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Comment by Thlom | Hacker News Reader

We had a national test in Norway that mostly worked OK a few months ago. But then they wanted to use it in a real emergency in early August(some specific areas were about to be flooded due to heavy rain) and that didn’t work as well. First of all cell phones way out of the flood area were getting emergency messages, some of these got several messages in different languages and different wording over several days. It was very strange. I’m way out of the flood area and got 4 messages during 25 hours. But my wife got 0. We have the same phone and same provider. A long way to say that this system should be tested in a “production” setting as well.

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Well we did recently have a pretty spectacular failure of the emergency alert system in Hawaii.

Bureaucratic failure though

Test messages are spam.

After the pandemic, I think we’re quite a number to not trust the public services (either act too late, or try to revive the panic when it’s over). When I received the alert test messages, which, I remind, will not only be used to amplify terrorism scare but also for crowd management during flood, tell you to avoid protests, and then to tell us that we should urgently take the vaccine…

No thanks. Even one test message that was irrelevant to me was enough to preemptively block all scare levels them at the OS level (which is possible, at least in iOS in France).

It's the "boy who cried wolf" problem - test messages should begin with TEST TEST TEST and there should be an option to filter out test messages.

I blocked all emergency alerts until they finally gave you the ability to block just amber alerts.

Not just the word TEST but also flag it as a test. There is a field that differentiates test messages from real ones. Some cell phones have the option to enable/disable the test broadcasts. buried in the menus under emergency broadcasts

In this case however I believe they want everyone to receive it regardless of being a test. I believe S. Korea also just did this test including locations of nearby bunkers. The US may not have that many accessible bunkers.

The US has some bunkers but unless you are some high government official or just work at the bunker, you're not getting in. Some people have their own bunkers but it's incredibly rare. Many people that live in tornado-prone areas have tornado shelters. In many parts of the US, below-grade basements are not a thing. Half of my basement is below ground but unfortunately the part that isn't, faces nearby Washington DC making it pretty useless for that.

iOS already allows you to filter out test alerts and amber alerts, while still getting (for instance) tornado warnings.

The tornado warnings have gotten really annoying; it used to be they'd only give you a warning when there was a real chance (so 50% of the time you got a warning, a tornado touched down somewhere) - now it feels like anytime there's a thunderstorm, you get the alert.

> I blocked all emergency alerts until they finally gave you the ability to block just amber alerts.

Likewise. I still have a tendency to forget whenever I reset my phone or get a new one until inevitably the next amber alert will be at 3:30 AM on a night that I really need every minute of sleep.

There is no logic to amber alerts being delivered as screaming alarms, and everyone responsible for that behavior being the default should never be allowed to make meaningful decisions again. Normal notifications that respect silent and DND settings would be perfectly fine.

Did you receive those emergency texts (the topics you listed) or merely speculating what they are used for?

Why wouldn’t they be sent, after the system is in place? Think of the children that can be harmed by a deadly virus. Of course it’s a case of emergency to get everyone vaccinated. Have you ever seen the government be reasonable with a public resource?

I would think they wouldn’t just utilize the system so broadly or maliciously as you speculated. I have seen the government be reasonable with a public resource at least in US. Are there times when it is incorrectly used? Yes, but it is used far more reasonably than not.

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