Turn off your phone, but if I remember correctly you can’t becuase you need to be able to be contacted by people for emergencies. That’s just selfish, your emergencies are important and others aren’t. That’s fine, just don’t create some weird government intrusion to justify your opinion.
Yes, you do remember correctly. I'm the only family member my elderly mom has in Calgary and I'm the point of contact for my alarm company if there is a problem at my company. My mom and the alarm company are whitelisted. I mean, maybe by definition that's selfish to want my mom to reach me if something happens, but ffs it's pretty reasonable, too. Like, yeah, my personal emergencies are more important to me than a possible abduction hundreds of kilometres away. I would expect everyone of us could be painted with that brush.
If I want to ignore my mom I can, but the government won't let me ignore it? Fata that.
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I don't think I even need a reason. If I don't want the government to be able to communicate directly with me at anytime of the day or night, I should have that right.
This is incredibly selfish. We live in a society. These are the compromises you make to live in that society. Don't like it, go live in the territories in a trap line, or just get rid of your cell phone.
Have you guys read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451? Basically, the main dude is a fireman that burns illegally held books and the homes of the people who own them. He starts to question his job and the world. Everyone in the book just sits around popping tranquilizers and watching TV with the state's message blaring. From what I recall of the book, you can't not accept the state's communication. You have to allow it into your home. These alerts slightly remind me of that.
I'm uneasy that government can so easily force us to receive a message. I want to opt out during certain hours. If I wake up in the night I can't go back to sleep. Yeah, TS for me and I know a lot of you don't care because a child's life is on the line, but there is a very low probability that I'll be able to help and maybe I'm an a-hole, but I should be able to opt out if I want to. I don't like that the government can wake me up to force me to receive a message 24/7. I'm not on call for the government or for any police agencies. When I put DND on, it's because I don't want to be disturbed. If you don't mind being disturbed, then you can feel free to whitelist these messages, but an abducted kid in Cold Lake doesn't register on my long list of things I need to be thinking about at 3:30 a.m. and I should be able to blacklist them.
I don't read these messages at night, anyway. I silence my phone and carry on with my sleep if I can get back to sleep.
I want my daughter who tends to be a little anxious to be able to opt out completely. She's 13 and doesn't need to be worrying about an abduction 100 miles away. She'll be afraid to walk home from school that day.
I see a lot of people in this thread more than willing to wake up at night, read government messages and take action if needed. Good for you (not even saying that sarcastically). I'm happy to do this 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That makes me a reasonably good citizen, I think. Those 8 hours I have DND on, though, I don't want the government to be able to wake me up with a message that is not nearly targeted enough. Once they can focus the alert, then yeah, hit me up if something is going down in my area. Please allow me to not be disturbed with your shotgun approach, though.
This is a very good post that has me questioning my full support of these alerts with no way to mute them.
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I feel like the system can't really be altered aside from the way it is now, because the point of these Amber alerts is to gather information. They don't know who may have it, otherwise as mentioned a few pages back, the police would just reach out to those that do have it. The only way to get information ASAP since it's a time sensitive matter, is to make a mass broadcast alert to hopefully get some information from those who may have seen or know something.
You don't know you don't have any information to provide, and can't respond to the alert, until you get the alert. And again, they need to know ASAP because the information can become outdated extremely quickly. From where they left, and how long it took for the alert to be activated, they could've been anywhere in the province at that point. So sure, 99% of the people getting the alert may have gotten woken up from nothing in their mind, but they're looking for the very few who may know something, and can give info to bring those kids to safety.
Yes it's obnoxious and can be annoying to get woken up in the middle of the night by something like this, but I don't know if we want to sacrifice less people being aware of the situation at hand at that moment, so no one sleep is disturbed. If we allow people to set amber alerts to silent, but they miss the alert the time it's given out, then the system is failing at that point. For it to be effective, you have to get the immediate attention of the very few people who have information, so they can respond as quick as possible.
It would suck if a child's life ended, where one person could have provided the life saving tip in time because they were woken up by the alert. I think that's why we have the all or nothing approach.
I feel if you REALLY don't want to be disturbed by these alerts, you have to take the same all or nothing approach by turning off your phone. So you would have sacrifice getting notified by things that may be more important to you, to ensure you get your full sleep in.
There has to be a balance struck between a states rights to force you to do something vs the good of society. I don't think it's reasonable for me to have to go on airplane mode when I go to bed or turn off my phone.
A compromise could be being able to opt out for 8 hours a day, when you're asleep.
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I always know a conversation is very constructive when the comparisons to significant literary works of dystopia come out.
“See this thing I don’t like? Basically 451/1984/Brave New World/Handmaids Tale/etc.
Please don’t mention all the other things I don’t mind that are also comparable to the novel i’ve chosen, because that would dilute my point.”
