What Tired Texans Wrote To the FCC 153
A pre-dawn statewide alert about an officer shooting in Hall County triggered over 4,500 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. The 4:52 a.m. "Blue Alert" on October 4 awakened millions of Texans, many living hundreds of miles from the incident location, to notify them about suspect Seth Altman. Air traffic controllers, healthcare workers, and other professionals reported safety concerns from sleep disruption, according to records obtained by 404 Media. Multiple residents told the FCC they disabled all emergency notifications in response, potentially compromising public safety for future alerts.
I don't like the alerts. (Score:3)
Amber alerts (Score:2)
We get them, maybe, four times a year. Usually 50% of the alerts are for nowhere near where I live, usually on the other side of the state. Theoretically the suspect could drive their car to my area on the one freeway that cuts across the state, or drive on one of the three other freeways in the other direction for the same amount of time and be in one of four other states.
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In Texas, it is about once a day. It sucks.
There is no good idea that law enforcement won't abuse.
Why have you not turned them off? Or at least turned off the most common types of alert?
Re:Amber alerts (Score:4, Funny)
Honestly I mostly think "Fine, if a silver Honda license plate blah blah blah happens to drive into my bedroom, I'll be sure to call 911".
Why not put those messages on the electronic signs over the freeway where people who might actually see the car can read them?
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Why not put those messages on the electronic signs over the freeway where people who might actually see the car can read them?
At least around here in MA they do that as well.
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And in Washington state also.
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Why not ONLY put them on the signs, at least in the A.M.?
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Why not ONLY put them on the signs, at least in the A.M.?
Well for Amber alerts, maybe. But with Silver alerts, we're talking about a confused person who's driving a car... you could conceivably spot the vehicle in the lobby or hallway at your office.
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But with Silver alerts, we're talking about a confused person who's driving a car
A "Silver" alert? What the heck? There are too many alert colors. I think I lost track of them.
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I don't know if Silver Alerts are everywhere - they are a thing in Washington state, at least. Basically it's a notification made when an elderly person, who is ostensibly dealing with dementia at some level, has wandered off and can't be located.
All of these different types of alerts that are now part of the system are certainly well-intentioned, but I do think they're quickly devolving into uselessness simply because everyone seems to want their special case to be included - which has trained most people
Re:Amber alerts (Score:5, Informative)
Amber alerts are only supposed to go out between 6:00am and 11:00pm. Naturally, Law Enforcement doesn't feel obliged to obey these rules. The net result is millions of people disable Amber Alerts on their phones, reducing the effectiveness of Amber Alerts.
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Part of the larger pattern of Police acting as if they are above the law and owe nothing to anyone and then wondering why public mistrust happens.
Re: Amber alerts (Score:2)
In Texas, they do put alerts on signs over the roadway.
Re:Amber alerts (Score:4, Informative)
Quite an over generalization you've got. Someone taking things into their own hands and violating agreements, regardless of intent, isn't all that stable. Being frustrated about a situation to the point of taking it into your own hands is a pretty good indicator you shouldn't have custody.
https://www.kgw.com/article/ne... [kgw.com]
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Of course, I've also heard of that happening when one parent knows the other is genuinely unfit but the court won't look in to it or the child actually begs the non-custodial parent to take them.
The link you provided is an outlier.
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Quite an over generalization you've got. Someone taking things into their own hands and violating agreements
It's a fair generalization.. Most of the alerts are for non-custodial parent with no reason to believe the child is in imminent danger; for some reason. Although the alerts were introduced with the intention of covering serious child abductions - they got expanded.
By the same token I would not suggest people turn off the alerts, because many of them ARE extremely serious situations where a child ha
Re: Amber alerts (Score:2)
Telling me a child was abducted 250 miles away is not a useful alert... Telling people in Dallas the a child in Houston was abducted is a waste of resources.
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Telling me a child was abducted 250 miles away is not a useful alert... Telling people in Dallas the a child in Houston was abducted is a waste of resources.
It gets worse. Telling people in Lubbock that a child in Houston (10 hour drive away) was abducted is mostly useless. It's worse when they don't have a license number. Or even a make -- I've seen them with just "white pick up truck". Texas should be broken into "zones" for these alerts, and pay attention to the "sufficient information" rules.
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It's almost always custody disputes, where the kids aren't hurt and the father (no matter how good a person) is treated as an unwanted entity. The father wants to spend time with his own kids, so he's not going to hurt them.
