The article is long but comprehensive, please see if for the full discussion.
Agencies tout very high success rates, but some experts compare it to “crime control theatre”
On Sunday, March 22 of this year, a large swath of the population in Quebec was woken up at 4:25 a.m. as cellphones lit up and screamed. An Amber alert had been broadcast. Less than four hours later, the two missing children were thankfully found, unharmed, and the alert was cancelled.
Amber alerts cast wide nets in an effort to find abducted children and teenagers, but each time one is transmitted in Canada, we go through a predictable cycle. Many complain that these alerts cannot be turned off or muted, even in sleep mode, and that waking people up in the middle of the night to help them find a specific car that was last spotted 200 kilometres away is unnecessarily disruptive—with some even calling 911 to complain. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials remind us through the media that these alerts are only used when necessary and that they save lives.
Any subject tied to the safety of children is bound to evoke the deepest emotions. In fact, the crime that led to the creation of Amber alerts—and to their name—was monstrous enough that it’s no wonder it rallied influential people into building a system that could potentially prevent this kind of crime.
But warranted emotions aside, do Amber alerts even work? What little data we do have point to a system that has likely been oversold to us.
They found all the kids I took. :/
Problem 1: They make the same DTMF tones that severe weather alerts do. That particular tone should mean “Immediate risk to YOUR life” such as a flash flood, severe thunderstorm or tornado. Using the same tone for amber alerts (or silver alerts, for missing old people) is just crying wolf. How many people are going to go “FOR FUCK’S SAKE I’M IN BED I’M NOT JOINING A MANHUNT” and mute such an alert without reading it, and then it’s gonna be about a tornado?
Side problem: I learned something from Technology Connections a month or two ago that I’ve known since I was four. Almost all fire alarms sound a cadence of three short bursts. When I was in kindergarten, our school used the normal bells for the emergency alarm system, we were taught that groups of 3 short bursts on the bell was the fire alarm, but they taught it as if that’s how it works at this school and not universally. I bet the alert noises your phone makes, you know the government screeches? I bet those carry meaning they haven’t even tried to teach the public, in either the exact tone or beep sequence.
Problem 2: It seems to assume that every adult in half a state is going to drop what they’re doing and fod walk the world looking for this kid (or geezer). Almost no one is, in large part because no one has been trained as to how. I guess the idea is you’re supposed to be out driving, get that alert, remember the details including the license plate number of the vehicle, and then call 911. Has that ever even once happened? Especially since:
Problem 3: The message isn’t persistent or retrievable. It’s a push notification. If you dismiss it, possibly to get it to stop making noise so you can concentrate on reading it, it vanishes. There’s no message history to find it in, no real way to go “Hey wait a second, is that the car the amber alert was talking about?” 22 minutes later.
It does kind of come off as a very political “I am assembling a task force to create a solution to these dastardly crimes” solution.
And number 4, I do not need to be sent an amber alert from two counties over. And because they’re usually not nearby, they’re super annoying, and tend to contain very little information that I cannot retrieve…
I just dismiss them. I don’t know all the car models, and I’m going to forget the color the moment I stop reading it
What they should do is make them undismissable notifications with a short unique chime, that way they can also dismiss them when they’re no longer active
And only show them if you’re in a certain geofence that could be expanded over time… If I know a kid is missing down the street, I’d actually take a look around. If it stays to for more than a few minutes, I might look up the model of the car and keep an eye out
And if they sent a pic of that model of the car, I might recognize it
Some regions have stopped observing standard time because of the accident risk with so many drivers, surgeons, and heavy equipment operators, for instance, working on a circadian rhythm issue. Yet, we cause sleep deprivation to a huge number of people more often each year with little concrete benefit we can tie causally to the amber alerts.
Whom do we sue for loved ones injured by amber alerts and sleep-deprivation?
The only members of the public who might reasonably be expected to offer some help finding a license plate are driving, and aren’t supposed to be messing around with phones.
This built-in contradiction has always bothered me.
