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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.
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!
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.
So enable it on YOUR phone and let everyone else decide whether they want it or not on their phones.
They are all enabled by default when you buy the phone.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Your phone likely won't be able to recive the new version of alerts no but neither will anyone else's current phone unless they add support in a software update.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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
Only members of the the Inner Party can turn off their Telescreens.
I forget. Did the citizens of Oceania have to buy their Telescreens and pay for monthly service?
Feature phone FTW!
Have gnu, will travel.
"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.
Can you imagine hacking the system and sending out an alert with a link to malware, beautiful .
It's also a free speech issue. We have a right to be free from government mandated speech - the FCC is overstepping its authority.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
Only on Slashdot does this get modded down. For the children? Of course.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Don't use them, don't need them. Just another way for the government to make you "feel" safe. Bunch of useless crap!
Nothing more tired, played out, and stupid as a "for the children" argument.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yes.
Sorry, My taxes pay for the people to actually fix those things.
I don't need to be alerted by an amber alert in channahon when I am shopping in south chicago heights - that was when I disabled the stupid thing.It's over an hour away from me and to be honest, it was a description of a black honda car.
So like, how many of them are there?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
My favorite was when I was working in a large office shortly after this was pushed out in both Android and iOS, and the carriers turned it on - there was an Amber alert and you could hear that loud as fuck sound coming from hundreds of phones across the building and everyone wondering what in the hell was going on.
And why is that alert three times louder than any other sound the phone is capable of making? Are the just begging for people to get pissed and turn it off?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Exactly. There have been many examples where this system completely fails - a kid missing from San Diego, yet Amber alerts being broadcast in San Francisco, 500 miles north. Or an Amber alert for a kid in Cincinnati, OH that isn't broadcast into either Kentucky or Indiana, which are less than 20 minutes away from downtown Cincinnati if there is no traffic. Kentucky is just over one of the bridges from downtown FFS.
Or, reverse that and they do broadcast into Kentucky and Indiana - I'm sure people on the outskirts of Chicago really give a damn.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
One of these was not a relative but an outright pedophile.
Most kiddie touchers are relatives. Having a kiddie toucher not be a relative doesn't make them more of a pedophile. It actually makes them unusual.
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?
What the fuck are you on about? I don't complain about the TV and the radio because they don't turn themselves on to tell me about something I don't need to know about. If it's 10 PM and I've been at home all day, an AMBER alert will do precisely no good. The phone has enough sensors to decide whether I need this alert without phoning home.
Fuck off and I hope you never have kids in a situation that makes you oh so personally give a shit.
I won't, because I didn't make any. We have too many people on this mudball already. So not only have I already avoided saddling the earth with another human who will drive the planet farther into toxic debt, but I don't need to kill people through distraction and sleep loss in order to preserve their safety.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
The FCC needs to fuck the right off.
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?
I sincerely hope this is a Poe.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
Who says it can't be disabled? And who says they you are the determinant of what other people's phones do?
Let's use your logic.
We need a newer and better amber alert system. Did you know that some people have theirs alerts turned off? Did you know that there are still some people who don't have smartphones or televisions or have those turned off as well?
In order to achieve the needed granularity for the effective deployment of Amber alerts, we must immediately send police door to door to alert every citizen of a missing child. And anyone who does not admit the police to be informed, must be charged with child endangerment, as they might have had the one clue that would put the child back with their rightful guardians.
I just wrote what you did, only took it to the next level.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Fuck you and fuck you. fuck you and fuck you. Fuck you and fuck you all the way up to 964164. And fuck you for modding this instead of saying something smart or smart ass!
It's sad when someone mixes meth, coffee, and a desire to control others.
Chillaxe, brah - you can't control other people, and you're tearing yourself apart with anger in the attempt. I suggest Valerian root capsules, maybe some St John's Wort as well. Even out those moods without turning yourself into a prescription drug zombie.
And if you want the alerts, by all means take them. But you can't demand that others do that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Most kiddie touchers are relatives
I'm not sure that still holds statistically when there's an abduction involved.
I'm not sure that still holds statistically when there's an abduction involved.
I don't know either, but I'd guess that it does, because most abductions are by relatives. But hey, maybe those particular groups don't overlap much.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would bet that most abductions by relatives are custody-related. I'm not sure there's a reliable source on numbers for something so specific either way.