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People Hate Canada's New 'Amber Alert' System (www.cbc.ca)
The CBC reports:
When the siren-like sounds from an Amber Alert rang out on cellular phones across Ontario on Monday, it sparked a bit of a backlash against Canada's new mobile emergency alert system. The Ontario Provincial Police had issued the alert for a missing eight-year-old boy in the Thunder Bay region. (The boy has since been found safe)... On social media, people startled by the alerts complained about the number of alerts they received and that they had received separate alerts in English and French... Meanwhile, others who were located far from the incident felt that receiving the alert was pointless. "I've received two Amber Alerts today for Thunder Bay, which is 15 hours away from Toronto by car," tweeted Molly Sauter. "Congrats, you have trained me to ignore Emergency Alerts...."
The CRTC ordered wireless providers to implement the system to distribute warnings of imminent safety threats such as tornadoes, floods, Amber Alerts or terrorist threats. Telecom companies had favoured an opt-out option or the ability to disable the alarm for some types of alerts. But this was rejected by the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator. Individuals concerned about receiving these alerts are left with a couple of options: they can turn off their phone -- it will not be forced on by the alert -- or mute their phone so they won't hear it.
Long-time Slashdot reader knorthern knight complains that the first two alerts-- one in English, followed by one in French -- were then followed by a third (bi-lingual) alert advising recipients to ignore the previous two alerts, since the missing child had been found.
The CRTC ordered wireless providers to implement the system to distribute warnings of imminent safety threats such as tornadoes, floods, Amber Alerts or terrorist threats. Telecom companies had favoured an opt-out option or the ability to disable the alarm for some types of alerts. But this was rejected by the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator. Individuals concerned about receiving these alerts are left with a couple of options: they can turn off their phone -- it will not be forced on by the alert -- or mute their phone so they won't hear it.
Long-time Slashdot reader knorthern knight complains that the first two alerts-- one in English, followed by one in French -- were then followed by a third (bi-lingual) alert advising recipients to ignore the previous two alerts, since the missing child had been found.
Over here the government just celebrated that they can now send regional emergency messages by sms. Even the civil contingencies agency has pointed out that sms has a ton of flaws and error states, would probably not work at all in a larger emergency, and that cell broadcast is a much better technology choice for this. In the end it doesn't matter though if officials aren't using it carefully.
Thunder Bay is 870 miles away from Toronto by road. This is equivalent to setting off an amber alert in Pittsburgh or Washington because of a missing kid in Florida.
The first time I was awoken at 3am to be on the lookout for a blue pickup with some random kid inside, I spent the next morning looking up how to disable those stupid alerts. If Canadia won't let people turn them off, then its time to leave Canadia.
Citizens... CITIZENS!!!
*clap clap clap*
May I have your attention please!
*CLAP CLAP CLAP*
Good citizens, be on the lookout for a blue pickup truck. The constabulary would.... like to have a word with them (do not approach though).
This is only people that installed the app.
but then I don't like the continuous dark either.
haven't gotten a single one of these, even the initial testing one from a couple weeks ago.
What if we could get everybody to help find missing kids? We'd find them in no time. No, you would have everyone busy searching all the time, not getting anything else done. This is the same dynamic that makes spam so evil: It costs you nothing to issue the alert, but it costs everyone a bit of their time to react to it. The tiniest benefit and the faintest hope seem worth it if the action doesn't cost you anything. That's why there is no mailing list of everybody in your city. Nobody is responsible enough to handle such a list. Eventually they will send an email to all to help find their runaway dog.
Justin Trudeau is soooooooo dreamy!!!!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Another example of stupid things the government does with good intentions. Same people who voted to ban dihydrogen-monoxide I bet.
