It’s fairly typical of this government to present us with an Innovative New Thing that no one actually asked for, which is genuinely dangerous to quite a few of us. The motivation behind the Emergency Alert which is apparently going to hit your phone, like it or not (like the U2 album pre-loaded onto people’s iPods) is probably no more sinister than a way of some mate of a cabinet member getting the opportunity to rinse us all for even more public money, but that doesn’t mean we should just put up with it.
It’s definitely going to endanger anyone who needs to have a secret phone because they share their living space with an abuser, so here are links to ways of making sure your phone won’t be bothered by it.
Of course, you could simply switch off the phone and/or remove the battery, as well.
OK, some of the people objecting to the whole business are wingnuts, but even wingnuts sometimes get something right: this is a bad, stupid, harmful idea. There will be some
people in and around the government creaming themselves at the idea they can now hit everyone’s phones with propaganda that must be acknowledged, for instance. There may be a little data theft or hidden surveillance involved (though, going on past performance, it probably won’t work very well and will be getting monitored by bewildered, untrained students and long-term unemployed people pushed into taking the job on under threat of benefit sanctions.)
If you are not in a position where the discovery of your secret phone would put you in harm’s way, though, I would still recommend disabling or switching off. Simply because non-compliance at every appropriate opportunity, in the face of a government as untrustworthy and dangerous as this one, is generally a good idea.