The 4G/5G Public Warning System is fundamentally designed for instantaneous earthquake and tsunami response.

It's a bit like modern day equivalent of air raid sirens, or incoming nuke alerts, even. And as such, it's just unfit for things that don't require immediate and full alert. AMBER alerts are just not good use of it.

We, tourists, were driving in one helluva rainstorm in Texas back in 2017. It was all I could do to focus on the road. (And yes, we found a spot and pulled over. A Denny's, IIRC.)

Anyway, midway through this hellish journey, the car was filled with terror. What the hell? Just pure raw audio chaos. Neither of us knew what was going on.

It was my phone, of course. Helpfully telling me that it was raining, via some absurd bust-through-my-DND 'alert'.

Not helpful.

While I understand how we arrived at this point I find these centralized systems with special privileges frustrating. That they have repeatedly exhibited severe vulnerabilities and mismanagement is just the cherry on top.

There ought to be a specification of an open protocol that includes certificate based authentication. I should be able to have my pick of which app to use and then subscribe to whatever feeds I'm interested in from anywhere in the world. In addition the local network operator should advertise various local feeds.

What I'm describing is about as technically complicated as RSS plus public keys but as usual even moderate technical competency is a bridge too far for the government.

> Disabling alerts is the second thing I do to a new handset

Except you can't in Canada. The Canadian government has made the alerts mandatory. The option to disable alerts in not present in settings menu (at least on iPhones).

You can disable alerts in Brazil. So in one sense, Brazil is more free than Canada.

This is the way! One jurisdiction where I resided for a while loved these alerts. A rain cloud, warm weather, too cold, too warm, the phone was beeping at least 1 or 2 times a month. Fortunately my trusty chinese produced Nokia allowed me to turn all of it off to get some peace.

Here in Spain the alerts completely ignore my settings. They sound even when I turn them off on my Samsung. And they send them way too frequently, since the floods in Valencia last year they are constantly bothering us with minor weather issues, afraid they'll get blamed.

We don't have presidents here but they mark everything at the highest alert level.

You cannot disable maximum severity cell broadcast alerts on the iPhone.

>even if they were closer - say only 25 mi away, I'm still not going to be any help.

Even if you help the cops locate the kidnapping victim, they might just murder her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Savannah_Graziano

The biggest issue is that Amber alerts are abused for both kidnappings and abductions. In a lot of jurisdictions, the term "abduction" is used for cases of domestic disputes e.g the divorced mom left the state with the kid when she wasn't supposed to etc.

I really disagree with Amber alerts being issued in cases where there's no immediate risk of harm to the child, and especially if the child is a teenager. They can damn well decide who they want to be with themselves. The type of stuff that's better off being handled in family courts with contempt of court orders shouldn't be aired out like dirty laundry and domestic disputes should not wake up the entire city. It sucks for the parties involved but there are much bigger fish to fry and actual kidnappings and human trafficking to worry about than to cry wolf across the mobile network every time kids get caught in the crosshairs of a bad relationship.

Next time when you get an Amber alert actually read and check up on the background story.

That's all well and good when you dont live in an earthquake or tsunami area I guess

(which is California, the world's 3rd largest economy)

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