Of course, the emergency alerts could hypothetically be useful, if used
sparingly, only in real emergencies, and only in a way which helps
people. But given that the government has used claims of "national
security" to effect all sorts of shenanigans, it's hard to believe that
the system would not be used for political purposes. See this, this, this, this and this. (Remember that peaceful protest is now considered "low-level terrorism", as shown here, here, here and here.)
Indeed, fear is the main tool which governments have to motivate, pacify and control their people.
And as the Herald points out, the new emergency chips might do more than just receive incoming messages:
Some
critics worry about the government’s ability to identify cell phone
users by location -- officials can limit alerts to customers in a
specific radius.
“If you can send a message to people based on
their location, you can identify or pinpoint them based on their
location,” said Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center. “We may need to look at this a little more carefully.”
“I
always like hearing from my government,” said Cambridge civil
liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate. “But I’m awfully curious what
else this chip can do.”
If you want to go down the rabbit hole regarding the implications of this new program and similar programs, read this.
And see this:
- advertisements -
There are maybe 100 people in the USA who truly need a cell phone.
For the rest, I have news for you: you're not that important. Get over yourselves.
Yes, ditch the fucking cell phones!
I've never had one.
There was always something about the takeup I didn't like on an emotional level. It wasn't like computers, which took, what, twenty years for every household to have one? But for mobiles, within maybe five years, everywhere I looked, suddenly every sheep had one of these things and was shocked, shocked! if I didn't. People seem to think of it as a necessity now, which feels actually scary to me on some level.
It didn't feel like personal preference, like TiVo or flatscreen vs LCD, or pagers, or other technology. Mobile takeup was freaky, a little like waking up one day and realising everyone, EVERYONE around you is wearing blue jeans - no skirts, no trousers, no kilts, just jeans on everybody. Something about this has always felt very lock-step to me, so I guess I've always sort of psychically resisted getting one.
It was all emotional, for me. I could never give anyone a good 'case' against having one, and when people demanded that I support my choice not to, the best I could come up with is, I just don't like them. But the last year or so, I've felt more and more justified in that resistance.
I've heard 'they' may shut down the landline system for good eventually. If 'they' do that, then maybe I'll just have to tell people they can get in touch with me by email, IM, post, or telegraph; but I'll be damned if I'll be bullied into paying for the privilege of getting tracked, spied, and messaged at will by whoever my phone decides to give access to.
Bravo!
I also have resisted getting a sheeple phone, and have no problems in defending my choice not to, from the added expense, to the crappy quality of the calls, to frequent dropped calls, to the fact that most of the area I routinely travel within does not have and probably never will have cell phone coverage, but primarily due to the fact that I see them as just another socially corrosive influence which encourages and has led to just more rude behavior, narcissism and egotistical inconsideration, and feeds the whole growing instant gratification/short-term/dumbed-down mentality.
If you can't live without a cell phone, then there is something fundamentally wrong in how you are chosing to live.
I too resisted for years and years, even while working in a profession that pretty much demanded having a cell phone. When I did finally break down, I went with a business class smart phone with a data plan, and then ditched my land line at home as a redundant expense. The phone as been more life altering as a highly portable way to access my work e-mail and the Internet than as a phone. The increased efficiency on the job was noticeable, and on the personal side, cell phones make dandy walkie talkies when trying to rendezvous with friends in large public spaces. Also, having just recently spent 90+ minutes on my butt in the waiting room of an orthopedist, having access to the news and ZH on my phone's web browser, in place of the six month old copies of celebrity and sports magazines, was a sanity saver. Speaking just for myself, just this one time, going along with the unwashed masses has actually worked out pretty well.
rush limbah is so 20th century
.
cell phone ditoheads, eyes plugged into their teleprompter head down walking the streets
there's a point there ....... somewhere.......
Go long on call blocker apps.
Hail Victory Comrades!
You will OBEY.
Of course you can ignore the MF's.
This has been all over talk radio around Boston too, but does anyone really think that in the event of an imminent terrorist threat our government would alert us and risk creating mass panic?
Remember that on 9/11 the EMS system was not used.
4 words "do not call list"
I gave my daughters school my number for emergency situations..They spam me atleast 3 days a week with fund raising projects and PTA meetings and all kinds of shit..They have wokie me up several mornings at 4am with "school is running 2 hours late or closed shit" ...I fuckin know school is closed when theres 6 inches of snow on the road motherfuckers...The school year is almost over and they will not get it next year..My daughter can call me direct if needed from her cell..
And the abuses you speak of are coming from the lowest level pea-brained bureaucrats. The criminal A-holes who have hijacked the Federal Gov. know no shame. No abuse is too great. To have the CIA bred puppet maggot, Barry Soetoro, busting in on a ball game on T.V. or texting you to try to scare the serfs into line with the latest staged-hyped B. S. will backfire. The roll out has been going on for many years like the stupid hyped Amber Alerts. All communication devices including your f-ing clock radio are wired into their Stalinist EMS system.
What they are really doing is spying on you but before most realize that it will be to late and you will have an RFID chip in your wrist and they wil also control all of your money.
@ mcl2177; it's not a chip. A company has developed an electronic tattoo machine that prints an RFID directly into your skin using conductive ink. It only takes a second to apply and less than that to read from 2 feet away.
Fuck these douchebags. All they really want is to control the population. It is not the providence of the federal government to intervene in my private life. These mother fuckers have taken this shit waaaaay too far.
The TSA needs to be dismantled and Napolitano sent to Angola prison for the balance of her dumb ass life.
The police state is running amok. But government needs to keep the police state in control so the masses don't get out of control when they figure out they are being stripped of everything they own.
Even though she would hate Angola since there are no female inmates there, prison is too good for the fascist lesbian Napolitano. The Italians hanged Mussolini in 1943, didn't they?
Think ELLA;
It's wonderful, it's marvelous, that you should care for me;
It's awful nice; it's paradise,
It's what I love to see,
You've made my life so glamourous,
You can't blame me for feeling amorous------
Yessir, we've come a long way baby!!
Milestones