Days After Hawaii's False Missile Alarm, a New One in Japan (nytimes.com) 67
An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan's public broadcaster on Tuesday accidentally sent news alerts that North Korea had launched a missile and that citizens should take shelter -- just days after the government of Hawaii had sent a similar warning to its citizens. The broadcaster, NHK, corrected itself five minutes later and apologized for the error on its evening news (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The initial texts cited J-Alert, a system used by the government to issue warnings to its citizens about missiles, tsunamis and other natural disasters. But NHK later said that the system was not to blame for the false alarm. Makoto Sasaki, a spokesman for NHK, apologized, saying that "staff had mistakenly operated the equipment to deliver news alerts over the internet."
Re:All part of NK's plan.... (Score:4, Interesting)
A 10 kiloton warhead in the centre of any city would cause at least 45,000 immediate deaths and about 250,000 injuries. That's a warhead smaller than either of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
With a standard 300 kiloton warhead you would have over 600,000 immediate deaths and over 2 million injuries.
How much good is it going to do to "take warnings seriously"?
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Taking shelter can make a big difference. We can learn a lot from what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People in the open were much more likely to be killed. But shelter helped a lot more in Nagasaki, where most buildings were stone, rather than in Hiroshima, where most were wood. Nagasaki was hit by a bigger bomb (20kT vs 15kT) but fewer people died because there was no firestorm like Hiroshima experienced.
Anyway, I think we are way past the point where anyone is going to take these stupid "alerts"
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What percentage of Hawaiians actually knew about the alert between the time it was sent and the time an announcement of the error was made?
Everyone with an 808 area code cellphone that was turned on. Likely 90% of the adult population of Hawaii.
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That's a reasonable estimate on the percentage that received the message... but not necessarily what percentage actually happened to see the message before the retraction notice was made.
My phone is on all the time too, but unless I'm actually doing something with my phone at the time that it arrives, I often I don't see text messages for 20 to 30 minutes or sometimes even longer.
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A 10 kiloton warhead in the centre of any city would cause at least 45,000 immediate deaths and about 250,000 injuries.
Huh? You're making an identical estimate for NYC & Muleshoe, TX? The average population for a US city isn't anywhaere near 250,000. Maybe you're going off a list of likely targets? Where in the world are these numbers coming from?
How much good is it going to do to "take warnings seriously"?
Depends. Your odds are better in a bomb shelter than operating a hot dog cart when a bomb hits, but whether it actually does you any good depends on a lot of things. If you're in Seoul and NK starts firing conventional artillery at you, taking the warning seriously could save y
Re:All part of NK's plan.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Are you saying: if they were behind this (and had hacked the missile alert systems), then they wouldnt advertise it (by hacking the missile alert systems)? Seems like a contradiction.
First of all, let me say I approve of the feculence you reprobates manage to dreg up. If I could, you would have my vote, as my points are due to expire this evening. But /. won't let me give credit where I've gone before. And let me confess I've had to drastically cut this response down, eliminating references to Steve Bannon and the s*hole (house?) that sits on Pennsylvania Avenue. Too much fun.
I thought I said if North Korea did the hacks, it was a message meant for the president and the p
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The testing of every gov network.
Interviewing all cleared mil and gov staff.
Creating a profile of all staff to see who might be swayed by NK?
Its win win win for contractors once a person in gov accepts the NK cyber part.
A lot of well politically well connected mil and gov contractors would really like a new reason to sell their services to any gov, mil. NK is a great way to start that
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The "what if" NK was doing cyber is the message to push a sale to the gov/mil with.
Sell and rent the software, hardware, experts, get overtime and its all good again.
They're seeing what happens (Score:5, Insightful)
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Especially if, as apparently in Hawaii, there are no shelters designed to resist thermonuclear attack.
After all, it's not as if they were real Americans.
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The H3 tunnel is technically designed a shelter, although there are obviously no supplies and it is likely more dangerous to get there than just stay put and work on your tan.
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Prudence, indeed, will dict
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Go back to Africa. See if they welcome you with open arms... or if they machete you to death because the 40% African in you is from the wrong tribe.
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Or, if you were to look outside of /., you would find that in a lot of North Africa and the Arab world, nothing has changed in this regard. Saudis selling African slaves (and killing or castrating them) has been much in the news over the past week.
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In most of Africa (ie those parts where there is no actual declared war), the murder rate is significantly lower than in the USA (much the same as in Europe).
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I believe these false alerts are deliberate, and are being used to see what happens when people think there's an attack.
When people said that after the Hawaii alert, I thought it was unfounded. Now that it's happened again so rapidly, I think that's a credible idea. These could also be political acts, however, being done to make a point about NK.
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I believe these false alerts are deliberate...
...I think that's a credible idea.
Hanlon's razor [wikipedia.org]: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Do you think Japan & Hawaii coordinated these experiments or that they came up with the same idea independently? Seems far-fetched to me.
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Hanlon's razor [wikipedia.org]: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
That's just what a malicious actor wants you to think.
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Yaknow, I thought it was far-fetched that a CNN moderator would cheat and give Hillary Clinton the debate questions beforehand. It's like something the villain would do in a Charlie Brown cartoon special. But it happened.
I thought it was far-fetched that a senior Politico journalist, a serious man with serious credibility, would run his articles past the Democrats before publishing. But it happened. His punishment? He was hired by the New York Times after the election.
I thought it was far-fetched tha
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There was a mistaken warning about an earthquake sent out a few weeks ago too, but I guess it's not a missile so it wasn't seen as a big deal. Basically there were two small earthquakes separated by a few minutes and not too far apart, which the system decided was one big earthquake and sent out the alert.
