Re: Draft Charter of Emergency Information TF (was: Re: [DRAFT] Disaster Prevention and Response TF charter

On Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:13:36 +0200, Silvia Pfeiffer  
<silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/10/4 Giuseppe Pascale <giuseppep@opera.com>:
>> My understanding of this TF work is not to create new  
>> standards/protocols in
>> the area of emergency notification,
>> but to review the existing ones and see if anything needs to be done to
>> support such notifications in a web browsers.
>>
>> One of the outcome could also be: nothing needs to be done.
>>
>> My personal feeling on this is that notifications should not be handled  
>> at
>> web application level but at a UA level (for end user notifications, I
>> mean).
>
> I wonder how this would work. Are you suggesting that every browser
> (UA) when it goes online registers with a national notification
> service from which it would get emergency notifications if there are
> any to be delivered?Seeing as the Web is fundamentally a
> pull-information based infrastructure, pushing information can only
> work if the UA allows it (e.g. RSS feed style). However, as soon as
> you make the information-push UA-dependent and not user-dependent, you
> run into all sorts of privacy issues.
>
> For example, if all UAs in the US had to register with a US agency as
> soon as they go online, that single agency would know everything about
> when everyone in the US is going online, their IP addresses and their
> devices.
>
> Why not just go with a Web application, such as an RSS feed to which
> you can subscribe that gives you emergency notifications to those
> channels that you usually communicate on (could, e.g. be twitter,
> facebook, google+, email, RSS reader etc)?
>
>

What I was trying to highlight is that if emergency notification is  
something that can save your life, having to rely on the application to  
timely show you a message or having it only for some type of content (e.g.  
video) doesn't feel safe.

To be honest, I'm wondering if this is something related to UA at all.  
What we are actually saying here is that when there is an emergency all  
possible channels (including Internet) should be used to notify about the  
emergency. Connection to a network (being it the Internet or any other  
network) is something in control of the OS. Also, visibility of  
application is something in control of the OS (you don't want to miss your  
earthquake notification just because your were watching a movie and not  
looking at (or not using at all) your browser.
I also think that most devices are connected to internet also when not  
browsing.

So it feels to me this is something to be handled at OS level, if it needs  
to be robust. And at a network protocol level, to make sure all networks  
you may connect to (broadband, DVB, others) provide this kind of  
functionalities (many already do).

/g



-- 
Giuseppe Pascale
TV & Connected Devices
Opera Software

Received on Tuesday, 4 October 2011 13:34:54 UTC