First California AMBER Alert Shows AT&T's Emergency Alerts Are a Mess

Mark Gibbs writes "AT&T's implementation of the FCC's Emergency Alerts System provides minimally useful information in an untimely fashion with little geolocational relevance. ... Yesterday California got its first AMBER alert and my notification arrived at 10:54pm. It came up as panel over my lock screen and here's what it looked like on my notifications screen: 'Boulevard, CA AMBER Alert UPDATE: LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door.' The problem with this it that's all there is! You can stab away at the message as much as you like but that's all you get, there's no link to any detail and considering the event it related to occurred over 240 miles away from me near to the Mexican border, the WEA service seems to be poorly implemented. Indeed, many Californians were annoyed and confused by the alert and according to the LA Times 'Some cellphones received only a text message, others buzzed and beeped. Some people got more than one alert.' I got a second copy of the alert at 2:22am and other subscribers reported not receiving any alert until late this morning." It seems to have gone down about as well as New York's.

Comments

missing the main point

[0WaitState]

Earth to submitter: AT&T is a mess.

poor implementation has little to do with AT&T

[Dahamma]

All services implemented the same feature and sent the EXACT same nearly useless message (which was written by a CA agency and approved by FEMA before being sent out).

Makes no sense to single out "AT&T's implementation"... it's mostly the cell phone manufacturer's implementation, and the govt's decision to send it out to the entire state in the middle of the night...

Re:poor implementation has little to do with AT&am

[Rockoon]

Not only that, but the entire system itself is so inherently flawed it amounts to little more than “crime-control theater.”

Re:You really can't figure that out?

[EvanED]

Happily you can simply turn off the alert on your phone and remove any random chance you might save someones life, so can can avoid a slightly annoying buzzing that lasts for a few seconds.

I feel that both positions are overstating things. Saying "a slightly annoying buzzing that lasts for a few seconds" is a dramatic understatement from what people saying it sounds like. (I can't find a sample of what it sounds like.) Being woken up is more than a "slight" annoyance, and there are plenty of situations where being suddenly startled by an unfamiliar loud noise can cause far more damage than "a slight annoyance."

Those probably make sense for a tornado warning or something like that, but not an AMBER alert. Virtually no one is going to do anything other than roll over and go back to sleep. It sounds like phone manufacturers went too far towards making it obnoxious for that case -- it seems quite unlikely that there would be many cases where a massive alert would garner a response that wouldn't be achieved through a simple text message alert for example.

Re:I don't see much of a problem

[EvanED]

The radius needs to be quite wide, because a person can travel a great distance in a car in a short period of time. 800 miles would not be unreasonable depending on when the missing child was reported.

By that reasoning, at the time the AMBER alert was issued, it would have been justifiable to announce it to about 1/2 of the continental US.

Reasoning:
- The kidnapping occurred no later than ~8pm Sunday
- The earliest AMBER alerts (according to the summary) started around ~11pm Monday; let's be kind and say that they started around 8pm
- That gives 24 hours for the kidnapper to get somewhere
- If the kidnapper drove at 60 mph for that time (that is... moderately realistic if he planned for it), he'd be able to clear 1,440 miles
- The entire west coast up to Seattle would be in fairly easy range; Austin would be in range; Houston is barely out of range according to 1440 miles (though Google Maps estimates it at under 21 hours, and puts New Orleans at 25 hrs); Omaha is a bit out of range by 1440 miles (but in range per Google Maps's estimate of 22:40); Sheridan, WY and the Montana border are in range

And that's just counting what he'd be able to do by the time the alert was issued. Want them to plan ahead for where he might be in another 12 hours? Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta, etc. are all in fairly easy range; Tampa, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh are maybe possible.

Re:anoying and useless...

[whoever57]

As a European in the USA, I have noticed that there is a stronger tendency to think that "something must be done" for every issue, even if that "something" makes no sense.

Amber alters are one of those "somethings"