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.
missing the main point (Score:5, Insightful)
Info on the amber alert (Score:2)
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Not an emergency for you? Now citizen, every family's custody battle is your duty to be involved with. Can't you see that everyone in the state should cease all other activity and help when one parent disagrees about the judge saying the other parent should have custody? How could anything be more important? Someone is failing to respect the power of the state; that's not some minor passing worry like an earthquake dropping the overpass in front of you, that's important!
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.
Re:This is AT&T's fault how? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you have to admit most of the damage was done by AT&AT.
The AT&ST could be beaten even by tiny bears with prehistoric technology.
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..did the messages arrive to them late too?
it sounds to me they just sent the sms's over as regular(marked with special bit that makes them appear instantly on supported handsets, forgot what was the name for that bit in the spec).
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Cell Broadcast
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.
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'Annoying bit.'
poor implementation has little to do with AT&T (Score:5, Insightful)
All services implemented the same feature and sent the EXACT same nearly useless message (which was written by a CA agency and approved by FEMA before being sent out).
Makes no sense to single out "AT&T's implementation"... it's mostly the cell phone manufacturer's implementation, and the govt's decision to send it out to the entire state in the middle of the night...
Re:poor implementation has little to do with AT&am (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:poor implementation has little to do with AT&am (Score:3)
Sure, you're modded as insightful because we love to think of all federal government initiatives as security theatre. But this article cites no actual statistics to the contrary. Its entire premise seems to be that child abduction is rare, and law enforcement often can't get an alert out within three hours, therefore "probably" the system is useless. Seriously, it cites no actual numbers as to the effectiveness of the system, and uses the word "probably" and pure rhetoric (i.e. bullshit) a lot. If the same
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sent the EXACT same nearly useless message (which was written by a CA agency and approved by FEMA before being sent out)
Just as a note, that's the EXACT same information every other state provides in an amber alert: city, car and license plate.
Here in Texas, it's usually the parent on the losing side of the divorce grabbing the kids and running for Mexico.
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:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Now go look up "Boulevard, CA" on a map and explain why 20+ million people in CA who have never heard of it or live within 300 miles of it should be woken up in the middle of the night about it.
You really can't figure that out? (Score:3)
Just how long do you think it takes to drive 300 miles in a CAR which can travel at over 60MPH? Why would someone who kidnapped a child stay in the same area anyway? 300 miles is peanuts for that kind of alert, it should really be more like the possible distance travelled in a generous window since the disappearance was reported, not just five hours...
The whole point of the thing is to alert people in a huge radius to be on the lookout for the car. The alert had just the information needed - if you saw
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you get the message on your phone? I did. It was just a plain bad experience for most people. Scared the crap out of me, it vibrated and made a crazy loud noise I'd never heard before even though my phone was in my pocket and supposedly on mute. The first thing I did was disable all future amber alerts (which was the only option in the iPhone's settings), as apparently did millions of other people who were woken up or otherwise freaked out by the way it was delivered. One of the main things they needed to avoid with this "opt out" system was the "car alarm syndrome", and they completely failed that.
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only to someone who jumps to quick, incorrect, conclusions. There are thousands of things everyone could do everyday that could could save or improve others lives. We don't do the vast majority of them because the chance they will help and the time required stops it being viable. The chances of a car happening to travel 300 miles to just where I am, for me to be in a position where I see it, remember (5+ hours after the event) and actually recognise it are tiny. There would be literally dozens of things happening near by that my time would be better spent, still wasted in most cases, doing to help others instead.
If someone is going to broadcast messages to my phone that they want me to read, let alone treat as a priority, then I need to think they are. If I don't I'm going to avoid seeing as many of them as possible.
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel that both positions are overstating things. Saying "a slightly annoying buzzing that lasts for a few seconds" is a dramatic understatement from what people saying it sounds like. (I can't find a sample of what it sounds like.) Being woken up is more than a "slight" annoyance, and there are plenty of situations where being suddenly startled by an unfamiliar loud noise can cause far more damage than "a slight annoyance."
