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.

Comments

Still better than sms

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Still better than sms

[ls671]

I believe that you might have a point. SMS systems usually queue the messages 1 by 1, 1 for each recipient and seem to lack the broadcasting ability required hence the need for a parallel broadcasting system. Otherwise, a special "emergency flag" on SMS, usable only by authorized sender, would have been sufficient.

For the Canada system, this was announced a few mouths ago with great hype and watching the press releases and TV, I couldn't have guessed that what is happening today would have somehow happened.

Re:Still better than sms

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many reasons why sms would not be sufficient at all. There is no direct way to broadcast sms messages to a geographic area without looking up the location of all subscribers. With cell broadcast the cell towers are told to broadcast the message and if you're able to pick up the signal you get it.

Re:Still better than sms

[tgeek]

Cell towers - both GSM/CDMA and eNodeB (LTE) - do have the capability to broadcast messages. In the US, carriers receive all alerts from IPAWS (a FEMA operated system) and then pick out and dispatch the geographically appropriate ones to their towers.

Re:Still better than sms

[KingMotley]

The TV emergency broadcast system has the problem that it can only reach those who have the TV turned on.

Re: Still better than sms

[Brockmire]

Point made, but that's also broadcast free, over the air, no? A place that might get flooded or in range of fire doesn't have cable but may have an off air antenna to receive a life saving broadcast.

Re:Still better than sms

[arth1]

The TV emergency broadcast system has the problem that it can only reach those who have the TV turned on.

Which is why one of the emergency siren codes is "important message, listen to radio/TV". During the cold war, we were drilled in these, but these days, I would wager that nine out of ten people can't tell what any of the siren codes mean.

Re:Still better than sms

[KingMotley]

Actually emergency SMS don't require a SIM card, or a cellular plan in the USA (pretty sure on that, I've never personally tried it). You can also make emergency calls even with no SIM. That I've personally seen on an iPhone I ripped the SIM card out of because I wanted to use it as a WIFI only device. You can even make an emergency call on an iPhone without having the unlock code as well. I'd assume the Canadian system works the same, but I'm not positive on that.

** Emergency call in this context means to 911, 999, 180 or similar number.

Re: Still better than sms

[damien_kane]

Because who the fuck has a cellphone with the sim chip removed? Itâ(TM)s like complaining your emergency radio wonâ(TM)t work if youâ(TM)re using it to store your forks.

Children who aren't yet old enough to have a fully-functional cellphone, but for their parents it was cheaper just to give them their old cellphone sans-SIM when they upgraded, than it was to buy them a tablet, perhaps?

The added benefit of the above is that your kid can still make emergency calls to 911, which they wouldn't be able to do with a tablet that doesn't have a GPRS/LTE radio in it

Some context

[Guspaz]

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.

Re:Some context

[Calydor]

In my home country of Denmark you can't go 870 miles in any direction from any point in the country without ending up in another country altogether.

Or the ocean.

I suspect this is true for a lot of the smaller European countries, though I can't be bothered to pull up a bunch of maps to check for certain.

Re:Some context

[ls671]

Indeed, the contrast is stunning.

Re:Some context

[Jbcarpen]

I live in Colorado. Before disabling Amber Alerts on my phone I regularly received them from Tampa Florida. That's an 1800-2000 mile trip (depending on where in CO you start), so the Amber alert system in the US is no better.

Why is it so hard to get the location for the alerts down to something narrow enough to be useful? I like the idea of the system, but the implementation is so bad that it's useless.

Re:Some context

[93 Escort Wagon]

I live in Washington state. A couple of years ago we got an Amber Alert related to an abduction in California - somebody thought the guy might choose to head north, so they apparently set them off along the entire I-5 corridor.

I disabled them on my phone long before that, but you still see them on freeway signs and whatnot.

The idea behind Amber Alerts isn’t a bad one, but the implementation is rubbish - probably because it’s driven by emotion rather than a rational look at what might actually help.

Re:Some context

[Carewolf]

In my home country of Denmark you can't go 870 miles in any direction from any point in the country without ending up in another country altogether.

Or the ocean.

I suspect this is true for a lot of the smaller European countries, though I can't be bothered to pull up a bunch of maps to check for certain.

And still the Danish equivalent alert system can be alerted for a single city at a time.

Re:Some context

[o_ferguson]

This drive also only gets you 1/3 of the way out of the province towards Manitoba. Canada is vaaaaassssst.

Re:Some context

[o_ferguson]

separation of powers, capitalism and jurisdictional pissing contests.

Re: Some context

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason is this: Imagine that the guy had headed up north. Then the person who decided not to use the amber alert in WA would have been dragged through media as worse than the perpetrator.

Re:Some context

[jarkus4]

The only countries in Europe with such long straight line territory seem to be Sweden, Norway and Russia. Also Turkey, but its in their Asian part

Re:Some context

[SuricouRaven]

Imagine you are a very concerned public official in charge of this system, and you get a police alert for a missing child. You know that the child has probably just gotten lost, but may have been abducted - it happens, usually following an ugly divorce in which one parent gets custody. The child has been missing now for 24 hours - the time taken for the parent to notice they didn't come home from school, call the school, let the school search and check their records, call the police, have the police send an officer over to collect full details, organise a local search, and finally conclude that the child should be declared potentially abducted and an amber alert issued.

I ran that through the trip planner on Google: An abductor on the run, unable to use air travel but also willing to forgo sleep in their deperation to escape a search area, can do that in 27 hours drive time. Achievable if they take a bus part of the journey, or try for a desperation-fueled thirty-hours-without-sleep day. So that is actually a perfectly reasonable search radius.

There is an obvious problem with this: When the 'reasonable search radius' includes more than half the country, alerts are so frequent that people quickly learn to ignore them. Child abductions are very good at terrifying parents, but actual cases of children harmed are very rare - that's why they make headlines when it does happen, further fuelling the fear.

Re:Some context

[Anonymous Coward]

> driven by emotion rather than a rational look at what might actually help.

Just like gun control.

Re:Some context

[sjames]

The last alert I got was for an abduction that had taken place two hours prior, in a city that was an 8 hour drive away. A little after 9 P.M.

The odds that I might happen to see the described vehicle were zero. Since then, I have seen news reports of abductions where people in my general area might have potentially seen the vehicle, but I didn't receive an alert.

Re:Some context

[Kjella]

You know that the child has probably just gotten lost, but may have been abducted - it happens, usually following an ugly divorce in which one parent gets custody.

Haven't suspected custody battles been explicitly exempted from the Amber Alerts? Also I think you've missed out on the recent paranoia, it's notice the child is missing - or even potentially missing - and go straight to panic, better safe than sorry. Even in my day I'd say the longest period out of touch between dinner and supper would be 3-4 hours at the most, if I didn't show up for school or didn't get home from school the panic would start much sooner. I mean I could hang out with a friend, but then they'd call from their house to my house and tell where I was.

