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FCC Votes To Upgrade Emergency Smartphone Alerts (cnn.com)
After recent bombings, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to update the four-year-old emergency smartphone alerts system, which is used by officials to ping smartphones to alert people of severe weather, missing children, terror attacks or other danger. Some of the new changes allow the system to send texts with links to pictures, maps and phone numbers. CNNMoney reports: The agency also voted to allow longer messages -- 360 characters, up from 90 -- and to require wireless providers to support Spanish-language alerts. Wireless carriers will be allowed to support embedded links later this year. They'll be required to next year. The system's limits were on display last week when millions of New Yorkers received a text alert seeking information on Ahmad Khan Rahami, suspected in bombings in New York and New Jersey. "See media for pic," the alert said. Emergency alerts still won't include embedded photos, but commissioners said they're open to the idea. "Vague directives in text about where to find information about a suspect, just as we saw in New York, are not good enough," said Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner. "As we move into the 5G future, we need to ensure that multimedia is available in all of our alert messages." Not everyone was so sure. Michael O'Rielly, another commissioner, said adding links and multimedia could jam cell networks during emergencies.
Red Alert?
After the alert mechanism was misused in my state for an Amber alert for an incident hundreds of miles away, I turned these alerts off.
I suspect more people would turn them off if they knew how (it's not obvious on Android -- used to be in settings, but then moved into the messaging app).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
How many people are they killing a year by disrupting sleep (which results in accidents) and distracting drivers with those "alert" texts that are rarely applicable?
Next update: you cannot disable alerts, even by turning your phone off or even running down the battery. Subsequent release: government gets "notifications" from your phones, too.
As long as we, the consumers have FULL CONTROL over what alerts we get. We should have the ability to turn off/on whatever we want. If you (the government) want to have them on by default for new devices, fine; but we should be able to decide how and what to get. Don't act like you (the government) have some *right* to communicate with our devices in any way you choose.
For example, I don't give a **** about amber alerts, there are days I am not out in the public and it serves no purpose but to annoy me. And I have apps that already give me CORRECT weather alerts. The ones through the carrier's forced app were always WRONG- scaring the crap out of me or waking me from sleep with super-loud sirens and stuff for things HUNDREDS of miles away that posed zero threat.
And I'm just suppose to click on a link...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I have found this system useful. Although it is painful to hear that emergency signal go off minutes before the sirens go off, it may yet save my life. Also, I can attest that it has returned at least a couple small kids to their rightful guardian over the years. One of these was not a relative but an outright pedophile. To the detractors who say, "But it cannot be disabled!"... I cite my second experience over the first of my own life and say so fucking what? Are you going to complain about the TV you no longer watch and the radio you no longer listen to? Fuck off and I hope you never have kids in a situation that makes you oh so personally give a shit. Now find some flawed grammar and call it out.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Do people actually turn these alerts on. I never have turned them on and never will... I have better shit to do...
Something about my phone causes it to not receive MMS messages (though SMS works fine). Does that mean I won't get alerts in this 5G future?
Phone is good for specific people to call you when needed. i.e. alarm tech, plumber, physician, EMT on standby. Or when calling ARES/RACES hams when needed. Weather alert, there are those radios that activate to NOAA alert transmission. Amber alerts, BOL for stolen vehicle, robbers, etc. the phone is something at first glance might be useful but everyone will suffer alarm fatigue and eventually will ignore further alerts. Probably news media more effective, or those that monitor police on their scanners might be useful.
Few years ago I had my phone on county alert system, one late night it makes the most horrible loud sound for a missing child in some town far away from where I live. I then signed off from that system. There was a story where 2 million New Yorkers were awaken at 2 am when stolen car alert was sent to everyone's phone.
mfwright@batnet.com
"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
but I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
Have gnu, will travel.
The entire system should be opt in for those chicken scratches that the government and media keep in constant fear. If I pay for something, I want complete control. That goes for my house, car, computer, phone, and anything else that politicians want control of. I want liberty and freedom.
Can you imagine hacking the system and sending out an alert with a link to malware, beautiful .
Despite living in an area that gets tornadoes, I decided I'd to take my chances and shut it off, rather than have my smartphone screech at me, every time somebody is having a domestic dispute.
Don't use them, don't need them. Just another way for the government to make you "feel" safe. Bunch of useless crap!
Enable AMBER alerts. The AMBER alerts are designed and function explicitly to broaden the search for people harming kids.
That's what they are sold to the public as being.
What they actually are is a big hammer that divorced couples who hate each other can use against each other in custody disputes.
"But the system rarely works as well as that. In a 2008 article in Criminal Justice Review titled “Child Abduction, AMBER Alert, and Crime Control Theater,” Timothy Griffin and Monica K. Miller argued that “AMBER Alert has not achieved and probably cannot achieve the ambitious goals that inspired its creation.” Griffin and Miller examined data from hundreds of AMBER Alerts issued between 2003 and 2006, and dubbed the AMBER Alert system a “theatrical policy” that was largely ineffective in helping save kidnapped children. “In most cases where they were issued, Griffin found, Amber Alerts played no role in the eventual return of abducted children,” the Boston Globe wrote in 2008. “Their successes were generally in child custody fights that didn't pose a risk to the child. And in those rare instances where kidnappers did intend to rape or kill the child, Amber Alerts usually failed to save lives.” ...
"...those sorts of kidnappings are very rare. The vast majority of child abductions in this country are committed by relatives or acquaintances—estranged parents and such who usually mean the children no harm. Even though AMBER Alerts are only supposed to be issued in “the most serious child-abduction cases,” they are nevertheless used in domestic cases like these—cases where, Griffin argues, AMBER Alerts might actually serve to escalate an otherwise manageable situation. "
Reference: http://www.slate.com/blogs/cri...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How many kids have actually been saved because of the Amber alert, vs the number of such alerts sent?
Well, they claim 830 successes.
Well, here's the very first item on that list of "successes": a custody dispute, where the "kidnapper" had dropped the child off with relatives.
And that's typical. This is what they claim as "successes": the non-custodial parent has the child. Rather than issuing an AMBER alert, maybe the police could have just called the relatives of the missing child?
February 29, 2016 - Hayden, AZ
A non-custodial father abducted his 2-year-old child after assaulting the child’s mother. An AMBER Alert was activated as the child was believed to be in imminent danger. Later, the abductor dropped the child off with relatives. Multiple people made the relatives aware of the AMBER Alert and the family notified law enforcement. The child was safely rescued and the abductor later arrested.