At 3 p.m. this afternoon, our phones will awaken with a screech announcing impending doom. It won’t be for real (unless a terror group decides it is an opportune moment to launch an attack) but an exercise in testing a new civil defence warning system – an updated version of the network of sirens used to warn of air raids during world war two and maintained until the 1990s.
We should be worried about the long-term implications of the government seizing control of our mobile phones in order to spread emergency messages. True, were Vladimir Putin ever minded to fire one of his nuclear missiles at us it might be useful to be able to warn people about it (at least those who are at least two miles away from where it lands, there being little point otherwise). It might be useful, too, if emergency services were able to warn people in the vicinity of a terrorist on the rampage with a machine gun, or if serious flooding is expected – although it should never be assumed that everyone own a mobile phone or has it on them at all times. But experience suggests that the government is unlikely to reserve the system for genuine emergencies. It could be tempted to use the system in order to communicate with us on a routine basis.
The pandemic revealed just how quickly and extensively a government is apt to create and exercise emergency powers. Carefully-prepared pandemic plans were pushed aside as panic spread through Downing Street, leading to repeated lockdowns. I don’t think we have seen the last of that sort of thing. Now that every other local authority seems to have declared a ‘climate emergency’, what’s the betting that within a few years our phones will start buzzing to warn us about hot weather or high pollution levels – or because national carbon emissions have breached a preset level – and suggesting we remain indoors?
Don’t bet against us being bombarded with messages telling us not to try to travel on the day of a rail strike, or being warned to keep away from a bird flu outbreak area. We’ll have snow warnings, telling us to keep off the roads when half an inch of snow falls. In dry weather we will have warnings telling us to stay away from areas deemed to be at risk. Any trouble at a football match and we’ll have warnings sent to everyone in the vicinity ordering them to disperse.
A warning system based on mobile phones is so potent because it can be used to hone in on a defined area, identifying who is within it and targeting them with advice and instructions. I am sure there is a case for maintaining such a system for use in genuine emergencies, but as usual with all these kind of things, we are not having a debate about when it should be used and when it should not. The whole system has bubbled up from nowhere without any debate.
When our phones erupt with a screech this afternoon we will simultaneously receive a message telling us it is nothing to worry about. It would be better if it invited us to respond and say in which circumstances we want a mobile phone emergency system to be used – and in which circumstances we would rather be left alone.
Comments