Those probably make sense for a tornado warning or something like that, but not an AMBER alert. Virtually no one is going to do anything other than roll over and go back to sleep. It sounds like phone manufacturers went too far towards making it obnoxious for that case -- it seems quite unlikely that there would be many cases where a massive alert would garner a response that wouldn't be achieved through a simple text message alert for example.
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Being woken up is more than a "slight" annoyance
Yeah, when the phone rang in the middle of the night, my uncle got up too fast, fainted, broke his skull on the floor and was for TWO YEARS in the hospital (on and off) as a consequence. And they never figured out who had called. Hint: never call in the middle of the night unless it's an emergency RELEVANT to the person you are calling.
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Did you get this Amber Alert? On the iPhone the klaxon was something like the Star Trek red alert, or an air raid siren, or a hybrid of the two. It was VERY loud. I had no idea what the fuck it was. My phone was in another room, and I thought something in my home had caught fire, or the AC had failed and was delivering some sort of catastrophic failure sound that I didn't know it was capable of making.
It really was that bad.
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.
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On the other hand, some of us have decided not to live our lives as totally selfish assholes.
[...]
Happily you can simply turn off the alert on your phone and remove any random chance you might save someones life, so can can avoid a slightly annoying buzzing that lasts for a few seconds.
Are you really willing to sacrifice getting annoyed for a few seconds in exchange for the slim chance of saving a child?
Really?
Let's say I make a phone app that wakes the entire state up in the middle of the night, every week or so, with an important message from my sponsors. Let's say that of the large amounts of money I'd get paid by the sponsor, I give 50% to a charity operating in any of the poorest countries in Africa.
I guarantee you the chances of that money saving several children lives wouldn't be s
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25% don't get killed less than 3 hours after the abduction your saying then?
Yes it is a lottery when it comes to you making a difference, but with enough bodies looking there is a real chance to make a life saving difference.
It may not be you that makes the crucial difference but without people like you responding there will be no difference.
It is your choice though.
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Japan can pre-warn about earthquakes by as much as 30 seconds to a couple minutes. Enough time to seek shelter. Unlike our system, I believe their system is automated and goes off when their computers detect the impending quake.
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:4, Insightful)
But if poor implementation (this is not just a text-alert noise, which mutes to vibrate when told to), results in millions of people disabling Amber alerts, then you've dramatically reduced the chance of it "reaching one person who can help find the missing child" next time.
Worse, if it results in reflexively people turning off all such warnings (including weather/emergency alerts), then you've also reduced the chance of people receiving appropriate warnings of danger. Ie, you've increased the risk of preventable deaths.
In other words, the system most definitely didn't work.
Any alert that sounds when it's not needed merely trains people to ignore all such alerts. This is pretty basic "emergency" psychology, and hardly new.
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.
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My phone was on DND. Didn't help. Still sounded like my house was on fire.
That seems like a really bad idea, DND is there for a reason and pretty much for sure indicates you are not in a position to do anything (on the other hand, it should not block out the weather alerts I guess). If the alert overrides DND I can see a ton of people turning it off.
If you look into it at *all*, AMBER alerts have been even less useful
I would submit they have been less useful because they were not in the past going to indiv
Re:You really can't figure that out? (Score:4, Insightful)
Once the system is in place there is hardly any money involved in sending out an alert. The attention is minimal
That's totally untrue. I'm not just talking about the phone part, I'm questioning the whole system - remember AMBER alerts are not just about phone messages, but billboards, radio and TV alerts, police response, FEMA review, tons of false positive reports, etc. I read an article where authorities complained that an AMBER alert hoax cost taxpayers large amounts of money all told ($50-$100k+). I assume the hoaxes cost the same as the "real" ones, so it's clearly impossible that there is hardly any money involved.
