
Amber Alert: Californians confused, angry and startled - shill
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-amber-alert-california-angry-20130806,0,2233972.story
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GauntletWizard
The 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
Which 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
I 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
If that's what he means, he's wrong. At least on iPhones, there is a specific
setting for AMBER Alerts, separate from Emergency Alerts.

~~~
jlgreco
I strongly suspect the same systems are used to deliver all alert types, and
the phone can just select which type of message from that single system to
display. This probably depends on the carrier, but I don't see any good reason
to implement them separately.

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mchusma
I 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.

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avolcano
The 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
"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/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/?page=full)

[http://www.psmag.com/culture/amber-alerts-largely-
ineffectiv...](http://www.psmag.com/culture/amber-alerts-largely-ineffective-
study-shows-4792/)

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.

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BgSpnnrs
That seems like an incredibly odd system to be deployed, and to be used for
that particular incident at that time.

~~~
dmix
But think of the children.

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LoganCale
While 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.

~~~
gpvos
As 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
They 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
OK, 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.

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jongraehl
Discussion 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.

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United857
If 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.

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saurik
> 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
This 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.

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sk5t
About 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
> 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
Cool, thanks for the pointer. I'd never scrolled past the start of the
enormous list of notification center apps.

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com2kid
The 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?)

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pgrote
This 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)

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nickmain
I 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.

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donretag
Was this Amber Alert geo-targetted? I never even heard of Boulevard, CA, which
is 500 miles away from my home.

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dromidas
Um... 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'.

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antiterra
I 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
[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/?page=full)

~~~
antiterra
I 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.

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rco8786
My 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.

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speeder
If 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...

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k-mcgrady
People 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
It wasn't a normal "ding!" text message - it was sirens and all-hell-breaking-
loose.

~~~
nexox
Yep, 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
That sounds intense. Maybe this was one mass psychological experiment.

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cbabraham
tl;dr An amber alert went out to people's phones, here are 5 tweets about it.

