Wireless Emergency Alerts
[10] Within ten months of FEMA making the government's design specifications for this secure interface for message transfer available, wireless service providers choosing to participate in CMAS must begin development and testing of systems which will allow them to receive alerts from alert originators and distribute them to their customers.
[1] Systems were required to be fully deployed within 28 months of the December 2009 adoption of such standards and were expected to be delivering alert messages to the public by 2012.
[10] Although not mandatory, several wireless providers, including T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon have announced their willingness to participate in the system.
The FCC voted in favor of these new rules on January 30, 2018; by November 30, 2019, participating providers must deliver alerts with only a 0.1 mile overspill from their target area, require that devices be able to cache previous alerts for at least 24 hours, and that providers must support a 360-character maximum length and Spanish-language messages by May 2019.
While blizzard and ice storm warnings are no longer sent to phones by the National Weather Service, some local authorities continue to send winter weather related alerts at their discretion; for example in New York City during the January 2015 North American blizzard, alerts were sent to people's cell phones to warn users of a travel ban on New York City streets.
[20] Beginning Fall 2019, NWS significantly reduced the amount of Flash Flood Warnings that are issued over WEA to only those with a considerable or catastrophic damage threat.
[21] As of August 2, 2021, NWS has added Severe Thunderstorm Warnings labeled with a “destructive” damage threat, for wind gusts over 80 mph and hail over baseball (2.75") size.
This is in effect for the nationwide WEA Program as this event requires immediate action unlike Blizzard or Ice Storm Warnings.
[44][45] A lawsuit was filed requesting a temporary restraining order blocking the test, claiming that it violated users' First Amendment rights to be free from "government-compelled listening", the system could allow the dissemination of "arbitrary, biased, irrational and/or content-based messages to hundreds of millions of people", and could frighten children.
[8][63] At the 2019 MobiSys conference in South Korea, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder demonstrated that it was possible to easily spoof wireless emergency alerts within a confined area, using open source software and commercially available software-defined radios.
They recommended that steps be taken to ensure that alerts can be verified as coming from a trusted network, or using public-key cryptography upon reception.