Avoid collateral damage entirely.
well maybe.... we also get automated phone calls on top of text alerts, here... and even to land lines .. even to unlisted, unpublished landlines..
then the cable tv goes fucking nuts, too. hell, even the 'weekly' or 'monthly' "tests" go a half dozen times in the span of a few hours (and far more often than the 'weekly' or 'monthly' descriptor would suggest). when it's a "test day" forget about watching tv. the tests are loud as fuck; and it fucks the signal up so much, and for so long, even the dvr takes a dump and thinks it's lost the program, so it quits recording.
Coming soon: child-in-a-hot-car alerts, child-accidentally-saw-someone-naked alerts, child-missed-school alerts, child-using-drugs alerts, child-feeling-depressed alerts, child-feeling-repressed alerts, child-defying-authority alerts, child-attempting-suicide alerts, public-child-funeral alerts, government-overreach alerts, government-collapse alerts, and finally no alerts once children are starving in a lawless land.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Likely get downvoated but whatever. As a Canadian, fuck this. Ottawa does _not_ speak for the rest of Canada, despite what Trudy wants the world to believe. This is yet another example of it.
The Amber alert is _frequently_ abused by couples as part of their own internal marital problems. Thankfully not all reports get full blown Province wide alerts but enough do go out. It wasn't enough to plaster them all over highway signs and the media, oh no.
I don't care about your marriage problems. What I do care about is their continuing to implement frameworks used for totalitarian control. Even in Canada we have already tested using these systems to "alert" the public about crimes. Warn me when an actual emergency - say a power plant going into melt down - happens. Otherwise fuck off.
It is Canada, eh: The fourth alert was an apology about all the alerts.
I just turned the alerts off for any thing but the apocalypse. I felt they were irrelevant and not even close to my location. Unfortunately no common sense used in developing this sort of alert system. So most likely many disable it which defeats its success and usefulness.
He was abducted by his mother. Be on the lookout for an 8 year old boy with his mother from a town 15 hours away.
I have no clue how anyone who doesn't personally know the family would be able to pick this pair out from a text alert.
I can only imagine they may have wanted to be sure domestic airlines, car rental companies or bus lines were aware that these two might be getting out of town. Surely there must be a better way.
and was driving home with the phone still in the box it came in, and it did not even have a sim card in it yet and the damn thing kept making noise like those Emergency Broadcast System warning sounds you hear on TV & radio, so i get home, take the phone out of the box and turn it on (it was off and getting those warnings) and there was several amber alerts on it, from Tulsa Oklahoma, and i bought the phone in Norman Ok, and was driving south east to go home, Tulsa was over 150 miles away from me, all those emergency alarms got shut off when found them in the settings, the only one i could not shut off was the Presidential Alarms,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The CRTC ordered wireless providers to implement the system to distribute warnings of imminent safety threats such as tornadoes, floods, Amber Alerts or terrorist threats.
One of these things is not like the other... one of these things is not the same...
I'm not sure what kind of flawed logic you need to consider an "Amber Alert" (which basically affects a single child) to be a safety threat anywhere near on the same level as natural disasters. Many "terrorist threats" may be false or localized, but even those affect many more people than a single child.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
My phone has sent me Amber alerts for kids missing from states that are many hundreds of miles away from where I am. I feel bad for kids missing in Florida, but if I'm in MN at the time there isn't much I can do for them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm more surprised that you're all familiar with such alerts.
The day I recieve one of these, I will not only disable it (or ditch the phone for telephony entirely and go full IP and mute everything else), I will file a formal complaint and initiate a lawsuit if they just say 'tough'.
My country surely has the same facility but unless it's literally 'London is radioactive, stay the fuck away' it shouldn't be used. And people say *we're* a police state. Honestly, you could trigger outright riots and vigilanteism with that kind of crap.
Molly makes an excellent point. It's well known that kidnappers are restricted to a 14.9-hour radius, and any alert should be strictly localized to users within that range. It makes NO SENSE to err on the side of covering an overly broad geographical area. If anything, only the 2 or 3 people nearest the event should even receive an alert. In fact, why even issue alerts? Just find the cell phone closest to the event and obviously that's your kidnapper. Case closed. You're welcome!