The general feeling seemed to be "better safe than sorry".
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They only send warnings for large quakes where there is some specific risk, like a tsunami or mud slides or just enough shaking to damage buildings. There are smaller quakes every single day, and a lot of the time you don't even notice them.
Re:They're seeing what happens (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe these false alerts are deliberate, and are being used to see what happens when people think there's an attack.
I've heard a few conspiracies, including that the Hawaii debacle was done on purpose to make Trump look bad. However, since we shouldn't be quick to attribute malice to what can be explained by incompetence, it's easy enough for me to believe a government worker screwed up.
These false alerts also act to discredit the real alerts, if God forbid one ever comes. The whole thing is deeply disconcerting, and I hope a patriotic leaker comes forward with the real story to Wikileaks.
I could see your point if this happened a few times, but I think having it happen once is a good thing. The vast majority of Hawaiians probably had no idea what to do in this case. You could see it in all of the YouTube videos posted out there. I'm sure a lot of them have now taken stock in where they will go & what they should do if the real thing happens, which they hadn't considered before.
It's a process problem (Score:2)
On the UI side, the interface simply consisted of a bunch of hyperlinks in no particular order with test messages and real messages interspersed. Upon clicking a link, the page just asked if you were sure you wanted to send a message but didn't show what the message actually was. It allowed one operator to make all the decisions with no oversi
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A GUI on a computer with "test" and "alarm" on a mouse click? A touch screen with two easy to read options?
The every shift test system should be easy to get to.
The alarm button use should be a bit more considered than selecting the test function?
Some sort of industrial control buttons on a more impressive looking design?
The "test" and "alarm" button are next too each other and the same color, size and type of easy to use button?
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Oh honey, Trump doesn't need Hawaii's help to look bad.
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And the purpose of doing this would be what exactly?
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> Just because you can't immediately figure out a purpose doesn't mean that there is no purpose. Are you really that self absorbed?
er, I was asking what the supposed purpose is, not denying that there is no purpose. O_o
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They're real alerts. NK is firing missiles, but we're shooting them down with lasers (from satellites, not sharks).
We can't pull the plug on the alerts without revealing our hand. And there's always the possibility that we fail to zap one.
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A good way I've found to Occam it is...
1. Once is happenstance
2. Twice is coincidence.
3. Thrice? Now we have a pattern.
It's similar to music.
1. One note is a melody.
2. Two notes are an interval.
Neither of those are enough to signify the key of the music.
3. Three notes sets the key.
Now there's a pattern to work with.
Hah (Score:5, Funny)
Let me guess, the conversation went as follows.
Boss - Show me our system can't make the same mistake what the Hawaii one did.
Operator - It can't boss, look. First you click here, then here and then her.. oh shit, oh shit, shit.
Boss - <running in circles> Make it stop, make it stop.
password on sticky note Warningpoint2 (Score:2)
password on sticky note Warningpoint2
Once is happenstance... (Score:2)
Twice is coincidence...
Watch this spot.
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A communications disruption can mean only one thing!
Mobile Phone Presidential False Alert Next? (Score:1)
I've long wondered what would happen if a presidential alert was accidentally sent. Most all newer mobile phones intended for use in the U.S. will respond to such alerts. Presidential alerts can't be turned off on non-rooted phones. I could easily envision someone doing this as a jab to the Trump administration.
Hopefully, national presidential alerts are better safeguarded than many state and local based alerts. Incompetence abounds. Even after the event. According to some articles I've read, the state of H
that's a good way to keep your citizens scared... (Score:1)
to be able to pass any laws that you want....
Obligatory stereotype (Score:2)
Makoto Sasaki, a spokesman for NHK, apologized, saying that "staff had mistakenly operated the equipment to deliver news alerts over the internet." NHK is now looking for new staff to replace the old one that commited seppuku.
GOZIRA! (Score:2)
Nuclear monsters inbound, take shelter!
Another example why 'alerts' are useless (Score:2)
Only kind of alert I think may be useful are one of those radios that respond when NOAA NWS sends out a tornado warning. Other than that, I think last time aerial bombardment alerts were useful was in WWII, or maybe first Gulf War of incoming Scud missiles. Airstrikes these days are first realized at bombstrikes, an incoming missile with nuclear bomb... not sure what to do about that.
I remember signing up for county alerts only to get late at night (and wow I didn't know cellphone can be that loud) a miss
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I had emergency alerts enabled where I work. I very quickly disabled them.
The first issue is that the vast majority of the alerts were not relevant to where I worked, but were for a neighboring area.
They quickly implemented a filter to let people subscribe to 2 different lists to try and separate those out. They still bled over.
The second issue was that the vast majority of the emergency alerts were for non emergencies. I don't like being awoken at 3 AM to hear about an attempted bike theft or an alleged
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It kept overtime support and upgrades to the alert system safe.
Different from Hawaii case. (Score:2)
This was not a "false missile alarm" or any kind of fault in J-Alert system. This was news organization (NHK) mistakenly publishing a pre-written news piece, kinda like when premature obituaries occur. That is not to say there hasn't been a mistake in J-Alert testing producing a false missile alarm. In fact it has happened several times already:
4/19/2017 in Osaki, Miyagi. False missile warning broadcasted over loud speakers while testing of J-Alert system. Correction issued after 6 minutes.
9/8/2017 in Yokka
Reminds me of that Star Trek TOS episode (Score:2)