Mere custodial interference isn't supposed to be enough to trigger an AMBER alert. If it was, you'd be getting several per day. If you look at CA's page [ca.gov], it states they've activated it just 320 times since 2002, so about once per month. It's only supposed to be activated when there is a sincere belief that the child is in immediate danger and a detailed enough description of the suspect and their vehicle is available. I image they don't trigger it state-wide for every incident. CA is an outlier I'm sur
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It's only supposed to be activated when there is a sincere belief that the child is in immediate danger and a detailed enough description of the suspect and their vehicle is available.
There should be a more realistic geographic limit on those alerts. No, a child abducted in LA is very unlikely to be found in the SF Bay Area an hour later and, if it's 8 hours later, the chance of finding the child is already very low.
Abuse of the Amber alert system only results in people (like me) turning off the Amber Alerts on their phones. Law enforcement doesn't seem to understand this simple idea.
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I disabled Amber alerts after I got a notice about a family abduction two hundred miles away.
(and, most of the Amber alerts seem to be family squabbles.)
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Re:I don't like the alerts. (Score:5, Informative)
On iOS, at least, to turn them off go to Settings -> Notifications, then scroll to the very bottom to the "Government Alerts" section.
Unfortunately I'll also note that they will occasionally and spontaneously turn themselves back on during iOS system updates. So it's not "one and done".
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OK, I found the settings on the phone, now I really want them gone on my cable TV.
Unfortunately access to that setting requires a large hammer.
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With NTSC cable TV technology as of early 90s it did in fact take over the TV. The per-RF-channel modulators at the head end, in addition to audio/video content inputs, had a discrete contact closure and a coaxial connector carrying the Emergency Alert System TV signal from a common source at 44 MHz IF. The head end EAS receiver is on full time. When it detects the EAS alert indication, it activates the contact closure, which switches each modulator's IF input from program to EAS, so the channel sees EAS
What are you supposed to do about these? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What are you supposed to do about these? (Score:5, Informative)
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It is texas, so yes. lol.
This made me laugh. Thank you.
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Arise, arise, Riders of the Lone Star!
Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to El Paso!
Re: What are you supposed to do about these? (Score:2)
Re: What are you supposed to do about these? (Score:3)
It is Texas so I think as soon as you get an alert, you are obligated to not only grab your gun and saddle your horse, but you also need to round up a dozen or more of your neighbors with their guns and horses and form a posse to cut the offenders off at the pass.
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Alerts off (Score:2)
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Khajiit is innocent of this crime!
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You can't disable the "Presidental Alerts".
Re:Alerts off (Score:4, Informative)
This one wasn't an Amber Alert. It was an Emergency Alert, the type that's supposed to be used for tornados and floods, where there's a serious risk of significant damage and/or casualties in an area. Those aren't supposed to be sent state-wide, and certainly not over a wanted suspect, almost no matter what they've done.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Amber alerts got me during a job interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Well these can sometimes hit people at the *worst* time. I was on the phone for a job interview and the company was overseas. About 3 or 4 minutes in despite holding the phone directly to my head, it starts vibrating and ringing loud right over my talking. After it stopped I simply tried explaining it was an Amber alert but the people oversea had no clue what I was talking about. A few minutes later it happens again, then another 2 minutes pass, AND IT HAPPENS AGAIN. Each of these were super interrupting requiring the conversation to stop while I waited 10+ seconds each time for the phone to stop going off.
Turns out the first message was the alert, second message had some license plate data, third message was a description of the person, and the fourth was that they already caught them to disregard all the others.
That was the day I realized people have no business FORCING these on people and I promptly disabled that shit.
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Years ago, I was awakened by one of these alerts at 2am. I learned immediately how to turn them off and have done so since. I am sure there are plenty of people who have learned the same way.
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That was my process as well. Based even on the information contained in the alert, the person hadn't had time to reach my location, and they woke me up for it. If only they were competent, I would still have those alerts turned on.
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Re:Amber alerts got me during a job interview (Score:4, Funny)
I was at a Gabriel Iglesias (a comedian, for those who don't know) performance, a few years back. He had just asked everyone to silence their phones, and 15000 phones all went off at once for what was probably the most hilariously timed Amber Alert in history.
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It's a bad system. They need a way of adding lower-priority follow up messages without repeatedly triggering the same notification level.
Possibly the Smartphones should do a software update so the "Alert tone" cannot be triggered repeatedly over a set period of time. For example: 2-hour Cooldown on the Amber alert alarm noise, and additional messages during the cooldown are treated as normal text messages.
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There ARE priorities in the system. The problem is, they often don't use them so they default to highest priority messages (e.g., in Canada) or they're misused so followups aren't lower priority.
