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FEMA Demands Use of IE To File Online Katrina Claims
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online. Further, you must have javascript enabled or face rejection. From the site: 'We are sorry for not being able to proceed your requests because you have failed our tests.' Opera and Netscape don't work either." Also reported at InformationWeek. From that story: "To file a claim online at FEMA's Individual Assistance Center, where citizens can apply for government help, the browser must be IE 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera. When TechWeb tested the site using Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.6, the message 'In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register' popped up on the screen." Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.
From TFA:
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Next you guys will have to use Windows to be considered citizens, get passports, a social security number...
How can a government possibly limit it's services to people who use a certain software package? Is this discrimination? What would happen if it said "Sorry but because you're black you can not use this website" ?
Yeah, that would be an issue...
I hate this stupid shit. And I know it's not even malicious, because I've seen it happen before at government agencies. It's out and out incompetence. Although it seems that given all the other crap FEMA has fucked up lately, this won't even register to most people.
from the above link:
Written Correspondence: FEMA P.O. Box 10055 Hyattsville, MD 20782-7055 Fax: (800) 827-8112
If FEMA has requested information from you in writing, you may send it to the address or fax number listed above. Please include your name, social security number, and Registration ID number on all correspondence.Technical Assistance: (800) 745-0243 Monday- Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm ET The technical helpdesk provides technical support for the on-line registration and user account creation applications and cannot answer disasters assistance related questions.
Please though, remember these people are a federal aid agency working overtime. PLEASE BE CORTEOUS when asking them.
Yes... there is no "feature" If you install a plugin that makes firefox read as "Internet Exploder" or use Opera's masking the site works.. so umm yeah this looks not good.
I wonder if opera using it's browser masking could do it?
Don't know about Opera, but Firefox running the User Agent Switcher set to IE 6 works just fine (tested it myself), so I would assume that Opera with browser masking would work as well.
Anyone out there with Opera installed that could give us a definitive answer?
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
This just one of a growing number of complaints against the FEMA. It's so bad that some are calling for its director, Micheal Brown, to be fired. Apparently, he's had problems in prior positions as well, as described HERE
Also, to address your point, I'm guessing that people will be filing their claims OUTSIDE of those areas.
The Section 508 accessibility guidelines are a requirement for all U.S. government sites. I have helped to develop several .gov sites, and we take 508 compliance very seriously. I think the people responsible for www.fema.gov are about to get dragged over the coals, and rightly so. Making their website work in one *one* browser is the antithesis of accessibility.
I assume you are being sarcastic? You are looking at it backwards. Websites start out 100% cross-browser compatible. It takes more work to go from standard HTML forms that work in every browser to complicated XML data islands that only work in software from a single vendor. Somewhere, some incompetent web developer decided that simple HTML wasn't good enough, and put in extra work to make it more complicated and in doing so, locked people out.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
IE on Mac stopped at version 5.2.3, not 5.5.
The version of IE for Mac had very little to do with the Windows versions. Different code base etc. I tried to use it recently and most sites that require IE won't work with IE for Mac anyway so there is really very little point in having it. The thing is so slow it isn't funny and the look of it is quite unlike modern Mac applications as it is still covered in the old pinstripe stuff. Safari is much better and has much greater compatibility than IE for Mac these days so yes, MS is right, there is no need for IE for Mac.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
If you're going to start looking at who did what wrong, you should at least get your facts straight.
First of all, FEMA has been largly dissolved into the Department of Homeland Security. That means that their resource level has changed.
Second, FEMA had staged three days before the hurricaine hit.
Third, the Mayor of New Orleans knew that a category 4 hurricaine was coming, and didn't declare a mandatory evacuation until 24 hours before the hurricaine struck.
Fourth, George Bush told the NO Mayor to evacuate two to three days before that, but was ignored.
Fifth, the NO Mayor tried to declare martial law. The NO Mayor doesn't have the power to declare martial law. S/he must request the Governor do that.
Sixth, in order for the Federal government to get involved, the state government must declare a state of emergency, then declare that it cannot cope with the emergency without further assistance, and request that the Federal government provide that assistance. There is Federal law by which Fed (which includes both FEMA and the National Guard) is barred from assisting with a disaster without the express request by the state. Besides, didn't the mayor and governor state that they wanted this resolved locally?
Seventh, one third of the NO police force abandoned their duties. I have heard arguments that they had a duty to their families, first. Sorry, but I just don't buy that. If you take up a position to serve your society, take an oath, and put on a uniform - be it police, military, or other - you fulfill your duty. You don't go off and loot. You don't abandon your post because it's tough. You do your duty.
Now, you may believe that the Federal government obeying the law, and waiting until it's invited is a bad thing. I happen to believe that the Fed should not break the law, and that when the government obeys the law, that's a good thing. You can argue that the law is incorrect, but be careful about abdicating power from the people, or from the states to the federal government.
