France launched Monday, June 20 its alert system subtly called FR-Alert. In the event of emergencies, natural disasters, petrochemical accidents, fires or attacks, the State will thus be able to alert the entire population, directly to the cell phones of (almost) all French people — who do not won’t really have a choice, with a ringtone and a vibration accompanied by a message “Emergency Alert”.
These alerts, required by the European Union through the European directive of December 11, 2018, will supplement the usual sirens, television messages or radio. Without the need to register on a site or download an application, all people in the affected area will receive the alert notification thanks to the geolocation data of the telecommunications network.
Alerts galore?
Emergency situations that could be the subject of such an alert include natural events (such as floods, storms and cyclones, fires, tsunamis, volcanic eruption), biological and chemical accidents (pollution, gas leak, incident nuclear), health hazards (epidemic, pandemic, agri-food incident), technological and industrial incidents (breakdown of telecommunication means, serious accidents on the road, rail or air networks, industrial incident), or serious events of public security and terrorist attacks. Already, Internet users fear all-out notifications and complain about the infernal noise of the alert:
I feel that we will be inundated with abusive notifications
“Alert: a wolf / a UFO / Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès has been seen in the vicinity”
“Alert: 5-year-old Théo has been kidnapped by his father”
“heatwave red alert”
“the water tower was infested with pigeons DON’T DRINK” https://t.co/I130I6qfRk— VirusWar (@VirusWar) June 22, 2022
Already accustomed to “states of emergency” anxiety-provoking and forced to permanent resilience, we will receive via these messages different steps to follow according to the situations announced. As France info explains, “the alert will be sent even in silent mode, but not if the phone is in “airplane” mode or turned off”.
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An exclusive “cell broadcast” system
Android owners under 4G or 5G have nothing to do, and iPhone users will just have to update. The alert messages will be broadcast in the form of radio waves by the telecommunications antennas, and not by SMS, in order to avoid saturating the network in the event of massive sending. Cell broadcast works on 4G (soon 5G) which automatically excludes regular phones, not enough smart.
In other words, those who do not have a smartphone, whether for practical, financial or ideological reasons, will be spared (or excluded).
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According to the public service website, phones equipped with 3G and 2G will be able to receive geolocated SMS, but later. However, Orange has already announced the elimination of 2G and 3G networks by 2030, with the aim of freeing up frequencies to set up greater 4G and 5G coverage. If the followers of low tech and the digital resistance fighters are not taking the plunge until then, so this will further amplify the digital (and social) divide that already exists between the French.