Slashdot Mirror
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.
> driven by emotion rather than a rational look at what might actually help.
Just like gun control.
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.
There are not enough pedophiles to present any meaningful risk to me or my family.
My children are more likely to be abused by members of my own family.
My children are more likely to be run over walking home from school.
My children are more likely to be shot by my own gun in the family home.
For fuck sake everyone, gain some perspective!
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; }
You are beginning to understand American culture.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
And like gun control, it overwhelmingly only effects people who are not the sort of people who are the real problem.
But do the amber alerts do anything if there are too many of them?
Of course they do. Crying wolf desensitizes people, but the sheer amount justifies larger appropriations to certain departments.
And direct-to-phone communicaton like this alert system allows the phone companies and law enforcement agencies a pretext for a pen register of the IMEIs of phone capable devices that don't even have a subscription, as long as they're powered.