Client-side error checking is an optional extra. It's not necessary. The only things that are necessary to take information down from people are standard HTML forms that work in any browser.
Cross-browser client-side validation isn't exactly rocket surgery either though. Checking field values in anything more recent than Netscape 4.0 is essentially identical.
No, it's not. It's difficult to do so if you want to incorporate fancy extras like animation, complex styling, dynamic page sections, etc, but none of that kind of thing is needed for a government website intended to take down peoples details. All they need are standard HTML forms with cookies to maintain state - things that have been working reliably in common browsers for a decade or so.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
(I recall hearing somewhere that Rush Limbaugh is a big Mac advocate too)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Bush uses a Mac, as does Rush Limbaugh.
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
Daft thing is you can make data islands work with FF no bother:
something tells me the mail might not get through to New Orleans addresses for a while...
Something like this, perhaps.
Seems to work fine in opera 7 so long as you Identify as MSIE 6.0. No problem with the capcha or anything.
Of course, I didn't finish the registration process fully, so I can't say for sure. But it looks like the broweser banning is just a choice on their part rather than a technical limitation.
The ______ Agenda
I honestly hope you are not a web developer seeing as how you have absolutely no clue how design/development works.
It isnt difficult to make it cross platform, and basically if you code to the standard most browsers will work, then you just modify a bit here and there so that IE will now work.
it isnt a big deal.
and it just goes to show how truely incompetent a lot of developers are.
just to let you know...I evacuated from New Orleans to Houston, Texas, I brought an extra tshirt and shorts and my powerbook G4. I tried to register via online and of course the stupid thing required internet explorer 6. So I had to call the toll free number which was inundated and took me hours. Also to check in on your account, you can loging with pin -password but of course it requires IE 6. Agency is just moronic.
WRONG!!
Get your facts straight... Rightwing Timeline
Leftwing Timeline
That's not true. Opera works. I spent last weekend volunteering at the Reunion Arena shelter in Dallas. We booted one machine with Knoppix because the Windows install was bad. Mozilla and Konquerer failed to load the page correctly. So I downloaded Opera and it worked. Unless FEMA have gone out of their way to eliminate Opera, you should be able to register with Opera. In other words, there is nothing on that page that Opera cannot handle. We've registered a few hundred people already and a few with Opera.
The stupid site really ticks me off. Even with IE you will have problems. I think they did the stupid thing in ASP. Every stupid action you take requires exchange of states between you and the server. If you click before that's complete it will give you and error and you might have to start all over. There was nothing on that page that could not have been done with simple HTML
BTW, yesterday was the first day FEMA started working fully in Dallas. Their computers couldn't network properly so they had to take over OUR PCs to register people by doing exactly the same thing we've been doing. Not only that, they only want those computers, which do not belong to them, to be used only for FEMA registration. In the words of a FEMA worker, "People need money not email or Internet." That would be great if they all knew where the family was or our government was competent enough to provide them with that information. Unfortunately, most people have to look for their family on their own on the Internet.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I hate to bust your bubble, but Bush is a Mac-user. Clinton, too. (I'm a Mac-using Kerry-voter, just for the record.)
George W. Bush IS himself a mac user.
Which means he'd better fire the FEMA director for this one... as a fellow Mac using Republican, I would expect no less! Either that, or beat him with his iPod.
Just to add to this story...I was listening to a local talk radio station on my way home from work yesterday. They played an interview with a woman who was extremely frustrated, almost to the point of tears, with FEMA and their apparent lack of knowledge on the situation of people displaced by Katrina.
She called them in order to make a claim and they asked her for her address so they could send her the required paperwork (not sure HOW she called them). She told them she no longer had an address as her home no longer existed. They then asked for her home phone number so they could call her back...she again informned them she no longer had a home. They then asked for her cell phone number. She again told them there was no cell phone service where she is located. They then asked her for her fax number...then her email address....you get the picture.
FEMA's motto must be "Let's make it hard for people to get the support they need."
Is FEMA living in a hole, in a cave, in the middle of a desert or what?
Surely they can be nailed on the accessibility.
There is a nice helpful link on every page saying that they are committed to accessibility.
There is even a email address, to allow people who think that accessibility to this site is sub-optimal, to contact them.
If you know anyone who feels this way, maybe they should send an email to
FEMAOPA@dhs.gov
and I'm sure they will be pleased to sort it out.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Same for Konqueror. I have never had a problem telling Konqueror to ID itself as something else. I have 'pretended' to be using IE6 and Safari before (all of gmail's functions work nicely in Konqueror if gmail thinks you are using Safari). I agree that the poilcy sucks, but there are workarounds.
If you are using Proxomitron and Grypen's Latest Filters for Proxomitron, then this sites "IE only requirement" becomes VERY easy to bypass.
