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It Took Nearly Three Hours For France's Terror Alert App To Respond To Nice Attack (theverge.com)
Amar Toor, reporting for The Verge: A terror alert app released by the French government last month has come under criticism after taking hours to notify users of Thursday night's attack in Nice. The app, called SAIP was released by the French Interior Ministry on iOS and Android in June, ahead of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament. According to the ministry, the app would provide users with alerts and information within 15 minutes of a terrorist attack being confirmed. But it apparently took much longer to send out alerts following last night's attack in Nice, where a man drove a truck into a crowded seaside promenade during Bastille Day celebrations, killing at least 84 people and leaving 18 others in critical condition. Users who had downloaded the app posted phone screenshots to Twitter last night showing that SAIP sent out its first alert just after 1:30AM local time -- nearly three hours after the attack began. Facebook, by contrast, activated its Safety Check feature shortly after the attack was carried out, and French politicians urged those in the area to check in using that feature, as SAIP remained silent.
The keyword is "being confirmed". It take time to confirm that a truck running over people is a criminal act and not 'just' an accident.
But in the end this demonstrate that this application is completely un-useful...
Yep, why take chances in which ones are good and which ones are bad. Deport them all and let them fight it out. Maybe if they have no countries to run to and ruin, they will fix their own. Or maybe they'll all kill each other. Either way they won't ruin other countries anymore.
I know that news such as this one always attract criticism about the lack of technology from "some" people ion the community, but as many others /. users have pointed out, /. is also supposed to be about "stuff that matters".
So, my question is, how did it occurred in the editor's compassionless mind that the stupid delay of the terror app was more relevant than the +300 victims of this tragedy?
Elok
Last I heard, there was considerable evidence that it might not have been terrorism; it might have just someone going apeshit and committing mass murder.
My guess is that the French government had no idea whether or not it was terrorism, and after 3 hours they just decided to err on the side of caution and issue the alert, just in case.
Of course, that raises the whole question as to why anyone would give a damn what the motive behind a mass murder is, in any situation where they're trying to get information quickly. Regardless of whether the truck driver is politically motivated or not, you want to get the fuck out of his way. It sounds like the very idea of a "terror alert" app just might be amazingly stupid. A "danger alert" app would be a hundred times more useful.
There are many problems that cannot be solved with the app. Not the terrorism.
This app was a scam by design: there are little benefits of knowing of attack 15 minutes after it took place.
Reality is that the app was just another project to skim money from government, like they have skimmed thousands of times before that. Remember the $2 million app that randomizes whether to go to left or to the right? Reality is that once money have been consumed, those who made profit moved on and they no longer care. Also, reality is that you cannot buy complete security for the amount of resources is limited, yet security risks are infinite. If the app gets sued it will eventually become clear that the app cannot be litigated and has no responsibility to notify you, as decided by the courts http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06...
Reality is that the attacker was stopped by the first man with a firearm.
Reality is that automatic and semi-automatic gun ownership just got another solid, not even a theoretical card, to use when defending the gun ownership from nutty gun fearing zealots. Reality is that a single semi-automatic rifle would have been extremely effective in stopping the madman in Nice attack.
And no. Let's not ban the trucks.
The point of this app was to generate profit for the company developing it, not to do anything useful. To expect it to be useful is naive in the extreme.
Yes, because the healthy, normal response to feeling a little out of place is to murder people. Surely we can all agree that a culture which promotes mass murder because their feelings are hurt is one which must be honored, cherished, and brought into our homelands in droves.
Hint: the belief that a better path is "why don't we kill all..." is the source, not solution to the problem.
Only a king bigot would want to kill all people he/she thinks are bigots. I think you need to look in the mirror and reflect on the monster you have become.
Though in this case, it turned out the only (semi)effective defense against the bad guy with a truck was a good guy with a gun....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The media is certain that guns force people to kill, so trucks must do it as well.
They refuse to deal with the real problem, there are batshit insane people in the world that want to kill others....
Maybe making murder illegal will fix it?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You could almost say that the oil industry is really to blame. We've got a 60 year history of destabilizing a region where this mad ideology originates and then funding (and arming) their dictators. Oil industry and banksters have wrought this upon us. And a family named, "Rothschild"
We'll never deal with terrorism until we deal with that and the fallout from Balfour.
