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Pre-Dawn Wireless Emergency Alert Wakes Up NYC
New submitter SkiTee94 writes "Many people, perhaps millions, in and around NYC were loudly awoken shortly before 4am this morning by an activation of the Wireless Emergency Alert system. As the New York Times is reporting, the alert was related to an ongoing search for a missing child. Given that the alert asked people to look out for a 'Tan Lexus ES300' with NY Plate 'GEX1377,' many New Yorkers are questioning the logic of waking up the whole city to ask them to look for a car. Normally such alerts are reserved for road-side signs. While emergency authorities have yet to give a precise reason for why the decision was made to wake up the city, many have taken the step of deactivating these alerts to avoid future jolting mid-slumber alarms (likely not the intended result of last night's exercise)."
The actual alert was even more cryptic due to texting truncation
"LIC/GEX1377 NY 1995 Tan Lexis"
Kind of a pre-dawn WTF. Told my wife it was my boss asking for directions to the strip club. Did NOT get a free massage.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
That's what we really want to know.
You would think in a city with thousands of cameras and surveillance assets, they could find a single car. It's not like the car could get very far, it's New York!
sudo make me a sandwich
I can barely keep track of the cars around me in some traffic patterns, much less take the time to read each license plate. And seriously, a tan Lexus? Here in Texas, it's inevitably "white Ford Explorer" or "Blue black Chevy pickup" or some other horribly common vehicle. Maybe if kidnappers start driving more distinct cars, like an old VW painted like a ladybug or something, I'll be a little more alert to it.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
While emergency authorities have yet to give a precise reason for why the decision was made to wake up the city, many have taken the step of deactivating these alerts to avoid future jolting mid-slumber alarms (likely not the indented result of last night's exercise).
I don't live in NYC, but my phone settings were recently updated by AT&T to display Amber Alerts and weather alerts. The very first moment one of these went off while I was driving, I decided to shut it off forever as a menace. After all, I noticed that I wasn't the only driver wobbling a little in their lane right after it happened.
If I was woken in the early morning by one of these things, I just hope I'd have the presence of mind not to throw the damned thing out a window!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Last week there was an Amber Alert in the Valley of the Sun. A bit later, I thought that such a system was too easy to abuse...imagine an Amber Alert that says it's for a kidnapped child but actually happens to be for a political dissident like Snowden...and that's when I turned off the Amber Alerts.
They've also been excessively over-zealous about thunderstorm alerts, but I'm not quite yet ready to turn those off. But if they don't clean up their act fast, I will.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
What kind of alert system has device access permissions that let it be loud enough to wake everyone up? When I get Amber alerts, it's just a text message with a momentary vibrate.
Wolf Wolf! Wolf!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The same thing happened in the Boston area within a week of the alert system going live; we got two alerts in 48 hours, one at about 11 PM and the other at 2 AM; the whole Boston area got jolted awake by their phones shreiking at full volume.
Next day, everyone and their brother was scrambling to figure out how to TURN OFF THE $($(#( alerts.
Net result is that we've lost a possibly-useful resource. What should have happened is that there should be an "I'm mobile" test in the chain; Amber alerts should shriek at you only if you're actively moving right then.
Well, they know it works and are now ready for the Zombpocalypse!
which will be reported on /. the day after it starts
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
or is there a way to add these to a block list?
Let me get this straight? People are bitching because an alert for a missing child woke them up? So a child's life is less important to you then a few minutes of missing sleep?
Wow. That certainly puts some peoples priorities in place.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Not only was it stupid to send this alert to everyone's phones, it was yet another example of Amber Alert scope creep.
Amber Alerts are meant to be restricted to cases where "the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death."
This was just another case of a non-custodial parent running off with the kid. The child was not in any imminent danger. She lost custody because of violence in her home (none of which was ever directed at the child).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Link link is not working unless you are registred (and paid) to that newspaper. Please stop linking such articles that are impossible to read (what's the point?!)
likely not the indented result of last night's exercise
Really? People are getting all worked up over paragraph formatting when there's an emergency going on?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Even by the standards of Crappy Slashdot Typos, that's a Crappy Slashdot Typo.
