Give Americans a Dedicated Blue Alert Toggle:
Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are an important public-safety tool. Americans should be able to receive warnings about tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, nuclear emergencies, and other extraordinary threats without being forced to accept every other type of alert transmitted through the same system.

We are asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create a distinct WEA classification for Blue Alerts and require WEA-capable wireless devices to provide consumers with an independent Blue Alert on/off control.

The problem:
Today, consumers have limited control over the types of Wireless Emergency Alerts they receive.

Some categories, such as AMBER Alerts, have their own consumer-facing controls. Other emergency programs, including Blue Alerts, do not necessarily have an equivalent independent setting.

Instead, Blue Alerts can be transmitted using broader WEA classifications. This means a consumer who wants to receive serious weather and other extraordinary emergency warnings may have no way to decline Blue Alerts specifically without also declining unrelated messages that share the same classification.

This is a poor user-interface and policy design.

The choice should not be:

“Receive everything.”

or

“Turn off potentially life-saving emergency notifications.”

Consumers should be able to make a more precise choice.

What we are asking the FCC to do
We ask the FCC to:

Establish a distinct Wireless Emergency Alert classification for Blue Alerts.
Require participating wireless providers and WEA-capable mobile devices to recognize that classification independently.
Require WEA-capable consumer devices to provide a clearly labeled, independently configurable Blue Alert setting.
Preserve the existing ability of authorized public-safety agencies to issue legitimate Blue Alerts.
Ensure that opting out of Blue Alerts does not disable unrelated WEA categories, including extreme-threat alerts, National Alerts, AMBER Alerts, or other categories selected by the consumer.
This proposal does not seek to eliminate Blue Alerts.

It seeks to give Americans control over whether they personally receive them.

Why this matters:
Wireless Emergency Alerts work because people take them seriously. The FCC itself has recognized the problem of alert fatigue and the risk that excessive or poorly differentiated alerts can lead consumers to disable emergency notifications altogether.

Greater control can strengthen the system rather than weaken it.

A person who can configure WEA to receive the alerts they consider most relevant is less likely to abandon emergency alerts altogether.

The technology to distinguish different types of alerts already exists. FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) uses distinct event codes, including BLU for Blue Alerts.

The missing piece is consumer-facing control.

Our request:
We respectfully ask the Federal Communications Commission to modernize Wireless Emergency Alerts by creating a dedicated Blue Alert classification and requiring an independent consumer opt-in/opt-out control for that classification.

Americans should not have to choose between receiving critical emergency warnings and receiving every category of public-safety alert.

Give Americans the ability to choose.

Give Blue Alerts their own category.

Give consumers a Blue Alert toggle.