“Government can’t protect people from their own idiocy: News at 11.”
I’m basing my critique on how I, a person with average intelligence, would design the system.
My phone has GPS, it has a clock. It’s constantly logged in to Google (it’s an Android phone) and Google knows where I work, where I live, and what times I commute at.
It’s clear that where my home is, a flash flood isn’t going to wash it away. When it’s 2am and my phone is at my home and I’m probably not going anywhere for the duration of the warning, then I probably don’t need to know about it. If I happen to get up and leave my home, then by all means, send the warning.
Likewise, when it’s 10am and I’m not going to be going to be leaving work for the next 6 hours, I don’t need an amber alert. Show it when I walk out of my office building.
The system has no intelligence in it right now and they are overusing it.
Government can take the warnings-fatigue into account and tread carefully. Too may warnings aren’t so much better than none.
Well, sure enough, at 3:00 AM last night down here in Pasadena, both my wife’s iPhone and my Android blasted off with a flash-flood warning. She woke up slightly terrified, but I knew what it was instantly (thanks to this thread), and so we both went right back to sleep.
But yeah, on her iPhone 6 Plus, that was one disturbing alarm. My Droid RAZR M sounded much less scary.
Have fun with the flash floods when they hit you in your sleep.
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I can’t wait for this to be abused, hacked, etc.
So false positive?
Hahah! I will need to share that. 
Like I said in another comment, my phone has GPS, Google knows where my house is and it’s nowhere a flash flood could hit. There’s absolutely no reason for it to warn me when I’m at home in the middle of the night.
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What about for those who don’t have GPSes in their phones?
They can switch off the annoyance in the phone menu manually.
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Yeah, I thought it was cool the first few times. Glad I could turn it off.
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Dude, this isn’t rocket science. I’m sure you can figure it out.
? I don’t even own a mobile phone.
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