"The highly automated nature of” the emergency alert system “was demonstrated yet again” last week when EAS warnings at several TV stations were triggered without authorization and hoax alerts about zombies were broadcast through the common alerting protocol (CAP) format, an industry lawyer said. The “downside” of EAS’s automation has been shown before by unintended alerts such as by ads that included tones that triggered the system’s activation, Scott Flick wrote Thursday on the Pillsbury law firm’s blog (http://bit.ly/VVSNCa). “While the automatic nature of EAS creates the risk of false alerts propagating rapidly, at least the false alerts up until now were somewhat self-inflicted wounds, caused by either the system being erroneously activated by a governmental mistake, or by an EAS Participant accidentally airing an activation code contained in third-party content. Because of the closed nature of the system, false activations necessarily required a mistake from a participant.” That changed as “the backbone of the EAS system was moved not long ago from the closed network model to an Internet-based system,” which triggered the fake alerts this time (CD Feb 14 p8), Flick wrote. “The benefit is that mobile and other devices connected to the Internet will be able to relay alerts to the public automatically. ... The bad news, however, is that by shifting to an Internet backbone, we have opened the public alert system to the same outside forces that plague every other aspect of the Internet.” The “good news” of the “unsettling” hoax is that it uncovered security issues “in the system that can be fixed” by resetting factory-set passwords on CAP equipment, the New Jersey Broadcasters Association wrote members Friday in its weekly newsletter (http://bit.ly/Yw1mi6).
The FCC required emergency alert system participants to immediately bar unauthorized use of common alerting protocol-triggered EAS alerts to radio and TV stations and subscription-video providers via the Internet, broadcast industry officials said. They said Tuesday’s FCC advisory came after some stations in Michigan and maybe Montana, too, aired a bogus alert about zombies when their CAP systems had security breached, from what appear to be non-U.S. Internet Protocol addresses. CAP isn’t yet being relied on by federal or state agencies to distribute warnings about bad weather and other hazards, since they also transmit those announcements by broadcasts. All EAS participants are required to be able to get the alerts in that format from a Federal Emergency Management Agency website (CD Sept 17 p6), and industry officials said the unauthorized access is a reminder to take security precautions that the affected stations apparently didn’t.
Preparation for Superstorm Sandy’s landfall was key to New York-area broadcasters’ efforts to disseminate news and information to the public, said executives from Clear Channel Media and WABC during the FCC’s second hearing Tuesday on the storm’s communications impact. Others testified how Google and Twitter helped to fill the void left by outages in the area’s wireless and wireline communications networks.
NAB attorneys told officials from the FCC’s Media and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureaus that existing text-to-speech technology is problematic for creating audio versions of on-screen emergency information that can be heard by the blind and sight impaired, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bodd2x). On-screen emergency information crawls may originate from a variety of sources at a station, such as the newsroom, master control, weather center or its emergency alert system equipment, the notice said. “While text-to-speech technology and software is available, there is currently no methodology for interfacing the output of the graphics equipment” that creates the on-screen crawl to the text-to-speech equipment, it said. “Thus, we urge the commission to refrain from requiring or precluding any technology for audio transcription,” it said.
The FCC proposed fining a Puerto Rico FM station $8,000 because its emergency alert system gear couldn’t automatically interrupt programming with EAS messages and the station isn’t staffed 24 hours a day, said an Enforcement Bureau notice of apparent liability to WVID Anasco. The NAL gave licensee Centro Colegial Cristiano Inc. 30 days to provide the agency with a sworn statement that the system is working (http://xrl.us/bocbev).
The FCC Public Safety Bureau report on June’s derecho wind storm, which knocked out phone service for 3.6 million people in the mid-Atlantic and beyond -- many unable to reach 911 for several hours -- made demands of telcos among its recommendations. The Public Safety Bureau released the 56-page document Thursday after starting an investigation in July (CD July 20 p5). Four 911 centers in northern Virginia lost 911 access completely, prompting a close look at Verizon’s role and backup power generator failures there. FCC recommendations include provisions on backup power and audits and preface a rulemaking notice intended to strengthen emergency communications.
ATSC 2.0 will emerge as a new candidate broadcast standard early this year with a goal of deploying it in CE products by year-end, Richard Chernock, chairman of the ATSC technology and standards group, told us. The candidate standard designation is a precursor to formal implementation of ATSC 2.0, he said.
CMA Communications it is still working on getting broadband connections at 14 of its cable system headends in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana in order to comply with FCC Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) requirements for Emergency Alert System (EAS) participants. It already asked for a six-month extension to bring its systems into compliance. “CMA Communications had originally planned to shut down the systems, however decided to continue to operate the systems with standard EAS equipment installed, provided that the Commission grants the waiver,” it said (http://xrl.us/bn8xbr).
Charter Communications asked for a temporary waiver of new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) requirements for Emergency Alert System participants at 28 small systems. The company already got a waiver in June for 32 systems where it was still installing the Internet connection needed to be CAP-compliant. Those systems are now connected but the cable operator said it has since identified another 28 headend facilities where broadband is not available (http://xrl.us/bn8xbc). It expects it can use DSL connections at 12 facilities, but the rest are too far from the nearest DSLAM for that technology to be of use, it said. It’s still testing whether DSL will be viable at another six and installing satellite Internet service at the other 10, it said.
Suddenlink Communications asked the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau for extra time to comply at some of its systems with new Common Alerting Protocol requirements for Emergency Alert System participants. The cable operator’s 12 “most remote systems” have no broadband access at the headends and recent field research by Suddenlink’s staff “indicates there is still no viable means to bring these very remote systems into immediate compliance,” it said (http://xrl.us/bn8b3z). It planned to use satellite Internet connections at seven of the sites and DSL at the other five, it said. But it learned that the five planned DSL sites are too far from the closest digital subscriber line access multiplexer to receive an effective broadband connection. Furthermore, satellite connections have proved problematic at all 12 sites, it said. It asked for another six months to comply with the requirements.