And heres an additional followup:

DIGITAL EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM DEMONSTRATION
At an event that took place July 12 at PBS member station WETA in Washington DC, the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) showed a test of Phase Two of the Digital Emergency Alert System (DEAS). This project was intended to demonstrate how the Department of Homeland Security can improve and disseminate public alerts and warnings during times of national crisis through the use of local public television's digital television broadcasts.

Together with the Director of FEMA, David Paulison and the White House Homeland Security Advisor, Kenneth Rapuano, the President and CEO of the Association of Public Television Stations, John Lawson, said, "This project demonstrates how the capabilities of America's public broadcasters can be utilized to dramatically enhance the ability of the President of
the United States to communicate with the American public during a national crisis."

Here is an extract from the rest of Lawson's speech describing the demonstration.

"We are going to demonstrate for you the capabilities of our digital alert and warning system. I ask you to turn your attention to this plasma screen. On it, you see a schematic of how the system will operate.


John Lawson, APTS (left), David Paulison, FEMA, Charles Hopkins, DHS (right), at WETA




First, on the far left, you see the logo representing the Department. In a few moments, an official at FEMA headquarters will send a test alert to PBS over a secure connection. PBS will then uplink to their satellite and it will be received by WETA and other pubic television stations across the country. WETA will then datacast the message on their DTV transmitter, and it will be received over the air by a regular TV antenna that we have set up and connected to the laptop computer you see before you. This will only take a matter of seconds.

Once the Presidential message comes through, it will take priority and replace what was being fed. When the laptop receives the transmission, the first thing you will see will be banner scroll across the bottom of the screen. You will also hear the EAS tones as the message trips an existing EAS encoder/decoder. Because we will datacast text, audio and video in this demonstration, a Windows media player will open and you will see and hear a live message from that same official at FEMA headquarters. At the same time as these alerts are being sent, we will datacast text files (for those of us in the Washington area) that include critical information that the Department would be able to provide in the event of - for example - a biological attack.

In the demonstration, the audio that WETA datacasts will be received at XM Radio's headquarters, uplinked to their satellite and received on the XM radio here in the room. Because of the extra satellite link it will take a few more seconds to get here.

Finally, these messages will be sent to these cellphones and Blackberries through the use of Alert Manager, a proprietary software technology developed by SpectraRep. For today's demonstration, we are using the Internet to send messages to cell phones. In the pilot, wireless carriers received live messages off-air from WETA and successfully retransmitted them as text messages to designated cell phones without using the Internet."

Lawson then went on to say:

"We are not saying that public television's DEAS is a silver bullet offering the total solution for all emergency communications. However, we do want to make clear that our stations can offer the backbone for a unique, robust, and highly cost effective alert and warning system. It responds directly to the recommendations of the Katrina Commission and the requirements of the Executive Order signed by the President on June 26, 2006. Without the support of the Department that we are announcing today, we can deploy the basic delivery system in months, not years.

Although FEMA's responsibility is Presidential messaging, the infrastructure and best practices developed in the national plan can be used by public television stations working with local, regional, and state authorities to serve their alert and warning needs.

APTS has demonstrated the DEAS before Congress, and they have embraced it. Both the House and Senate have introduced versions of the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (or WARN) Act.

The WARN Act establishes a National Alert System to provide a public communications network capable of alerting the public on a national, regional, or local basis. The WARN Act builds upon the infrastructure we are creating today. We hope Congress will act on this legislation quickly to extend the capabilities of this system to States and local jurisdictions as well."

More information on the technical basis for this system may be found on the SpectraRep web site at: http://www.spectrarep.com

It is becoming more apparent that Big Bro is intent on siezing privately owned broadcast and telecom facilities for their own use under the guise of Public Safety.