Maybe my parents could be out and about a whole day without being in touch with an adult, but not me. These days any child that's mature enough to be left unsupervised for any longer period of time usually has a cell phone too, so if you're too young to have one or isn't answering they're both reasons to start a search sooner. Of course there could always be an outlier somewhere but I imagine the vast majority start <2 hours after they got lost.

For the Amber Alert to be useful the child must be visible which only happens if the kid is still going along with it, if it's drugged or tied up in the trunk/back of a van it hardly matters how wide the alert goes. And it'll only take so long before the kid realize you're not giving him/her a lift home, so practically I doubt it's useful for more than say a one hour radius. You also have to consider that you will be blasting it on TV, radio and online news. How many people do you really need to nag by text message? I'd probably go with like a 50 mile radius at most. Potentially even less.

Re: Some context

[Ogive17]

I'm in Ohio. I've never received one from a location that was more than a one hour drive from where I am.

Re:Some context

[TFAFalcon]

But do the amber alerts do anything if there are too many of them?

If you receive a few per day, virtually any kid you see is probably going to match at least a couple of the reports you got in the last week. Should you report every case of a kid crying to the police as a possible sighting? After all, there was an amber alert.

Re:Some context

[Cederic]

may have been abducted - it happens, usually following an ugly divorce in which one parent gets custody

In which case the child is either in no danger of harm at all, or they're about to participate in a murder-suicide for which the abductor isn't going to drive 800 miles.

Re:Some context

[pslytely psycho]

We get the alerts here, but they have a much finer grain. I have only gotten two in the last year, because the city is split up into quadrants (the same boundaries the police and fire and bus lines use, why re-invent the wheel?) and the alerts only go to those areas, bordering areas are alerted only when the situation is close to their border. They do put them on the overhead information signs citywide, but the audio alerts are area-specific.

Re: Some context

[jarkus4]

Ukraine is to small, the longest distance I managed to find (google maps distance tool) was about 800 miles.
Turkey only reaches this in its Asian part.
Greenland doesn't really count as Europe as its NA.
You also missed Sweden and Norway, they are quite long in their N-S axis

Re:Some context

[drinkypoo]

The odds that I might happen to see the described vehicle were zero. Since then, I have seen news reports of abductions where people in my general area might have potentially seen the vehicle, but I didn't receive an alert.

Yep. When you couple the alerts you don't get (any useful ones, IME) with the alerts you do get (which couldn't possibly have anything to do with you) then the whole thing becomes a shit-show. I disabled all alerts a long time ago (my rom lets me) and I'm much happier for it.

Maybe if I start doing a lot of freeway miles, I'll turn them back on, but that'd be the only way.

Re:Some context

[thegarbz]

An abductor on the run, unable to use air travel but also willing to forgo sleep in their deperation to escape a search area, can do that in 27 hours drive time. Achievable if they take a bus part of the journey, or try for a desperation-fueled thirty-hours-without-sleep day. So that is actually a perfectly reasonable search radius.

Holy crap the conclusion you reach is not even remotely related to conditions in your assumption.

Re:Some context

[iCEBaLM]

> The child has been missing now for 24 hours

Amber alerts are issued immediately, not days after.

Re:Some context

[arth1]

Even in my day I'd say the longest period out of touch between dinner and supper would be 3-4 hours at the most, if I didn't show up for school or didn't get home from school the panic would start much sooner.

Different cultures and times have different norms, I think. As long as I were home by the time matching my age, it didn't matter whether I was out the entire day without giving notice.
There were Rules, like no swimming without at least one person staying ashore, or no getting into cars unless driven by parents of friends, and if there were an Event like a family dinner, I'd be home in time to clean up before then, but by and large, we kids were allowed to go missing for the day, and expected to be able to take care of ourselves from reaching school age. That's when we received a key to the house. It was expected that we'd often come home with cuts and bruises, or scared by an experience, or deserved a scalding if we did something stupid.

Re: Some context

[evenmoreconfused]

We got that Amber Alert in Montreal too, and thatâ(TM)s another 6 hours further by car than Toronto. Admittedly, we only got it on the radio, but thatâ(TM)s because the Quebec emergency system failed totally when tested a couple of weeks ago.

Re:Some context

[ceoyoyo]

Wha? I've driven Thunder Bay to Toronto in one go. Twice. It's about a 15 hour drive, no desperation required.

If you're in Thunder Bay, which is really kind of a smallish town by most countries' standards and you want to get out, there's really only one highway and two ways to go: west to Winnipeg and south to Toronto. Of those options, south would be way better for losing yourself in the crowd. So if the kid had been missing for more than eight hours or so, an alert in southern Ontario wouldn't be completely stupid.

Re: Some context

[Anonymous Coward]

And like gun control, it overwhelmingly only effects people who are not the sort of people who are the real problem.

Re:Some context

[arth1]

> driven by emotion rather than a rational look at what might actually help.

Just like gun control.

Just like gun rights, you mean.
Gun control proponents are quite often objective, looking at statistics like data from other Western countries that tightened control like the UK and Australia, instead of appeals to feelings and heritage. Sure, there are knee-jerk reactions for gun control too, but those are fewer, and not nearly as pervasive as the irrational feelings-based "from my cold dead hands" crowd.

Re:Some context

[arth1]

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.

Re: Some context

[Calydor]

Well, technically Greenland falls under Danish government now that you mention it.

Re:Some context

[Solandri]

Not that I think Amber Alerts are a good idea. But I would assume if you got one from a city an 8 hour drive away, that means abduction took place more than 8 hours ago. And authorities were issuing the alert to all locations where the suspect could've driven in the intervening time. It's not like you instantly know a child has been abducted. There's some time where you figure the child is out playing with friends, then some more time for frantic phone calls and searching when the child doesn't show up for a meal, then more time to decide if this is serious enough to call police, then time to explain to and convince police that an abduction has taken place, then time for police to gather evidence and confirm that a certain person (and thus a vehicle license plate) may be responsible.

The infrequency of Amber Alerts probably has more to do with how rare child abductions are, than it has to do with them being issued to a small localized area.

Re:Some context

[jonfr]

This is a sample of helicopter parenting. It is not good for the kid (don't learn how to evaluate risk or to take risk), it is also not good for the parent (never learn to trust their kid).

There are other effects described here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.psychologytoday.co...
https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Re: Some context

[iCEBaLM]

Oh, not very effective then. I've never seen amber alerts here for that kind of situation.

Re:Some context

[Pseudonym]

For comparison, in Australia it's possible to go 870 miles in a straight line without leaving the cattle ranch. Canada is a little bigger, but Australia has a lot more nothing between things.

Re:Some context

[ooloorie]

separation of powers, capitalism and jurisdictional pissing contests.