It's called opportunity cost. These alerts aren't free and resources are limited. The argument that "if it saves one child it will be worth any cost" is unfortunately not a good one when there are so many thousands that could be helped in other, much more common circumstances if the limited resources were used more wisely.
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um no emergency alerts (including amber alert) override all DND setttings.
when mine went off my phones DND settings were on.
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Rewind and first of all explain to me why some random child being kidnapped justifies an alert on a national emergency system.
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Rewind and first of all explain to me why some random child being kidnapped justifies an alert on a national emergency system.
It wasn't a national alert, it was a regional alert in California. An alert that the system was specifically designed for, that's why your phone will let your block Amber alerts separately from the other alerts if you want to.
If you don't want child abduction alerts, then turn off amber alerts in your phone.
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Now go look up "Boulevard, CA" on a map and explain why 20+ million people in CA who have never heard of it or live within 300 miles of it should be woken up in the middle of the night about it.
Because one possible destination was Canada, so the suspect would have been driving through all of California? At least he would have until he saw the alert on his phone.
It wasn't the middle of the night, I got my message at 10:51 - a time when many people were still awake.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't the middle of the night, I got my message at 10:51 - a time when many people were still awake.
And they resent it at 2:30am just in case it didn't piss off EVERYONE at 10:51.
I'm not arguing the whole concept is bad, just the implementation. What the hell is wrong with a text message? Ok, if it's delayed by a few minutes big deal, the 99.9% of the people who are not on the road until the next morning will get it anyway (and technically it's actually *illegal* in CA - and possibly dangerous - for the 0.1% who are on the road - to check it while driving!) And in fact, they will possibly be MORE likely to get it since the first thing I did on my phone going bats hit crazy was unlock it, which cancelled the message window... I never even got to see what it actually said until I read a news article the next day. If it was just a text message I would have seen it on my phone when I woke up, read it and probably digested the contents a lot better (and not immediately opted out of it like many also did).
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It wasn't the middle of the night, I got my message at 10:51 - a time when many people were still awake.
And they resent it at 2:30am just in case it didn't piss off EVERYONE at 10:51.
That's apparently your carrier's problem since my Verizon and T-Mobile phones only received one message.
I'm not arguing the whole concept is bad, just the implementation. What the hell is wrong with a text message?
Because the carrier networks are not designed to send a geographically targeted SMS message, not to send millions of simultaneous SMS messages.
Ok, if it's delayed by a few minutes big deal, the 99.9% of the people who are not on the road until the next morning will get it anyway (and technically it's actually *illegal* in CA - and possibly dangerous - for the 0.1% who are on the road - to check it while driving!) And in fact, they will possibly be MORE likely to get it since the first thing I did on my phone going bats hit crazy was unlock it, which cancelled the message window... I never even got to see what it actually said until I read a news article the next day. If it was just a text message I would have seen it on my phone when I woke up, read it and probably digested the contents a lot better (and not immediately opted out of it like many also did).
My phone stores emergency alert messages, I assume that all (most?) do. So if you really cared about the contents of the message you could have read it the next day.
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Because the carrier networks are not designed to send a geographically targeted SMS message, not to send millions of simultaneous SMS messages.
That's absurd. Did you read that somewhere or just make it up? Either way, just stop and THINK about how they already send millions of simultaneous SMS messages! AT&T sent 630 BILLON text messages in 2011 to ~90M total customers in the US. That's almost 2 billion a day. I think they can handle another few million to their CA customers for an AMBER alert.
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Seriously, do you not understand that the *carrier* can do whatever they want here? They know where all of their customer's cells are all the time, they could implement this with SMS messages just as easily as the system they did end up implementing. Or a system that DIDN'T USE SMS but had the same effect (ever heard of iMessage?) I don't know, seems pretty fucking obvious to me.
But in the end, as I already said, I'm not against the idea, just the implementation. Who the hell cares which protocol is us
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Seriously, do you not understand that the *carrier* can do whatever they want here? They know where all of their customer's cells are all the time, they could implement this with SMS messages just as easily as the system they did end up implementing.
