Not being a Merican myself, I have to confess to ignorance of the process and politics by which this Bill was handled. As you will note in the blog posting, it falls within a wider piece of legislation dealing with Port security and, of all things, Internet gambling.
However, my understanding is that in its original conception, the WARN Act was intended to develop a multi-mode, integrated national public alerting system for the US. In certain respects it was to provide a digital-generation warning system that would compliment and extend the existing Emergency Alerting System (EAS) in that country. The original Bill included a proposed National Alert Office that would coordinate standards and procedures for all types of media, most notably conventional radio and TV. That part is gone in the legislation that was passed, and it is now almost exclusively about mobile phones. As if they are the only technology--the "magic bullet" as noted in the blog entry--that matters for public alerting. I was at an ITU-sponsored public alerting workhsop in Geneva last week when this was announced and the Americans there who have been following this Bill closely couldn't figure it out either. However, look for some interesting activity to come out of the FCC appointed "Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee" which is required to deal with technical and other procedural matters pertaining to the use of cell phones for public alerting. The Committee is required to report within one year (Oct. 2007) but will be holding public hearings between now and then. http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2006/db1016/DA-06-2037A1.pdf On 27/10/06, Barry Wellman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > not all of us are Mericans. You might supply some context. > The blog linked to is very insider based. > > Barry Wellman > > PS: Just read in Oct 24, 2006 NY Times that Hillary Clinton has 12,880 > MySpace friends linking to her. > (I believe George W Bush has only one: Osama Bin-Ladin;-)) > _____________________________________________________________________ > > Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director > Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto > 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 > wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman > for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php > _____________________________________________________________________ > > > On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, gordon gow wrote: > > > Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:03:32 -0600 > > From: gordon gow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: [mobile-society] US WARN Act and mobile phones > > > > > > The WARN Act has been passed in the US for public alerting. Mobile > > phones are at the heart of it, much to the surprise of some who have > > been following its progress: > > > > http://www.incident.com/blog/?p=35 > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mobile-society" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-society -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