Bzzt. The correct answer is statism, progressivism, regulatory overreach, and bureaucracy.

Re:Some context

[Mashiki]

In Canada, driving 800+ miles is considered a day trip, unless you live in one of the big cities and never really travel. Same with the US. People really don't grasp the size of north america, and just how far people travel. Often, it's cheaper to drive from ontario to alberta through the US(call it 3-4 days) with fuel and hotel rentals then it is to fly(call that a 4200km drive), a flight could run you $600-900 even with 2mo reservations, driving? $300 if that. It's hilarious to hear european truck drivers for instance complaining about 300-400km drives, but then look at you in shock when you explain that truck drivers here drive 1500km in a 2 or 3 day stint and that's considered a normal 401/I75 run.

I used to drive from Southern Ontario(let's call it London because it's easier to find on the map), to southern Indianapolis(southport) every friday afternoon after work, to visit my GF. I'd leave sunday around 6-7pm and get back in time for a few hours of sleep and be up for work monday morning. I sure am not the only person that did or does that, and that's only a 7hr drive.

Re:Some context

[sjames]

The last alert I got was for an abduction that had taken place TWO HOURS PRIOR, in a city that was an 8 hour drive away. A little after 9 P.M.

Re:Some context

[arth1]

"Western countries" like UK and Australia do not have a large amount of African or South American populations. You will notice as populations of these southern hemisphere types increase, crime increases.

You have apparently never been to the UK.
20% of the UK population identify as non-white, and in London, only 45% of the population is "White British". It's hard to find any metropolis in the world with more cultural diversity than London. Or one where your life is in less danger from murder.

How is UK's gun ban working for London's stabbing rates?

Quite well, actually. Compared to the total number shot or stabbed before with the number shot or stabbed now, the risk has gone down.
And given a choice, I'd take a higher risk of being stabbed or sliced over being shot any day. The odds of leaving the hospital upright are indisputably much better.

Re:Some context

[Mashiki]

Well it's harder to go in a straight line in Canada, once you start getting out of the civilized parts it's bogs, marsh, permafrost, lakes, forests, mountains, hills the size of mountains and so on. You can drive 870 miles and never see anything but outpost villages(pop 18-50) that get fuel by rail(it's too expensive for trucks to make round trips for fuel), but are considered critical lifeline communities. That 870 miles you might never see a single car, truck or another person except outside of those outpost communities too. And if you broke down? Cell service doesn't exist.

Re:Some context

[SuricouRaven]

The post I was replying to specifically mentioned Colorado. I don't know the US road system, so I just used google to check the journey time.

The point here is that with modern transpotation, people can travel fast, so the search radius for a missing child rapidly grows to the point where amber alerts end up annoying a very large number of people.

Re:Some context

[SuricouRaven]

There was an article I remember seeing in a tabloid paper about this. Being tabloidy, it was all anecdote rather than serious science, but they had a map that got the point across. They asked four (male) generations of a family how far they had been allowed to roam unsupervised when they were sixteen, and overlaid it onto a map. A huge blob of red for the great-grandfather. A smaller, deeper red within for the grandfather. A smaller, deeper circle still within that for the father - and a barely visible red dot for the latest generation, who was not permitted beyond the end of the driveway.

What the statistics say about childhood dangers and what parents perceive to be dangerous really have little connection.

Re:Some context

[ahodgson]

Nah, it's only like 550km or so from Thunder Bay to the Manitoba border.

Re:Some context

[Hognoxious]

In my home country of Denmark you can't go 870 miles in any direction from any point in the country without ending up in another country altogether.

I don't think it would help much if Germany gave back the bit they stole.

P.S. For Luxembourg, that'd be more like 870 metres.

Re:Some context

[Hognoxious]

"Western countries" like UK and Australia do not have a large amount of African or South American populations.

Australians are descended from convicts, though. It's why they're good at rugby - running with an iron ball chained to your leg builds the strength for breaking tackles.

Re:Some context

[Drethon]

But do the amber alerts do anything if there are too many of them?

If you receive a few per day, virtually any kid you see is probably going to match at least a couple of the reports you got in the last week. Should you report every case of a kid crying to the police as a possible sighting? After all, there was an amber alert.

Even getting a couple a day wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the loud klaxon they use for the alert. There may be a way to switch it to simple vibrate but the alert sound annoyed me so much I just wanted it off.

Re: Some context

[Guspaz]

I hadn't even noticed there was an alert: an alert sent out by radio in this day and age isn't going to be widespread, and my cellphone never got any notification.

The CRTC's new alert system applies to Quebec too. It's a national system.

Re:Some context

[Guspaz]

Save a child today, don't save a child tomorrow because everybody turned off the alert system due to too many alerts from too far away.

That said, I see lots of Americans posting here about how they "turned off" amber alert notifications, but there is no option to do that in Canada. There is no option or setting to configure or control them, or at least, I've not seen any.

Re:Some context

[arth1]

Most of the non-white population in London are Middle Eastern and Indian. Not North American African or South and Central American.

Again, you spew bullshit about a city you have never walked the streets of, as I have, frequently.
4.2% of London's population identify as black American (chiefly Caribbean) heritage. Plus 1.5% of mixed white and black American heritage.
Arabs are only around 1.3% of London's population.
Asians are more populous than American blacks, sure.

And what's this focus on "North American African"s anyhow? How big percentage of the dozens of mass shooters the last few years fit that bill? It seems to me that it's the white guys one should be worried about...

Re:Some context

[Maxthod]

I guess Tinder/Uber does not "call" that far?

Didn't they use GPS? Its not to hard to write an API for mobile firmware once its mandatory to support like 911.

(Not even need to push malicious gov. code.)

Re:Some context

[jrumney]

Regardless of how widely the amber alert is broadcast, there's no need for the siren. Just send a message to the phone. Keep the siren for incoming North Korean missiles, tsunami's, tornados and the like where everyone needs to take immediate action to ensure their own safety.

Re: Some context

[Brockmire]

Fuck, I thought Canada's Trans Canada Highway was going to be longer than Australia's, but I turned out to be disappointed. The road construction business must be full of billionaires.

Re: Some context

[Brockmire]

800+km is a day trip for a family. 800+ miles is not. That's professional trucking driving. One of the biggest limitations are the goddamn moose crossing highways.

Re: Some context

[Brockmire]

I don't know what is hard to understand, what fucking good is it to get the alert after you could have seen it and acted on the info? More people will see the alert over the next 6 hours than if they delayed it for some possible driving distance (fucking planes, man). The guy could get off a Greyhound bus 6 hours later in your town. More people who saw the alert, the better the chance of finding. It's better to be generous with the range than stingy. Holy fuck, this is coming across as fucking whining in a potential life saving situation.

Re: Some context

[Brockmire]

Don't bother ever calling for an ambulance, total Trojan horse, too. Any time government wants to save your life, it's just fucking tyranny, right?