It was originally designed to be an un-mute-able system as well so you couldn't disable the alerts, but it appears lots of phones are offering the capability of silencing them all
Re:Amber alerts got me during a job interview (Score:5, Informative)
That was the day I realized people have no business FORCING these on people and I promptly disabled that shit.
Aside from that, the alerts are ineffective. Multiple studies have found that while Amber alerts do help in recovering children quickly in a minority of cases, those are also the cases in which the child was in no danger (e.g. abducted by a non-custodial parent with no intention of harming the child) and in which the child almost certainly would have been recovered anyway. Silver alerts are probably no different, but research seems not to have been done.
It also doesn't appear that any studies have been done to evaluate the effectiveness of Blue alerts, either, but they seem even more suspect. It's a pretty unusual situation where civilians jumping to the assistance of law enforcement is likely to be helpful -- and I say that as a former police officer and a strong believer in the value of a "good guy with a gun", to the degree that I teach concealed weapons permit classes and carry daily. I'm better trained and equipped to step in and help out than 99% of citizens... but my training means I know that in most situations joining in without knowing the context will just make things worse. In extremely rare circumstances I might step in to help in a situation I observed evolving, so that I feel I have sufficient understanding of the players and have confidence they can recognize my intentions. Maybe. I have a hard time coming up with a scenario where I'd do that without first getting in touch with the police dispatcher. I would never, ever respond to a Blue alert on my phone by running into the scene to "help".
I suppose if the intention of Blue alerts is to inform citizens to stay away from a situation, that could be of some value, but clearly not to anyone not already very close to the scene.
I always immediately disable all of these things on my devices. They are annoying, potentially harmful/dangerous if they occur at just the wrong moment, and serve no useful purpose.
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re: "That was the day I realized people have no business FORCING these on people and I promptly disabled that shit."
Could be worse... at least you get to disable it. In Canada our thankfully-soon-to-be-gone fed. gov. legislated all phones sold in Canada to have it baked in the firmware that this can't be disabled, muted, minimized, etc. The alerts got over the 911 emerg. channel so even come through without a SIM, and it maximizes the volume and plays through the phone speaker overriding anything but a phys
Only a US thing? (Score:2)
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Re:Only a US thing? (Score:5, Funny)
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Apparently, this is only a thing in the US? Do iOS and Android have a special US edition?
Every country/region has it's own unique regulatory requirements for mobile phones that are going to be somewhat unique.
But yeah, in this case, it's part of a replacement for the old US emergency broadcast system [wikipedia.org] (example test broadcast [youtube.com]), which could take over TV and radio broadcasts in the event of an impending emergency. The special alert sound they played is a combination of 853Hz and 960Hz tones and is illegal to reproduce in any other broadcast. The original intended use was for incoming ICBMs or oth
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The capability (pushing messages to peoples' phones, as a requirement imposed on carriers and handset providers) exists in the US (and probably other countries).
Without someone to push back on it... I suspect it will just get extended to more and more items over time, defaulting to opt-out.
https://www.igeeksblog.com/how... [igeeksblog.com]
From that article, there are possibly 4 alerts enabled by default here in the US ( emergency alert, amber alert, public safety, test).
Apparently they're required to test the national syste
could be worse (Score:5, Funny)
They told Hawaii they were about to be bombed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That was what the emergency alert system was originally for when first proposed. Trying to save like an extra percent or two of people from a nuclear strike, letting the US "Win" by having more surviving population to conscript.
Now they bug us every time someone with a gun makes some smoked pork.
Re:could be worse (Score:5, Informative)
Naw. No one cares about mass shootings any more. They've become part of our lives and is something we just have to live with. We'll discuss it for five minutes then move onto more important things such as who will win the football game over the weekend.
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The cops care about cop shootings and force annoying alerts on the rest of us.
Maybe a "jury summons" model would do better. (Score:2)
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What a sad bunch (Score:2)
In the case of amber alerts, maybe you're 100 miles away, MAYBE that car has driven to where you live and actually IS in front of you, and you notice it because of the amber alert. That's how it fucking works.
It's not a call to action for everyone to go hunting them down. It's so everyone is aware in case they do see it, instead of 'Huh, I was watching the news last night, what's funny is I did see that car a few hours earlier in the day, too bad I didn't know about it'.
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In Canada we absolutely have results where tips were provided to law enforcement by people who received the amber alert and that lead to child safety. Hard to tell if that person was ever going to hurt the kid or not but there are cases were they definitely did.
