First California AMBER Alert Shows AT&T's Emergency Alerts Are a Mess 380
Mark Gibbs writes "AT&T's implementation of the FCC's Emergency Alerts System provides minimally useful information in an untimely fashion with little geolocational relevance. ... Yesterday California got its first AMBER alert and my notification arrived at 10:54pm. It came up as panel over my lock screen and here's what it looked like on my notifications screen: 'Boulevard, CA AMBER Alert UPDATE: LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door.' The problem with this it that's all there is! You can stab away at the message as much as you like but that's all you get, there's no link to any detail and considering the event it related to occurred over 240 miles away from me near to the Mexican border, the WEA service seems to be poorly implemented. Indeed, many Californians were annoyed and confused by the alert and according to the LA Times 'Some cellphones received only a text message, others buzzed and beeped. Some people got more than one alert.' I got a second copy of the alert at 2:22am and other subscribers reported not receiving any alert until late this morning."
It seems to have gone down about as well as New York's.
This is AT&T's fault how? (Score:5, Interesting)
People on Verizon and T-Mobile got the same message. But sure, just blame AT&T for it anyway.
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Illinois and didn't watch the news tonight so I wasn't aware of the Amber alert in California. However, from the message you posted, here is what I got:
AMBER ALERT
Location: Boulevard, California
California License Plate: 6WCU986
Car Make: Nissan
Car Model: Versa
Car Color: Blue
Other Attributes: 4 door, not 2 door.
Re:Seriously? Yes! (Score:5, Interesting)
There WAS NO USEFUL geographic info'.
I got the same message as the submission on Virgin (Sprint). Where the hell is "Boulevard, CA"? California is a big state; more than a day's drive NS for most people.
If I'm driving, the alert is on the big orange-text signs every couple of miles, and I'm NOT supposed to be taking text messages while driving.
If I'm home, in bed (or, in my case, watching a movie), how much good does it do to wake/text me?
As to "what more do I (you) need?": tell me if it's a custody dispute or a "stranger" kidnapping. In the former case, I don't care, while in the latter, I do. The custodial parent isn't always the more fit, they might just have better lawyers, 'specially abusive, wealthy fathers/husbands.
Terrible experience so far (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Alerts don't sell phones or services, so it's probably funded, staffed, and supported like anything else that doesn't contribute to profits: poorly.
Expect it to either be pwned after a few times, or "This important message is brought to you by General Motors"
I do wonder how long it will be until someone figures out how to hack the system and uses it to send out repeated "Presidential Alerts" in the middle of the night -- those alerts can't be blocked by any phone settings. Worse if the alert says "Incoming nuclear missiles. Evacuate your town immediately. Don't trust radio or TV."
I disabled mine, I'm sure many others did too. (Score:4, Interesting)
My phone made an awful, loud, startling noise. I had never heard it before, and it scared the crap out of me. It sounded like a fire alarm. Once I realized it was my phone, my first thought was some sort of disaster requiring evacuation. Once I saw the message, it was only confusing. No real information, no linkage to details.
A google search turned up more about the Amber alert, which I discovered was several hours away from me in Southern California. I'm in Northern California. The details on the web mentioned that they were suspected of escaping to Texas. So, it was absolutely irrelevant to me. I immediately looked into how to disable it, and had it disabled in a couple minutes. 75% of the others I talked to today also disabled there Amber alerts.
1. The alarm should be more moderate, or at least adjustable. It was very startling. If I had been driving when it went off, I think the effect would have been dangerous. I would have left it on if I could disable the audio alarm and just get the message.
2. It needs more information, or at least a simlpe click-through to details, location radius / distance from me, pictures of the people involved, etc.
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another option is to use the DND (do not disturb) feature which I believe overrides the national alerts and prevents a 2am wakeup call when you can't help.
My phone was on DND. Didn't help. Still sounded like my house was on fire.
Disabling an important warning system that could save children seems kind of... selfish.
Oh, come on, based on your UID I would have thought you'd be better than that tired line... BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!
If you look into it at *all*, AMBER alerts have been even less useful [psmag.com], with more false positives, than TSA airport screening. "Crime control theater", indeed.
The issue - as usual - isn't that the problem - strangers kidnapping and murdering children - isn't horrible, it's that it's in fact extremely rare and the "solution" spends an absurd amount of time, money, and attention on it instead of the other 99.9% of the actual crimes against children. And the implementation was so bad it managed to piss off people instead of encourage them to help.
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:5, Interesting)
I got the alert 6 times. By the time I got it the first time, I'd already seen the alert elsewhere. Every single time it went off, I was still not in a position to see *that* car much less any car. Had I received it once, cool, no issues whatsoever. When it blows up my phone every 5 minutes, I'm going to disable it. I think giving it 30 min of being obnoxious was plenty generous and I don't much care if you think that makes me a terrible person.
Re:This is AT&T's fault how? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cell broadcast is the delivery method (although parent suspected that it was *not* used but they used regular SMS instead, for an example on my Android device (JB) the default is to disable cell broadcast, disabling incoming "normal" SMS is much harder), flash SMS is the name for the "instantly appearing" message.