Right here on /. I predicted (and was shot down) that this alert system was going to be used badly. The simple reason is that every bureaucrat thinks their job is so very important. Thus any government weenie who got their hands on it would start sending out "helpful" messages. A missing child is not the worst use for this but per usual the government did it about as badly as they could; The message being basically useless.
What they need to do is to make an opt in system with levels that you can opt into. Level 1 would be for situations where nearly everyone's life is peril. Say a poison gas leak where going outside will kill you. The Boston bombers manhunt would not count as level 1. Level 2 would be a warning about something that could kill you such as to stay away from an area as there is a poison gas leak there. Level 3 would be Lost children who have been taken by bad people (not a custody case) Level 4 would be things like weather alerts.
But my guess is that the government is going to be captain obvious with most of their alerts and tell people that a storm is coming (that has been in the news for 3 straight days), then it will be political messages of grief and loss (i.e. "My heart goes out to those who...") , and eventually things like reminders to vote and recycle.
But being the government they believe that their mission is so very important that people should not be able to opt out of this crap. The key is that people need to not be treated like children and the government should not have any special rights. If people want to opt out then they are clearly stating "I don't want your crap".
Do none of your phones have an OFF button? You know, turn the phone off at night or must you be reachable 24/7/365?
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
So they're going to forcible alert everybody for everything now?
People will rapidly start tuning them out or finding ways to disable it.
Do not go straight to "notify everybody every time anything happens" -- because then you're just crying wolf.
What next, go beyond wireless and automatically phone every land line? This is so incredibly stupid it isn't funny -- if you have a missing child, don't call me about it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Citys / counties to big for the system?
I used deal with BS like this on cable floods and other stuff any where in the same big county used to trigger the sound cut off / on screen text. (added by the cable co and not the local tv channels)
Meany years ago and only on the SD channels. I have directv now so I don't get this stuffed added by the cable co.
But clearly the phones need to provide better software so that people can block alerts by time of occurence. e.g., all those naysayers could block alerts between 10pm-7am had the software allowed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This has happened at least four times in the last year or so in Atlanta. Amber alerts get treated by many phones as any other emergency alert, and they happen to go out between 1 and 4 am to the entire metro area, so the missing child could be up to 50 miles away. A lot of my friends have turned off emergency alerts completely because of this.
Too many custody battle child-nappings or teen runaways. When you get a rare stranger kidnapping, how would you know then?
I read this and thought the Amber Alert system was more alike an air-raid siren, y'know actually waking up the whole city, not sending an over-zealous text to subscribers. I had a V for Vendetta moment there thinking you had bull-horns on poles broadcasting propaganda and subliminal messages but then I remembered you have Fox for that.
A group-text was sent by mistake. News for nerds? Stuff that matters? Really?
Participation is not optional citizen.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not that I'm complaining, of course, but I never got the alert, and I live right across the street from NYC's Office of Emergency Management. I'm curious about why my phone never got the message, because who knows, I might want to get alerted the next time something like Sandy blows into town.
Speaking of Sandy, I did receive a text message alert or 2 during the storm, which presumably means my phone is capable of getting the messages. Could the reason be that I switched carriers around New Year's? (ATT to T-Mobile, if it matters.)
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
Or not, because moving often means driving and if I'm driving you really shouldn't encourage me to read my phone.
There already are levels to the alert system. I wasted no time turning off Amber alerts after receiving one, but I'm leaving the the other ones activated for now. I think it's a bit stupid to use the EBS tone for Amber alerts, in any case; it should be reserved for things like severe weather, zombie apocalypse, etc. If a tornado is heading for my area at 2 AM, I want to know about it.
There's a "Presidential alert" that can't be disabled, though. Hopefully, it won't ever be used (because it's likely that it will mean that World War III has started).
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I thought it was the city that never sleeps.
The alert system is not a "group text", it triggers a special alarm on the phones that support it. Most of the phones that support this alarm support it at maxmium volume.
Which you'd have known if you had bothered to read some of the messages above you before whining to all of us about how you're an ignorant little git.
