Impractical? (Score 4, Interesting)

This would be an additional cost of exactly how much? They don't say. Whatever the cost may happen to be, it is surely nonzero. This feature is unlikely to be favored by the market, so the companies making the phones won't want to include it. It might even necessitate reduced functionality. Therefore, this would require a government mandate. What penalty would there be for failure to comply? How intrusive would they have to be to make sure this came to pass? How much would this cost our government? Us? How would all these things affect the market?

Now to the important part. Would it really work? If it did, how easy would it be to hack the system? Mandated communication equals easy virus spread? How many false alarms? Would it promote overconfidence and lax insecurity?

Is this a good idea? I'm not sure. If it prevented a nuclear explosion in a major city that would obviously be a great thing, but what if it made us fail to do so? What if it takes funds that could have been used for more effective measures, and wastes it? There are too many questions about this.

So, is it impractical?