Amber Alert wakes up thousands of New Yorkers

When a child is abducted under dangerous circumstances, owners of newer smartphones will receive a piercing tone (similar to the tone that announces the Emergency Broadcasting System messages) along with a text message regarding the abduction. Thousands of New Yorkers learned about this for the first time at about 3AM this week, when an alert was sent out regarding a little boy who had been kidnapped by his mentally ill mother.

Perhaps a bigger problem with the system is that Amber Alerts are "largely ineffective." Yes, most of the children featured in Amber Alerts are recovered - but not because of the alert. In fact, the system is so flawed and useless that one watchdog group recently dubbed it "crime control theater."

Image courtesy Flickr/Theen ...