Amber Alert: Californians confused, angry and startled
latimes.com
latimes.com
I actually am not certain if there is a similar large-scale system for "natural disasters [or] nuclear wars". In Santa Barbara (a specific county) we have a way to sign up for that kind of alert run by the "County Office of Emergency Management", but AMBER operates over a much larger arena. Sure, war might sound important, but think of the children!
> The AMBER Alert™ Program is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases. The goal of an AMBER Alert is to instantly galvanize the entire community to assist in the search for and the safe recovery of the child.
Stuff this sort of system would really be useful for is things like Tsunami warnings. I assume it is use for that where applicable.
I still take issue with the implication my the original comment that it is being misused for this purpose due to some "misunderstanding of scale": people demanded tons of things after Amber, and they got them. Even the sex offender registry was caused as a reaction to Amber (with initial designs for it being parts of bills named after her). The general "zeitgeist" considers "think of the children" much more important than war.
So, this new EAS was being conceived of only a couple years before AMBER, was only really documented a few years ago, and had an implementation deadline of last year. All the FCC's documents on it currently list "such as AMBER Alerts" as either a primary use or an example. The protocol was even modified in 2002 to add an AMBER-specific event code (but if not implemented they use "civil emergency".
> What alerts will WEA deliver?
> Alerts from WEA cover only critical emergency situations. Consumers will receive only three types of alerts:
> Alerts issued by the President > Alerts involving imminent threats to safety or life > Amber Alerts
> Participating carriers may allow subscribers to block all but Presidential alerts.
Does iOS have some ridiculous implementation? Because for Android and SMS users to get horribly inconvenienced by the sound of a text message at 10PM with information about a child abduction sounds quite insensitive. At best.
I think a far superior option to these kinds of active, "HEY LOOK AT ME" alerts would be something that could fit in passively but draw just as much viewership, and not just on phones.
Imagine if, when an Amber Alert was out in your area, the alert showed up in your Twitter and Facebook feeds, your phone's lock screen, and maybe even above your email inbox. Sure, some people would probably mentally (or actually) filter these out just like they filter out ads, but it's preferable to everyone getting annoyed by the alerts and turning them off entirely.
Can we? It is not clear that the Amber Alert system is an effective way to find kidnapped children, and it may actually cause more harm than good.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/...
http://www.psmag.com/culture/amber-alerts-largely-ineffectiv...
Like most attempts to protect our children from strangers, the Amber Alert system was a knee-jerk reaction to a shocking but exceedingly rare crime.
This system should also be far more targeted. Sending a blanket message to the whole state is absurd. They should selectively send it to people based on GPS location. Who knows where that kid was abducted, but I'm certain that people on the other side of the state didn't need to know about it.
I would imagine that this particular alert system has to deal with this pressure more than most. It's a system that can send an alert to every pocket and purse in the country, complete with audible and visual notification of its arrival. Anyone who has something they want to alert the public about would love to have their alerts go out to that network. But if they all could, it would just train people to ignore the buzzing and flashing -- which could lead to them missing an alert that is genuinely important, such as a dangerous weather event or potential mass-casualty threat in their area.
Making it impossible to disable Presidential alerts is even worse.
I wonder what kind of alert a Presidential alert could be.
I wonder what makes this thread so different. More people are focused on the costs as well as the benefits (I agree that the costs are significant). If it's not just a random difference in the initial seeding of comments, I'd have to guess that it's the authority of latimes.com talking about how (many!) Californians are startled etc. Now this is a safe, approved line of thought.
This calls into suspicion the independence of the typical HN comment. If you're just posting to be seen on the prevailing side, why comment at all? The less deeply you think before talking, the more you're swayed by subtle priming and attention-focusing trivia.
Also interesting, a years-ago attempt to shame Apple into enabling Amber alerts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=509741
It sounds like a less intrusive amber-alert UI (a regular text, for example) would be accepted by most, although I'm sure if you tally up the attention spent vs. the increased odds of catching a criminal vs. increased harassment of near-matches, it's not a clear win.
A good example of the law of unintended consequences.
FWIW, on the iPhone, AMBER is a switch under notifications; you don't have to contact anyone to turn it off. (The alerts also come with a "Settings" button to help users turn them off if the notification was unwelcome.)
It seems absurd that there's no setting in iOS to disable this nonsense without calling up the phone company. Can we at least have a graduated system of alert terrifyingness out of which to opt?
There is: Settings > Notifications > Government Alerts (at the bottom)
A friend of mine experienced a similar thing before my phone had the capability. His phone went crazy with a "blizzard warning", even though there were no storms around, and I don't believe the NWS has ever issued a blizzard warning for this area.
Also on Verizon iPhone. Received Tornado warning alert via iPhone Emergency Alert night we had 5 tornadoes...it was awesome!
Settings > Notifications > down at the bottom there's a Government Alerts section, with AMBER Alerts and Emergency Alerts toggles.
At least, there is with AT&T, because I recall getting a notification saying my phone's software was updated to be complient with phone company requirements, which added the two toggles.
Is this a regional based thing where it was just enabled in California so for whatever reason something that has been going on for awhile now finally hit the national news? Or is this alert format new to iOS? Basically, why haven't we heard about people in other cities complaining? (Or were they just ignored?)
Using a alert like that for something trivial is VERY, VERY, VERY stupid.
It should be just a normal SMS...
The frustrating part is the lack of contextual info in the alert message. Mine said something about a car and its color, but nothing about the abducted child, area where he/she went missing from, etc.. It simply wasn't enough info to be useful to anyone.
If you're gonna send out an alert as disturbing as that one, at least include some relevant information.
This is a great way to destroy the credibility of our emergency alert system.
That sounds like the real issue here then. I'm sure there are others like you who found it useless but quite a lot of people who think it's a great idea. They need to offer a few on/of switches in the settings for types of alert (weather, terrorism, amber alert etc.).
It only woke me up, but I wondered how smart they were. I mean, someone driving might have been shocked into an accident. The cost-benefit of a really loud system might be more cost.