Re: Some context

[Brockmire]

Fuck that. Shame the cunts that disable alerts.

Re: Some context

[Brockmire]

That's very reasonable.

Re:Some context

[stephanruby]

The child has been missing now for 24 hours - the time taken for the parent to notice they didn't come home from school, call the school, let the school search and check their records, call the police, have the police send an officer over to collect full details, organise a local search, and finally conclude that the child should be declared potentially abducted and an amber alert issued.

First of all, Amber alerts (the ones in California) are not used for parental abduction unless the kid's life is really in danger. Otherwise, we would be inundated with such alerts. https://www.amberalert.gov/gui...

Also, an amber alert would never be issued for the details you mentioned. Your example doesn't contain nearly enough actionable information. For an Amber alert to be issued, the kid would need to be in immediate danger. Either, it's a 5-year-old kid that was seen walking out at night during freezing weather, or it's a kid that was seen abducted by someone in a car and the plate number was written down or captured by video.

In other words, an amber alert is just a text alert. It's very limited in the kind of information it can convey and it has to be sent out almost immediately after an event occured. And the authorities are not going to send out generic physical descriptions, because probably, they do not want private citizens to take it upon themselves to set up roadblocks and ask passers-by to open the trunk of their car.

Re: Some context

[Alok]

If the dispatchers are really concerned about this, they should just set standards on how far to sound alerts (say, 1 hour travel distance around location) and point to that rule whenever asked.

For something so annoying, I'd think that it is obvious to focus on keeping users interested in helping out rather than maximum coverage that just acts as a disincentive to ever use the alerts.

Sadly, I do understand your point on how people would rather deflect any potential criticism without considering the fallout.

Re:Some context

[stealth_finger]

In my home country of Denmark you can't go 870 miles in any direction from any point in the country without ending up in another country altogether.

Or the ocean.

I suspect this is true for a lot of the smaller European countries, though I can't be bothered to pull up a bunch of maps to check for certain.

I remember hearing a good Canadian saying, Don't know if it actually is one or not but still.

America is where they think 100 years is old and Europe is where they think 100 miles is far.

Re:Some context

[Calydor]

For shits and giggles I looked it up, Google says there's 1439.5 miles between Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and the Vatican.

Re:Some context

[stealth_finger]

How is UK's gun ban working for London's stabbing rates?

What kind of retarded fucking question is that? How is the gun ban working for the whole countries shooting rates? Very well, it's very rare anyone is shot these days. Sure it happens but the last school massacre was a very long time ago now. People are always going to violent and find weapons. No one says a gun ban puts an end to violence but it does make that violence a lot less life threatening and severe most of the time. But hey, lets ban knives too and then you'll just go on about the fist problem.

Re:Some context

[stealth_finger]

But but but if it saves one child, it is worth it! Everything, including reason, must fall before the feet of safety.

Yeah man, fuck those kids, I don't want my phone beeping.

Re: Some context

[sjames]

What good does it do to convince people to disable the alerts by alerting when they are extremely unlikely to see anything anyway?

How is it helpful to use the same alert for "A tornado will pass through your neighborhood in 5 minutes" and "in 6 hours a car may pass through a city half an hour away from you, or not. So if you happen to wake up and spot it from your bedroom window, give us a call.". Keep in mind, we already have signs over the interstates that can display that information where it is much more likely to be relevant and won't wake anyone up.

Re: Some context

[Joey Vegetables]

We do in the Cleveland area sometimes. I presume that this may result from there being some nexus with the area, for instance, perhaps the child was abducted elsewhere but is believed to be near here, or the suspected abductor has ties with the area, and so forth. Our rapidly declining population means that there are far more people with connections to our area than there are who still live here.

Re:Some context

[DarthVain]

Canada is big. I mentioned years ago to an English exchange student who I went to university with that I drive home to Nova Scotia from Ontario each summer to visit my family, and that it is an 1800km trip. He was astounded, and said he could probably reach Russia in the same distance. I just google mapped it now, and from London to Moscow is just under 1800km...

Even just Ontario is big, you can drive from Windsor to Pickle Lake (farthest north you can actually drive) is over 2200km...

As far as the Amber Alerts go, they are still fine tuning it, that is why they are having "tests" that is what they are for. Didn't go off for all networks either, or all phones, so that have that to work out. What made the alert in question a bit more frustrating other than the fact that it was so far away as to be meaningless, was that this wasn't a kid that got picked up by some stranger, or lost in the woods or who knows what, but rather they knew his mom took him in what was obviously a custody dispute... So I'm not sure it was really necessary to involve millions of people across thousands of kilometers about what amounts to a domestic issue...

It's like notifying Ivan and Ivana in Russia that Oliver and Olivia in England are on the outs again, and she's taking her son to her mothers place... Keep an eye out!

Re:Some context

[terrycarlino]

It's not that the world is more dangerous, or even that parents necessarily feel their child is in more danger. it's that if something happens to your child Joy Behar will be on national television telling people what a bad parent you are (and how it's all because you're a conservative.)

Re: Some context

[terrycarlino]

Words matter enormously. The militia of the United States consists of the organized and unorganized militia. The militia consists of all male citizens between the ages of 17 and 45 and any women who are members of the National Guard. That designation is set by the Code of Federal Regulations. If you wish to limit gun ownership to anyone outside that group knock yourself out, but the constitution guarantees the right of those militia members to own arms (defined at the time as guns.)

Re:Some context

[ooloorie]

And when statistics are used to show that too many guns, not "too many doors" or "not enough armed teachers" is the problem? Well, that's when you hear the most ridiculous nonsense from gun nuts.

There is no significant correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates, either at the country level of at the US state level; those are the simple, easily verifiable facts.

It is quite beyond any understanding how much Americans love their guns.

We Americans love our liberty, and we don't like to be told that we can't do things because a bunch of hysterical, irrational ninnies are throwing temper tantrums.

Oh, and I don't love guns. I don't own a gun, I have never shot a gun, and I don't expect I ever will. Nevertheless, I want guns to remain legal because I want to continue to live in a free society.

Re: Some context

[ooloorie]

In Australia the idea of getting shot is akin to getting hit by a meteorite. Just not going to happen.

The homicide rate in Australia is about 1:100000; the homicide rate in the US is about 4:100000, but less than 2:100000 outside minority populations; not particularly big differences. If you correct further for demographics, you find that mainstream US society is not particularly violent.

Gun ownership rates among countries and states actually correlate slightly negatively with homicide rates. The major factors correlating positively with homicide rates are economic and social.

Australia shares with the US that homicide is a massive problem among certain minorities (African Americans in the US, aborigines in Australia). When you figure out how to solve that problem, please share it with the US. Your advice on gun control is irrelevant and ill informed.

