Today, 2025-03-13 at 11 AM and for the umpteenth time, I saw an inexcusable intrusion upon the residents in Germany in form of spurious “presidential alerts” spamming phones en masse with an extremely loud blaring.
Below, I will discuss some aspects of the problem.
(More information on problems with and around Android and/or smartphones can be found at [1]. For more on problems relating to government, see the rest of the current category.)
I will use “phone” in the sense of “smartphone” or (if applicable!) sufficiently compatible cellphones. (I am not certain how and whether presidential alerts manifest on a non-smartphone cellphone.) More specifically, I write as an Android user and cannot rule out that the situation elsewhere is different, be it in the big picture or in the details. (In my superficial understanding, however, Apple has a very similar problem.)
I stick with “presidential alert”, notwithstanding that the term is misleading in a German context and likely poorly chosen more generally. If nothing else, this is the term used in the display of my phone (which has an English language setting).
It is not always clear who is to blame for what and I do not have the time to research the details. Correspondingly, some statements should be seen with reservations for that “who is to blame”. For instance, I do not know whether the main blame for the action rests on the head of some incompetent and/or civil-rights hostile politician, some incompetent and/or civil-rights hostile civil servant, or a group of either or both. For instance, I do not know to what degree the volume issues rest with the sender of the message (and/or some external entity that has prescribed a certain behavior and to some degree can be viewed on a level with the sender) or whether this is within the discretion of the makers of Android and/or the individual phone. Certainly, the volume reached has an upper limit in hardware, in that a certain built-in loudspeaker cannot be arbitrarily loud, implying that owners of different smartphones might experience different sound levels, even should, which I strongly suspect, the idea be to be to blare as loudly as the phone physically can.
On this occasion, I was, despite ear-plugs, torn out of my sleep after spending most of the night working, could not get to sleep again, and spent half the day too sleepy to do anything productive. Only around 6 PM did I manage to fall asleep again, to get less than two hours of further sleep, which does less to compensate for the sleep lost through the alarm and more to partially (and only partially!) balance out the unproductive waking hours since the alarm. To boot, and because of this idiotic alert, I have been in a really foul mood for most of the day, even during the evening, past this second sleep phase.
As for “extremely loud”: Despite the ear-plugs, I could hear phones going off in other apartments in the building (once I had silenced my own).
(2025-03-14)
The negative effects were such that I only managed a half-done draft on the 13th (the “now” of the text), was very tired and unproductive through lack of sleep on the 14th and, indeed, spent more than ten hours of the 14th sleeping. Only shortly before midnight 14th-to-15th did I manage to actually complete and publish the text—and, yes, I still feel more tired than I should.
This, then, amounts to two ruined days, because of that/those fucking little shit/shits.
I note, among other things, that I was slightly ahead of my schedule for the week on the 12th (and for the day on the 13th, when I first went to sleep) and am now almost a day behind—implying that I will need to sacrifice Sunday, my scheduled rest day, to catch up.
I generate to-do lists for each week to ensure that I put in a full work week, even when not working in an office, and to ensure that some sport, various chores, and similar, get done.
As for when I work and sleep, it varies highly over time, because my “natural” day appears to be longer than 24 hours and I see a continual shift. Leading up to the 13th, I was in a phase where I was active during the night and slept during the late morning and early afternoon. What it will be like in the aftermath is yet to be seen.
That this type of intrusion, overriding “quiet modes”, volume settings, turned off notifications, whatnot, at all exists, is both highly dubious and a self-condemnation of whoever at Google forced this feature upon the users. Contrast this with a system that simply gave whatever notification signal applied to regular messages and allowed access in the same way. (Possibly, with a different sound or other notification per default—but respecting volume settings and whatnots.)
At an absolute minimum, users should and must have a non-negotiable right to turn this feature off and take whatever (very small) additional risk follows. This, however, unfortunately, and almost certainly by design, is not possible, because there is (a) no documented way to do so, (b) undocumented ways (going by my research the last time around) require a rooted device—and rooting is not only a potentially tricky act, which not everyone might even manage, but risks that the smartphone at hand is “bricked” even when the user follows instructions that have worked for others.
In a next step, it is inexcusable that phones are not sold pre-rooted. Imagine if computers were sold without granting admin rights to their owners. (Unfortunately, with the extreme contempt for customers that the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and Google continually display, chances that this would happen for non-FOSS systems might be larger than for an improvement of the smartphone situation—yet another reason to stick to FOSS as far as humanly possible.)