The carriers cannot deliver real-time geographically targeted messages with SMS. I've been told that by more than one carrier engineer when asked if our venue's dedicated cell tower could be used to send SMS messages to customers in the event of an emergency. He said many people ask for it, but it's not remotely possible and that if we had public safety messages to send, we'd have to work with FEMA and local public safety agencies to send an WEA alert. The towers can't autonomously send SMS messages to all
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Isn't that what they did? Implemented a system that doesn't use SMS, but has the same effect
No, not the same effect - the same effect would be for it to look like a text message, which is the goal of iMessage.
having it flash on your screen only to be discovered in the morning may make the data too stale to use.
That's my *point* - how on earth were all of the people lying in bed at midnight supposed to use it in a timely manner? They'd be better off seeing it in the morning before they left for their daily commute, etc. And probably awake and interested in it instead of tired, pissed off, and turning it off. And those people actually on the road would get a text message (or equivalent) on their
Sprint sent out the same message (Score:5, Informative)
I received the message via Sprint, despite being 400 miles from the affected area. I guess this is one way to make sure people start ignoring these messages.
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The inner party would like a word with you, we might have a job opening for you.
Re:Be vigilant citizen! (Score:4, Informative)
"Police Alert. Wanted: Hacker in city. Has committed cyberterrorism and crimes against the State. Name:
"... watch for a man running
(welcome to Fahrenheit 451)
Terrible experience so far (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't blame AT&T for terse message (Score:5, Informative)
Don't blame (only) AT&T for the terse message. The WEA system limits messages to 90 characters:
http://www.fema.gov/wireless-emergency-alerts [fema.gov]
WEA will look like a text message. The WEA message will show the type and time of the alert, any action you should take, and the agency issuing the alert. The message will be no more than 90 characters.
I can't believe the government asked for such an arbitrary and small limit on message size, so I'm assuming that the carriers said that's all they could provide, probably because a 90 character message fit into some control message they were already sending to phones.
Re:Don't blame AT&T for terse message (Score:5, Funny)
600 miles. (Score:2)
I live in San Francisco, which is 600 miles from San Diego where this alert originated from. For you east coasters that is the equivalent of an Amber Alert in Florida being sent to everybody all the way to Washington DC.
I quickly researched how to turn off Amber Alerts on my phone, I won't be bothered by them ever again. (On an iphone Settings > Notifications, scroll to very bottom where you find Government Alerts, turn off Amber Alerts, leave on Emergency Alerts since that might actually carry importa
I don't see much of a problem (Score:5, Informative)
The radius needs to be quite wide, because a person can travel a great distance in a car in a short period of time. 800 miles would not be unreasonable depending on when the missing child was reported.
Abducted children are often taken quite far away.
The fact it was an Amber alert tells you a child is involved, and the alert had all other information needed to report something, basically the plates and make/model of the car.
I guess the different times of reception are an issue but something is better than nothing, and it takes time to work through a list of many cell phone numbers to send out an alert... obviously they do need to improve on the speed of that, and try to remove duplicates.
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Re:I don't see much of a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
By that reasoning, at the time the AMBER alert was issued, it would have been justifiable to announce it to about 1/2 of the continental US.
Reasoning:
- The kidnapping occurred no later than ~8pm Sunday
- The earliest AMBER alerts (according to the summary) started around ~11pm Monday; let's be kind and say that they started around 8pm
- That gives 24 hours for the kidnapper to get somewhere
- If the kidnapper drove at 60 mph for that time (that is... moderately realistic if he planned for it), he'd be able to clear 1,440 miles
- The entire west coast up to Seattle would be in fairly easy range; Austin would be in range; Houston is barely out of range according to 1440 miles (though Google Maps estimates it at under 21 hours, and puts New Orleans at 25 hrs); Omaha is a bit out of range by 1440 miles (but in range per Google Maps's estimate of 22:40); Sheridan, WY and the Montana border are in range
And that's just counting what he'd be able to do by the time the alert was issued. Want them to plan ahead for where he might be in another 12 hours? Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta, etc. are all in fairly easy range; Tampa, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh are maybe possible.