Several of the public schools around me have gotten new robocall systems, meant to be used to mass-alert all parents when something happens. School closings, emergencies, stuff like that.
Naturally, the school principals have been quick to send out mass calls for anything, up to and including announcing dates for sporting events. I hear quite a bit of grumbling from people about this.
Basically, if you give anyone a way to easily send a message to a large number of people, they will find an excuse to use it. Hell, we saw that with spam - it was so easy to send emails by the thousands that we had to pass laws against it, and we *still* haven't solved the problem.
That's what happened here. Someone found an excuse to use their shiny toy and feel important, and they used it, despite the fact that a) the circumstances did not really justify such a response, and b) the message sent was not even good at solving the problem.
In this case, a child was stolen away from child services by his mother in the middle of a supervised visit. While the woman was bipolar and could have been a theoretical risk to her child (why she didn't have custody in the first place), this is not the sort of child abduction scenario most people envisioned when the Amber Alert system was put into place.
Additionally, most of the people contacted were in no position to help. And I doubt the alert was timely since it's highly unlikely that this woman has given a supervised visitation at a social services facility just shy of 4:00 AM. This means that the situation most likely had been developing for hours, and the alert should have gone out when it was likely she'd still be driving with the child. That means the information was most likely useless to everyone who received it. Contacting them caused them harm with no benefit to the child.
I mean, really, what do you expect people to do? Get up, get out of bed, get dressed, and go hunting around their block for cars matching the description? At 4:00 AM? Or should they just lie there in bed, frustrated at their powerlessness to help a child that somewhere is maybe suffering?
What is the appropriate reaction in your mind that shows ones priorities are in place?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The biological mother abducted the child from a social service facility during a supervised visit. This is a baby, and a social service facility... meaning this visit almost certainly occurred during daylight.
Why, exactly, did this alert go out at 3:51AM?
(likely not the indented result of last night's exercise).
Likely not the intended spelling of "intended."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Alarm fatigue is what it's called. When there is simply one alert after another and becomes routine, then it really is not an alert after all (or at least how your brain will be conditioned).
mfwright@batnet.com
I got one of these alerts in Central MA, along with a lot of friends and family, a month or two back. AMBER alert was one of them, also got a flood warning, both in the middle of the goddamned night. My Android phone did it, others' iPhones...
Shut off all of them after the flood warning. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die WELL RESTED.
Back in January, the ENTIRE state of Florida was awaken by an emergency Amber alert sent to their phones:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/early-morning-amber-alert-catches-florida-residents-by-surprise/1270496
Yep, just like how we kept getting constant Reagan alerts back in the Good Days(tm)! Man, those repeated Gerald Ford alerts that we got were annoying, weren't they? The Nixon alerts, though, those were great! Taught those damned hippies their place!
Or you can figure out that what you said was bullshit and we've had this exact same system in place for decades , just for TV and radio? Or is it different now that you've learned it's also on your achingly precious shiny shiny smartphone? I can assure you, people back then treated their radios and TVs exactly the same way you treat your phone. But then again, I guess they didn't delude themselves into thinking that they would eventually someday maybe once they feel like it use them to do anything other than consume content.
T-mobile did the same thing here in WA 6 months ago, they started sending out an amber alert at 3am and we kept getting these alerts every 20 minutes for hours until we turned the phones off. We still kept getting them that night even 10-12 hours after the missing boy was found. Finally found a setting in our phones to disable all these alerts.
In this surveillance state you are are expected to do you part to protect the state as a whole. if you don't then you must be a terrorist and there for not be allowed to partake in the states protection of you. Your choice executed or jailed.
()-()
in NYC we also get SILVER alerts (via NYC text / email alert system not the EAS system). SILVER is for when old people go missing!
Please don't feed the trolls. Regardless of what anyone thinks (and I disagree with "Lord Apathy") he is slinging flamebait. Please mod him accordingly.
It's my alarm clock.
It's NOT the government's alarm clock for me.
I rely on my phone for an alarm clock (one that actually tracks the depth of my sleep and wakes me at the most appropriate moment), and I do not appreciate it being co-opted at that time of the night.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If we're going to issue an amber alert every time some meth-head runs off with her get, nobody's going to get any sleep.
