Ahh The Stupidity, And The Intrusion

I have no idea what idiot wrote the text that went along with this "presidential alert", (Frankly I'm not inclined to trust a president that is obviously more concerned about men being called out on their bad behavior than he is in giving credence to the women that have been impacted by that behavior, to be determining what is and isn't worthy of an emergency notification for me.)  but I do know, this being a governmental project, that several additional people, all government or at least government-adjacent, had to review and sign off on it weeks ago.

Then yesterday (Even though it was in my pocket at the time I don't allow my phone to make any noises and didn't check it until about an hour ago) the message was reviewed and confirmed one more time before being signed off on and sent. (Recent events have proven that sending the wrong message, however well intentioned, can be embarrassing!)

So, given all the checks and reviews, how the hell then did the clowns, who just confiscated our personal property, albeit temporarily, with no probable cause, manage to send a message telling us that we didn't need to take any further action when clearly we did?!

I tried rebooting but nope, that message popped right back up, the lie starring me in the face and preventing me from using my own property.

But I sure as hell didn't trust that "no action required" CONFIRM button. For all I know it could be like the UNSUBSCRIBE button at the end of a spam e-mail that when pressed doesn't actually unsubscribe you at all, but rather announces to the sender that they have managed to hit an active account worthy of more spam.

I really didn't want to participate in potentially adding my phone into some government database as having received their intrusive finger-poke, but it appeared that taking the "non-action" route of pressing CONFIRM was the only way for a non-hacker type to regain ownership of his phone.

I did eventually press their damn button, but only after switching to airplane mode, which  presumably prevented it from sending any data out. It worked, which probably means that there is no such database at all, but, in keeping with my motto of 'trust no one', it could also just be an indication of piss-poor coding.