Ever since the bogus Hawaii missile alert on the weekend, the world has been firmly divided into two camps: those who think the person who did it is a colossal moron, and those who believe that there is clearly a profound design flaw in the system if someone can accidentally trigger a mass, statewide nuclear panic.
Well, consider this some ammunition for the latter camp. A new image from government officials reveals that the interface for the alert system is… not particularly clear. In fact, there’s only a one word difference between the test alert and the actual alert.
This is the screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday. The operator clicked the PACOM (CDW) State Only link. The drill link is the one that was supposed to be clicked. #Hawaii pic.twitter.com/lDVnqUmyHa
— Honolulu Civil Beat (@CivilBeat) January 16, 2018
See, the employee clicked on “PACOM (CDW) – State Only”, when they actually should have clicked on “Drill – PACOM (CDW) – State Only”. See, I’m only slightly a moron and I could feasibly imagine myself doing this, especially if I’d never done it before. That being said, DRILL should be reasonably clear.
There is reportedly a second confirmation page which appears after this, which the employee accidentally clicked YES on. According to officials, it’s a regular old confirmation page and doesn’t convey the sense that you’re about to cause a national incident.
A public information officer for Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency told The Verge that the above image isn’t actually a 100 accurate depiction of the system – which can’t be shown for security reasons – but did concede that it is “an acceptable representation of our system.”
Since the incident on the weekend, that top option there – “BMD False Alarm” – has been added. It would allow an operator to quickly send out a correction via the same emergency alert system. Much of the criticism of what happened on the weekend stems from the fact it took forty minutes to issue a correction of the false alarm.
New procedures have also been put in place. The EMA has ceased running emergency drills at all for the near future, and they will require two people present to run if and when they are reinstated.
