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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)."
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
Wolf Wolf! Wolf!
Welcome to New York City, where it's somebody else's problem.
Exactly. It is someone else's problem.
People in a small town can do something useful. People in a big city are probably miles away from where they could do something useful. Sending out this kind of stupid message just encourages them to ignore all messages in future.
I see no reason not to set off an alert every 40 seconds on the phones of the asshats who think this alert was appropriate.