Let's not forget -- Molly has been subjected to 100% of alerts so far. Can she please get a break?? Molly has things to do besides being trained to ignore your alerts! So Congrats, Canada. You inconvenienced a perfectly innocent woman, taught her the exact opposite of what you wanted her to learn, and made her life a living hell. And you wonder why nobody wants to live in your oppressive country!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Canada have this two officials language, even if the Alerts was send in French. Butg since the people managing the system are racist against french speaking people, the vocabulary in the Alert and the grammar was so off that none of the french speaking population CAN NOT read the thing supposed written in french that was send.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Ya, I hate getting an amber alert about some dad not bringing his kid back to her mother in time in a city 100 miles away.
I realize I may be late to the party, but what really surprised me was the statement "they can turn off their phone — it will not be forced on by the alert —", which makes it sound like there are alerts that WILL turn on ones phone. If so, how (technically) are devices that are off being turned on without the action of the user? That's a serious loss of control.
This is an extraordinary example of the effect of hyper-liberalism on society. What we have here is hyper-liberalism turning an entire country into a village and making every individual responsible for every other individual. A country cannot be a village, obviously, but not to a hyper-liberalist in a position of power. That is scary. Look for more of this kind of thing in the future.
E Proelio Veritas.
It looks like the system was built purposely without an opt-out option, the only choices for individuals is to mute the phone or to turn it off. This should never be the case as these systems are prone to mission creep and mistakes. We recently had an incident in my area where there was a threat of a release at a chemical plant, everyone within miles of the plant got a message "evacuate immediately" but the evacuation area was only intended for about a half mile around the facility. The failings of the Amber-Alert system here in the US are fairly well known, with alerts going out all the time for minor custodial disputes and someone getting the days of the week mixed up in their custody schedule. The threat of people dumping the system is about the only thing that would encourage those operating it to use it wisely, as if no one sees the service as useful it becomes increasingly likely it will meet the budget axe.
in any country. Next to stopping for pedestrians on quiet streets, stroboscopic seazure inducing school buses. Red lights on school buses stopping six bloody lanes of traffic for no real reason.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
My phone doesn't even support these alerts due to age. My household has three cell phones, none of them "smart", and only one of them even gets these alerts at all. I love how old technology can still serve a purpose. :)
The incident was in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We got the alert in Ottawa. That is a 16 hour drive away. Every phone in the office went off. Annoying and irrelevant. Maybe they needed to alert people who might know the people. Have a silent broadcast for things not in the immediate area of concern.
Fuck off and keep track of your own shitty kids.
Why would you implement a system that is so similar to the one in the US that has had all sort of similar problems?
Almost everyone in the US quickly learned to disable those alerts as soon as they got their first one. It wasn't that everyone hates kids in the entire country, but rather that they very quickly learned being awakened to information that they cannot possibly use isn't in their best interest.
If you cannot disable the alerts, then it's likely you soon will have an entire country that hates kids, parents, and the government.
Most folks in Thunder Bay didnâ(TM)t get the alert: https://www.tbnewswatch.com/local-news/amber-alert-failed-to-reach-thunder-bay-smartphones-924825
Neither me, my wife, nor one of our sons received any alerts at all. Not the earlier test alerts, nor any of the real alerts. You see, our phones are apparently "incompatible" with the alerting system and so we can't be reached. There are thousands of us in this situation. I just don't understand why the alerting system is so dependent on the particular chips used by the manufacturers, rather than the common protocols of the cellphone messaging system. We can receive phone calls from anyone and text messages from anyone. Why not from the alerting system too? Seems to be a huge failure in the design of the system.
Any system like this needs an Opt-Out option. I'm way the heck out in the mountains. Virtually none of these warnings are relevant to me and I can't do anything about them. All they do is waste time. Weather events I'm well aware of and always prepared for. Missing kids aren't going to be anywhere near me. All this system does is waste resources, piss people off and lower their attention threshold such that real warnings will get ignored.