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Exactly how many children are abducted a year (really abducted, not taken by a parent who lost custody)? How many amber alerts a year?
If they're in the same order of magnitude, I'd be okay with this. Somehow I doubt it.
I started getting similar (unstoppably) alerts for a weather advisory in the area. Not a hurricane or tornado. Just "severe rain". Do these people realize that these sorts of alerts really don't do much except remind people to let in their cats and dogs and close the windows?
anoying and useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:anoying and useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Amber alert is so-named because that's who it's for finding, little white girls who could be named Amber.
Where in holy hell do you go to get a list of Amber alerts anyway? You sure can't go to Amberalert.gov [amberalert.gov], they don't have any useful information there. You can get press releases there, but not amber alerts. Your tax dollars at rest! Oh wait, on the site index, I found a link to missingkids.com [missingkids.com]. Wait, that's just another informational page on amber alerts! If this program's goal were to find missing kids then the whole front page of amberalert.gov would be [the] current amber alert[s]. It isn't. It's to give the appearance of giving a shit. (Holy shit, the front page of missingkids.com has no missing kids on it, either.)
Amber alerts are bullshit from bullshit people.
Re:anoying and useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a European in the USA, I have noticed that there is a stronger tendency to think that "something must be done" for every issue, even if that "something" makes no sense.
Amber alters are one of those "somethings"
So the Common Good got screwed... (Score:2)
... by the ineptitude, apathy, and selfishness of a corporate contractor? News at 10:54pm!
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.
Are you KIDDING? (No pun intended... ok, a little) (Score:4, Insightful)
They used the national emergency service to inform the population about some child being kidnapped. Erh... Ok, now please tell me why I should care. Yes, yes, it's probably heart breaking for the parents, and yes, yes, if it was my child I'd certainly love to use it for that but the problem is: 99.something % of the population do not give half a fuck, let alone keep an eye out for that car. "Why the fuck should I care about some random brat I don't know about?" will probably be the reaction of nearly ALL the people who got that message.
I see a "cry wolf" scenario waiting to happen. Some day in the future, something actually important, something that actually is meaningful to most of the population, will happen and people will simply click it away after reading "AMBER AL...", thinking "fuck, that kidnapping fad's getting worse than spam texts".
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They used the national emergency service to inform the population about some child being kidnapped. Erh... Ok, now please tell me why I should care. Yes, yes, it's probably heart breaking for the parents, and yes, yes, if it was my child I'd certainly love to use it for that but the problem is: 99.something % of the population do not give half a fuck, let alone keep an eye out for that car. "Why the fuck should I care about some random brat I don't know about?" will probably be the reaction of nearly ALL the people who got that message.
I see a "cry wolf" scenario waiting to happen. Some day in the future, something actually important, something that actually is meaningful to most of the population, will happen and people will simply click it away after reading "AMBER AL...", thinking "fuck, that kidnapping fad's getting worse than spam texts".
If you don't care about Amber alerts, you can disable them in your phone while still receiving the other emergency alerts.
If you get a message that starts "AMBER AL...", then you can safely ignore it if you don't care about child abductions since Amber alerts are specifically for child abductions.
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Oh. Very convenient. Though it shoudl be opt-in.
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Oh. Very convenient. Though it shoudl be opt-in.
The whole point of opt-out systems is that they're used when few people would choose to opt-in.
This one fails dismally because they've made it so incredibly annoying that almost everyone goes to the trouble of figuring out how to disable them.
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Oh. Very convenient. Though it shoudl be opt-in.
The whole point of opt-out systems is that they're used when few people would choose to opt-in.
This one fails dismally because they've made it so incredibly annoying that almost everyone goes to the trouble of figuring out how to disable them.
