Presumptuous, Annoying, and Disruptive.

My phone just exploded with a loud, annoying noise, followed by an announcement in an artificial voice.

That announcement had nothing to do with me or any of the several hundred thousand (millions?) of people whose day was disrupted by it.

Apparently some white 'male' (I assume that probably that means a man and not some other male creature) is somewhere near Bearspaw with a gun.

This was of zero relevance or interest to most of those assaulted via their phones.

Why some worker bee would think that the millions of the people in the 587 and maybe 403 regiosn would care is a mystery to me. Who authorizes such abuses?

At most this incident affects probably only a very few people directly and maybe 100 or two indirectly -- if we include the police.

How the 'authorities' have the temerity to invade our lives over such a trivial matter is a mystery to me and a matter of great concern.

It seems that these people have a lot of power and very little discretion on when not to use it.

At this time of day, although most people are up and about, some are in hospitals with cell phones beside them and people who work night shift are sleeping. Others are in situations where a loud noise emitting from a phone they keep muted could reveal their presence, cost them a job, or even compromise their life and safety. In a city of millions of people and the countryside surrounding, there are very many situations that are hard to imagine, yet these people have the power to disrupt lives indiscriminately.

Incidents like this are indicative of how powerful governments and unthinking 'workers' are invading our lives daily in many different ways for no good purpose just because they can, regardless of certain and unforeseen collateral harms.

Alerts like this serve a purpose when there is a general and widespread danger such as when tornadoes are roaming the countryside, killer hail is expected, or a dam bursts, but for one guy wandering around far from most of the recipients of a message, or a child has gone missing, give us a break.

These latter small issues are daily occurrences and do not require blasting a noisy message to everyone within hundreds of miles and maybe to people on vacation out of country.

A simple text message would suffice. Most people would see it and those who think they might be affected would spread the word.

I would not object to a text message. but this is IMO is using a hammer to kill a fly.

It will never be known how much harm was done by this alert, but I am certain it was considerable. Did it do any good? We'll probably never know.