Re: Some context

[Mashiki]

800+km is a day trip for a family. 800+ miles is not. That's professional trucking driving. One of the biggest limitations are the goddamn moose crossing highways.

Well then, I guess myself and all those other kids I met during the 80's were just professional truck drivers along with their parents. 800mi is around a 12hr drive, and not really all that earth shattering even for those of us in the era before TV screens in the back of seats.

No opt-out is evil

[lusid1]

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.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you want pedophiles to win?

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a "free candy" van down by the river is the first step to a glourious career in government

Re:No opt-out is evil

[thegarbz]

Why are you not thinking of the Children? Are you some kind of sociopath?

Re:No opt-out is evil

[SuricouRaven]

Because people are instinctually inclined to be very fearful for the safety of children. If there are not sufficient real threats to satisfy this need, they exaggerate the tiniest of risks or imagine entirely new ones.

We joke a lot about how "think of the children" are the magic words to get even the worst-written of laws to pass, but we joke about it because that approach actually does work. Some officials did the calculations and decided the applying a minor inconvenience for around 80,000 people* is justified for the very slim chance that it might save a lost child.

*Assuming 80% of Thunder Bay residents own cellphones.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[JaredOfEuropa]

Even for real emergencies you'll want to discriminate a little better. Remember the Gulf war? When the sirens warned of incoming missiles the first time, everyone could be seen taking cover under their desks donning gas masks. A few false alarms later and most people seemed to ignore the sirens. At the time I did some work on an early warning system and they were very keen to find a way to issue the warnings to the area at risk only, otherwise it's pointless.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Calydor]

I'm curious, though.

Say someone is kidnapped two days before their 18th birthday. Still a child, so the entire country goes into a panic.

Then two days later it's said child's birthday. They're now a legal adult. Does the country relax because there's no child in danger anymore?

Re:No opt-out is evil

[swb]

Because there was that one time where that one photogenic kid of photogenic parents got kidnapped and killed but could have been identified and saved (maybe!)
if an alert about the missing kid had been rammed down everyone's throats *and* a politician was running for re-election and needed a PR win, so he helped pass a law thanks to weepy photogenic parents crying in committee meetings.

Plus, in addition to wanting to track us the next thing high on the government's list is being able to broadcast propaganda to us.

I mean, is there a better explanation? We have had "missing" kids for years and years, the actual risk level is near-zero if you factor out divorced parents in a pissing match.

The latter part always amazes me -- why the fuck would you fight your spouse over custody of the kids? I would be fighting my spouse to make her KEEP the kids. Isn't the whole point of divorce liberation from the harpy and the brats?

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Cederic]

Whether you like the kids or not, there's the basic principle of, "If I have to pay for these damn things then I'm at least going to fucking keep them"

Re:No opt-out is evil

[ckatko]

Remember. VIGILANTISM IS ALWAYS WRONG.

Except when children might be missing. Then... everyone should stop everything and hunt them down!

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Megane]

Don't forget the requirement for back-up cameras in cars (at the expense of yet another couple hundred bucks each) because of photogenic parents of photogenic kids, who couldn't be bothered to pay attention to where their kids are, or what's behind their car when backing up. And they also couldn't be bothered to tell their kids not to play sitting down in the driveway behind cars. So because a few hundred of these happen every year, we all need to pay for tens of millions of new back-up cameras every year.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Anne Thwacks]

Yes.

You are beginning to understand American culture.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[FudRucker]

get a faraday bag to put your phone in, it will shield your phone from all incoming RF so it wont get anything

Re:No opt-out is evil

[demonlapin]

I got one at, maybe, 3 AM. Called the issuing office and complained. Person on the other end said, “but what about the CHILD?!?!” Um, I’m in my bed at home. Not on the highway. Put it up on the highway message boards; don’t wake me up. I’m not going to spot them from here.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[drinkypoo]

Whether you like the kids or not, there's the basic principle of, "If I have to pay for these damn things then I'm at least going to fucking keep them"

Not just that, but "I'm not paying this crazy person to raise my kids". If your differences with someone you've got kids with are so great that you feel you have to separate, you probably think very very little of your partner. (Watch who you knock up next time, sparky.)

Re:No opt-out is evil

[ceoyoyo]

On the bright side, it will probably save billions of autobody work per year.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[serviscope_minor]

Isn't the whole point of divorce liberation from the harpy and the brats?

At least you're not bitter.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[arth1]

Yes.

You are beginning to understand American culture.

Sad but true.
American culture has a very strong need to quantize and pigeon hole everything, with a goal of reducing everything to binary decisions. It's either or. Gradients must not be allowed to exist, and "sound judgement" is to be avoided - it opens up for lawsuits.
Follow the letter, even if stupid, and you're safe.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[apoc.famine]

Same here. I don't allow my phone to demand my attention. It doesn't matter the reason.

Nothing gets to make noise on it, and nothing gets to pop up on the screen except calls and texts from the small number of people I've given the number to.

I can't wrap my mind around how 99% of the population allow their phones to dictate and interrupt their lives. I'm not interested in what an algorithm thinks I should be paying attention to. I'm not interested in what most people think I should be paying attention to. I'm busy living my own life.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[whoever57]

The cost of backup cameras is insignificant in modern cars.

Just about every car already has an LCD display and the tiny camera they install for the backup view can't cost much at all.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Carewolf]

Why are you not thinking of the Children? Are you some kind of sociopath?

Are you being sarcastic? "Why won't anyone think of the children" is a meme.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Carewolf]

Why are you not thinking of the Children? Are you some kind of sociopath?

Are you being sarcastic? "Why won't anyone think of the children" is a meme.

In case you are not. The reason it is a problem is that child obductions happens all the time and 95% of time it's by one of the child's parent and the whole thing just a divorce squable raised to a state alert because one parent didn't return the kid on time and their other decided to escalate the matter without informing the police about who had the kid. If people receive 19 false alarms for ever real alarm you are going wear them out and the system becomes worse that pointless as people will be much less likely to take real alarms serious.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[yuriklastalov]

People haven't changed significantly since the dawn of civilization, but now we're so immersed in useless information that it's little wonder people are losing their perspective on things. Reality has gotten so complicated that we can barely comprehend it, and it's only going to get worse. Yet the drums of Science beat on, as though making things even more incomprehensible to the average human will all just kind of work itself out in the end.

I guess the egghead technocrats are counting on some magical AI to do all the thinking for us since even they won't be able to understand more than a fraction of the system either, despite their ginormous intellect. Just shut up and do whatever the computer tells you to, and when things go wrong you can simply blame the algorithm. Nothing like a complete lack of accountability to make things work out for the best, right?

Re: No opt-out is evil

[Brockmire]

Yeah, you got whooshed.

