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Amber Alert: Californians confused, angry and startled
- BgSpnnrs 13y agoThat seems like an incredibly odd system to be deployed, and to be used for that particular incident at that time.
- dmix 13y agoBut think of the children.
- numo16 13y agoIt also exists for severe weather situations. Got a tornado warning alert on my phone in June in my area advising to take shelter (had 5 tornadoes touch down in the area that night). I thought it was pretty cool, since I don't watch TV and didn't think to check the weather.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoPeople are actually angry over this? If you are sleeping put your phone on silent or do not disturb. If you aren't how inconvenient is one text message?
- nickmain 13y agoIt wasn't a normal "ding!" text message - it was sirens and all-hell-breaking-loose.
- hitsurume 13y agoYea, me and my roommate were completely confused to why our phones went off. Not only that once you close the alert you can't find ANY history of it or the message that was displayed. Needs to be a better system for this.
- rallison 13y agoAt least on Android, you can go to Messaging, open the bottom right menu, then tap "Cell broadcasts."
- nexox 13y agoYep, these kept going off on the (crowded) train this morning, and I thought they were some sort of fire alarm. It didn't help that everyone assumed the noise was not coming from their phone (because they'd never heard it before or found a configuration page for it,) so they mostly just let it go off while looking around for the source. The whole ride was more than a bit surreal.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoThat sounds intense. Maybe this was one mass psychological experiment.
- jdcarter 13y agoI have my iPhone set to do-not-disturb, yet a couple months ago in Colorado I received an Amber Alert, and it made plenty of noise regardless of my settings. 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.
- rco8786 13y agoAngry is pretty strong. But I am one of the ones this happened to and let me tell you, it was not pleasant. The alert was more like "oh shit take cover in a bomb shelter" than "hey, be on the lookout for this". Not to mention that after the initial alarm that gave practically no information the whole thing disappeared. If you're gonna send out an alert as disturbing as that one, at least include some relevant information.
- j_baker 13y agoI want emergency notifications to wake me up. When the message came out, my phone made the exact same noise you hear for emergency broadcasts. I expected my phone to give me a message regarding a storm or a coming earthquake, but I instead got a pointless amber alert. This is a great way to destroy the credibility of our emergency alert system.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago>> "but I instead got a pointless amber alert" 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.).
- baddox 13y agoIf you're somewhere where a loud notification will irritate you, it's highly unlikely that you will be in a position to spot a vehicle that might be carrying an abducted child.
- betterunix 13y agoA loud notification would irritate me if I were driving (the best position to spot a vehicle), and might even cause an accident.
- jjindev 13y agoThis was full on alarm and blinking lights on my old Android Droid X. About 30x the sound volume of a text message. 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.
- rtkwe 13y agoThese _emergency_ notifications like alarm clocks don't respect silent or do not disturb. It's also that most people haven't experienced it before which adds to the annoyance of being woken up in the middle of the night by the jarring noise. It's really not surprising that people aren't thrilled about it.
- nickmain 13y agoI was asleep when it went off and my immediate thought was that my phone had some sort of LiOn-battery-about-to-explode warning system. It freaked me out.
- cbabraham 13y agotl;dr An amber alert went out to people's phones, here are 5 tweets about it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- GauntletWizard 13y agoThe problem seems to be a misunderstanding of scale - This system was designed for natural disasters, nuclear wars, and large-scale public address. Mass dissemination of mundane information is quite frankly unwarranted; Even if everyone should receive this alert, they should simply get a buzz and notification, not a full warning and reading of text.
- saurik 13y agoWhich system are you talking about? The AMBER (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, named after a specific child abduction case that I remember watching the news reports of with my parents while in high school) Alert system is specificaly designed for child abduction. 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.
- jlgreco 13y agoI think he means the regional emergency message system thing on cellphones. That system(s ?) is currently meant to be used by several things (most commonly dangerous weather I think. I recall getting "flash flood" warnings with it before in Philly.), and was presumably not initially created for AMBER Alerts. Stuff this sort of system would really be useful for is things like Tsunami warnings. I assume it is use for that where applicable.
- baddox 13y agoIf that's what he means, he's wrong. At least on iPhones, there is a specific setting for AMBER Alerts, separate from Emergency Alerts.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- avolcano 13y agoThe idea of getting more eyes on Amber Alerts is a fundamentally good one, I think we can all agree on that. 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.
- betterunix 13y ago"The idea of getting more eyes on Amber Alerts is a fundamentally good one, I think we can all agree on that." 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/abducted/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/... http://www.psmag.com/culture/amber-alerts-largely-ineffective-study-shows-4792/ 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.
- baddox 13y agoFYI, for years there have been electronic billboard displays on highways that will display AMBER alerts.