There hasn't been a Presidential alert, but it's part of the EBS system for cases like World War III or Alien invasions.
Quit spreading FUD with your tea party paranoid delusions. If a president regardless of party were to use the emergency alert system for political campaigning, that president would come under fire from both parties and the media for doing so. It would also be a severe violation of campaign finance laws. It's not going to happen. So please start taking your medication and start thinking rationally.
Deja vu.
I feel like I've read this exact comment on a similar story before.
At my place of work, we normally reserve emergency alerts for real emergencies like "Active shooter" or "Hurricane bearing on city, seek shelter". Then last year, someone decided that sending notifications about free flu vaccinations would be a good use of emergency alerts, so I got a text message, two phone calls, and two emails about availability of flu vaccine.
When Mount St. Helens blew nothing happened announcement wise, and there were a lot of complains about it.
A few days (week?) later Mount St. Helens burped, the local radio advised everybody about it, giving all sorts of
useless information. then the emergency broadcast was set off, it was the same lines word for word of
the news alert yet not a recording. Local station didn't want to be scooped, and the ones that activate the alert.
I was on my back repairing the car yet still floored over it.
And the burp? Didn't do anything or bother anyone not on the mountain itself.
and report on your neighbour when we text you.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Everyone was aware of the impending Mt St Helens activity... for about sixty days, including a state of emergency declared over 30 days before the main event...
20th March, 1980
Moderate earthquake under volcano signified rising magma.
25th March
Mountain closed to climbers.
27th March
First eruption in 123 years. Ash emitted to 3 km into the air and a small crater formed on the summit.
30th March
Sightseers flocked to area.
3rd April
State of emergency declared.
17th April
Risk of landslide recognised on the volcano north flank.
22nd April - 7th May
Volcano stopped erupting but bulging continued. By 27th April the bulge measured 2.5 km across and protruded 80 m.
7th May
Large earthquakes under volcano. Ash and steam emissions resumed after two weeks of quiet.
12th May
A larger than normal earthquake caused a one kilometer long avalanche down the north slope.
14th May.
Only small eruptions.
15th May
No eruptions.
17th May.
30 car loads of residents enter the restricted zone to gather possessions.
18th May 1980
The large eruption began at 8:32 am.
An earthquake shook loose the upper northern flank of the volcano. About 3 cubic km of of the mountain slid down in a massive avalanche at 250 km/hr.
The avalanche released pressure on the volcano and unleashed a huge explosion. A 300-500 km/hr blast of hot gases and fractured rock covered 600 sq km in minutes. 30 seconds after the initial blast the volcano released a Plinian eruption column of ash which rose to a height of 25 km in 15 minutes. The ash reaches Spokane 430 km away in 3½ hours. From noon until 5:30 pm nuee ardentes swept 8 km down the northern slopes of the volcano at 300 km/hr. Mudflows raged down the side of the volcan and were caused by melting of the snow on the mountain.
Effects of the eruption.
57 people were killed.
400 m lost from the height of the mountain.
Total damage bill one billion dollars.
http://www.volcanolive.com/sthelens.html
The WTC Tower attacks that happened in 2001 - since those were so well covered by news media - the Presidential Alert System /EBS wasn't even activated...
"many have taken the step of deactivating these alerts to avoid future jolting mid-slumber alarms"
The system is a very bad idea - no matter whether it is texts, phone calls, emails or what ever. Abuses like this will push people to turn off their links to the system. Justifying such systems is mere fascist totalitarianism.
It has never been used. Remember this is all just part of the Emergency Alert System, the thing radio and TV has had forever. It is just integrated in to phones now, since more people are using those. The president has always had the ability to issue an alert on radio and TV. The FCC 'owns' the public airwaves, they can demand their use, if needed.
So far, even during 9/11, there has never been a presidential alert. So clearly they save it only for the really, really, big things, hence why you can't turn it off.
The TNG episode where suddenly everyone is jacked into a google glass like "game", and wesley crusher and i believe ashley judd are the only ones immune. Only instead of a game, it is now a smart phone, and I am wesley crusher without a smart phone or ashley judd.
