Hasta La Ideas

When a then-unnamed bomber detonated his homemade bomb in New York City on September 17th, injuring dozens, he used a cell phone as a timer. Several mornings later, I was in downtown Manhattan when my own cell phone made the “emergency alert” noise. Here was the message:

I looked across the street to see a businesswoman had also pulled her phone out and was peering into it. And I thought, this is kind of cool, that the authorities can use cell phones to enlist all citizens to help find a potential terrorist.

Then I looked at the message again. It said “See media for pic” which I assumed meant an attached file, and I tried clicking on the message, but nothing happened. Then I realized they meant “See media” as in “go look it up in a newspaper, website or on TV,” which is ridiculous. How the hell are we supposed to spot somebody based on their name? Why wasn’t there at least a hyperlink to a website with his photo on it?

It’s limited to 90 characters. Even worse, the FCC has banned hyperlinks, embedded phone numbers and multimedia.

Well, as it turns out, the system that sent the message to my phone is the same as what you in tornado country may have received one on to warn of an impending twister: 

The Wireless Emergency Alerts system, or WEA, is “a public safety system that allows customers…to receive geographically-targeted, text-like messages alerting them of imminent threats to safety in their area. The technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services.”

This system would’ve come in damned handy on 9/11, when none of us could get text messages through and nobody knew what the hell was going on. (After the planes hit, I started the 60-block walk from my office in midtown to my apartment downtown, directly towards Ground Zero. I didn’t know if this was a good idea but I didn’t know what else to do, and some guidance would’ve been helpful.)

So it’s great that WEA exists–but its limitations are absurd. For one thing, it’s limited to 90 characters. Even worse the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the WEA, has banned hyperlinks, embedded phone numbers and multimedia. They’ve not explained why. Assuming it’s a technical issue to do with the never-gets-stuck nature of the messaging, America surely possesses the brainpower to overcome that.

New York State Senator Charles E. Schumer knows this problem has to be fixed, and yesterday held a press conference calling on the FCC to do so:

“In light of the need to respond in real time to terror threats, we can’t afford to have an emergency wireless response system that is stuck in the 90’s. The bottom line is that in the era of Instagram, Facebook and SnapChat our Wireless Emergency Alert System needs to get as smart as our phones and be updated so it can deliver photos and other media that has information that can save lives.”

The FCC, for their part, says they’re planning on upgrading the message capacity from 90 to 360 characters. But until they figure out how to accurately draw bombers with emoticons, that’s not enough.