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from the be-alert,-the-country-needs-more-lerts dept.
frojack writes:
"Amber alerts on our smartphones are starting to become all too frequent, and like most things, they are burdened with a certain degree of Feature Creep. Not just for abducted children anymore, the Alert system in US carrier sold phones can carry Presidential Alerts, Imminent Threat Alerts (weather or forest fires mostly) and the original AMBER alert for missing children.
Its not clear the President is ever going to have a single message for the entire population, where that message will make any difference to the average citizen. But then, this category is seldom abused. Weather broadcasts are invariably too late, historically too widely distributed, and often simply redundant. And Amber Alerts are, in the majority of cases, custody disputes, where the child is never in any real danger.
Amber Alerts are quickly becoming viewed as security theater, and the most abused aspect of the entire system. This has increasing numbers of people opting out of the alerts on their phones as a result.
The Amber system is the "third rail" of child safety discussions, and few agencies are willing to address its failings. Do we need additional shades of Amber, or the ability to filter custody disputes from the system?"
(Score: 1) by TK on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:09PM
>Presidential alert:
>Two words: alien attack.
Sounds like a recipe for the best prank ever made. All we need is a talented cracker or another disgruntled NSA employee.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:52PM
Or a lame duck president with a sense of humour, who realizes he's not going to be remembered for his policies so might as well be remembered for something.
But either way, no-one would believe it. For example, the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" panic was over-stated, apparently [slate.com].