I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used. Surely many people don't have the app installed? I'd never heard of it and I've lived in this country the whole time it's been available.
Because of utterly dumb people in charge: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/warntag-zum-ziv...
> Unger: Ja, die Niederlande zum Beispiel setzen auf dieses Cell-Broadcast-System. Wir haben davon Abstand genommen, weil die Mobilfunknetze - wie man etwa an Silvester sieht - im Fall der Fälle nicht ausreichen. Hinzu kommt ein datenschutzrechtliches Problem. Wenn man direkt die Handys ansteuert, werden auch Bewegungsdaten erfasst. Wir setzen daher auf die App...
To roughly translate: cell broadcast has a data protection problem, because directly notifying cellphones leads to movement data being recorded. Also cellphone networks don't have the capacity, as can be seen every new year's eve.
Just... what the fuck! What an utterly incompetent idiot.
They basically revoked this comment about capacity. The new reason is that mobile service providers don't offer this type of broadcast in Germany and that it's checked whether this can be implemented in the future.
Sure looks like they take data protection seriously by including advertising trackers...
Why is it checking who gets the message?
(Yes, Yes, I know, the German service providers (allegedly) didn't implement it so far, therefore we(allegedly) can't do it. It's not like a superspecial Extrawurst, since it's in use in many other places. I guess, depending on the vendor of the equipment it would be nothing more than a configuration flag to enable, since it's already there, just needs a license for the feature, or something like that. /ENDRANT)
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.materna.bbk...
Edit: As a commenter pointed out, it has 1M+ downloads. But I'm still unsure why is there is even an app, when you can use the cell broadcasted warnings, which everyone with a modern phone get, regardless whether they have an app installed.
Cell Broadcast/EU-Alert is the way to go for this and I have no idea why they thought an app would be better.
Maybe the telcos aren't ready? But they wanted to start practicing the other parts of the system?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert
There are a few implementations, but not as many as I would have assumed:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast#Public_warning_...
I wonder how effective this will work in case of real trouble.
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/terrorismebestrijdi...
Haven’t heard anything today.
(or that the Russians are invading again)
This is something, that localized test runs normally do not include.
Sounds like a complete nationwide fuckup.
The sirens are tested in Lyon, France on the first Wednesday of every month. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary but interesting that Germany hasn’t done it in so long.
Where I live, it was rather underwhelming. I probably would not have noticed if I hadn't known about it before which may be a bad sign, to be honest.
Here it's a siren, and then a spoken message (in Czech and then in English) telling people the emergency broadcast system is being tested. It goes on for a good 5 minutes.
At the start of the lockdown they blasted this [1] children's song over the broadcast system to try cheer everyone up
The "problem" is that most sirens had been removed in the 90's when it became less likely that Germany would be steamrolled by Soviet tanks.
More interestingly, the federal government is realizing that it may have been a mistake to dismantle the sirens in many areas after the Cold War ended, mainly because things likes TV, radio or app messages cannot warn people at night, when their devices are off. I have heard of 3 possible fixes that are discussed:
a) build more sirens again
b) use the mandatory smoke detectors in every home for a warning system
c) use car alarms or car horns
It would be interesting to see how b) and c) are implemented without any concerns regarding security or potential for misuse.
//edit: same info was added to head comment.
What a great emergency warning system!
I'm at work, phone goes off - significant other on the line.
"Our smoke alarms just went off and i'm running around, trying to turn them off"
I'm like "Ooook, have you been cooking?" - "No, nothing, been working and it just went off, also no smoke anywhere to be seen".
Scratching my head, looking at my watch, 10:39 (alarms where supposed to go off at around 11:00).
So, we currently have 6 connected fire alarms around the house (Hekatron Genius Plus X + Base Funk (radio) module, so they're connected).
They're not connected to anything besides themselves, so i really wondered how and why they'd go off for this test alert.
Thing is, the smoke alarms do have a notion of what time it is as they turn off the flashing light from 9PM to 7AM, so i wasn't quick to dismiss them catching the publicly broadcasted signal and go off too...
Scratching my head even further, i figured i'd give Hekatron a call - the guy on the hotline tried really hard to keep his calm but chuckled and said it basically was just a coincidence and if the one that triggered the alarm would go off again i could basically RMA it.
Lesson learned, coincidences do happen, also people do win the lottery after all :)
Though I must admit I was very surprised the first time I experienced it (I hadn't been forewarned).