For my part, even as an extremely experienced computer user, I have not taken the step of rooting: on the one hand, there is the risk and the further time out of my day; on the other, just presidential alerts. With my current (!) smartphone use, there is no further benefit from rooting, and just getting rid of presidential alerts does not justify the combination of risk and effort. (Or so I reasoned until today. Right now, rooting seems the lesser evil.)
More generally, this is a further proof of how important it is to preserve the rights of device owners: This is my phone and I should have complete decision-making powers for that phone. Anyone who fails to respect this basic principle has no right to write software, make phones, make governmental decisions, whatnot. Ditto, (regular) computers and other equipment of various kinds that are owned by me. (And, of course, ditto when replacing me and my property with any other owner and his property.)
There is nothing specific with smartphones that makes this a legitimate road—and nothing, except convenience-for-the-government, that makes it a new road. In principle, there was e.g. nothing that stopped the government of 2005, maybe, even 1985, from ringing through all landlines using some type of automatic dialer, but it either did not occur to the nitwits behind these operations or it required too much effort. (Or past generations of decision makers where less citizen-hostile.) In reverse, who is to say what similar intrusions we will have to put up with in 2045, if this idiocy goes unprotested.
Giving potential examples is tricky, because it is hard to predict what technologies will be in use in a sufficiently familiar form in 2045, what new technologies might be present, and similar. This the more so, if a pushing of smartphones as a replacement for everything than conceivably could be replaced continues—but not even smartphones are guaranteed to exist in such a “familiar form” in twenty years.
However, for the sake of illustration of principle, consider a TV or a computer being turned on remotely to shout out a spoken message by some government official, fire alarms being set off remotely and absent a fire, and/or a “smart” refrigerator suddenly going off with “Danger, Will Robinson!”, instead of “The milk is almost out. Should I order more milk?”. Or what if some Lauterbach-like figure decides that any apartment with someone not yet vaccinated against the latest virus should be bombarded with a “Get vaccinated!” every few minutes.
In a bigger picture, other types of intrusion become increasingly more likely without protests, say, that the camera of a smartphone is turned on remotely so that the government can see that everything is OK or, more likely, that the citizen is not up to some disapproved activity—like silent prayer in his own home. (And, yes, going by recent news, there are many deranged Leftists who try to ban even this, e.g. because there is an abortion clinic in the vicinity.) Indeed, there are partial precedents to this already, e.g. the grossly unethical covert smartphone tracking of virtually the entire population that took place in Canada (“because COVID”) or the equally unethical German “Bundestrojaner”—both incompatible with basic civil rights, Rechtstaatlichkeit, and respect for the individual.
There is no real reason to believe that “presidential alerts” will bring a non-trivial advantage over the older, much-more-convenient-to-the-citizen, and far less intrusive, central alarm systems using air horns and whatnots that have been standard in Sweden for decades. (Except, of course, which is the only thing that truly matters to these shits, that it is more convenient for the government—and the inconvenience for the citizens be damned.)
On the contrary, considering those who might not have a smartphone, might have an empty battery, might have turned the smartphone off, whatnot, chances are that the actual coverage of the population is reduced.
I originally spoke of “Sweden and Germany”, Germany being the actual scene of the current events. (Sweden being where I grow up.) Doing some checks, I find that Germany has applied this approach very inconsistently and/or incompetently, including a partial tear-down of existing alarm signals as early as the 1990s (long before presidential alerts) and a lack of nationwide coordination of e.g. testing. I have revised the above and some below formulations accordingly.
However, this more to be on the safe side than to imply that Germany would have no such systems: I have quite a few memories of exactly such air-horn systems being tested in Germany too, while a cost-effectiveness argument would, if at all, be mostly relevant to the countryside (of which Sweden, incidentally, has far more) due to the lower number of persons covered by any given horn—but where the risk of a real alarm is also typically far smaller than in densely populated areas. It would, then, be perfectly feasible to keep densely populated areas “air horned” while foregoing alarms on the countryside.
If in doubt, regardless of what type of alarms were available, Germany managed perfectly well for many decades of a similar risk profile without presidential alerts. (And for its entire previous history before that, if with an increasingly different risk profile, as we go back in time.)
Also note that I am 50 years old and have never experienced any such alarm, be it by air horn or cell phone, be it in Sweden or in Germany, which was not a test. Likewise, the only fire alarms that I have ever experienced were drills, other tests, or (in one unfortunate “recidivist” office building) false alarms. Etc. Real alarms do happen, but they are very rare—much rarer than the tests. (This is also important to bear in mind when we look at the next few items.)