Re: No opt-out is evil

[Brockmire]

Don't sleep next to your phone? Jesus Christ, whiny bitch.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Alok]

You're calculating for only Thunder Bay, which itself would as you show bother a lot of people for a very slim chance. But the actual alerts apparently rang all the way in Toronto, and presumably everywhere in between. That makes the disparity far worse :(

When this system was first introduced, iirc it was meant to help people evacuate from weather emergencies like tornadoes and hurricanes. Then we end up with this new 'feature' which is of course predicated on 'for the poor children!'. I guess Canadian implementation (no opt outs) has me finally happy that the American one isn't as bad!

Re:No opt-out is evil

[thegarbz]

Are you being sarcastic?

Yes.

Re: No opt-out is evil

[demonlapin]

I was on call. Fuck off.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[ahodgson]

I need my phone to interrupt me in the event of a systems problem. I am basically always on call. Thankfully these notices are rare. I do not need to get amber alert messages or anything else .gov thinks is important. My cheap chinese phone has not gotten any test messages yet, so hopefully it also won't get the "real" thing.

Re:No opt-out is evil

[Joey Vegetables]

It is true that the perpetrators of abductions, molestation, etc. are typically related and/or known to the victim. However, if you think that pedophilia is rare, then you may want to look at the stats of how many women report having been sexually assaulted when much younger. Granted, it is usually in their teens which doesn't fit the strict definition of pedophilia. But even pre-pubescent girls are VERY commonly sexually abused. And sometimes boys. And if it happened to your child, you would not care how "rare" it might be. It wasn't rare for him or her. I'm every bit as inconvenienced by Amber Alerts as anyone, and possibly more so since I have extreme difficulty sleeping. But it's an inconvenience I will happily live with, if it might save a child from something that could not possibly be rare enough.

Aunt Lydia Says:

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Incompetent government with good intentions

[misnohmer]

Another example of stupid things the government does with good intentions. Same people who voted to ban dihydrogen-monoxide I bet.

Re:Incompetent government with good intentions

[QuietLagoon]

Welcome to the web site for the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division (DMRD), currently located in Newark, Delaware. The controversy surrounding dihydrogen monoxide has never been more widely debated, and the goal of this site is to provide an unbiased data clearinghouse and a forum for public discussion. :)

Think of the Children, Reductio Ad Absurdum

[mentil]

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.

Re:Think of the Children, Reductio Ad Absurdum

[fafalone]

Don't forget alerts for more heinous crimes against children... child-was-microaggressed, child-was-misgendered, and child-heard-mean-words or god forbid child-heard-unpopular-opinion. We have get the child to a safe space right away and get that evil adult.

Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[thegarbz]

On behalf of the Canadian government: Sorry.

Re:Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[PmanAce]

Care to back up that statement with false amber alerts? Just the fact that you swore for something that happens rarely with no inconvenience to you speaks volumes.

Re:Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[Lifthrasir]

Err no, the swearing is completely meaningless.

Re:Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[PmanAce]

As the childish name distortion...got it.

Re: Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[Brockmire]

Yes, you are a cunt. They are testing and implementing the system in question to warn of earthquake and forest fires. How fucking dumb are you?

Re:Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[DarthVain]

While I disagree with most of what you say, I will agree that I raised an eyebrow over that alert. Was it really necessary to notify millions of people across thousands of kilometers that Bob and Nancy are having what amounts to a domestic custody dispute?

I don't necessarily think it is a terrible idea in general, but they obviously have some work ahead of them in terms of implementation before it is really ready for prime time. That said, they are testing the system, so I suppose can cut them some slack. Obviously aside from technical issues some thought needs to go into oversight and some rules about what it is actually used for, as you say I don't think the last alert was really what the intention was...

Just waiting for the next couple weeks for an alert to go out to everyone to "Vote for _______!" :p

Re:Good intention, incredibly bad implementation

[hyades1]

I guess you didn't know the push for this idiocy started under Harper.

"abducted"

[Dr. Evil]

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.

Re:"abducted"

[Dr. Evil]

I should add, the stupid alert may have *actually* worked. The kid was found in a coffee shop. Maybe mom bought him some donuts and said goodbye when EVERY PHONE AROUND THEM started going off.

Re:"abducted"

[Carewolf]

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.

There are better ways for that. Manhunts are common and the police has official lines to put out calls for arrest of people to airports. Not sure about rental companies though.

i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[FudRucker]

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,

Re:i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[green1]

The was however a recent legal case that said that the sender of a message could be responsible in the case where the recipient was involved in a collision due to distracted driving. I suddenly changed my mind about that ruling, I now think I've found the perfect place to apply it!

Re:i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[Nkwe]

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)

To confirm, are saying that the phone was actually powered off (and not just locked / screen blanked) and was still receiving alerts and making noise? By "actually off" I mean specifically choosing the "power off" function from a menu (and not just a brief press on the power button.) If true, silly Amber alerts aside, this is a serious issue / accusation for a phone with a non-removable battery.

Re:i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[FudRucker]

it was brand new, i never even turned it on yet. i was still using my old phone and was driving home

Re: i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[Brockmire]

Fuck you and your stereo, then. Your neighbours think you're a loser with micro dick. Like it's the government's fault your life revolves around how loud your fucking car is and how douchy you come off. Fuck you.

Re: i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[Brockmire]

Serious issue? Holy fuck. Phones have large ass batteries now. No need for panties to get in a bunch.

Re: i just bought a new Samsung Galaxy S9 plus

[Nkwe]

Serious issue? Holy fuck. Phones have large ass batteries now. No need for panties to get in a bunch.

A large ass battery on this phone is even more reason to get my panties in a bunch. Not because I can't swap batteries for run time or replace them when they wear out (those issues just wrinkle my panties), what gets them into a bunch is that a phone with a non-removable battery AND that actually operates when powered off (assuming the parent poster is correct) is a privacy nightmare. With such a phone, you can't just pull the battery if you don't want to be tracked. Not being able to absolutely turn of the phone (by disconnecting the battery) is what gets my panties in a bunch. A larger battery that can't be removed means *more* time that it can track you when it is not really off. Yes, with this phone you could purchase one of those radio frequency shielding bags, but you would have make sure that the shield bag did in fact shield all of the relevant frequencies and you would still have to worry about the phone recording audio and who knows what else.

"imminent safety threats"

[Megane]

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.

Re:"imminent safety threats"

[drinkypoo]

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.

What makes you assume that's what they're doing? It's not the level of butt-puckering that's the same, it's what you do that's the same — get the word out. With that said, it would be nice if there were a different sound for amber alerts that aren't immediately life-threatening that a) doesn't go off when you're asleep and b) doesn't sound like an air-raid alarm.

Re:"imminent safety threats"

[drinkypoo]

I don't want to get the word out. The alerts are stupid. 90% of the time it's one of the kids parents withholding the child from the other. The kid isn't in any danger.

The child is in danger. Even if the kidnapping parent isn't acting erratically enough to directly endanger their lives, child abduction is itself harmful. We don't need to create more fucked up people, there is no shortage of them already.

