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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.
Earth to submitter: AT&T is a mess.
Remain calm! All is well!
People on Verizon and T-Mobile got the same message. But sure, just blame AT&T for it anyway.
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...
I live in Illinois and didn't watch the news tonight so I wasn't aware of the Amber alert in California. However, from the message you posted, here is what I got:
AMBER ALERT
Location: Boulevard, California
California License Plate: 6WCU986
Car Make: Nissan
Car Model: Versa
Car Color: Blue
Other Attributes: 4 door, not 2 door.
I received the message via Sprint, despite being 400 miles from the affected area. I guess this is one way to make sure people start ignoring these messages.
There WAS NO USEFUL geographic info'.
I got the same message as the submission on Virgin (Sprint). Where the hell is "Boulevard, CA"? California is a big state; more than a day's drive NS for most people.
If I'm driving, the alert is on the big orange-text signs every couple of miles, and I'm NOT supposed to be taking text messages while driving.
If I'm home, in bed (or, in my case, watching a movie), how much good does it do to wake/text me?
As to "what more do I (you) need?": tell me if it's a custody dispute or a "stranger" kidnapping. In the former case, I don't care, while in the latter, I do. The custodial parent isn't always the more fit, they might just have better lawyers, 'specially abusive, wealthy fathers/husbands.
I got the same alert four times in the last 24 hours, several hours apart. And I was just in a night class with 100 other people, and four separate times during the class somebody's phone (including mine, once) started blaring the alert at max volume. My phone was on vibrate. One person couldn't figure out how to silence their phone, and ended up running out of the room with phone still blaring. After 3 seconds, if you don't silence it, the phone starts reading the alert text at maximum volume too (using TTS). I have an HTC One, which has incredibly loud speakers, so this is not cool. Of course, Amber Alerts are now disabled on my phone, which reminds me of the stupidity of Windows User Account Control popups -- people click on them just to get them to go away, so they lose their value. Incidentally, Presidential Alerts may not be disabled on Android. I just hope the US President never has a good reason to ring every phone in the nation at full volume.
Don't blame (only) AT&T for the terse message. The WEA system limits messages to 90 characters:
http://www.fema.gov/wireless-emergency-alerts
WEA will look like a text message. The WEA message will show the type and time of the alert, any action you should take, and the agency issuing the alert. The message will be no more than 90 characters.
I can't believe the government asked for such an arbitrary and small limit on message size, so I'm assuming that the carriers said that's all they could provide, probably because a 90 character message fit into some control message they were already sending to phones.
Alerts don't sell phones or services, so it's probably funded, staffed, and supported like anything else that doesn't contribute to profits: poorly.
Expect it to either be pwned after a few times, or "This important message is brought to you by General Motors"
I do wonder how long it will be until someone figures out how to hack the system and uses it to send out repeated "Presidential Alerts" in the middle of the night -- those alerts can't be blocked by any phone settings. Worse if the alert says "Incoming nuclear missiles. Evacuate your town immediately. Don't trust radio or TV."
Just how long do you think it takes to drive 300 miles in a CAR which can travel at over 60MPH? Why would someone who kidnapped a child stay in the same area anyway? 300 miles is peanuts for that kind of alert, it should really be more like the possible distance travelled in a generous window since the disappearance was reported, not just five hours...
The whole point of the thing is to alert people in a huge radius to be on the lookout for the car. The alert had just the information needed - if you saw that car you could just call 911.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't think a uselesss AMBER alert should be bitched about? Even the people who take these things seriously are going to lose interest when they overly broad.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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.
Abducted children are often taken quite far away.
The fact it was an Amber alert tells you a child is involved, and the alert had all other information needed to report something, basically the plates and make/model of the car.
