It can be difficult to get a message out to the masses in an extremely timely fashion. You could put up a news alert on television, but we’re not exactly glued to CNN on a 24 hour basis. You could send out the message over the radio, but we’re not listening to that thing all the time either. The one item that most of us have by our side at all times, however, is the cell phone.

It is with this in mind that regulators approved an emergency alert system that would allow the federal government to send text messages to every user in the United States. The text messages would be free to receive and they would only be used under emergency conditions. It seems that the system will be setup on an opt-out basis.

There are three levels to the emergency text messages. The first level, they say, will come from the president himself (or herself if Hillary gets elected) and these messages will warn against natural disasters and other huge events. The second level is for “imminent threats” and the third level is for amber alerts.