Precisely
a decade ago, just as staff at the mobile telecoms were getting ready to vacate
their offices for the New Years holidays, a request was delivered from the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I was one of those who received the request.
An
earthquake off the coast of Sumatra had, a few days earlier, sent a tutsamni
surging across the Indian Ocean, killing more than a quarter of a million
people, and rendering hundreds of thousands homeless. It caused horrific
devastation across more than a dozen countries.
British
Airways had very generously laid on a plane to evacuate British citizens, free
of charge, from one of the hardest hit areas. But how could the Brits be
advised that this flight had been arranged and was due to depart in the next 18
hours? Could the major mobile providers send a text message to its customers who
were likely to be in that area? And could they send the text message as quickly as possible –
preferably within a few hours, to give victims sufficient time to catch the
flight?
Yes
they could. And yes, they did. (Or at least, yes, they certainly tried to send
the messages). No mobile operator declined on the grounds that the sending of
such messages was unlawful, as they weren’t permitted by the Privacy and Electronic
Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which placed restrictions on
the ways that traffic data could be used to send messages to users.
Bugger
the legal restrictions. What was more important was offering practical
assistance to people who were victims of a regional calamity.
Shortly
afterwards, and bearing in mind the practical lessons which were learnt from
that incident, the FCO embarked on a series of discussions with the mobile
operators about creating a more formal process for sending emergency messages
to customers.
The
FCO-sponsored discussions continued at what can only be described as a glacial
pace. Eventually, the issue was handed to the Cabinet Office.
A
couple of weeks ago, the Cabinet Office was finally able to announce the result of
these discussions. After a decade of
deliberations, a consultation document has been published, proposing minor tweaks to
the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, to
set up a more robust public alert system.
The
deadline for commenting on the proposals is 26th January.
I
don’t expect that many people will bother responding to this consultation
exercise. If I were to respond, I would ask why it has taken a decade for this
matter to be addressed. When an issue like this emerges, it should not take the
relevant stakeholders -including the public officials - so long to react. After
all, when issues relating to the retention of communications data arose earlier
this year, threatening the destruction of records that were potentially of
considerable value to the law enforcement and intelligence community, emergency
legislation was rushed through Parliament in days.
The
third sentence of the consultation document’s Executive Summary is misleading.
It is not fair to state that “in 2010 the Government committed to evaluate
options for an improved public alert system in the UK” if readers are left with
the impression that credit for the proposal should rest with the Coalition
Government. This is just PR spin. It would have been much more accurate to state
that since 2005, all Governments have dithered over how the system for sending
alert messages to the public should be improved.
To use a more media-friendly phrase, they've dithered for a decade.
To use a more media-friendly phrase, they've dithered for a decade.
The
main problem with initiatives like this is not in legitimizing them – but in
executing them. Serious emergencies do not occur very frequently. So how will
the Gold Commanders (the senior police figures who direct the emergency
response teams) remember what process should be used to invoke the alert
messages? How will the operational network management staff within the telecoms
control rooms know that a genuine request is on its way? And how will the
target recipients be sent the messages within the proposed 15 minutes? All this
will require a lot of training, and regular exercising, to ensure that what
ought to happen in theory actually does happen in practice.
Knowing
how good the EE operational network management staff are at dealing with
incidents, I’m pretty confident that my phone will receive an emergency message
if I’m unfortunate enough to be in the affected area at the relevant time.
Whether I’ll read it in good time is another matter.
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