I guess the different times of reception are an issue but something is better than nothing, and it takes time to work through a list of many cell phone numbers to send out an alert... obviously they do need to improve on the speed of that, and try to remove duplicates.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First, I was watching cable tv when the show was interrupted by the EBS (with a computer synthesized voice, no less, yet it still sounded like a bad CB radio). My cable box inexplicably returned to some random channel that I wasnt watching. Thanks Time Warner and Motorola, your cable box SUCKS in yet another aspect. Then, hours later (at like 10pm or so), all three t-mobile cell phones got the alert. We got the alert yet again the next day. For something that occurred at around 5PM? The suspect could have been out of state or in mexico by then. At the time I was thinking, what makes this kid so special, this sort of thing probably happens daily.. I didn't know the details on the story until the next day. This might be useful if it arrived within, say, an hour or less of the incident and was sent to phones geographically within the area the suspect could have traveled in that amount of time (80 miles?).
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
The message was completely irrelevant for those of us 600+ miles away. I don't even own a car, I live in an urban area. I literally have NO idea what a Nissan Versa looks like. Literally NONE. I NEVER look at license plates on vehicles while I'm walking. NEVER.
These messages have ZERO relevance. Send me a pic of the kids or the kidnapper. I don't give a shit about the fucking make/model of a car that is 600 miles away (the distance from Washington DC to Florida btw).
I can only imagine what people in the far Northern side of the state in Shasta or Humboldt thought of it all. 900 miles away something happened and they are also getting this message.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Not only that, but the entire system itself is so inherently flawed it amounts to little more than “crime-control theater.”
"His name was James Damore."
My phone made an awful, loud, startling noise. I had never heard it before, and it scared the crap out of me. It sounded like a fire alarm. Once I realized it was my phone, my first thought was some sort of disaster requiring evacuation. Once I saw the message, it was only confusing. No real information, no linkage to details.
A google search turned up more about the Amber alert, which I discovered was several hours away from me in Southern California. I'm in Northern California. The details on the web mentioned that they were suspected of escaping to Texas. So, it was absolutely irrelevant to me. I immediately looked into how to disable it, and had it disabled in a couple minutes. 75% of the others I talked to today also disabled there Amber alerts.
1. The alarm should be more moderate, or at least adjustable. It was very startling. If I had been driving when it went off, I think the effect would have been dangerous. I would have left it on if I could disable the audio alarm and just get the message.
2. It needs more information, or at least a simlpe click-through to details, location radius / distance from me, pictures of the people involved, etc.
They used the national emergency service to inform the population about some child being kidnapped. Erh... Ok, now please tell me why I should care. Yes, yes, it's probably heart breaking for the parents, and yes, yes, if it was my child I'd certainly love to use it for that but the problem is: 99.something % of the population do not give half a fuck, let alone keep an eye out for that car. "Why the fuck should I care about some random brat I don't know about?" will probably be the reaction of nearly ALL the people who got that message.
I see a "cry wolf" scenario waiting to happen. Some day in the future, something actually important, something that actually is meaningful to most of the population, will happen and people will simply click it away after reading "AMBER AL...", thinking "fuck, that kidnapping fad's getting worse than spam texts".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
On iOS: settings -> notifications -> Government Alerts down at the bottom. You can turn off just Amber alerts.
On Android: open the Android messaging /application/, then menu -> settings -> emergency alerts -> disable Amber alerts.
We have a similar system in the Netherlands.
I subscribed to it very early on but unsubscribed after very few relevant messages and more often not getting messages that would have been relevant to my location.
Atleast the messages I got were understandable.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They used the national emergency service to inform the population about some child being kidnapped. Erh... Ok, now please tell me why I should care. Yes, yes, it's probably heart breaking for the parents, and yes, yes, if it was my child I'd certainly love to use it for that but the problem is: 99.something % of the population do not give half a fuck, let alone keep an eye out for that car. "Why the fuck should I care about some random brat I don't know about?" will probably be the reaction of nearly ALL the people who got that message.