Very true. It was such a stable and peaceful place before /sarcasm
Historically, the "good" ones are silent when Islamist terrorists act. How many mosques have you seen speak out against ISIS and Islamist terrorism? The Islamist terrorist activities are encouraged by their "holy" books. I have always viewed Islam as the religion of evil, not of peace which is what they falsely claim. Recent activities have only strengthened my belief that the world has 1.3 billion people that either kill "infidels" with impunity, want to kill them, or silently support the killings. Muslims that see the light and denounce evil are no longer Muslims. I encourage everyone to read the Koran. See for yourself how Muhammad went from founding a movement that was encouraged to get along with others, down the path of insanity where he directed believers to kill those that did not convert or follow the laws that Muhammad set for them. The Western world has been shielded from this truth for too long. We can share a planet. We cannot share a country with these folks.
The funniest part about this is how you would even know this, do you attend your local Mosque?
The fact is almost all Western Mosques and Imam's routinely condemn terrorist attacks and terrorist sponsoring groups. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about. And the most ironic thing about it is you wouldn't expect your own church congregation and priest to attack and condem acts of Christian violence around the world. For example where was your condemnation when the Christians of the Central African Republic went on a rampage murdering all Muslims including women and children? Where was your public statement? Oh they don't represent you, do they? So why would you expect radical Islamic militants represent all muslims?
You are a fucking bigot.
This is indeed a bad day when a hate-filled post like this gets modded +5 Insightful.
Historically, the "good" ones are silent when Islamist terrorists act. How many mosques have you seen speak out against ISIS and Islamist terrorism?
Yeah, they speak out all the time, though you wouldn't know it by reading the mainstream media. Every major terrorist event is generally followed by loads of denunciations by prominent Muslim leaders. And then there's stuff like this, where 70,000 Muslim clerics have issued a fatwa against terrorist acts.
The Islamist terrorist activities are encouraged by their "holy" books. .... I encourage everyone to read the Koran.
I'd encourage people to read other sacred texts written over a 1000 years ago when violence was much more common and compare. For example, have a look at the stuff in the Bible. Just one of those verses from Leviticus motivates dozens of killings of homosexuals every year, for example. But you don't tend to hear as much about them, because they tend to be individual killings. The main difference between Christianity/Judaism and Islam in terms of "holy" books (as you put it) is that the former tend to ignore the tenets of their scriptures more these days... compared to say a few centuries ago when they happily went around killing people in God's name too. (Heck, even in the 20th century you had genocides partially motivated by Christian sectarianism.)
The Western world has been shielded from this truth for too long. We can share a planet. We cannot share a country with these folks.
And it's people with views like this that are playing directly into the hands of the terrorists -- and by terrorists, I mean actual terrorist leaders and those motivated by political/religious ideology, not this numbnuts in France who from recent reports appears to be far from motivated by ideology. The reports are still early, but if recent media stories and interviews with family members and neighbors are to be believed, this guy was just a whackjob with a previous arrest for road rage and whose personal life had self-destructed. He doesn't appear to have been religious at all, drinking, doing drugs, eating pork, never attending services, etc.
So what about the reports that he shouted "Allahu akbar!" during the killings? Well, if he did, he was probably playing into the "terrorist" fantasy world you're putting him into.
If you don't mind, I'm not going to dignify him by calling him a "terrorist" -- that's insulting to actual politically motivated folks who feel the need to act violently in the name of an ideology. I'll just call this guy "Numbnuts," which is the level of respect he deserves.
From recent reports, it appears that Numbnuts was a depressed loner. In the past, some idiotic coward afraid of dealing with his own life might have quietly offed himself with a gun to the head in his own house, or maybe jumped off a bridge or something. Or maybe he would have "gone postal" and killed some family or coworkers just to take some of the people he hated with him. (Note that term go postal, remember that? Dozens of incidents of postal workers shooting up people over a decade, and I don't remember anyone calling for them all to be deported... sure no incidents on this scale, but still.)
Anyhow, Numbnuts here doesn't sound like a terrorist. He was just a screwed-up lunatic with a death wish. And if he shouted some Muslim phrase at the end, it's probably because he read some BS on the internet and people like you af