That's what I am thinking reading all these comments. Seriously, does everyone have a always on internet connected smartphone these days??
You have internet at work, internet at home. Do you really need it while you are traveling from work to home as well? Do you really need internet access when you are out supposedly spending time outside, away from the internet? or is that not an acceptable thing anymore. Smart phones drive me crazy, but everyone seems to have them!!
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Excuse me for being a stupid foreigner.
But how is this message delivered? On which devices?
By the comments it seems to be on cellphones but do phones sold in America has a special feature for this?
EAS alerts can be helpful, but they have become so abused that 90% of the alerts are not actually emergencies, and most frequently are not even close to being emergencies worthy of alerting everyone with a cell phone.
A confirmed tornado is an emergency. Doppler readings favorable for tornado formation are not.
An amber alert is not an emergency, let alone activating EAS for the initial alert and every 10 minutes thereafter with a repeat of the original message.
A fast-spreading wildfire is an emergency for the people in the affected area. A car fire on the interstate is not.
A suspicious person in the area is not an emergency.
I've gotten alerts for all of these. I ultimately just turned them all off. If I hear thunder, I check out my Weatherbug Elite. If I smell smoke, I look outside for the fire. I quite frankly no longer care if some negligent parent failed at their duty to protect their child.
I don't see how they expected any other outcome when they started expanding the scope of what constitutes an "emergency."
wasn't this a plot of a CSI episode? For real.
I use to watch TV at night but now I dont. If I fall asleep that damn alert wakes me. I cant opt out so I pitched the bedroom tv. I might bring it back with a ruko box to watch and ditch cable.
Or it could just be silent. If I'm sleeping, I'm not about to go looking for a suspect automobile, anyway.
snooze button?
So... all these people could have gotten a message or phonecall from just anyone during the night? Then what are they bitching about?
Where I live, AMBER alerts are normally sent only between 6 AM and 10 PM. You have to take action yourself to enable receiving messages during the night. That's not such a strange thing to implement. Why hasn't NYPD implemented that? I'm sure the technology is sophisticated enough that you should also be able to specify an interval where you don't want to receive alerts yourself.
Please note: I'm a Brit. That nation that Americans love to berate as the 1984 of the modern world. I live in London, the most populous city in the country, 33 times more population dense than New York.
THE VERY FIRST TIME that a government (or organisation) sends an emergency alert to my phone that isn't related to a DIRECT DANGER that I am LIKELY to need to avoid, the system used to send it goes in the bin. Smartphone, email, web-interception, text message, phone call, whatever.
Solicited or not. Decreed from the top or not. Turn-off-able or not. As you can probably tell from my attitude - it has NEVER happened in 20+ years of me owning a mobile phone, or my lifetime of owning a landline. Not during bus bombings. Not during IRA attacks. Not during attacks on airports. Not even school attacks with guns.
If a child goes missing, put it on the news, with photos of the suspect and child.
If there's a tornado or fire that might burn my house down, send the police around to inform residents and evacuate them. Don't rely on the little old lady having a cellphone and answering it at 4am and evacuating herself.
If there's a chemical leak or terrorist attack that covers a huge area and endangers thousands of lives, sure. You can send a text message to **local** cell masts AND send round the police then.
If a school is taken hostage by a gun-toting maniac - quite what do you think a message that targets ANYONE but those on the school premises is going to do apart from incite panic and worsen the situation? Campus alerts? Never even HEARD of such a thing over here (I work in schools!), but we probably do have them in some places if you look hard enough even if they are never used.
But, hell, the very, very, very first time I ever get a text from an official source about an emergency where my life is not - in all probability - in danger, complaints will be made AND the device will go in the bin.
Emergency alerts to everyone in the middle of the night for a missing child? Sorry, with all the sympathy in the world for the parent's plight, you simply cannot do that on the scale of even a small city.
Plus, we've seen the hackability of these alerts already. How long until some rogue element tells people of an emergency, informs them to gather in the street at point X and then blows them all up / incites a riot / raids the bank vault while everyone is away?