I see a "cry wolf" scenario waiting to happen. Some day in the future, something actually important, something that actually is meaningful to most of the population, will happen and people will simply click it away after reading "AMBER AL...", thinking "fuck, that kidnapping fad's getting worse than spam texts".
If you don't care about Amber alerts, you can disable them in your phone while still receiving the other emergency alerts.
If you get a message that starts "AMBER AL...", then you can safely ignore it if you don't care about child abductions since Amber alerts are specifically for child abductions.
You're right, the Amber Alert would be much more useful if they provided the exact location of the vehicle.
I'd just send a short and simple "Skynet activated".
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Wait for the alerts when http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/06/nsa-director-cyber-terrorism-snowden and the US gov has to "grab" and "bring" in all the:
..."nihilists, anarchists, activists, ..., twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years". ..... Occupation: Activist. Last seen . . ." ... watch for the running man . . . watch for a man alone, on foot . . . watch..."
"Police Alert. Wanted: Hacker in city. Has committed cyberterrorism and crimes against the State. Name:
"... watch for a man running
(welcome to Fahrenheit 451)
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
How many people knew that it would even have been an option? If it weren't for this and the previous NYC story, I wouldn't have known about it.
(My phone doesn't support it I'm pretty sure.)
If a firetruck suddenly appeared out of thin air, it may well do so.
It's not just the loudness it sounds like (having never heard such an alert) but the suddenness and unfamiliarity.
Someone already hacked the Emergency network in Montana last year to make it report that there were zombies.
I live in the eastern US and also am an AT&T customer. A few months ago I got blasted awake by an Amber alert in the middle of the night. It was the loudest sound I ever have heard coming from my iPhone. I honestly did not know it was possible for the phone to produce a sound that loud. I was less than thrilled at having received no warning about this being implemented. The next morning I read up on how to disable the alerts. If you haven't received an Amber alert on your phone, disable them now because you definitely do not want your first experience to be your phone screaming like a banshee in the middle of the night.
Maybe, but so is the number of accidents caused by placemats.
This is as beautiful an example of idiotic, worthless, counterproductive security theater as we've seen.
For starters, the implementation is something I'd expect from a drunk college sophomore who's been pulling C grades in CS courses. It's miserable. The most significant effects it's had have been to alarm, confuse, annoy and distract people -- some of whom were driving. Great idea, that last one: cause their cell phone to make a noise they've heard before so that it increases the probability they'll pick it up and look at it.
Second, the lack of detail is outrageously stupid. A recipient of this message who just happened to see such a vehicle might approach it because there's nothing in it warning them not to.
Third, sending it 24 hours later is idiotic. Any competent murdered would be in a different vehicle by then. (Once again, police assume that everyone is as stupid as they are. Most people aren't.)
Fourth, sending it multiple times ensures that many people will disable it. Way to go, alleged public safety officials.
Finally, the entire concept behind this is insane. Untrained civilians are poor observers (as anyone who's studied trial witness dynamics for even an hour knows). How many blue cars got reported because they might be Nissan Versas? (I have no idea what one of those looks like; hell, I didn't even know there was such a model.) How much manpower got diverted to deal with all those false reports instead of being used to pursue leads based on hard evidence?
This is just another case of lazy, sloppy, incompetent police work -- like we saw in Boston when they closed down the entire city and rolled armored vehicles through the streets to catch one frightened teenager and STILL couldn't manage to pull it off. It seems that the pigs in California only know how to drink coffee and shoot helpless unarmed civilians in the back -- something challenging, like tracking down a murderer, is far beyond their pitifully feeble minds.
Go through the cases individually, and you'll find it's a lot more equal than you'd like to admit. When cops get called out, they're far more likely to assume the male is the aggressor - and in fact, they will most likely behave in a dominant fashion toward the male, and certainly behave in a sympathetic fashion toward a whimpering female in a given situation. That behaviour causes things to get worse. I've heard of a man being arrested after the female stabbed him in the arm. I've seen men arrested after women assaulted them. I've lived through it with an ex- who was both abusive and aggressive, and would go crying to any male around.
