Sirens and messages broadcast on the radio, on social networks and billboards, this is what the French population warning and information system (SAIP) today consists of.
It warns residents of imminent or ongoing danger, such as a natural disaster, industrial accident or terrorist attack.
A multichannel device that can be improved, since it does not make use of an extremely widespread means of communication: cell phones.
Traveling to Rouen one year after the Lubrizol fire, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced last week a modernization of the SAIP, with in particular the possibility of sending alerts directly to the mobile phones present in a given area .
"
In the 20th century, we went from the alarm clock to the siren, in the 10th century, we will go from the siren to the cell phone,
" he declared.
"
It will now be possible to inform the population in real time and over time, whether it is to indicate the posture to be held, to inform the progress of the situation or to give any information allowing the residents of an area specific geographic area to protect themselves effectively by adopting appropriate protection measures
, ”explains the Interior Ministry in a press release.
This device must be fully deployed by 2022.
Two complementary systems
To allow this, two technologies are considered.
The first is based on the massive sending of SMS in a specific area or throughout France.
This is a proven technique, but it has limits.
"
Geolocated SMSs go through the classic broadcasting system which could potentially be saturated in exceptional circumstances, for example in the event of a natural disaster, an attack or an industrial incident
", explains Alain Felix, director of the government sector at Orange .
For a year now, he has been involved in drawing up the specifications for this modernization of the SAIP announced by Gérald Darmanin.
A second system, based on the direct broadcasting of messages from one or more relay antennae will also be set up.
"
This cell broadcasting system can send a sound signal and a text message directly to smartphones, even if they are on standby or silent,
" boasts Alain Felix.
A significant advantage compared to sirens tested every first Wednesday of the month, of which 78% of French people ignore the meaning according to a 2013 survey.
On the other hand, cell broadcasting is not necessarily compatible with older devices.
"
There could always be users on the margins,"
admits Alain Felix
.
But technical solutions are being studied to resolve these incompatibility problems
. ”
In both cases, the geolocation of mobile phones is carried out by demarcation, that is to say that messages are sent to devices located near one or more relay antennas.
With a few nuances, however.
Cell broadcasting sprinkles all the phones in a given area with a push signal.
It is therefore impossible to know who received the message.
Conversely, geolocated SMS are sent to certain phone numbers, which can be linked to the identity of their owners.
A more intrusive method, but which "
makes it possible to know how many people have received the alert thanks to an acknowledgment of receipt which is sent to the authorities
", explains Alain Felix.
An abandoned application
It is not the first mobile network-based alert system deployed by the government.
An application, launched in 2016, was to alert the French of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
But it did not prove its worth during the Nice attack and was only downloaded by 900,000 people.
It was finally abandoned in 2018. “
The systems announced on Thursday are more reliable than an application, since they do not require any prior action from users.
We have seen this with StopCovid, which has received little download,
”comments Alain Felix.
These new alert systems will be based on the existing mobile network, but they will still require the installation of specific equipment by the operators.
To this end, 50 million euros have been released by the government.
The latter has been strongly encouraged by senators, who have been calling for a cell broadcast alert system for more than ten years.
In an information report issued in 2017, elected officials questioned the financing of the siren network, decided according to them to the detriment of a more modern alert solution.
"The 81.5 million euros programmed to finance the SAIP could have been more usefully used to continue the preparatory studies relating to the" mobile "component and to finance a possible establishment of Cell-Broadcast as a vector of alert
" , they criticized.
At the end of 2019, the senators again asked for a more sophisticated alert system in the finance bill for 2020, made two months after the fire in Lubrizol.
"
The means of alerting by telephone are becoming more and more necessary nowadays, as the recent example of the accident at the Lubrizol plant illustrates: cell broadcasting technology would have been much more efficient and would have allowed a clear and immediate alert
”, they argued.
A year later, they were therefore satisfied.
The government is also responding to a European agreement concluded in 2018 on an alert system which should make it possible to "
ensure that citizens are alerted in the event of emergencies or major and imminent disasters, such as a terrorist attack or a natural disaster
".
All members of the European Union must be equipped by 2022, but only some countries like Italy, Greece and Romania have taken the plunge today.
A proven system
The announcement of a device that makes it possible to send targeted messages automatically will not fail to question the Cnil, the French gendarme of personal data.
But the latter validated the sending of an SMS to 30 million French people to announce the implementation of containment measures in March 2020. The law indeed stipulates that "
the telephone operators carry out the routing of the communications of the powers intended for the public to warn them of imminent dangers or mitigate the effects of major disasters
”, which is the case with SAIP.
But if such a system is legal, possible missteps and abuses are still possible.
In April 2018, a missile alert was sent by mistake to the entire population of Hawaii, which caused a wave of panic.
A year later, American researchers managed to send a false message to 50,000 people by hacking the American mobile alert system using radio transmitters.
“
The risk of error is very low because the organization of operators is very compartmentalized
, reassures Alain Felix.
In addition, these systems have already been tested in other countries
. ”
Does the arrival of alerts on mobile phones sign the disappearance of sirens, today considered to be a main vector of SAIP?
On the contrary, assures the Ministry of the Interior.
Despite calls from senators to direct the budget of this warning system towards more technological solutions, the size of this network inherited from the post-war period is expected to double this year.