
Hawaii missile alert standdown delayed by forgotten log-in - whyleyc
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42787419
======
albertgoeswoof
> Forgotten Twitter log-in details have been blamed for delaying a public
> correction to Hawaii's missile alert earlier this month.

Kind of floored that twitter is what the government has to use to put a
notification out to it's public to provide critical information.

But then I continued to read and the article goes on to say that twitter and
other social media was used by the Governor after the emergency text message
was sent out, which means it obviously isn't a primary source of information.

So actually it's just clickbait journalism. Anyone panicking in the area would
have almost certainly picked up a text before getting anything over twitter.

What is pretty terrible is that the governor of Hawaii most likely doesn't
have 2FA on his twitter account and keeps the password on his phone, probably
in a notes app of some kind, and is willing to publicly admit that.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In emergency situations, if social media platforms work better than "official
channels" (and they do), I'd prefer the government to use them.

~~~
craftyguy
I don't. Having to agree to yet more 'privacy' policies and succumb to
tracking and other rights violations by the big social media platforms just to
be able to recieve important messages from our government is, well, extremely
stupid. The government must have a reliable way to do this. They don't, so
they are trying to take the 'easy way', and that's a failure on their part.

------
zaroth
It’s perfectly rational, efficient and good policy to use social media to
reach people in an emergency.

Twitter has spent billions to deploy a worldwide network that people engage
with to communicate short status updates. They also have the content, and
scale to have a large percentage of the population actually familiar with how
to use their tool.

To get an equivalent reach and scale and level of familiarity with a
government run tool would be a $100 billion project doomed to fail.

Should Twitter be the _only_ way that government reaches the population to
deliver critical updates? Of course not, but it absolutely must be one of the
primary ways, and in many cases because the system design of Twitter is so
much better, it will be the channel with the most accurate and up-to-date
data.

I mean the best part of that is then Homeland can designate Twitter as
“critical national infrastructure” and put their agents in the data centers!
</s>

~~~
harlanji
I'm so glad you put that </s> at the end. I definitely see them jumping to
make those inroads. It's not hard to self operate this stuff now that
distributed computing is cheaper (eg. $50 raspi 2018 = 10+ $2000 boxes 1998).
How was Google built, lots of commodity hardware you say? Why can't a
neighborhood watch-like group operate a p2p network of RasPis located in homes
of volunteers, using enough replication and a signing policy with YubiKeys or
something, and operating guides and maintenance kits? Self-promotion, I
started working on something like this in Nov.

This morning I awoke to a map of my block covered in blue saying a warning had
started 20 minutes ago, in a Facebook post from a foodie. I like to think
those friendly warning sirens that blare at noon would tell me something, to
begin with. Then those loud alerts that go to my phone no matter how many
times I disable the setting. Then maybe text blast, granted I don't know all
the ones I should be on. I just had a needless bpm added to my heart rate.

All notifications are disabled on my mobile except calls; much as people
depend on them I won't let myself. Two days of disaster and everyone's battery
is dead, along with ability to search the web for life skills and claim to
have invented fire. Tangent, but for the doubters, I inspect routes before I
drive and know my way around blind after just a few thousand miles in the city
over 4 years (typical commuter is 10k/yr+). And literally nobody of
consequence has complained about responding to things a few times per day in
batches (around lunch, late afternoon/5).

People think I'm too intense, actually I think they're just addicts with no
attention span. So one can see why I don't want to turn on Notifs for an
advertising network in case there's something urgent. Oh hey, false alarm, buy
some stuff and surrender some power... [just click here :D]

------
Waterluvian
I'm not sure what the other duties of this team are, so this is more of a
generic thought, not specific to the Hawaii alert bungle.

Maybe it's important not to let any career exist that exercises its
capabilities so infrequently. For example, firefighters train for massive
disasters that rarely occur, but they more regularly fight smaller fires, and
even more regularly respond to other problems like traffic accidents. So they
are deployed on a very regular basis. Contrast that with the Minuteman missile
teams who, I hope, have never ever fulfilled their role in actuality. Does
this make them less effective?

Also makes me think about military efficacy. You can either go to war a lot,
or find other ways to practice your skills. Which is why disaster response
seems like such a natural fit for military.

~~~
fredley
I read an article recently about how we know what we know about history. The
big takeaway for me was that most of what we know about ancient times, we know
because the information was _repeated_. Ancient texts were copied by scholars
and monks over and over again. Even when the originals were destroyed or
decayed, we retained some of the copies. This turns out to be a common pattern
with almost anything in the sum of human knowledge. We only know what is newly
discovered, or what is rediscovered (repeated).

In the digital sphere we have the same issue. There is a whole heap of data
out there, but much of it is under threat of being lost, because it only
exists on a hard drive we have lost the technology to read, unless we rebuild
it (but we've also forgotten how to do that). If the platters decay without
that data being copied, it's lost forever.

Just as the military knows, with its constant drilling, the same is true of
human behaviours too. Repetition is the key to everything we know, and
everything we do. Knowledge and behaviours that aren't repeated _will_ be
lost.

------
mxuribe
Hmm, i just assumed that all executives - even in government - have their
public-facing accounts managed by their communications/public relations team.
Maybe this is one of those rare times that it would have been good to have a
team of people have access to the account? ;-)

------
taneq
Damned if you do write the password on a post-it note, damned if you don't.

~~~
pc86
Not damned if you just remember the goddamn password OR use a password
manager.

~~~
beat
Use a password manager. I'd prefer that critical government social media
accounts not use passwords that a human being can realistically remember.

------
sixothree
That's funny, I don't know my twitter password either. Nor do I know my
facebook password, or most of my other passwords.

edit: I guess my point is that the word is not getting out about good password
practices.

~~~
mikejmoffitt
Maybe it's snooty holier-than-thou posts by users of password managers,
lacking in substance or any real argument, that lets the majority of password
users remain unconvinced.

~~~
perl4ever
Password managers make me nervous for two reasons: (1) if someone breaches the
password manager, they have all your passwords, rather than one, and (2) you
have to trust the source of the password manager that it doesn't have an
intentional backdoor - even if it _was_ trustworthy, every update is the
potential for a new problem.

Also, in my experience, you're not allowed to use one at work, so what do you
think people do?

------
orliesaurus
Nothing wrong with using twitter to spread important news around faster. But
this article is as click bait as it gets honestly.. Next article on this
subject will be titled something: Hawaii social media person delayed by
additional 3 minutes because had to use the restroom during crisis

------
swarnie_
Wasn't it stuck to the monitor with a post-it note?

~~~
fredley
Presumably after they'd discovered it, they took this measure to prevent a
repeat of the same situation.