These days there are ALPR cameras everywhere, and it’s very hard to imagine John Q. Public is going to have a hot tip before our dystopian AI panopticon does. It has seemed obvious to me that, whatever their intention, the Amber alerts primarily function as copaganda: Persuading us that we live in a dangerous, unpredictable world, and that only the police can save us. By asking us for help locating license plates, while we’re at home asleep at 3AM.
Don’t amber alerts predate license plate cameras getting popularized by a little bit? Like mid 1990s, so there would have been a decent window before ALPR cameras really took up enough real estate to be useful
While I mostly agree with you, it is worth noting that vehicles can (and often do) have passengers accompanying a driver. They would be free to mess around on their phones when the alert goes out.
Yes for other children, it didn’t for us (but wasn’t amber alert that failed though, it was failure of police investigation.)
Anywho if you get an Amber alert, see a child/person in severe distress. Reach out or at least take note of what’s going on. It’s important.
Y’all spend fucking hours gooning, doom scrolling and posting about what your damn cat did each day. What can’t handle a 10-second interruption to your t-girl jerk hour?
Amber alerts aren’t emergency warnings. If you chose to ignore a warning about a tornado or a possible flood, that’s your problem. But out there is a kid that might need help, and all you’re asked to do is to report if you see something suspicious that’s matches the description.
If it means one less kid is going to end up on kiddie diddly island or found in a ditch, then send those alerts all day.
I thank you for your sacrifice and devastating hardship you have to face each time you get an amber alert like once or twice a year.
Have you ever heard the story about the boy who cry wolf?
Seems a bit counter-productive when 1/7 peoples want the government to disable it entirely while tech-saavy peoples will disable the system in their phone to not be bothered.
My main issue with Amber Alerts is that they’re not mutable. If my phone is screaming at me, I’m going to hit mute before reading what’s on the phone. When I hit mute, the alert is gone. It’s simply nowhere to be found. I can’t read it in my notifications panel. It’s gone.
It needs to show up as both an alert AND a notification. It’s crazy that this isn’t standard (in android, at least).
I agree. One of the most frustrating things about Amber alerts is the fact that you can’t easily look at the alert after it’s been dismissed. I found out there is a way to find the alert but it’s not simple.
As to the article. In my opinion if Amber alerts save just one child a year they’re worth having.
You can actually disable them on grapheneOS. I personally have most categories on except for Amber alert testing messages
I didn’t mean I wanted them off, I just wanted to be able to tell my phone to stop yelling at me and still read the alert.
Now i see why the uk got one about not lighting barbeques, they were copying all of you.
I turned it off
In Spain some of us got an alert for the solar eclipse, I kid you not. And the worst part is that with the loud beeping your first reaction is to turn it off… and by doing that you dismiss the message, so it is useless as fuck. Asking around somebody sent me a screenshot. I couldn’t believe this was used for something that stupid.
What? Was this about Gas leak or something?
Forest fires, so the government sent everyone an urgent warning to stop using disposable barbeques.
What’s a disposable barbecue? I’m kinda guessing through context that you mean charcoal rather than gas powered?
Something like that: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81Clok5FFSL.AC_SL1500.jpg
What can you even cook on that thing with so little charcoal inside?
anything you can with a normal one. I have used them and they are called disposable but you can use them till they become unusable. great for when your young and have not bought a real bbq setup.
Or when you’re out and about and want go out after BBQ
I wouldnt want to try a steak but it works fine for burgers and sausages.
Often theyre used by small groups of 3-4 people so dont need to cook much.
You guys get so many interesting alerts. They really use it for a missing kid? Its just tsunami warning, rain warning or smoke warning for us.
I haven’t got an amber alert in a long time. Probably because the first woke everyone up at two AM. Next morning the child was found safe with the parent who had legal custody the whole time. Now they have so many checks in place that the alters are almost never worth sending
Luckily the alerts can be turned off in the US. I don’t want to be woken up for something hundreds of miles away.
Am in the US and that is not the case.
Well, it may depend on your phone and os version, it wasn’t always the case.