But again, I don't need to be woken up at 3 am to be notified that someone might have a child on the freeway. I'm not on the freeway. What year is it? They should be able to send alerts only to active phones, in a case like that; ones which are moving!

Re:"imminent safety threats"

[green1]

Statistically it's way more than 90%.

On average in the entire country of Canada there is about one child a year abducted by someone they don't know. If Amber alerts were only used for this, and only in a reasonable radius, you'd only get one about once a decade or even less.

Re:"imminent safety threats"

[Calydor]

But where's your limit for getting the word out?

Child missing, check.
Escaped convict, check.
Drunk driver on the freeway, check.
Ghost driver on the freeway, check.
Crash on the freeway, find alternate route, check.
Heavy traffic, find alternate route, check.
Big sale on diapers at Wal-Mart, check.

A missing child is terrifying - for that child and that child's immediate family. The rest of the alerts or on Catastrophic Disaster level for an entire area, not a single household.

Re: "imminent safety threats"

[Brockmire]

Yeah, they should create TWO different systems to do the same thing! You must be a politician.

On par with the US system

[damn_registrars]

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.

Re:On par with the US system

[Lirodon]

On par, _but_ a big difference is that because all alerts are sent as an equivalent to Presidential, it actually disobeys many settings associated with them (including, ironically, a checkbox for AMBER Alerts to begin with, and the Severe/Extreme tiers), plus the Canadian version of this system also uses a completely different alert sound that actually makes the U.S. one for mobile look sane. Look up tests of Alert Ready (which is the overlying brand for all implementations of public alerts in Canada, which applies to television and radio as well), and its more like a very annoying siren than a The entire Canadian system appears to force the highest impact of presentation for any alert, with no room for a graduated system, to the point where the specific "style guide" for the TV system actually mandates that they always be presented as white text on red background.

Re: On par with the US system

[Brockmire]

I got the test alert on my phone at 1:55pm while driving. It was loud enough I noticed over the radio, but by no means was it loud or annoying. I likely wouldn't notice it in another room.

Really?

[ledow]

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.

Re:Really?

[iCEBaLM]

> 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),

This is actually what I do. Due to the high cost of cell service in Canada, I have a cheap data only plan meant for tablets, and I use voip for voice.

I still got the alerts.

Re: Really?

[Brockmire]

File a lawsuit? Fuck off. It's a one way alert for public safety. You can go fuck yourself. Just get rid of your phone now. Fuck you in an emergency.

Re: Really?

[ledow]

A child missing warning has almost NOTHING to do with public safety on the scale you're talking about.

That child's safety, yes. But I don't want a text every time he crosses the road not at a crossing, walks along the top of a wall.

It's an ENTIRELY different thing to flood alerts, tornado alerts, etc.

We just don't have missing child alerts like that in my country. They are on police-force websites, missing-child sites, people copy/paste them to Facebook if they're local, but unless it's something incredibly drastic then they are certainly not forced down anyone's throat. There has not been a time when *everyone* was informed indiscriminately about a missing child in such a manner, even with a few that made the news.

Waking up an entire city at 3am because of a reported-missing child is a ridiculous solution and abuse of the service - and just as the article states, it makes people ignore ALL the alerts.

So, yes, if someone starts pressing the panic button and forcing through junk alerts to my phone where *my* life isn't in danger if I don't receive them, then there's going to be a problem. And, note, this only applies if I can't turn them off. If I don't consent to getting such alerts, then I don't consent. Let me burn to death in the forest fire, drown in the flood or be taken away by the tornado.

But if you class "little Johnny 200 miles away has been hiding in the garden and we can't find him" in the same manner, then I'm going to turn them off and charge you the cost of waking me up for absolute nonsense.

Shameful

[StikyPad]

"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....

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!

Re:Shameful

[Insanity Defense]

And you wonder why nobody wants to live in your oppressive country!

So why are we getting refugees from the U.S.?

Re:Shameful

[Calydor]

By your logic, due to the prevalence of airplanes and travel to other countries, whenever a child goes missing anywhere in the world, all cell phones in the entire world needs to scream out an Amber Alert to their owners.

Re:Shameful

[baegucb]

I grew up in that part of Ontario, Canada, about 300 miles west of Thunder Bay. It's mostly empty. Empty of anything except a few small towns. When I went to town in the winter I often did not turn off and lock the car when it was -40, because it's pointless. Where could they go? Anyone trying to head from Toronto westwards can be easily found. There are areas where the Trans-Canada highway is the only road basically, and they could just set a police car in one or two places and see all the traffic. Most roads north are dirt roads that go maybe 30 miles to nowhere. And south to the US border checkpoints. So why send the alerts to Thunder Bay people?

French and english

[denisbergeron]

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.

Re:French and english

[ceoyoyo]

To be fair, they probably had trouble fitting the French version into the allowable message length. ;)

Re:French and english

[ColdWetDog]

Mind your own business.

Re:French and english

[denisbergeron]

Why ? because you don't know french youself don't make you a french expert.
  English people living in Canada are the most racists people when it come to canadian speaking people.

Re:French and english

[PPH]

Oblig Futurama.

Re:French and english

[Strider-]

At least it's not German.

Re: French and english

[Brockmire]

I'm sorry, which province has the fucking famous language police? The extent of us English speaking Canadians for the most part is the annoying dual announcements on planes. Otherwise, we don't give a shit. I'm all for Quebec separating.

Re:French and english

[stealth_finger]

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.

Now I know very little of French Canada but this is the exact kind of stuck up shit you would expect of the French too. No one will be moaning that your english is really bad and unreadable.

Re:French and english

[denisbergeron]

Well, the language that is actually named french, was first speaking here in Canada by the french settler before the british invasion, and was named canadian until 1960. That's also why the hockey team in Montreal was named canadian, because is was the only team in NHL to have the right to take North American White Negger like English people call the Canadian at that time.

Re: French and english

[denisbergeron]

The firsts province to have a language police was, in order: Lower-Canada (test serment)m Alberta, Sask, Manitoba (to remove all the right to those who speak french) after the BC (to remove the right of those who speak chiness) and after that, Quebec do the same to only protect the french language without removing any right to the english population... then ROC begun to throw shit ....

Re:French and english

[denisbergeron]

Yeah, angry and racist english people that live in canada alway said that french is not a race, but the english language is one when they talk about la 101.

Re:French and english

[denisbergeron]

So french people that live in Ontario can be killed and you approuve that !

Re:French and english

[stealth_finger]

qu’est ce fuck?

Amber alert is BS here too

[AndyKron]

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.

amber alert is overreaction bullshit

[mapkinase]

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.

Re:amber alert is overreaction bullshit

[drinkypoo]

Red lights on school buses stopping six bloody lanes of traffic for no real reason.

