US Senators want to give feds sole power to issue missile alerts
US senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii announced back in January that he wants take the responsibility of sending missile alerts away from state and local governments. Now he and fellow Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Gardner have introduced a legislation that would give feds the sole authority to send out missile threat notifications. Under the bill, called Authenticating Local Emergencies and Real Threats (ALERT) Act, the Department of Defense would be able to send notifications to the public using the same system US Presidents use to issue warnings in the event of national catastrophes. The DoD doesn't have to go through local authorities anymore, something Schatz thinks is ideal, because "[t]he people who know first should be the people who tell the rest of us." Schatz conjured up the bill after the false alarm that went out in his state showed how flawed the emergency alert system is. Based on the results of its investigation, the FCC found various elements that co...