You've just explained why it wasn't set up as an opt-in system -- few people would chose to opt-in. Since nearly everyone that's complaining about the message didn't realize that there was even an option to disable the alerts, non of those people would have opted in, so having them opt-out now is no worse. But most of the rest of the people that don't really care about the alerts (or don't know they can turn them off), will keep them enabled.
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If nobody would use it, what purpose does it serve? Unless I'm kinda mistaken here it's a service nobody wants. The population doesn't want it and the service providers sure as hell could do without it.
So who wants it?
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If nobody would use it, what purpose does it serve? Unless I'm kinda mistaken here it's a service nobody wants. The population doesn't want it and the service providers sure as hell could do without it.
So who wants it?
Parents of abducted children?
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Hmm... quite a small target group, no wonder no funds are being made available to push it.
Re:Are you KIDDING? (No pun intended... ok, a litt (Score:5, Funny)
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What does that change? I still cannot see the public interest.
If you said that he was an escaped child molester who kidnapped a random child on his or her way home from school, I can well see it. There is an inherent danger that he will do it again.
Motivation for a crime is a key element when assessing the threat an individual poses. Not the way the crime was committed. I'd be more wary of a hitman who cleanly killed his mark with a single headshot than of a husband who tortured his cheating wife to death b
Worse than useless - here's how to disable them. (Score:4, Informative)
On iOS: settings -> notifications -> Government Alerts down at the bottom. You can turn off just Amber alerts.
On Android: open the Android messaging /application/, then menu -> settings -> emergency alerts -> disable Amber alerts.
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On iOS: settings -> notifications -> Government Alerts down at the bottom. You can turn off just Amber alerts.
Thank you - I haven't had to deal with these phone alerts yet so I hadn't noticed this setting; but now I've disabled them preemptively.
I don't know about other areas of the US, but around here (Puget Sound region, Washington state) we've got all sorts of computer-controlled signage on our major freeways. For the past couple years these have included Amber Alert notices when those occur. There's no real benefit to having them also appear on my phone - if I'm not in my car, I'm not likely to notice random au
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In the Baltimore/DC area they also have "Silver Alerts": dementia patient got out, can someone catch him for us? Thankfully they're just on the freeway signs (which normally tell other helpful information like "don't drive drunk" and "YAY SAFETY WOOO". Meanwhile people drive like derps on the Beltway anyway.
AT&T (Score:2)
AT&T - for all that it's the same name as the precursor of the inventor of the telephone system and many innovative systems, is sadly not even a pale ghost of it's former glory. What they are is group of clue avoiding MBAs cum lawyers running a reconstituted monopoly to maximize shareholder profits and piss off customers. They are worse than that barking dog that just won't SHUT UP, they are a drag on innovation, competition, and customer service. While they do a great job of "servicing" their customers
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Amber alert in my state (Score:3)
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Isn't an Amber alert specifically something you don't wake people up for? The whole point is to make use of the citizenry as a distributed search system. People who are sleeping are pretty bad at looking out for missing kids.
You wake people up for things like tsunamis, nuclear war, and radiological attacks. That's about all I can think of.
Haven't ready any comments but... (Score:2)
240 miles away is perfectly reasonable for someone suspected to be on the run. [Insert The Fugitive quotes here.] 240 miles at an average speed of 50mph is under 5 hours. Hell, in 10 hours, they can be in New Mexico at a very leisurely pace.
As for the content of the alert, it would be nice if there was more info but what more do you need than "Amber Alert" and the vehicle description? The cops don't want you to take them down. They want you to report the location of the vehicle if you see it. That doe
This is pure security theater (Score:4, Insightful)
For starters, the implementation is something I'd expect from a drunk college sophomore who's been pulling C grades in CS courses. It's miserable. The most significant effects it's had have been to alarm, confuse, annoy and distract people -- some of whom were driving. Great idea, that last one: cause their cell phone to make a noise they've heard before so that it increases the probability they'll pick it up and look at it.