As per the article, in Canada, Amber Alerts are sent at the top level. Meaning even if your phone lets you set different sounds for different levels of government alert, Amber Alerts are sent at the “Your life is in imminent danger if you don’t take immediate action” level every time.
I “hacked” my phone to disable the system, then downloaded an app that sends me equivalent notifications with the sound effects of my choosing.
Could you tell us what that app is?
And yes, the fact that they blast out amber alerts at the same level as “imminent nuclear attack” is unbelievably stupid. There’s no justification for it whatsoever.
Í live in Fort Worth, why the hell do I get amber alerts for Houston!? That’s a 6 hour drive at least…
I live in Anchorage, AK. Why do I get Amber Alerts for Barrow. They’re 900 miles away, not on the road system, and if the kidnapper and victim fled by any means other than plane they’re likely dead.
As in the kind of dead where a paleontologist will write a paper about finding a tiny piece of their mangled remains in a pile of fossilized polar bear shit a millennia from now.
Just about every Amber alert I’ve ever gotten has been that kind of utterly useless.
Amber alerts may not come out immediately when a child disappears. It could be hours later. It’s better that people are aware of a beat up red Toyota Camry that is expected to be transporting and abducted child than not.
The article says if a child is harmed, it usually happens within the first three hours.
Okay, the kid is harmed, but then what? Still a good way to find the abductor, get closure, find the body. Or should we just let them get away with it after 3 hours? Is that all that it takes in your head? A 3 hour statue of limitations?
Ok? Does that mean we should stop searching after 3 hours?
By the time you can verify the child is in danger odds are more than 3 hours have passed.
Many claims of child endangerment are really a parent (or grand parent) trying to mess with their EX who currently has custody of the child. The child is not in danger at all. The system needs to spend time verifying that the report is real before bothering thousands (or likely millions) of people.
Yep, which is why I don’t think that 6 hours away is necessarily too far for an amber alert. I think that’s extra true in a place like texas that’s so large that it may take a driver about 6 hours to get to a larger metro area from their starting spot. Maybe not 6 hours, but not a 30 min jaunt.
Yea, because after 3 hours it’s just too hard to find them, they could be anywhere. Only if we could find a way to get the help of the public or something. Many eyes are better than one.
Howdy neighborino
“Here’s Jose Flanders!”
“Buenos ding dong diddly Diaz senor!”
Shut mine off the first time it warned me in the middle of the night about something happening 400 miles away.
Police gotta stop crying wolf.
Police gotta stop crying wolf.
Lol reminds me of when Texas had a blue alert.
Reminds me of 2001 to 2008 when we had national “terror alerts” each day
Damn, I don’t remember that. Sounds wild tho.
I remember a great deal of jokes about the ‘color’ of the day.
I live in New Hampshire and Maine was so terrible with their amber/safety alerts that I shut them off entirely on my phone. I remember getting woken up at 2 or 3am for an abducted child, they knew it was a parent. Later they sent out an ‘extreme’ (whatever the highest level is) threat to human life after a road rage incident where 1 guy shot another guy at an intersection. I was 150 miles away. That is a heck of a radius to set for one guy with a pistol. They ought to save extreme for when a meteor is headed for us or something.
How’d you turn yours off? They use a protocol on the phones that are designed so the user is unable to turn them off. Do you use a custom OS? -Or do you mean that you shut your entire phone off?
On my Pixel, stock os:
- settings
- safety & emergency
- wireless emergency alerts
Iphone. Settings > Notifications > Government Alerts
Thank You for posting that. This is all new information to me. When last I checked a few years ago no such menu existed.
Sounds like the system needs tweaking to be less disruptive. Maybe with some actual rules on usage and reach? Especially restrictions on alerts during sleeping hours
Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of “WELL WHY DIDN’T THEY ISSUE AN AMBER ALERT???” when a kid is found dead.
this kinda reminds me of a security back and forth I had recently and tech security things in general. You get the technically this can be used like this and as you say no one wants to be the one against it if an incident ever happens.
