Discussion
🆕 blog! “And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway”
In early February 2011 Egypt was in the middle of a political revolution. One morning, everyone's phones suddenly pinged with an alert.
The Armed Forces asks Egypt's honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honour and our precious Egypt.
A series of…
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/and-then-the-men-with-guns-tell-you-to-do-it-anyway/
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#politics #technology
@Edent I like the way it's implemented in Russia. These kinds of messages never come as "emergency alerts". I don't think our carriers even have the technical capability of sending these. They are just regular SMS messages. You can block the sender if you don't want them.
It used to be just severe weather warnings, but since 2022 happened, it's more like "strong wind and torrential rain with a chance of explosions in the sky".
@Edent also true for any infrastructure: secu cameras, electronic payment systems, messenger apps, ...
@Edent This reminds me of the xkcd about security: https://xkcd.com/538/
@Edent “How would you design a system that simultaneously achieved all these goals: …”
Maybe you can't. At some point it becomes a political problem. And if it becomes an unsolvable political problem then a few silly messages on your phone are probably the least of your worries.
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