‘Big Brother' fears stop warning system

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32957, 1 July 1972, Page 8

‘Big Brother' fears stop warning system

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, June 28. The White House has killed plans for a cheap nation-wide system to warn every household in the country of approaching hurricanes, floods, and other disasters for fear it would lay itself open to charges of

starting a thought control system.

Since 1963, officials involved in civil defence and disaster relief have been looking at a proposal to require that all new television sets be equipped with a special attachment allowing the authorities to tun. the sets on at full volume day or night to wake up and warn citizens of an approaching disaster. However, fears that the Government would be assailed for forcing a “Big Brother” system of thought control on the public led the White House to kill the idea of asking Congress to make the television attachments mandatory, Administration officials said today. In George Orwell’s book, “1984,” Big Brother controlled the populace by issuing orders into every home over a Government-controlled radio system. That system also contained microphones allowing Big Brother’s police to hear what was being said in any home. The White House also op-

posed the proposal on grounds that it was “economic coercion” to require the warning system on television sets.

But other officials noted that that argument had not stopped Congress from requiring seat belts on cars.

Officials are now trying to devise special warning radios that citizens could buy or ignore at their own choosing. They said that the problem was to build a set cheap

enough so that they did not in effect discriminate against ■ the poor and make broadcast I warnings the advantage only of the wealthy. A receiver developed recently for the Weather Bureau costs SNZI26 and is clearly out of reach of the poor, if not the middle class. One official who had opposed the mandatory attachment on television sets, reasoned that warnings could not be forced on the people. “The family that wants to be warned will buy a set when we get the price down low enough,” he said. “The fellow who even today ignores radio and TV warnings of trouble would only curse the President if he were awakened in the middle of the night to be told that there were tornadoes in the area.”

ti Officials emphasised that t their proposed television t warning device would conj tain no microphones and would be used only for disaster messages, not for poli- ' tical speeches. But the ‘ White House still feared a s public outcry. 8 For a while the plans even • called for including a switch 1 that would allow people fear- • ful of the “Big Brother” i, simply to disconnect the en--1 tire warning system from . their sets. ) Some officials estimated t the needed equipment would 1 add only SNZ7.3I to the cost 3 of a television set, although / others said that a price could • not yet be calculated. / Passing a law requiring 3 manufacturers to install the » gear on all new sets would t ensure that most homes 3 would have the warning system within a decade.