Then there was my mother, who beat herself up and called the police. They prosecuted my father for it, too. That'll go in your statistics in spite of it being a complete lie.
For the record, that didn't happen just the once, either. It happened at least twice, and probably a lot more often than that. Remember: I lived through it. This is first hand.
(I also lived through it when my mother tried to stab me with a kitchen knife, after through dinner plates at me, then started screaming that I was going to assault her. She had a knife, I was barefoot, and surrounded by broken crockery and glass: she was simply putting on a scene for whoever was listening.)
In much the same way that insurance companies ask if you've had any alcohol within the 24 hours preceding a car accident, the statistics you cite simply reflect social bias. Serial killers are usually intelligent white males, so when someone starts researching a serial killer the model begins with "Assuming a white male, intelligent..." If something doesn't fit that profile, it's far more likely to be dropped, and thus not represented in the statistics.
Social bias has it that women are weaker, and need defended from the evil bad mean big bully males, who beat them up. (Social bias completely forgets that women have faster reflexes, and the strength difference between men and women isn't as great as most believe it is, making a fight more of an even match.) Women are dainty and girly and tiday, not aggressive and non-violent, while mean eat steak and drink beer, drive cars fast, pick fights, and shout a lot. Women don't go and get in fights, but guys do.
This is all bullshit. Time to update your profile of humanity.
The custodial parent isn't always the more fit, they might just have better lawyers, 'specially abusive, wealthy fathers/husbands.
Rely on Slashdot to vote this up to +5.
sent the EXACT same nearly useless message (which was written by a CA agency and approved by FEMA before being sent out)
Just as a note, that's the EXACT same information every other state provides in an amber alert: city, car and license plate.
Here in Texas, it's usually the parent on the losing side of the divorce grabbing the kids and running for Mexico.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The parents of abducted children already know their kid is abducted. There's no point in alerting them.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Amber Alert seems like a really good idea, until you look at it closely. The root problem is false positives. Not false reports of sightings of abducted children, those can be weeded through pretty effectively. False Amber Alerts.
The basic concept behind the system is that since many abducted children are killed in the first three hours, it's necessary to get the alert out there fast. But, it's also really important that there not be a flood of Amber alerts issued about kids who just wandered off to a friend's house or something, so the process of verifying that a particular case meets all of the criteria for issuing an alert pretty much guarantees that by the time the alert is issued it's too late for kids who were victims of the most frightening form of child abduction, the sort for which the alert system was created.
Research backs this logic up. Multiple studies have been done, and none have demonstrated that Amber alerts do much at all that's useful. They're most effective at finding family abduction cases, but those almost never harm the kids and almost always get resolved anyway, without the alert.
All of the actual research papers I can find are paywalled, but here's a Boston Globe article that discusses the results of one of the earliest studies. Several more have reaffirmed and even strengthened the findings of the first.
So, it really doesn't matter much if the alert delivery system is broken. The alert issuance system is fundamentally and likely irreparably flawed.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Sure, you're modded as insightful because we love to think of all federal government initiatives as security theatre. But this article cites no actual statistics to the contrary. Its entire premise seems to be that child abduction is rare, and law enforcement often can't get an alert out within three hours, therefore "probably" the system is useless. Seriously, it cites no actual numbers as to the effectiveness of the system, and uses the word "probably" and pure rhetoric (i.e. bullshit) a lot. If the same article was changed around so that the author appeared to be a law enforcement spokesman and the conclusions were just reversed, we'd all be picking it apart as bullshit.
Everyone already knew this system was being rolled out for an extremely rare type of crime. Society decided (yes, it did, that's why the media hype launched this in the first place) that the crime was bad enough that no matter how rare, we wanted a system to help mitigate it. Yes, society can be emotional like that, but that is no reason in itself to condemn the system. I want to see actual numbers, not bullshit opinion pieces.