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Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#321

Post by abalone »

packetslave wrote: post #117

Just watched an interview on CNN with the Governor of Hawaii and their director of emergency management. Pretty impressed that the director didn't throw anybody under the bus. He basically said "An employee pushed the wrong button. It's my responsibility, so this is my fault. We're going to make procedure and technical changes to make sure this doesn't happen again."

The problem is not the employee who pushed the button. It's whomever designed a system with no checks and balances against a single human operator's error, given the severity of the outcome.

No way we should accept errors like this as some sort of blameless par for course in software engineering. Especially as SV grows more and more into life-critical systems like autonomous vehicles. If there was deep incompetence in architecting a system like this then yes, potentially the employees responsible for that architecture could be disciplined. If the responsible employees were too junior to design appropriate safeguards correctly, then the finger points at the managers who set up the team that way.

It sounds like the parties to blame here lie somewhere in the management chain between the poor unfortunate button-pusher and the director of all emergency management for Hawaii.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#322

Post by mynewtb »

packetslave wrote: post #316
ronald_raygun wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, I was a noogler there 4ish years ago, and they still tell that story as an example of "its okay to break things, we care about fixing them after so they dont break in the future"

There's a couple of good stories about massive outages and good incident response. Mine is just one of them (and at some level, I was very lucky). There's also the one where all the frontend servers worldwide went into a crash loop from a bad configuration push. The SRE doing the push noticed some "weirdness" and rolled back even before the full scope of the issue was known. That one's in the SRE book.

GFE? SRE?

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#323

Post by roywiggins »

anigbrowl wrote: post #274
roywiggins wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This system is run by the state of Hawaii. They're not exactly pro-confrontation (Tulsi Gabbard aside, but she's not in the state government).

How many people do you need to persuade to a particular point of view to actually put something like this into effect? If it were staged it would be interest of the state to hush it up rather than admit to a power struggle in the control room.

The State of Hawaii is spending time and money suing the feds over several things right now. The politicians in charge would probably love to blame this on someone else. The control room is probably staffed by underpaid state employees who aren't paid enough to take part in a government coverup for no good reason.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#324

Post by anigbrowl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #311
anigbrowl wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When news reports quoted the White House saying it was an exercise (which they did) I was naturally inclined to take that at face value. Here is one example. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/368907-white-hous... Furthermore, allow me to quote from the NY Times story on which we are commenting: Officials said the alert was the result of human error and not the work of hackers or a foreign government. The mis…

You posted specific and false information. You have not amended those posts. You then accused me of “trotting out an excuse.” I noted the incivility of that statement and, as you repeated false and specific facts, highlighted your lie. Let me go one layer deeper. You are upset a civil notification system malfunctioned, by saying false things. That is reasonable. But in reacting to that, you said false things. These a…

Not true. I said it was a drill, you repeatedly averred it wasn't, called me a liar, and I provided 2 sources tos support my claim. In this post you've accused me of lying 5 times, but never get around to stating what these supposed falsehoods are.

Retract your false claims.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#325

Post by SheinhardtWigCo »

intopieces wrote: post #80

If I were going to erode public trust in emergency broadcast systems in order to increase the amount of damage I would do by launching an actual missile, this is how I would do it. A series of false alarms. A similar, if obviously much smaller and less disastrous example, happens at my apartment about 4 times a week: the fire alarms for entire floors of my apartment building are easily triggered by people smoking in…

If you want to go down this particular rabbit hole, then let me say that I think it's more likely this was "us" than "them". Now the whole country is talking and thinking about the effects of a real ballistic missile launch. We got a glimpse at the chaos and mass panic that would ensue.

Tomorrow there will be more people in favor of putting a swift and aggressive end to NK's nuclear ambitions than there were yesterday.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#326

Post by Bluestrike2 »

packetslave wrote: post #316
ronald_raygun wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, I was a noogler there 4ish years ago, and they still tell that story as an example of "its okay to break things, we care about fixing them after so they dont break in the future"

There's a couple of good stories about massive outages and good incident response. Mine is just one of them (and at some level, I was very lucky). There's also the one where all the frontend servers worldwide went into a crash loop from a bad configuration push. The SRE doing the push noticed some "weirdness" and rolled back even before the full scope of the issue was known. That one's in the SRE book.

Site Reliability Engineering.[0] Google's SRE book is a pretty interesting read.

0. https://landing.google.com/sre/interview/ben-treynor.html

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#327

Post by JumpCrisscross »

anigbrowl wrote: post #324
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You posted specific and false information. You have not amended those posts. You then accused me of “trotting out an excuse.” I noted the incivility of that statement and, as you repeated false and specific facts, highlighted your lie. Let me go one layer deeper. You are upset a civil notification system malfunctioned, by saying false things. That is reasonable. But in reacting to that, you said false things. These a…

Not true. I said it was a drill, you repeatedly averred it wasn't, called me a liar, and I provided 2 sources tos support my claim. In this post you've accused me of lying 5 times, but never get around to stating what these supposed falsehoods are. Retract your false claims.

You are doubling down on discredited reports. You repeated something false. In doubling down, you are lying. This was not a drill, it was a mistake [1]. Your focus on your ego over the facts doesn’t change that.

[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-hawaii-inb...

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#328

Post by anigbrowl »

roywiggins wrote: post #323
anigbrowl wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people do you need to persuade to a particular point of view to actually put something like this into effect? If it were staged it would be interest of the state to hush it up rather than admit to a power struggle in the control room.

The State of Hawaii is spending time and money suing the feds over several things right now. The politicians in charge would probably love to blame this on someone else. The control room is probably staffed by underpaid state employees who aren't paid enough to take part in a government coverup for no good reason.

Most likely, but it seems like a single disgruntled individual who disapproved of the state's policy could effect such an outcome. We've seen numerous examples of security-related fuckups over the years that were swept under the rug despite the economic incentives to blow the whistle, so I'm no inclined to completely dismiss the possibility.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#329

Post by strken »

blhack wrote: post #312
astura wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking prepping is silly is not synonymous with believing "when gloves of society are off, we all gonna be happy singing kumbaya and respecting rules." I think prepping is ridiculous, but it's precisely because I know the nature of humanity. (Among a bunch of other reasons.) It's also ridiculous to think this particular incident has anything to do with, well, anything...

>I think prepping is ridiculous, but it's precisely because I know the nature of humanity. (Among a bunch of other reasons.) Could you share this insight? The US gov't recommends that you do some amount of emergency preparedness ("prepping"): https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit

Having 72 hours of shelter/water/food, a first aid kit, and some other bits and pieces is not how prepping is colloquially used.

Given a disaster with a 1% yearly chance, and a lifespan of 80 years, lifetime odds of encountering that disaster are close to 50%. Given a disaster with a 0% or a 0.000001% chance, lifetime odds are still pretty close to zero. Disaster preparedness worries about the 1%, prepping worries about what many people including me would consider the 0.000001%, which is why having a pack of water bottles and a first aid kit in a cupboard seems like common sense, but prepping for the fall of civilisation seems ridiculous.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#330

Post by joering2 »

yks wrote: post #297
joering2 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I join a gang?? I have enough brothers in arms to create my own.

gangs have an hierarchy, experience with violence and disregard of ethics. if you and your "brothers in arms" are veterans you have pretty good odds otherwise not so much.

I think you missed the whole point of this threat, that there are no ethics when there is no policing or government oversight.
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