Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.
Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
11–20 of 57 posts
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#12This was pretty freaky.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#13I wonder how many people are killed per alert? These alerts (usually AMBER alerts) are sent to millions of people, accompanied by a loud and startling siren. You can imagine all sorts of "one-in-a-million" events. The surgeon woken in the middle of the night, who can't get back to sleep and makes a mistake the next day. The startled roofer falling off a ladder. Etc.
Not even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada implemented this in the worst way possible so that any alert gets the highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by the blaring alert and then scrambling to sh…
In the US, I assumed most people turn AMBER alerts off on their phones. Some people seem to get mad about people disabling them but some people get mad at just about everything.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#14It's pretty clear that the current Ontario emergency alert system doesn't have enough checks. They need to pause the whole system and add in an external approval before messages are sent out. Also everything is sent out at the "Presidential Alert Level". Presumably because someone gave the contract to their cousin.
Until the time its needed and there is a delay on sending out the message because the person(s) with the second set of auths isn't available and there is even more press about alerts to the public were delayed because of red tape in the alert system.
As someone who recently sent out notifications to a ton of people by mistake (accidentality set a number of twitch streams to live instead of just testing so sending out a ton of "X just went live" notifications for a handful of channels) a simple "Are you really sure you want to do this action? It will do this..." confirmation message goes a long way without the need of a 2nd person to auth the action. Just don't do the confirmation message unless its needed to prevent training people to just click though it.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#15I wonder how many people are killed per alert? These alerts (usually AMBER alerts) are sent to millions of people, accompanied by a loud and startling siren. You can imagine all sorts of "one-in-a-million" events. The surgeon woken in the middle of the night, who can't get back to sleep and makes a mistake the next day. The startled roofer falling off a ladder. Etc.
Not even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada implemented this in the worst way possible so that any alert gets the highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by the blaring alert and then scrambling to sh…
The Canadian government is pretty much uniformly incompetent as an institution.
I honestly can't think of a single thing in my lifetime they haven't bungled.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#16Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.
>wish I could fully disable these alerts
Can't you? On my iPhone, I can. I'm not sure I would--although I have one category of alert disabled, but I can.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#17I wonder how many people are killed per alert? These alerts (usually AMBER alerts) are sent to millions of people, accompanied by a loud and startling siren. You can imagine all sorts of "one-in-a-million" events. The surgeon woken in the middle of the night, who can't get back to sleep and makes a mistake the next day. The startled roofer falling off a ladder. Etc.
Probably zero. You can imagine all sorts of things that don't happen.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#18Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.
>wish I could fully disable these alerts Can't you? On my iPhone, I can. I'm not sure I would--although I have one category of alert disabled, but I can.
On my Android I've turned off everything in the emergency alerts section but they still go through. I think that you aren't able to disable presidential alerts on Android, which happens to be the only alert level Ontario uses.
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
>wish I could fully disable these alerts Can't you? On my iPhone, I can. I'm not sure I would--although I have one category of alert disabled, but I can.
On my Android I've turned off everything in the emergency alerts section but they still go through. I think that you aren't able to disable presidential alerts on Android, which happens to be the only alert level Ontario uses.
That may be true on the iPhone in the US as well. Apple support doesn't say anything about it AFAIK but I did find an article suggesting you can't turn Presidential alerts off. (Though I don't think I've ever seen one.)
Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada implemented this in the worst way possible so that any alert gets the highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by the blaring alert and then scrambling to sh…
In the US, I assumed most people turn AMBER alerts off on their phones. Some people seem to get mad about people disabling them but some people get mad at just about everything.
I highly doubt "most people" even know how to do this.