Second, the lack of detail is outrageously stupid. A recipient of this message who just happened to see such a vehicle might approach it because there's nothing in it warning them not to.
Third, sending it 24 hours later is idiotic. Any competent murdered would be in a different vehicle by then. (Once again, police assume that everyone is as stupid as they are. Most people aren't.)
Fourth, sending it multiple times ensures that many people will disable it. Way to go, alleged public safety officials.
Finally, the entire concept behind this is insane. Untrained civilians are poor observers (as anyone who's studied trial witness dynamics for even an hour knows). How many blue cars got reported because they might be Nissan Versas? (I have no idea what one of those looks like; hell, I didn't even know there was such a model.) How much manpower got diverted to deal with all those false reports instead of being used to pursue leads based on hard evidence?
This is just another case of lazy, sloppy, incompetent police work -- like we saw in Boston when they closed down the entire city and rolled armored vehicles through the streets to catch one frightened teenager and STILL couldn't manage to pull it off. It seems that the pigs in California only know how to drink coffee and shoot helpless unarmed civilians in the back -- something challenging, like tracking down a murderer, is far beyond their pitifully feeble minds.
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We've had a few of these alerts in the Ohio area and people here pretty much ignore them now. They go off in a conference room, everyone knows what it is and they just keep on doing what they were before. Most don't even read them. "Oh, another Amber alert"
It's not that people "don't care". It's that the alert isn't going to amount to anything to someone sitting on a conference or the office. I certainly don't remember what kind of car the alert mentions on my drive home let alone a license plate numbe
Not surprising.. (Score:2)
Plus, it is a text message and character limited, so it is hard to put detail in. Links would be nice, but they take space, and lets face it, not all phones can follow links, even with smartphone penetration where it is.
Ultimately I turned th
Meh. Amber Alerts are largely useless anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Amber Alert seems like a really good idea, until you look at it closely. The root problem is false positives. Not false reports of sightings of abducted children, those can be weeded through pretty effectively. False Amber Alerts.
The basic concept behind the system is that since many abducted children are killed in the first three hours, it's necessary to get the alert out there fast. But, it's also really important that there not be a flood of Amber alerts issued about kids who just wandered off to a friend's house or something, so the process of verifying that a particular case meets all of the criteria for issuing an alert pretty much guarantees that by the time the alert is issued it's too late for kids who were victims of the most frightening form of child abduction, the sort for which the alert system was created.
Research backs this logic up. Multiple studies have been done, and none have demonstrated that Amber alerts do much at all that's useful. They're most effective at finding family abduction cases, but those almost never harm the kids and almost always get resolved anyway, without the alert.
All of the actual research papers I can find are paywalled, but here's a Boston Globe article [boston.com] that discusses the results of one of the earliest studies. Several more have reaffirmed and even strengthened the findings of the first.
So, it really doesn't matter much if the alert delivery system is broken. The alert issuance system is fundamentally and likely irreparably flawed.
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.
Re:Seriously? Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
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I got the message six times. I was in a bar and had already seen the keno machines go nuts displaying it. Unless the car drove through the room, there wasn't a damned thing I could do to catch someone a few hundred miles away. End result is that I disabled Amber alerts on my phone.
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The custodial parent isn't always the more fit, they might just have better lawyers, 'specially abusive, wealthy fathers/husbands.
Rely on Slashdot to vote this up to +5.
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Sure, but they usually can't afford the better lawyer, although there is some courtroom bias in their favor.
Look at the overall numbers, and there are more abusive fathers (and boyfriends of mothers) than mothers.
Re:Seriously? Yes! (Score:4, Insightful)
Go through the cases individually, and you'll find it's a lot more equal than you'd like to admit. When cops get called out, they're far more likely to assume the male is the aggressor - and in fact, they will most likely behave in a dominant fashion toward the male, and certainly behave in a sympathetic fashion toward a whimpering female in a given situation. That behaviour causes things to get worse. I've heard of a man being arrested after the female stabbed him in the arm. I've seen men arrested after women assaulted them. I've lived through it with an ex- who was both abusive and aggressive, and would go crying to any male around.
