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Wireless Emergency Alerts

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA, formerly known as the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS), and prior to that as the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN)),[1] is an alerting network in the United States designed to disseminate emergency alerts to mobile devices such as cell phones and pagers. Organizations are able to disseminate and coordinate emergency alerts and warning messages through WEA and other public systems by means of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.[2]

For other uses, see WEA (disambiguation).

"National alert" (formerly "Presidential alert"): Alerts issued by the President of the United States or the Administrator of the (FEMA)[5]

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life, issued in two different categories: extreme threats and severe threats

[1]

Amber alerts

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed and adopted the network structure, operational procedures and technical requirements in 2007 and 2008 in response to the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act passed by Congress in 2006, which allocated $106 million to fund the program.[3] CMAS will allow federal agencies to accept and aggregate alerts from the President of the United States, the National Weather Service (NWS) and emergency operations centers, and send the alerts to participating wireless providers who will distribute the alerts to their customers with compatible devices via Cell Broadcast, a technology similar to SMS text messages that simultaneously delivers messages to all phones using a cell tower instead of individual recipients.[1][4]


The government issues three types of alerts through this system:


When the alert is received, a sound is played even if the ringer is off.[6] On nearly all devices, the Emergency Alert System radio/TV attention signal sounds in a predetermined pattern.[7]


The system is a collaborative effort among FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).[8]

– A shelter-in-place warning was issued via CMAS by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.[23][24][25]

Boston Marathon bombing

A child abduction alert in the New York City region in July 2013 for a 7-month-old boy who had been abducted. The massive inconvenience caused by the 4:00 am timing raised concerns that many cellphone users would choose to disable alerts.

[26]

A blizzard warning in February 2013 for New York City. (Note: As of November 2013, blizzard warnings are no longer included in the CMAS program.)

[27]

A shelter-in-place warning for New York City in October 2012 due to .[28]

Hurricane Sandy

A child abduction alert in the New York City Region on June 30, 2015, for a 3-year-old girl who had been abducted.

[29]

– A wanted alert was issued in New York City with a suspect's name two days after the bombings.[30]

2016 New York and New Jersey bombings

On October 24, 2018, an alert was sent to those in the area of the to shelter in place while the NYPD investigated a suspicious package sent to CNN.[31]

Time Warner Center

An amber alert issued in Utah in late-September 2019 was mocked on social media for its accompanying WEA message, which only contained the unclear shorthand "gry Toyt" (an abbreviation of "gray ", referring to the suspect's vehicle).[32][33]

Toyota

WEA was used extensively during the to provide notice of health guidance and stay-at-home orders. Utah attempted to use localized alerts to inform drivers entering the state that they must fill out a mandatory, online travel declaration. However, this was dropped and replaced with road signs after the state reported that the alert was being received by residents up to 80 miles away of the intended area, and that "some of them received the alert more than 15 times."[34][35][36]

COVID-19 pandemic

Security[edit]

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.[61]

Integrated Public Alert and Warning System

Emergency Alert System

NOAA Weather Radio

Common Alerting Protocol

(Canada)

Alert Ready

(New Zealand)

Emergency Mobile Alert

(European Union)

EU-Alert

(Netherlands)

NL-Alert

(UK)

National Severe Weather Warning Service

FEMA Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS)

Commercial Mobile Alert System Test in San Diego

Archived 2016-03-07 at the Wayback Machine

List of wireless emergency alert capable cell phones with instructions to enable or disable WEA