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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.

6 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. I'm just waiting for.... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...the democrats to get on the air quickly and start advocating for Banning ALL Assault Trucks immediately!!

    ;)

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    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:I'm just waiting for.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I rented a large "moving truck" last year. I didn't even need a background check. They didn't even ask why I needed such a big truck

      It is scary how easy it is to get a large truck like that.

  2. Re:I'm just waiting for....ban on assault trucks!! by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    And if they can't they will limit gas tank capacity, axle width, and armor piercing bumpers as then require that you pass a background check every time you refill at a gas station.

    Well, come on..lets be *reasonable*..I mean, who needs 30 gallons of gas JUST to go hunting, you know?

    What we need are Common Sense Truck Laws...at this point, even 80% of truck owning Americans agree with this.

    Next week, we also need to take up knife and folding chair safety legislation, you just never know what one of these terrorist bastards will pick up next to kill with....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  3. Re:When will they get it? by Ogive17 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reality is that a single semi-automatic rifle would have been extremely effective in stopping the madman in Nice attack.

    I don't know how long it took that guy to plow through the crowd but I am quite positive no one in that crowd would have had the time, situational analysis, and space to end the threat without taking out more innocent bystanders.

    I'm not anti-gun, there are just very few people trained to respond with deadly force in traumatic situations. Your average citizen is not one of them. Your average citizen is going to protect their own life by getting the fuck out of the way.

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    "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
  4. Re:When will they get it? by PPH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reality is that the attacker was stopped by the first man with a firearm.

    Actually, no. Video made of the truck just getting started shows French police shooting at it. It continued on for at least a mile. One or two snap shots aren't going to have much change of stopping something like a truck. The truck stopped on its own, then they killed the driver.

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    Have gnu, will travel.
  5. Re: YOU HAVE TO GO BACK by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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