- malandrew 13y agoYesterday, thousands of people probably disabled the alerts on their phone. Classic boy who cried wolf problem. Now these people may not get alerts for legitimate warnings like floods, Tsunamis, war, etc. 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.
- smacktoward 13y ago
- pgrote 13y agoThis is what it sounds like. I had no idea my phone make that sound. lol http://youtu.be/y2tj4vz8qX0?t=55s http://youtu.be/y2tj4vz8qX0?t=55s
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mchusma 13y agoI got this alert last night, woke me any my wife up and we were irritated and confused. The level of the alert was vastly disproportionate to the relevancy and severity of the issue. It was a very poor implementation of a reasonable idea.
- sk5t 13y agoAbout a week ago my phone went bonkers with a weather alert, warning of potential flash floods. I would say this was roughly as distracting as an air raid siren... it wasn't raining and to my knowledge no flash floods actually came to visit destruction upon the Philadelphia region that day. 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?
- numo16 13y ago> It seems absurd that there's no setting in iOS to disable this nonsense without calling up the phone company There is: Settings > Notifications > Government Alerts (at the bottom)
- sk5t 13y agoCool, thanks for the pointer. I'd never scrolled past the start of the enormous list of notification center apps.
- volker48 13y agoYeah it woke me up at 2 AM despite my do not disturb being set during that time.
- mitchty 13y agoDon't you want this to alert you for things like floods/earthquakes/etc even with do not disturb? I don't think do not disturb means ignore alerts about weather or other life threatening (to you at least) alerts.
- dubfan 13y agoI'd love a system that could warn me of earthquakes.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
- speeder 13y agoIf a alert sounded like that in Brazil, people would instantly panic and think we are under attack by US. Using a alert like that for something trivial is VERY, VERY, VERY stupid. It should be just a normal SMS...
- rco8786 13y agoMy girlfriend got this last night. Scared the shit out of us with a bunch of beeping and buzzing. Then just went away as soon as we looked at it...we still don't know what the actual alert was for.
- LoganCale 13y agoWhile I understand why they made this system on by default and opt-out, I feel like that's unethical and should have been opt-in. Adding such things to people's phones without their permission is a bad action done with good intentions. Making it impossible to disable Presidential alerts is even worse.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gpvos 13y agoAs long as they tell you about it when you buy the phone, and there's an easy way to opt out, I don't see the problem. And after some time, people will just know that it is turned on by default on new phones.
- LoganCale 13y agoThey activated it suddenly in the past couple months on most existing phones without asking, under Congressional orders. And there is no way to opt out of Presidential alerts.
- gpvos 13y agoOK, that's not good. The system they are introducing here, NL-Alert (which still has some problems), is purely opt-in. And only for things that would make the air sirens go off. I wonder what kind of alert a Presidential alert could be.
- saurik 13y ago> Most newer phones are automatically set up to receive the alerts -- which look like text messages but are free -- meaning customers must contact their cell service provider to opt out of the program. 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.)
- smacktoward 13y agoThis is true in Android as well, at least on my Galaxy S III running Android 4.1.2. The preference setting on my device is in Messaging > Settings > Emergency Alerts.
- com2kid 13y agoThe way Android does Amber Alerts, which IIRC I have been getting for at least 2 years now, seems much more agreeable. That said I am surprised this just came up. I get an Amber Alert on my phone every couple of months or so. 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?)
- donretag 13y agoWas this Amber Alert geo-targetted? I never even heard of Boulevard, CA, which is 500 miles away from my home.
- United857 13y agoIf the goal of the iPhone Amber Alert feature was to wake people up, induce panic, then get them to turn alerts off...it's working. A good example of the law of unintended consequences.
- antiterra 13y agoI admit to not knowing how effective Amber Alerts are. Perhaps the cell phone alerts are overkill and should be opt-in. However, are the commenters here really claiming the abduction of two children after their mother was slain to be 'mundane' or 'trivial?'
- betterunix 13y agohttp://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/?page=full http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/...
- antiterra 13y agoI already admitted the possibility that Amber Alerts themselves may be overkill and ineffective, so that doesn't really respond to my comment about 'trivial' and 'mundane' descriptors being applied to the actual abduction.
- dromidas 13y agoUm... I received that this morning but my phone was on silent so I didn't hear a damn thing. I did see it on my phone when I looked at it, but no big deal. Android was nice enough to say 'You just received an emergency alert. Do you want to continue receiving these? Yes/No'.
- jongraehl 13y agoDiscussion last night ("Just got an Amber Alert ..."): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6165026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6165026 had predominantly "think of the children, how can you complain about your minor inconvenience" prevailing tone. 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 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.