Then there was my mother, who beat herself up and called the police. They prosecuted my father for it, too. That'll go in your statistics in spite of it being a complete lie.
For the record, that didn't happen just the once, either. It happened at least twice, and probably a lot more often than that. Remember: I lived through it. This is first hand.
(I also lived through it when my mother tried to stab me with a kitchen knife, after through dinner plates at me, then started screaming that I was going to assault her. She had a knife, I was barefoot, and surrounded by broken crockery and glass: she was simply putting on a scene for whoever was listening.)
In much the same way that insurance companies ask if you've had any alcohol within the 24 hours preceding a car accident, the statistics you cite simply reflect social bias. Serial killers are usually intelligent white males, so when someone starts researching a serial killer the model begins with "Assuming a white male, intelligent..." If something doesn't fit that profile, it's far more likely to be dropped, and thus not represented in the statistics.
Social bias has it that women are weaker, and need defended from the evil bad mean big bully males, who beat them up. (Social bias completely forgets that women have faster reflexes, and the strength difference between men and women isn't as great as most believe it is, making a fight more of an even match.) Women are dainty and girly and tiday, not aggressive and non-violent, while mean eat steak and drink beer, drive cars fast, pick fights, and shout a lot. Women don't go and get in fights, but guys do.
This is all bullshit. Time to update your profile of humanity.
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You don't think a uselesss AMBER alert should be bitched about? Even the people who take these things seriously are going to lose interest when they overly broad.
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*turns over*
Wake me when the alert goes black.
Black?
Yeah, when the power's out so we don't get any colorful alerts anymore.
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We have a similar system in the Netherlands.
I subscribed to it very early on but unsubscribed after very few relevant messages and more often not getting messages that would have been relevant to my location.
Atleast the messages I got were understandable.
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
The message was completely irrelevant for those of us 600+ miles away. I don't even own a car, I live in an urban area. I literally have NO idea what a Nissan Versa looks like. Literally NONE. I NEVER look at license plates on vehicles while I'm walking. NEVER.
These messages have ZERO relevance. Send me a pic of the kids or the kidnapper. I don't give a shit about the fucking make/model of a car that is 600 miles away (the distance from Washington DC to Florida btw).
I can only imagine what people in the far Northern side of the state in Shasta or Humboldt thought of it all. 900 miles away something happened and they are also getting this message.
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The number has got to be non-zero.
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If only I had mod points. That's an insightful comment if ever I heard one.
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."
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I'd just send a short and simple "Skynet activated".
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Someone already hacked the Emergency network in Montana last year to make it report that there were zombies.
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Well, with this system, you'll probably get it like the Germans did: A few years too late to be an eye opener.
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Yes and no. There are good reasons for enforced standards, but they have to be enforced well or they will be ignored.
I'm in the security business. And I guess I'm preaching the choir when I say that IT security is sub par in most companies. For the same reason this emergency broadcasting system is FUBAR: Costs money, doesn't make money. Same with security. Costs money, nobody wants to pay for it.
So if there is NO regulation, no minimum standard requirements, no fines for negligence, companies will simply ig
Re:Not just AT&T (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people knew that it would even have been an option? If it weren't for this and the previous NYC story, I wouldn't have known about it.
(My phone doesn't support it I'm pretty sure.)
If a firetruck suddenly appeared out of thin air, it may well do so.
It's not just the loudness it sounds like (having never heard such an alert) but the suddenness and unfamiliarity.
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I was around a group of people who all looked at their phone, recognized it, acknowledged it and went about their evening. Why people are even complaining, is beyond me. There's nothing wrong with what went out. It was a good test and I expected to see more in the future. The alert is a non-story (the kidnapping is a story).