Colorful Alerts?

     This morning, I went to the Indiana legislature website, to see what they're going to be up to next year.  Remember, this is the deliberative body that toyed with setting pi to three; they're something like a too-trusting elderly relative, who must be diverted from answering the door when traveling salesmen come to call, or you'll find out the driveway has been "top-coated" with used crankcase oil or the front steps have been repaired with a mixture of sand, flour and water.

     It's too soon for the 2025 litany of pork, posturing and puffery.  Looking over what they tried and sometimes pushed forward in 2024, I came across a well-meaning example of...something.

     The idea behind it has merit, but it suggests we ought to step back and take another look: the legislature's got a bill in progress to introduce a "Green Alert" for missing veterans and service members.

     You might ask, why not?  We already have Amber Alerts for missing or abducted children, Silver Alerts for missing, at-risk seniors (and it's sometimes used for other people who need care) and Blue Alerts for police (no, I am not making this up -- presumably it's for hostage situations).  Most of these are embedded in the nationwide EAS system that goes over broadcast stations and the WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert) system that communicates with cellphones.  They use three-letter "Event Codes," generally defined by Congress, like "CAE" (Child Abduction Emergency) for Amber Alerts.  CAE is the oldest code of this type, and it works; it's helped locate many missing children.  One of 26 letters in three positions means there are a lot of possible codes.  Not all are mnemonic.

     Some of the proposed codes are intended to make a point: missing people get disproportionate media attention if they're young, white and female, so "Ebony Alert" and "Feather Alert" codes have been proposed.  This can be read as government signalling to media, more than joggling your elbow: when it lights up an EAS codec, radio and TV stations have to either pass it along automatically* or actually sit down and read the thing before making a decision about sharing it, an effort that often results in a news story, and the specialized code is intended as a reminder.  How you or I -- or a news editor -- react to it is highly subjective, and this might not be an area for subjectivity: lost, at-risk individuals deserve to be found, period, and that is worth lighting up your phone for half a minute or airing a twenty-second broadcast news story, no matter who they are.

     As a practical matter, all that is needed are alerts for "lost child" and "lost adult."  Details should go in the accompanying text message, to tell you and me if we should be looking for a four-year-old Native American child or a 60 year old law enforcement officer: it's supposed to be way to help out, not an overloaded "thin blue line" flag with a special stripe for each and every sliver of the population who might be at risk.

     P.S.  There are highly-specific geocoding numbers in the systems, too, which as a practical matter are steerable down to the level of counties.  (The code gets even more localized but cellphones and EAS codecs generally do not.)  Just like weather alerts, alerts for lost and missing persons are supposed to be coded for a limited area.  This helps reduce people getting alerts that don't apply to their location.

     P.P.S.  I am reminded that the Federal guidelines for issuing this type of alert on EAS or WEA are specific and strict, so while your Mayor or local law enforcement may hold a news conference and say they're issuing a gray and yellow-striped alert, a genuine, official version with its own event code is supposed to be a rare thing that had to meet well-defined criteria before it was sent.  Will that stop state and Federal legislators from making up new ones?  I sure wouldn't want to bet money on it.
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* Remarkably few EAS event codes are required to go on the air automatically, just national-level emergencies, a system that has been used for a "live code" test or two but never in earnest.  Most of the boxes treat national-level tests the same way, but the rest of it is set up for a human to look at and decide -- if there's a human around to do so.  If your local radio station is running every darned beep-beep-beep alert that comes across, there's probably a robot at the wheel.