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TACOMA — A system set up to send emergency alerts to thousands of cellphone users warning them of natural disasters and missing children has experienced problems during its rollout in Washington state, the News Tribune reported today.

The mobile notification system has helped authorities find at least two missing children as a result of Amber Alerts sent to cellphones in the state.

But it also mistakenly warned people in the lowlands of Western Washington of a blizzard that was happening in the Cascade Mountains, and it alerted others in Western Washington of potential flash floods thousands of miles away, in Puerto Rico.

Still, officials said, the weather warnings have saved countless people elsewhere in the country. The system is working, they said, despite the problems.

“To some people these things are annoying. But when you look at it as the big picture of saving lives, as a community as a whole, it’s the right thing to do,” said Ted Buehner, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle. “These are targeted for immediate, life-threatening, hazardous events.”

In Connecticut last July, for example, a camp director got 29 children to safety after getting a tornado warning on her cellphone moments before the storm touched down where she and the campers had been. Tornado warnings in the Midwest also were responsible for saving many lives, Buehner said.

Congress approved the national Wireless Emergency Alert system in 2006 to provide instant warnings from emergency agencies throughout the country. To get the word out, the system uses cellphone carriers to complement other alerts sent out on television and radio.

But in a few cases, the system has confused both cellphone users and the emergency agencies in charge of implementing it, according to the News Tribune.

Three of the eight messages sent in Washington state were sent too broadly, reaching people in the wrong areas. Two others went out before dawn, raising questions about what people were expected to do in the middle of the night once they received those alerts.

Carri Gordon, the Amber Alert coordinator for the Washington State Patrol, said the rollout of the system was especially complicated.

“There’s a lot of players in this and a lot of pieces that all have to work together,” Gordon told the News Tribune. “There really is no one agency that’s in charge of the whole process.”

Worried that cellphone users may opt out en masse of getting the alerts, state and federal agencies have made changes. They are also working to educate the public about the alerts.

The committee that oversees the national system decided last year to eliminate blizzards and ice storms from its list of emergency alerts, Buehner said. The list now covers tornados, hurricanes, extreme wind, typhoons, dust storms and flash flooding. The committee also added tsunamis in February.

After an Amber Alert went out to hundreds of people at 3:30 a.m. on April 28, alerting them to a missing child, some who received the message wondered what they were supposed to do about it so early in the morning.

The Washington State Patrol, which oversees the state’s Amber Alerts, later said the message wasn’t meant to wake up residents. Agency officials said they learned that they were responsible for setting time parameters on the alerts to prevent them going out late at night.

The agency set those time parameters in June. Now, the alert system is programmed not to send alerts after 10 p.m. or before 6 a.m.

Still, the alert served a purpose. The missing 1-year-old boy was found safe in Fife that morning as a result of the cellphone broadcast, Gordon said.

“These are useful, and they’ve proven very successful in locating these kids who have been abducted,” she told the News Tribune.

In December 2012, the National Weather Service in Seattle sent a blizzard alert to people living near the Cascades, but the technology of the national system forwarded it to all the counties in the region. Some people living in Pierce County where the storm never reached were puzzled to get the message.

But Herb Munson told the newspaper he hoped the confusion doesn’t dissuade the agency from issuing such alerts.

“I would like to get such messages when there is a threat to nearby areas,” Munson told the newspaper.

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The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."

Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance.

Silent Circle, another provider of secure online services, announced on later Thursday night that it would scrap its own encrypted email offering, Silent Mail.

The founder of Lavabait, Ladar Levison, wrote on the company's website: "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." The news was firstreported by Xeni Jardin the popular news site Boing Boing.

Levison said government-imposed restrictions prevented him from explaining what exactly led to his company's crisis point.

I feel you deserve to know what's going on – the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this," Levison wrote. "Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

Silent Circle said in a blogpostthat although it had not received any government orders to hand over information, "the writing is on the wall".

Privacy advocates called the moves unprecedented. "I am unaware of any situation in which a service provider chose to shut down rather than comply with a court order they felt violated the constitution," said Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Several technology companies that participate in the National Security Agency's surveillance dragnets have filed legal requests to lift the secrecy restrictions that prevent them from explaining to their customers precisely what it is that they provide to the powerful intelligence service – either wittingly or due to a court order. Yahoo has sued for the disclosure of some of those court orders.

The presiding judge of the secret court that issues such orders, known as the Fisa court, has indicated to the Justice Department that he expects declassification in the Yahoo case. The department agreed last week to a review that will last into September about the issues surrounding the release of that information.

There are few internet and telecommunications companies known to have refused compliance with the NSA for its bulk surveillance efforts, which the NSA and the Obama administration assert are vital to protect Americans. One of them is Qwest Communications, whose former CEO Joseph Nacchio – convicted of insider trading – alleged that the government rejected it for lucrative contracts after Qwest became a rare holdout for post-9/11 surveillance.

"Without the companies' participation," former NSA codebreaker William Binney recently told the Guardian, "it would reduce the collection capability of the NSA significantly."

Snowden was allegedly a Lavabit customer. A Lavabit email address believed to come from Snowden invited reporters to a press conferenceat Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in mid-July.

While Levinson did not say much about the shuttering of his company – he notably did not refer to the NSA, for instance – he did say he intended to mount a legal challenge.

"We've already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals," Levinson wrote. "A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company."

He continued: "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."

Opsahl noted that the fact that Levinson was appealing a case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals indicated the government had a court order for Lavabit's data.

"It's taking a very bold stand, one that I'm sure will have financial ramifications," Opsahl said.

"There should be more transparency around this. There's probably no harm to the national security of the United States to have it publicly revealed what are the legal issues here," Opsahl continued.

The justice department said it had no comment to make. Representatives from the NSA, White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately reply to a request for comment.