I’m certainly an individualist, even if I’m not really sure what a radical libertarian is. But for me, it’s philosophy, not politics, and digital rights is just a re-branding of speech and property rights. In my mind, I just can’t grok FLOSS without liberty – if I pull that thread, the whole thing unravels.
I intended no anger or intolerance in my post, sincerely. Maybe it’s the way my avatar is clinching that cigar, which is barely visible after the forum cropped it. 
Dude it wasn’t on topic or necessary in this post. You’re just shoehorning your ideology as always relevant here. But not everyone here is a libertarian. Consider it a courtesy to not be overtly political in a tech forum. Can we go down the rabbit hole of “everything is political”? Yeah, but why on a tech forum?
I’d like to remind everyone in here, if you have a baseband your location is known while it is connected to cell towers, they don’t need an alert system to track you just saying. They will just demand the data via the FISA court in the USA.
That’s correct, so any emergency/rescue service interested in saving your life can still get your last (or current) position.
But technically the OP question was answeered already so this is just now near-technical ethical/political discussion around it.
To add to that - current settings mockup does not have any specific filters for notification types.
That’s no issues, just seemed very off topic.
As I said I wasn’t sure if you intended the anger and yes your Avatar makes it seem alot worse. Maybe consider changing it? 
Was that sarcastic? Loudspeakers fail all the time:
Presidential alerts are a broadcast based notification system. Just because it’s delivered via cell service rather than your chosen medium doesn’t make it different.
Broadcast based transmission is radio and tv, phone is unicast. newspaper is broadcast, mail is unicast. Loudspeaker announcement is broadcast. Policeman taping you on the shoulder is a unicast.
In what way is sending an alert to all devices in receiving range of cell towers in a geographical area not a broadcast?
From the FCC’s website:
In the same as unsolicited bulk email notification is spam.
The problem is not that the alrets are sent. The problem is inability to ignore them.
Those alerts bypass all the user control on the receiving phone and this is an outrage.
That’s just another way to control it, one should be able to either opt-in (subscribe) to those alerts or opt-out (filter/ignore) them. If they just did something like -
People of earth, this is your president, we just made a nice a shiny notification system which costed you Nteeth billions dollars and now we kindly ask you to subscribe to it at your local phone operator to not miss opportunity to observe next natural cataclysm from afar.
Does your email address have some way to receive messages that aren’t specifically directed at it? If so, that’s a different protocol than I’m familiar with.
But then again, that would also be a broadcast. Regular spam (even bulk spam) has to specify your email address to reach you. There’s no such requirement for these alerts.
That would require the operators to know users preferences. I’d rather they not know that. For me filter on my device is sufficient in this case. It’s not like those alerts consume a lot of bandwidth. They are not sent every second.
Well it does, it’s the same as if government forced all mail providers to provide them a broadcast address to all their subscribers so that they can deliver bulk notifications. From the law perspective it is a broadcast. From the implementation perspective it’s a bulk unicast. Me as a user - i don’t have any broadcast/multicast address, i have unicast address (or phone number in this case). And I see that to my unicast terminal is coming unsolicited notification.
Which they already have via your USIM apps (3g/4g preference, voice mail, redirection, etc.)
O.K., but do you get that a large percentage of us aren’t from the U.S.A. though, eh? Even if we were to rally behind you, there’s nothing we could do. i.e. We use the technology (broadcast from the base station, btw )in Canada for Amber alerts (kids in danger) and I’m way cool with that.
We just need you to be a little more cosmopolitan minded on an international forum please 
It’s a bulk unicast in the same sense that sending a packet to x.x.x.255 is a bulk unicast. The tower gets a message with the alert flag - and it doesn’t have a destination set. It then immediately sends that message to each device connected to that tower, also passing on the alert flag.
The only reason why it’s sent as a series of unicast messages is because that is the only way that SMS delivery can be done on mobile networks. The broadcast channel only ever carries messages saying “device with TMSI xyz, there is a message for you” or “I’m a device with TMSI xyz, I want to talk”. They then go to a separate channel (this one’s a bit “wider”, I believe) to arrange how they’re going to talk (frequency, timeslots, etc.), then they carry out a one to one conversation on that pre-arranged channel. It’s for channel setup and global network status indications only - the standards provide no way to transmit data over these channels.
This is an unavoidable consequence of having to use a shared medium (radio waves) to communicate between multiple devices. You cannot have everything talking at once on the same frequency/timeslot/convolution code.
Yes, I’m aware of physical implementation details. And yes, there were times when you could send a message to broadcast address in lanman/netbios environment using winpopup or net send. But the point is not about implementation but about implication.
eMail provider will likely also not list each and every address to deliver the broadcast mail but rather will use wildcard delivery. That does not change the fact that you get mail into your personal mailbox.
government : thou shall eat ONLY integral wheat bread from now until death do us part … don’t worry it’s healthy and it’s good for your body … we want what’s best for you … please do not resist
the point is everyone should HAVE a choice even if that choice turns out to be the wrong one in the end …
As long as phones are not mandatory then people are free to choose what information they receive.