Ask HN: Chicago area Amber Alert system gone haywire?
My family and my friends have each received the same amber alert more than 5 times in the last 48 hours. This has happened with multiple carriers and multiple device brands.
Local news reported the subject of this alert was recovered uninjured more than 36 hours ago, but the alerts persist at random intervals. I and many others have had to disable the alerts entirely, which is basically a permanent reduction in the effectiveness of the system.
Clearly some sort of queueing system has gone awry. Does anybody know the infrastructure for amber alerts? Who runs this system?
FEMA
https://www.amberillinois.org/Wireless%20Emergency%20Alerts
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/wireless-emergency-aler...
https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Public_Alert_and_Wa...
Thank you for the background. Unfortunately, none of those references seem to cover the systems that actually originate the alerts. They only seem to cover the bureaucracy and the transport protocols.
This incident has the appearance of a queue recirculation bug (or maybe a state reset in a Kafka-style consumer) but it’s unclear where I could even report the bug. The FCC site for complaints does not seem to cover this system.