The testing is largely pointless, as the only thing that really can be both tested and verified (and, if need be, corrected) is that someone somewhere can send a particular type of message over all cellphone nets—which should be perfectly possible to test without disturbing the entire population. In contrast, the air horns need to be tested for e.g. the ability to reach a sufficient volume, which cannot be done without reaching that volume. In reverse, if some given smartphone only reaches “loud”, instead of the obviously intended “ear-shatteringly loud”, there is really no way for the testers to find out and do something about it—and the victims of the test are unlikely to be dissatisfied with a more humane loudness. Ditto, those who have deliberate rooted their smartphones and disabled this nonsense—they will not complain about the lack of noise and suddenly rush to re-activate this anti-feature.
Here, some variation of the presidential-alert system might have brought a benefit through a silent test, but this benefit has been foregone. On the contrary, as noted, the phones blared so loudly that I could hear them going off in other apartments while I was wearing ear-plugs. The loudness of the air horns is far more humane and proportionate to the task.
However, in terms of testing they are set to do far more harm, because of the extreme intrusiveness and lack of forewarning.
The lack of forewarning is particular bad, as the air horns were always scheduled to go off at known times at certain specific days of the year. (Once per quarter in Sweden; varying per Bundesland/state in Germany.) These presidential alerts, however, have been seemingly random, causing a much greater surprise and disturbance factor, causing more effort, because the actual message sent has to be checked, etc.—and for no good reason.
To next consider intrusiveness: As I have already noted, my sleep was ruined, and so was much of my day—just to fulfill the whims of some little shit pressing a button somewhere. Others might, with the extreme intrusiveness, have been far worse off. What e.g. if the same happened to a shift worker who did not have my flexibility in use of time? What e.g. if someone had just managed to put a troublesome baby to sleep after half an hour of effort and now saw it waked up with a vengeance? (Turning the, as such, comparatively short disturbance of the alert into another half hour of screaming.) What e.g. if someone was carrying a fragile heirloom, got a shock, and dropped the object to the floor? What e.g. if someone was on a ladder, received the same shock, and broke his leg or, worse, back when crashing onto the ground? What e.g. if someone got that shock while driving and spilled piping hot coffee on himself, ruining his clothes and getting second-degree burns—and, possibly, in a next step, causing a mass collision with half a dozen dead? Even I almost came close to just throwing my phone at the wall (and chances are that someone else out there did) after having been exposed to this shit repeatedly over the last few years and now having my sleep ruined. Indeed, had I not been wearing ear-plugs, I might have, because I had the phone close to my head and the loudness, sans ear-plugs, would have been outright painful, causing me to wake up as if from a physical attack, which could have caused an equally physical response before my mind was clear from the drowsiness of sleep.
Generally, “safety” measures used in Germany do not consider the risks and costs (opportunity and regular) that comes with them and that typically outweigh the benefits. For instance, I have repeatedly noted that the yearly, mandatory, smoke-detector checks bring very little value, while causing a great amount of lost work time, increases in travel time, increased pollution and risk of accident from the additional travel, etc.—on top of the smaller cost of having hired “specialists” walk into the apartment, perfunctorily push a button on each smoke detector, and walk out again, after ten or twenty seconds of work. (As to the value: The checks, as opposed to the smoke detectors, only bring value if a fire actually takes place, that fire otherwise would have gone undiscovered or been discovered too late, the residents failed to themselves make trivial checks, the very loud “battery is going empty” beeps were, themselves, somehow disabled or ignored over weeks or months, whatnot—an exceptionally rare set of circumstances.)
The tests are also damaging in that they have a “cry wolf” effect. The air-horn tests were scheduled and it was easy to just go through a mental check of “Is today the air-horn day?”. The same is not possible with the much more random smartphone tests and the repeated exposure to mere test messages (and, especially, annoying and intrusive test messages) brings a great risk that many will ignore or only react with an undue delay to a real alarm, should they ever encounter one.
Also note how Microsoft shot it self in the foot by ever again having Windows pop-up intrusive-yet-pointless windows with messages, which caused many users to just click them away by reflex, which, in turn, made it very easy to miss the small minority of pop-ups that actually warranted attention and/or for which some other action than clicking “OK” was called for.
The following is an automatically generated list of other pages linking to this one. These may or may not contain further content relevant to this topic.