Yet again, the US has accepted something as necessary and "the norm" that other countries would recoil in horror at the mere suggestion of putting the concept to the populous. I have no doubt we do have an emergency broadcast system of some kind. The fact is that we've NEVER used it, and certainly not for missing children.
We don't have as many natural disasters, granted. We have, however, had more terrorism against us in the last 100 years than the US has. Just the IRA bombings in London alone were so frequent and deadly that they lost all effectiveness in terms of "terror" ("What was that?" "Oh, probably just the IRA again - going to have to check the bloody Tube timetable again now to get to work on time..."), and the IRA eventually became politicians and rioters instead.
But missing-person alerts? Rogue nutters? Probably we have our fair share on the same scale. Hell, a soldier walking along a street in London was beheaded for no reason only the other day and the guy who did it gave interviews to the camera. It was a news story for a day. The funeral was a news story for a day. End of.
God, we'd jam our phones solid worrying about that kind of shit.
If they keep this up, it will become like car alarms, nobody will care.
So sleep is more important than finding an abducted or missing child? What kind of self absorbed useless garbage inhabit NYC? Reminds me of the opening scene in Boondock Saints when nobody would help a screaming murder victim. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwIJ9pRWBpo
I prefer the original name: Crying 'wolf'.
This could be the consequence of so many things. If it doesn't kill someone, of course it'll be ignored.
While NYC was at fault here, why sleep with a potential wake-up-machine next to you? Next time it won't be an Amber alert, but a drunk buddy who's lost track of the time. Why risk it?
I have a weather radio and the only alerts you cannot shut off are warnings for hurricane, tornado, fire, and some BS National Emergency. Seems a rational approach for mobile as well.
And yes, Amber Alerts are now also broadcast on 'weather' radios (thankfully they can be shut off too).
The same thing happened in Atlanta about three weeks ago. An Amber alert went off at 2:44am on the Emergency Broadcast Network.
7. What are AMBER Alerts?
AMBER Alerts are urgent bulletins issued in the most serious child-abduction cases. The America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert Program is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry.
More like an alert that there's been a serious attack on our country or a major natural disaster. It's pure wingnut derp to suggest that it would be used to track the ignorant teabaggers.
If it was you kid that was missing; you'd be waking up everybody you could, in order to have any chance of finding them -- no matter how small.
I got the alert too - I live in NYC - but since my phone is set to vibrate and lives in my purse, and my purse stays in the living room when I'm home, it didn't wake me. What are all these people doing keeping their phone right by their bed? If you're not a cop, doctor, or otherwise on call for work, why would you chance it? I used to get bugged at about 9 am a lot, and it interrupted me at work. My number was apparently the previous number of the mother of a "Christopher Garcia". Christopher, whoever he was, wasn't good about going to school, and when he did he got into all kinds of trouble there, The school called me about 10 times informing me he was truant or had done something before I finally managed to convince them that I not only wasn't Christopher's mother, but I had no idea who he was. They couldn't get their records straight. Needless to say, I didn't want to hear about it.
that the kid was found and it was because of the alert and yes, they had been kidnapped. no, not everyone is asleep at that time, so he missed that point. plus, normal people turn off the ringer when they're sleeping, otherwise you get what's coming to you.
I know it's not exactly the same as a stockade, but announcing to everyone in the largest city in the United States is public shaming. I thought we were innocent until proven guilty. or is that only when children or "terrorist" are not involved?
so what is stopping someone with power from putting an amber alert out on you, and encouraging an entire city to dish out their version of justice?
and how would everyone react to the news? "Person with an active amber alert is assaulted and murdered inside their car with published license plate" my guess is most people would assume you're a child molester and celebrate your death. how many people have already been targeted this way?
I'd rather die free than live oppressed.
These alerts come from a system controlled by FEMA and less than 200 local governments are currently using that system. So here's a way to get better, more relevant safety alerts and still get a good night's sleep: sign up for your local emergency alert service. Thousands of counties and cities across the US have them. And you can sign up for yours at http://www.usnear.org./ Choose "text messages" and they will come in like normal texts (not a 3 alarm fire alert!). Which means they won't override your DND settings.
by using it once like this.