Quick, nobody mention that Bradbury warned against television and reading the news online. The horror...
Listen, some of us old folk don’t like the government telling us how we go about consuming our missing children reports. You millennials like your fandangled text messages alarming you at 4 am but some of us prefer to read ours the old fashioned way. On the side of a milk carton while we’re eatin our cereal.
Actual that’s not really true. I don’t eat my cereal with milk in it.
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Jokes aside, thoughts on that the person abducting the child is also getting the alert and informs them of the information police have on their whereabouts and the vehicle they are in?
There has to be a balance struck between a states rights to force you to do something vs the good of society. I don't think it's reasonable for me to have to go on airplane mode when I go to bed or turn off my phone.
A compromise could be being able to opt out for 8 hours a day, when you're asleep.
Well the government is not forcing you to do anything. It's just alerting you an emergency is unfolding, and seeking information if you have it. And you can already opt out by turning off your phone.
I don't know if a compromise is worth it since you're limiting the maximum amount of people you can reach out to at that time. Because if someone does have information, but they were in a DND setting that prevented them from being a alerted, then that's useful information that authorities are not getting when they need it.
The system isn't perfect, but a perfect system that can appease everyone so they aren't disturbed, yet everyone that has information can be reached at that time, may not be possible.
Jokes aside, thoughts on that the person abducting the child is also getting the alert and informs them of the information police have on their whereabouts and the vehicle they are in?
That is a benefit in this. It lets them know that po-po is coming for them, and that can cause them to become more nervous and ethier surrender, or having them become more noticeable/make mistakes that can draw the police into their whereabouts.
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I'm sympathetic to many of the arguments that this system could be improved, because I think it's incredibly obvious that this is not the best possible system that could be envisioned. However, the argument that this is some encroachment by the state on your private life or your freedoms is asinine. You don't have a right to own a cell phone, much less own one without regulation about how it works. Do you object to the government imposing limits and regulations on how you drive your car, too? Are seatbelt laws an unconscionable affront to your dignity? Give me a break.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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Is everybody leaving their ringer on while they sleep? I have never had an Amber Alert force an audible ringtone while in vibrate mode. I always end up waking up in the morning to find messages from Emergency Alert or WHY having been aware of nothing during the night. Heck, I may have even made this comment before.
I've never once gotten an amber alert text on my phone for whatever reason and I've had it for 3 years. I'd be willing to sell my phone, an iPhone 5 se, along with my $75 a month phone plan from Telus to anyone who has been bombarded by these alerts. I'll let that package go for... let's call it 10 g's. HMU
Yes, you do remember correctly. I'm the only family member my elderly mom has in Calgary and I'm the point of contact for my alarm company if there is a problem at my company. My mom and the alarm company are whitelisted. I mean, maybe by definition that's selfish to want my mom to reach me if something happens, but ffs it's pretty reasonable, too. Like, yeah, my personal emergencies are more important to me than a possible abduction hundreds of kilometres away. I would expect everyone of us could be painted with that brush.
If I want to ignore my mom I can, but the government won't let me ignore it? Fata that.
My issue is that to justify your position that your emergencies are more important than state emergencies you have created a government conspiracy.
Own your opinion. You don’t want the inconvenience of having to turn off your daughters phone or being woken up by an Amber alert and you are willing to risk an unknown but likely very small % chance of a child dying as a result.
Location: Close enough to make a beer run during a TV timeout
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
You don’t want the inconvenience of having to turn off your daughters phone.
I read that part differently. Even if his daughter turns off her phone at night, won't she get the message when she turns it back on? Or if the amber alert comes at 1:00 pm, he doesn't want her to be scared walking home from school. Kids are all different, and can react funny to different things.
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My issue is that to justify your position that your emergencies are more important than state emergencies you have created a government conspiracy.
Own your opinion. You don’t want the inconvenience of having to turn off your daughters phone or being woken up by an Amber alert and you are willing to risk an unknown but likely very small % chance of a child dying as a result.
How have I not owned my opinion? I don't want the government to be able to disturb my sleep and circumvent my DND settings. I value my sleep more than being awoken in the middle of the night because I think the probability that I will be able help for an Amber Alert is so low - and the probability that my sleep will be fataed up is 100% - that I want to opt out of having these messages blare an audible sound when DND is on. I'm more than willing to help and read the alerts 16 hours per day, every day of the year.
I also don't want my daughter to receive them at all since the probability of them freaking her out is 100% while the probability of her being able to help is almost nil. This is a kid that will have a tough time sleeping if she hears a ghost story at Girl Guides. The last thing she needs to be reading at any time of the day or night is abduction warnings. If you tell her some kid was abducted in Vancouver, she'll be looking over her shoulder the whole way home from school in Calgary.
You can disagree with my opinion, but it is reasonable.
