Local government making me accept corporate terms of service for emergency alerts?

Questions
1

My county outsources emergency notifications to a private company (Rave Mobile Safety). To get alerts about flooding, road closures, evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, or other emergencies, I have to create an account and agree to their corporate privacy policy and terms of service.

This feels wrong. Why should access to public safety information require handing over personal data to a third party?

What I’ve found so far:

I did some digging and learned that the federal government has a system called Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) that doesn’t require any registration or personal data collection. It just broadcasts to all phones in an area from cell towers. No account needed.

But my local government apparently chose not to use that system (or uses it only for certain types of alerts), and instead went with this opt-in corporate system that requires me to share contact information and agree to Rave’s privacy policy.

My questions:

Has anyone dealt with this in their area? Are there workarounds like:

  • Public RSS feeds or APIs that governments publish but don’t advertise?

  • Alternative official channels that don’t gate-keep public safety info?

  • Ways to monitor emergency communications without the tracking?

I get that some contact info makes sense for targeted notifications, but requiring acceptance of corporate ToS for government emergency alerts seems like a line being crossed.

Anyone have experience pushing back on this locally or finding technical solutions?

1 Like
2

Please clarify, what exactly you’ll need to share in the first place? And is your identity going to be verified before you’re enrolled in this system?

And welcome to the forum!

3

Have you thought about buying a NOAA weather radio? Or any regular radio for major emergencies.

I never lived in an area that outsources these types of alerts. That seems awful at actually warning people if it’s opt-in.

1 Like
4

The data they require during signup is:

  • Full Name
  • Phone number
  • Home address

They only verify phone number.

I know it’s not much data, but it just seems icky to be agreeing to a private corporation’s privacy policy to receive government alerts.

The county’s website refers citizens to this third party (Rave) as the only (publicly posted) way to sign up for real-time alerts, although I believe they also send some alerts through smartphone Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs), although they don’t advertise this or provide instructions on how to enable/re-enable WEAs on their website.

Rave’s Terms explicitly require citizens to release them of liability for invasion of privacy:

ALL SUBSCRIBERS…AGREE THAT RAVE…DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL LIABILITY…FOR…INVASION OF PRIVACY…

The county website states:

You can’t be reached for the majority of non-life threatening emergencies if you don’t register for [alerts through Rave] — it’s an opt-in service so you must sign up in order to receive the alerts.

5

Damn. Terrible all around.

If they only verify phone numbers, give them a different name and address and a jmp.chat number. If you can afford a few dollars every month, could be worth it. If they want do unethical things, you have to meet them on the same playing field.

I wonder what the local government is getting out of this terrible deal for its citizens.

I wish I had a better solution.