I think it's three times so far that I've removed myself from a gov't emergency alert service, due to poor use of it.
Once I was awaked by an ungodly alarm noise that I didn't know my smartphone could make, and which should only be used for something apocalyptic like a tsunami warning (e.g., you have 3 minutes to get to the top of the hill, or you will probably die). Some kind of Amber Alert, to the greater metro area of millions of people. So I disabled it.
And, on a local emergency alert thing, someone used it to announce a city street cleaning or routine snow removal. I then went some trouble to opt-out of the alerts, more than it took to opt-in, like they wanted me to waive liability.
(Speaking of street cleaning, if only I could get the city to stop routinely driving a truck up and down the street in early morning, blaring numerous times over loudspeakers that there's a street cleaning sometime in the next couple hours, and any cars should be moved before they are towed. Rolling through the streets, making stern announcements on loudspeakers, to be heard inside homes, is what you do to announce that you have invaded the city with tanks, and anyone caught outside will be shot. Not to repeatedly wake up a neighborhood of sleep-deprived students and researchers and hospital workers, who mostly don't even own cars.)
I'd think we're incapable of handling any real emergency, except I spent awhile listening in on local emergency services radio (police, fire, ambulance), and it's really impressive how on the ball in an emergency some can be. I wish some others -- who don't seem to have that training, experience, and discipline -- wouldn't grab the emergency alerts ball, and drop it.
I know that presidential alarms can’t be blocked, but I have yet to find if local “real” alerts can be blocked? The entire state of Texas was awoken recently because of something that happened in a locality that didn’t really affect anyone outside of it.
I don’t need to know a cop is hurt 8 hours from me and the chances the perp would come into my life are bordering on infinitely small. What it can do is lead to lots of deaths because people turn off all emergency alarms because now they don’t trust the government to be decisive in sending out an alert that should have been local. Texas government definitely has a lot of joke elements to it. Evidently you can’t turn off these “Blue Alerts” unless you turn off all alerts. There has been nothing from the government about why this is allowed, only just radio silence, and they wonder why people have an axe to grind.
I had to disable these alerts on my devices after some similar spurious experiences. It's too bad there was no way to simply change the alert sound or volume because I might have done that.
Sounds like its main purpose is propaganda. I have seen similar acts of government bullshit like local tourism ads which just so happen to be structured like campaign ads for incumbents saying how awesome of a job they are doing.
if they can send you mail about parking tickets, the tech is there to text just the parked car owners, after driving up and down to get the number plates surely? Id be happy to develop it for them…
> Speaking of street cleaning, if only I could get the city to stop [waking people up for something you could do silently with a sign]
Assuming you are in fact talking about Cambridge, MA, good luck with that. I've written to the city repeatedly over the past 10 or 12 years with no result except getting nonconsensually added to a mailing list about noise from airplanes, which I don't care about.
It’s loud enough you hear earlier repetitions as a vague buzz in the distance, then crescendoing to a blare on your block, then receding with agonizing slowness like some hellish echo. And the whole time you thinking, awake now and very annoyed, “I don’t even own a car.”
Once I was awaked by an ungodly alarm noise that I didn't know my smartphone could make, and which should only be used for something apocalyptic like a tsunami warning (e.g., you have 3 minutes to get to the top of the hill, or you will probably die). Some kind of Amber Alert, to the greater metro area of millions of people. So I disabled it.
And, on a local emergency alert thing, someone used it to announce a city street cleaning or routine snow removal. I then went some trouble to opt-out of the alerts, more than it took to opt-in, like they wanted me to waive liability.
(Speaking of street cleaning, if only I could get the city to stop routinely driving a truck up and down the street in early morning, blaring numerous times over loudspeakers that there's a street cleaning sometime in the next couple hours, and any cars should be moved before they are towed. Rolling through the streets, making stern announcements on loudspeakers, to be heard inside homes, is what you do to announce that you have invaded the city with tanks, and anyone caught outside will be shot. Not to repeatedly wake up a neighborhood of sleep-deprived students and researchers and hospital workers, who mostly don't even own cars.)
I'd think we're incapable of handling any real emergency, except I spent awhile listening in on local emergency services radio (police, fire, ambulance), and it's really impressive how on the ball in an emergency some can be. I wish some others -- who don't seem to have that training, experience, and discipline -- wouldn't grab the emergency alerts ball, and drop it.