It was Thunder Bay. If whatever their nation protection agency is called does not have license plate trackers on the highways there, there is something serious wrong. Thunder Bay is at a point where there is ONE paved road crossing Canada east to west. There is no other option than the bridge at Nipigon.
As the percentage of islamic persons increases so does crime
The initial implementation of the US system had the same problem, Amber Alerts in places that were irrelevantly distant from the crime. This is a bug that has been worked out.
... the recipients of the alerts must feel that the alerts are useful, and not misdirected or annoying. To force an alert system upon people who do not want it will result in alerts being ignored.
I live in the northeastern US, and earlier this week we had a series of bad thunderstorms that spawned a few tornadoes. The cell carriers saw fit to send out a mass alert (with alarm) to tell people there was a tornado warning. The problem was that by the time they sent this out (and the fact that they sent this to places an hour or more away from where the actual tornado threat was) most of the threat had expired - but that didn't stop idiots from running to their cars the second they got the alert. The local highway system had something like ten accidents occur in the span of an hour because people were panicked and stupid.
I hate them down here in the states as well. From an efficiency perspective, Amber Alerts are a dreadful waste of resources. They're a disruptive, irritating blunt instrument and a reminder of government control and intrusion.
It's extremely (and I can't add enough HTML to emphasize that word enough) annoying to receive one of these alerts at 3:00AM about a missing child last seen in a car with license plate blah blah. Unless I personally know the car with that plate (highly, highly unlikely) or I'm actually on the road and could have a ghost of a chance of spotting it, the number of people who can actually take action on these alerts is vanishingly small. As far as I've been able to tell, it's not possible to filter these to only be received during waking hours. I doubt I'm alone in feeling that the only emergencies I'm interested in hearing about in the middle of the freakin' night are from my children or parents.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'll complain and grump about amber alerts instead of just turning them off in the phone.
First if all, what happened to anonymity for minors in legal matters? They named the kid in the alerts! Secondly, how is this a public safety issue? I think its a wonderful thing that we can have a public broadcast alert system that will warn me of imminent threats to public safety such as tornadoes, terrorism, or big rocks falling from space. But a missing child does not qualify as a public safety issue in my opinion.
Government of Canada, please let us know, was this alert, which was sent to millions of cell phones in multiple provinces, and the system that carried the alert, which was mandated and will be paid for by the subscribers of the cell phone networks, instrumental in finding the child? No details were provided. It should be a measurement of effectiveness and success of the project.
I just checked my lineageOS install (ASUS zenFone 2 Laser Z00T) and I can turn on/off AMBER *and* presidential alerts (which is nice, since I'm in Canada). Take that Drumpf :p
More seriously though, lineageOS also lets one set Emergency Alerts to vibrate-only so I just got a vibrate and the alert texts.
AMBER alert statistics (US):
https://www.amberalert.gov/statistics.htm
Sorry you infertile nerds are inconvenienced by a beep on the phone while chaterbaitin but the majority of the people in the real world do care about these things. If i see an amber alert i do pay more attention when driving looking for the car. I would hope others would attention if it were my kids as well.
Do the cops always get it right? No, they are dumb ass cops. Even their technical units are horrible, at least here in NY. But you can't dismiss the premise and technology boost based on mistakes made in the implementation, you improve it.
I hope someday cars will come default with a LPR system that sends a cell signal out to the police for these things.
Submitter here. There was so much more I wanted to put into the submission, but didn't have room for.
How would you feel if somebody took away your $100 or $1000 cellphone and gave you a dedicated pager that only worked for alerts? Pretty bad, right? The primary use cases for cellphones are
1) making/receiving phone calls (dohhh)
2) listening to built-in FM radio (if your model has one)
3) listening to music or podcasts in storage
4) listening to streaming internet music
5) receiving messages when at meetings
Given that the alert sound is *DAMN LOUD*, and cannot be turned off easily...
