The thing is, it would be pretty trivial to set up a geofencing system that would sent emergency alerts only to people in an affected area. It’s likely that several Silicon Valley companies have the capability to do so now for large swaths of the population.

But that would require a trustworthy government, one that never used access to location information for any other reason, and one that never pushed messages for anything but life-saving purposes. The distance between that government and the one we have is perhaps something to keep in mind.

Emergency alerts get scrutiny after deadly wildfires