I hope they just treat your issues with the same disdain. 'Where the numbers that shows helping you matters'
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Right, but they way it SHOULD work, up here in Canada, is to use the actual Amber Alert functionality that's built into the Wireless Alerting System.
Somebody that's fast asleep at 2 AM doesn't need that information until they wake up.
But instead, we send out EVERYTHING at the Presidential Alert level, which is intended to bypass all of your phone settings and wake you up.
Which is a problem, in a lot of ways. One being that it leads to alarm fatigue, which makes people ignore the alerts, which is terrible.
S
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People SHOULD pay attention to the alerts in the morning, but they won't. They'll dismiss and ignore them. Human nature is to not be bothered, and will do what it does. The government doesn't know who is a sleep, who is awake, who has a nightshift or anything else when they send these alerts for.
Maybe, you want to legally allow the government realtime data if you're asleep or not, and where you are exactly at all times so they can better cater the alerts to your needs. Then of course, you'll complain about
Amber Alert cost effectiveness - Canada 1.8B waste (Score:2)
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Do you have anything to back that up? I see articles saying they help anywhere in 1-4 to 1-7 cases depending on the different criteria.
If it even helps in 10% of the cases, sounds worth it still?
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Great idea. Terrible implementation.
Just make it a push notification like everything else is. You can then prioritize it.
In other words, your priority is not my priority.
The issue is probably local (Score:2)
Who's tired? (Score:2)
Texas may be tired, but I am tired of Texas.
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I have never been to Texas, but I have heard good things about Austin.
Or at least its city limits.
The story of the boy who cried wolf ... (Score:2)
Apparently, the idiots in control of the alert system now have education below the level of children's stories.
Meh... (Score:2)
Let me know when they have an "incoming missile, seek shelter immediately" alert.
These things are broken and over used. Significantly better filtering and control is desperately needed, both centrally and on the local device. There also needs to be much clearer paths for follow-up information, and not Facebook or some other random social media site.
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Let me know when they have an "incoming missile, seek shelter immediately" alert.
That's the sort of thing the Presidential Alerts [time.com] are intended for.
Turned 'em Off (Score:3)
I disabled all those alerts because they're annoying and ineffective. I wish I could disable the Presidential-level alert, too. If the President wants to contact me he can call or text, just like everyone else.
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If the President wants to contact me he can call or text, just like everyone else.
He might also choose to just activate the military to hunt you down.
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It's a shame because they can be useful when not abused. Japan uses them to warn you about natural disasters, where they are timely and useful. Knowing several seconds before an earthquake hits gives you time to get to a safe position, and knowing about tsunami gives you a chance to get to higher ground.
By the way, don't ignore tsunami warnings. Even if it says it's 30cm, that is still more than enough to knock you off your feet and sweep you away.
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You can do it if you have a rooted Android device.
Yeah, that's an irritating bar, but at least it's possible somewhere in Android-land. You can't turn them off if you are using iOS, period.
Here in Canuckistan (Score:2)
We have an emergency alert service that's mandatory on mobile phones. Sometimes they just send out a text message, a severe weather warning (tornado, etc), and most often an Amber alert.
I don't need to be driving and have my phone make me jolt because it suddenly screams at me. Luckily, if you know how to get into the dev console on your phone you can remove 'mandatory' apps and my phone no longer has the capacity to do this to me.
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We here in Canuckistan use the same Wireless Alert System that America does; it's baked into the 3gpp protocols.
What we do wrong up here, however, is ignore the 'emergency' alert level, that one would typically use for something like this, or a tornado warning, wildfire, etc, and ignore the 'amber alert' level, that one would use for amber alerts, and send out EVERY GODDAMN ALERT at the 'Presidential Level' alert that would typically be used to announce something like, I dunno, Nuclear ICBMs inbound.
Which m
Who's decision and what geographic options? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish it had more detail on who makes the decision to send these - I'm assuming it's coming form a state or local official?
What options are available to pick geography wise when they decide to send one - is i just send to this whole state, within X miles?
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A cop getting shot is the equivalent of 10 civilians.
Re: Blue (Score:2)
I think you got that backwards.
Mr. Pink : Tagged a couple of cops. You kill anybody?
Mr. White : A few cops.
Mr. Pink : No real people?
Mr. White : Just cops.
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https://www.chp.ca.gov/Pages/E... [ca.gov]
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I notice that they were sufficiently sheepish about it to leave out "the person is black" from the criteria even though it's in the summary.
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How is an alert special treatment? The entire Amber alert system is based off a white girl who went missing. They literally use her name in the alert. It doesn't get more special treatment than that.
Also, *you're*.