Amber Alert mobile system working despite glitches, but could be tweaked, experts say

Some people received duplicate alerts on their mobile phones, some not until hours after the incident,and some as far away as Manitoba.

But despite those glitches, the Amber Alertsent out Thursday to locate a missing 11-year-oldBrampton, Ont., girlshows the mobile emergency system seems to be doing what it was intended to do, experts say.

Ontario Provincial Police issued theAmber Alert around 11 p.m. ET,searching for 41-year-old Roopesh Rajkumar and his daughterRiya. A motorist spotted the car described in the alert, and police were able to locate and arrest the man.The girl'sbody was found about an hour later in hisapartment.

Rajkumar wascharged Friday with first-degree murder.

"Thisis exactly whyit was designed, and someone who was somewhere at the right time, even at 11:00 [at night], was able to contribute," saidsecurity expert MatthewOverton. "Unfortunately, the little girl was already dead."

Overtonsaid he has receivedseveral alerts since the CRTCmade it mandatorylast year for telecom companies to support AmberAlerts on their mobile phone networks.

"Itcertainly caught my attention, so it has done everything it wants to," he said. "I think from that perspective it seems to be moderated pretty well. I'm not seeing a series of alerts [that] I'm wondering: 'Why should I get that?'"

Peel Regional Police said they received aseriesofemailsand calls from peoplecomplainingabout receiving the late-night alertsthat were accompanied by a siren-like sound.

"I appreciate that a lot of people were sleeping,but the immediate need to locatethe child outweighed the momentary inconvenience that some people encountered,"Const.AkhilMookensaid onTwitter."Tragically this incident did not have the outcome we were all hoping for but the suspect was located as a direct result of a citizen receiving the alert and calling 911. The system works."

That doesn't mean there weren't technical glitches. Ina statement,Pelmorex, the company that operates the alert system, acknowledgedit received reports that some users receivedduplicatealerts, as well as some users outside the province, inneighbouring Manitoba, who received alerts.

Martin Belanger, Pelmorex's director of public alerting, said in a statementthat thecompany was reviewing those reports, but thatinitial checksindicatedthat devices set with a reminder feature on may cause the alert to repeat until it is acknowledged by the user.

Thesystem also sends simultaneous alerts to multiple distributors. One of the simultaneous alerts remained "active" and resulted in someusers receiving the message after the alert had been cancelled, he said.

'Still some problems'

Overton said glitches like those will "carry on a for a while" and "obviously there's still some problems."

"But I think it's going pretty well right now," he said.

Since April 2018, theCRTChas required that all wireless service providers participate in theNational Public Alerting System (NPAS)anddistributewireless public emergency messages warningof imminent safety threats such as tornadoes, floods, Amber Alerts or terrorist threats.

Telecom companies wanted an opt-out option or the ability to disable the alarm for some types of alerts, but thatwas rejected by the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator.

Police react to Amber Alert complaints

6 years ago

Duration 0:27

Peel Regional Police Const. Danny Marttini responds to complaints prompted by a late-night Amber Alert.

The U.S. system classifies alerts at different levels, allowing people to opt out of receiving the less serious ones, according to Sunil Johal, policy director at the Mowat Centre at the University of Toronto. Canadaonly pushes out alerts at one level urgent a policyofficials may want to reconsider, he said.

Johal suggested Canada could geotarget thealerts more effectively so that if, for example, something is happening in Toronto, people in Ottawa or Thunder Bay won't necessarily get that same alert.

Tweak the sounds

He said the goal should be finding that "perfect balancewhere we're warning people but not inundating them with things they can't do anything about."

Overtonsaid it may be possible to tweak the sounds of the alertsyet still allow them to catch the attention of people.

Still, the unnervingsound that frightened and annoyed some people that, too, means the system is working.

"Because,in a littleway, it's supposed to be annoying to catch your attention to something around you that you may not be aware of."