[xenob]

I’ll wait until the paranoia clears but this may not be a horrible thing. The current national emergency system is woefully inadequate. I know for me in the days of Tivo’s and iPod/iPhones I rarely listen to live broadcasts in the car or at home. National emergency alerts to my phone (which is always with me) based on proximity to a tower isn’t bad. Now if it’s messages like “This is Obama go vote for me!”. Then this is BS.

[ASA Vet]

It'll be same as Weather service alert radios. I bought mine for Tornado Warnings only.
Good idea at first, but now they want to alert me to every thunderstorm or small craft warning. Their overkill has made it so annoying, that it's now shut off.

[ctdonath2]

If it’s limited to truly huge/important/urgent messages, like “SF just got nuked”, and costs are minimal then fine.

But such urgency is rare indeed, and in this hyper-info-connected email/news-crawl/cellphone/tweet/Drudge/etc age there is little need for the President to speak to EVERYONE RIGHT NOW to get a message out.

The more I think about it, the more I can’t think of a legitimate use for this. Great propaganda tool, but even the obvious biggies cannot be well served by such a message. I’m open to theories/suggestions; the very nature of the President delivering the message means it will be delayed ‘til after other news outlets move first, and will be softened to focus on the interests of the government instead of the individual.

The ensuing conspiracy theories will be fun though. Popcorn?

[Ramius]

I agree. With the state of communications these days, it’s kind of silly that we haven’t yet taken advantage of these capabilities for various kinds of emergency situations.

Not “Presidential messages” so much as key bits of information about what’s happening and where. The ability to customize messages based on GPS location or cell towers means getting better targeted info to the people right in the affected area. It could have custom evac routes, locations of emergency supplies and all sorts of info.

It would be great for minimizing rumor mills that seem to always crop up. I wouldn’t mind having a feed for APB alerts too. If there’s a fleeing suspect what could be better than having everybody with a cell phone suddenly aware of the description and plate number?

Sure, there’s possible abuse, but overall I think it would be a very useful thing.