1) So you're in a phone call and holding the phone up to your ear, or using earphones/earbuds... AND THE DAMN LOUD KLAXON GOES OFF
2) FM radio requires earphones/earbuds, so that the wire can be used as an FM antenna... AND THE DAMN LOUD KLAXON GOES OFF
3) You're listening to pre-recorded music or podcasts... AND THE DAMN LOUD KLAXON GOES OFF
4) you're listening to streaming internet music... AND THE DAMN LOUD KLAXON GOES OFF
5) You're at a meeting, or at a movie, or at church, or whatever with your phone set to vibrate-only "meeting mode"... AND THE DAMN LOUD KLAXON GOES OFF
From https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/heal...
> What is noise-induced hearing loss?
> Every day, we experience sound in our environment, such as the sounds from
> television and radio, household appliances, and traffic. Normally, these
> sounds are at safe levels that don't damage our hearing. But sounds can be
> harmful when they are too loud, even for a brief time, or when they
> are both loud and long-lasting. These sounds can damage sensitive
> structures in the inner ear and cause noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL).
Fortunately, my phone has the option to be forced down to 3G-only. Since the Canadian alert system is LTE-only, that protects me. The other options are rooting the phone and/or flashing LineageOS on it.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
In the USA, Amber alerts are largely ineffective, and most cases where they do result in a "missing" child being recovered involve custody disputes, rather than kidnappings by potential malefactors ...
Check out my novel.
Got a new cell phone last fall. Amber alerts were enabled on it.
Got 2 AAs in the first month - both about 100 miles away. I disabled the notifications.
I don't live near any interstates or major roads that someone would use to get between villages/towns. The house is on a dead end street with a few homes. Basically, zero traffic. We barely look at the street most days, choosing to live in our back yard with a few acres of forest.
The point is we aren't going too see someone speeding away with "Amber."
If everyone who receives an Amber alert were to call into 911 and report they have not yet seen that child in their area....maybe that would get a response!!!
Were you signed up under one of the infamous "Thunder Bay" phone plans that many signed up for the best data plan for years?
I'm glad other people feel the amber alert system is broken in the states and up in Canada. I've often talked about trying to change the system since I don't support the current method of everybody being opted in automatically. Every time I've brought it up though I'm shutdown by "Think of the children" or "Your a heartless bastard". How do we fix this broken system going forward?
And as usual, the JEWS are imposing their bullshit on their slave population. Why is there no opt-out? What a complete and utter waste of time this is - but then, what do you expect from the Jewish, Bolshevik shithole that is Canada?
If we're talking about wasted resources, let's start with the wasted time of thousands of people who have nothing to do with these panic alerts. Spamming people isn't okay just because you mention a child in the message.
It is a new system introduced, the bugs will get worked out I am sure. ...or the lack of a new service.. ...
Being Canadian...I know that one thing that a soul can count on in Canada is that there will be a lot of complaining about anything. Either a new service
There will be griping.
And for something as essential as a country wide emergency alert system
Most definitely there will be complaining...
Give the service time to sort out their issues.
I am sure that individuals who are complaining now ...will be happy to get the alerts when it is their butt on the line ...and the emergency impacts them and theirs...
I know that when an emergency finally does happen...one that foreknowledge of could save the life of me and mine..
I will be thankful.
Why the hell do we have to call it an "Amber" alert? Are we just piggy backing on the old US Homeland Security colour threat level scheme? wtf did "Amber" come from anyway? Is it just a way of saying that it isn't the end of the world (red I presume), or worth not ignoring (yellow I guess)?
I'm going to throw it out there if you are forcibly sending out an alert to MILLIONS of people across THOUSANDS of kilometers, it better be a RED level event...
If EVERYONE receiving an alert would report (call back) either a positive or negative sighting, the authorities would soon have ample data with which to refine their algorithm and area of coverage.
Regards, -- Chris Johansen