The reason is incompetence of the school district. One should design school bus routes to minimize traffic disruption, which is hazardous anyway.

Re:amber alert is overreaction bullshit

[rnturn]

The reason is incompetence of the school district.

More like the paranoia of the school district's lawyers. The school buses around here stop at every house where a kid who takes the bus lives. They're afraid that Mr. Stranger Danger is going to scoop up the little ones if they were to walk to the corner where 6-8 kids could be picked up in one stop. On the other hand, the kids who live close enough to the school that they can walk to school have to negotiate street intersections that have no stop signs for the streets with the most traffic. Where do they place a crossing guard? At the intersection near the school with a four-way stop. Go figure.

Not a Big Problem

[ve3oat]

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.

Re:Not a Big Problem

[Yaztromo]

Seems to be a huge failure in the design of the system.

SMS is a bit of a nasty kludge. The messages themselves exist inside call setup packets that your phone needs to send and receive anyway. It wasn't originally intended for the sending of text messages -- it was merely a packet that needed to be sent and received, but where most of the packet data was empty, and so someone had the bright idea of putting message data in there.

This presents a number of problems. It's not exactly efficient. There is no guarantee of timeliness or message order. You can't message people geographically. And as the number of messages to transmit on a single cell increases, so do lost packets.

At the same time, SMS is store-and-forward; like e-mail if your phone isn't available to receive a transmitted message, the message will be stored and then transmitted once your phone is reconnected to the network. This again affects the timeliness of receiving messages -- if you're cell is offline or out of range, you might get alerts long after they have lost relevance. This would could cause confusion.

SMS was a great way for cell providers to extract more value out of packets of data they had to send and receive anyway, but otherwise SMS is a really crappy protocol. You don't want to base your emergency messaging for the general population of a large geographic area on SMS. You'd break the SMS network.

Yaz

Re: Not a Big Problem

[Brockmire]

Does the phone still get 911 service without a sim installed? Does it have all the bands available in a given area? It would help to know if your phone is 5 years or older.

Needs an Opt-Out

[pubwvj]

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.

Re:Needs an Opt-Out

[pubwvj]

I just checked my up-to-date iOS device and there is no setting for turning off Amber Alerts where you specified. More info?

Re:nothing here

[green1]

I have a phone that isn't sold by any carrier in the country, and is not listed as being compatible with this system. I still got the alerts.

On the bright side, mine doesn't appear to respect the government mandate that you can't turn them off because I have settings to do just that. (Except for "presidential alerts" whatever that means in a country that does not have president) but I have turned off amber alerts. (Unless of course the government is actually sending all alerts as "presidential") we'll see next time an alert is sent in my province.

Nationwide Amber Alerts

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Re:Nationwide Amber Alerts

[QuietLagoon]

...This is a bug that has been worked out....

Not really. I still get alerts that are not relevant to me.

Re:Nationwide Amber Alerts

[Applehu Akbar]

You're getting alerts from how far away, exactly?

In order for an Alert System to be useful...

[QuietLagoon]

... 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.

Alerts usually do nothing but cause panic.

[timrod]

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.

Not much better here in the U.S.

[rnturn]

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.

Missing child not a public safety issue

[snowsnoot]

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.

Re:Bitchfest

[X!0mbarg]

The point of this is that you CANNOT Turn Them Off, which is why the backlash has started in the first place.

They are Loud, have their own alert noise, and you can't over-ride or otherwise disable or "opt out" of the system.

Just wait until it hits your service provider down there, and you see it for yourself...

Cellphones now useless for intended purpose

[knorthern knight]

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.

Re: Cellphones now useless for intended purpose

[Brockmire]

What was your phone? The test alert for my DTEK60 was perfectly reasonable and wouldn't cause any hearing damage, temporary or permanently. Perhaps there are some models set at 11? In which case, fix that shit in phone software, not the fucking alert system.

Re:Cellphones now useless for intended purpose

[sysrammer]

My iPhone & Blackberrys both do alerts through the speaker. Is this an Android thing?

Re:Cellphones now useless for intended purpose

[thegarbz]

I was with you until you brought up hearing loss. Sorry but if you or anyone you know are suffering from hearing loss, it sure as hell isn't due to the Amber alert on your mobile phone.

Strongly disagree

[thomst]

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 ...

Re:Strongly disagree

[terrycarlino]

Only 1-hundreth of 1 percent of missing children have been abducted by a stranger, so of course almost all Amber Alerts which are actually abductions are going to be abductions by the non-custodial parent. Abductions by non-custodial parents are often as problematic as stranger abductions and require intervention. The custodial assignment system is not perfect, but usually tries to take the best interest of the child in to account. By the Wikipedia article you sited a certain number were lost or ran away. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer that lost children were found and that children who ran away were located by authorities. Perhaps they had a valid reason to run away, but typically even children running away from abusive situations just end up in situations which are even worse. Many such children end up the victims of predators of one sort or another. Do I even have to mention minors running away with adults of their own free will? Should they be allowed to do this without intervention? By the same article 30% of Amber Alerts were for for children actually taken bey strangers or minors traveling with adults not their legal guardian. That seems pretty effective to me.

Re:nothing here

[green1]

On the bright side, the odds of actually having to read the alert are minimal, if you touch the screen anywhere the alert vanishes completely never to be seen again.

I'm sure there could have been a worse implementation, but it's really hard to see how.

Re: nothing here

[Brockmire]

What province? My DTEK60 got it in BC just fine.

Re: 16 hour drive away from the incident got the a

[Brockmire]

Were you signed up under one of the infamous "Thunder Bay" phone plans that many signed up for the best data plan for years?

Support for push back

[sizzlinkitty]

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?

Re: Support for push back

[Brockmire]

Don't be a heartless bastard? I don't see your suggestion for improvement, so until the argument becomes more than very minor annoyance, you can chill out.

Re:Support for push back

[Alok]

> How do we fix this broken system going forward?

Even if you fix it, who will be willing to trust the new 'better' version? Once people get used to downloading cracks to turn this off on their phones, there will be an entire generation trained to do so as one of the standard setup when buying a new phone. Similar to how so many people think its just natural to ignore copyrights when possible, because of the brokenly long terms that are set on them - now there is little/no social shame in pirating even the newest stuff which earlier had a justifiable reason for society protections (to recoup costs).

Re: Response: Everyone dial 911

[Brockmire]

How about a fucking fine for wasting 911 resources? Take it up with the CRTC you piece of shit.

Re:LOL, my phone is so fucking old.

[stealth_finger]

You say that as if you can't still get dumb phones and you've shown some kind of massive insight as to why you've kept one.

Re:Shitty kids, shitty parents

[stealth_finger]

This kid was kidnapped by his own mother, fucking asshole.

Wait, why is the kid the asshole? ;)

As an aside

[DarthVain]

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...

EVERYONE report!

[Xojo]

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.