How do you we do this once Proxomitron and Gryphen's filters are installed? Easy! Open up
User - Include - Exclude.txt
Then add the following into this file.
www.fema.gov $SET(keyword=.js.ajs.code.flash.popup.iesite.)
Once this is done - you can now visit the site using any god damn browser you want. In my case I tested the registration page under Opera, Firefox, and Mozilla, and as far as FEMA site was concerned, this was my user agent.
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
So really, I don't know why moronic webmasters, especially for a government or government related site, want to pull shit like this for users whom may not know how to get around "IE only" requirements.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
As it happens, the mobile networks in New Orleans were completely knocked out by this. It wasn't until Saturday that Verizon and T-Mobile were able to get their services semi-operational. Sprint PCS is having problems, and Cingular didn't comment in the report I read on the subject (I know they're all doing what they can.) Landline service is spotty in the area, with many exchanges waterlogged.
Of course, this in some ways is beside the point. Nobody trying to contact FEMA for a Katrina claim is actually in New Orleans at the moment. That said, a large effort to keep Katrina refugees in contact with the outside world via Internet kiosks is underway, and this type of thing will directly hurt that.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That may not be quite right. According to this this the call to the FEMA number does not open a claim; it results in a package containing the claim form being mailed to the address of the evacuee. However, being in a shelter, the evacuees are unable to receive mail.
In Baton Rouge following the storm, cell phones for all practical purposes were as useless here as in New Orleans. Whether this was due to damage to infrastructure or network overload, I couldn't tell you.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Before we go off the high board (ok, maybe while we're in the air before hitting water anyway...)
Link and the below snippet:
This is a case many of us are all to familiar with. One where the 'product' is being used in an environment that it was not intended.
"Mike Quealy, a FEMA spokesperson, explained to me that they are aware of the issue, and are currently working on a application that supports all of the most popular browsers. Quealy said that the application in question was originally an in-house tool, meant to be used by call center people. Internet Explorer was the official in-house browser, so the application was coded with IE in mind."
So we have an *INTERNAL* app that was opened to the public, thus adding new browsers for which it was not designed to it's possible clients.
It's also a good lesson for designing things even when you *know* the environment in which it will be used...that can change and it's best to work with standards rather than the easiest, but perhaps proprietary choice.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You can not make a claim over the phone, the 800 number only alows you to give an address to have claim forms shipped to you.
Now all of those homeless nomads won't be able to use all that spare electricity and bandwidth going around the Gulf Coast to get help unless they bow to the power of Microsoft! Have any of you worked in a government agency? I do. It isn't even remotely what you think. It is far worse. I am mandated to only develop using Microsoft technologies. If I go above and beyond and make sure my stuff works on anything else (mozilla (which I use) etc...) there is a good chance a mozilla or opera user will be denied access anyway.
--Always, I mean never..., No I mean always check your references.--
Incompetence.
This is part of a string of bad moves from FEMA. Brown is a serial Incompetant. This is a man kicked out of the International Arabian Horse Association for gross stupidity.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
To add insult to injury, there is absolutely no technical reason why the site could not work with all browsers. To prove the theory, I tried Opera masquerading as IE 6 and got through the registration process without a hitch. Whoever designed that site should be fired instantly.
As usual, Slashdot is late by several days with this story. Read FEMA website doesn't work with any browser except IE 6 at The CDCer.
I agree. I just sent them (femawebmaster@dhs.gov) this quote, and some other nasty thoughts. Please crush them with email. This is BS.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Why does it matter? Because some people wanted to make kiosks based on donated hardware to set up in New Orleans for this purpose, as well as hopefully contacting worrying family members. Installing windows would A) reduce the security of a kiosk B) cost more money as liscensing would be the most expensive part of the operation C) exclude most older donated hardware and d) take longer per kiosk. This means significantly less kiosks will be able to be be set up.
And people have run tests that show the website doesn't actually use any IE only features, it simply checks to make sure it is IE and then locks your browser out if it reports as something else. So there is no reason that the site is IE centric anyways.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
While a lot of public terminals have IE, many of them have Firefox or are Macs, and you cannot run anything else, even if IE is installed or installable.
Likewise, the people using Firefox can't run extensions to fake IE. Because it's a public terminal.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
My wife's an arabian horsewoman and shot up in her chair when she heard he was in charge of FEMA. He nearly broke the International Arabian Horse Association with lawsuits over equine comsmetic surgery, and soon after solicited personal defense funds as part of his work - an ethics violation. He left with the IAHA in a pretty good uproar in the middle of a three year contract. Either way, it was Charlie Foxtrot.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Especially since the bucks responsible for upgrading the levee system were PERSONALLY slashed from the budget and diverted to Iraq - which in itself was a fucking moronic operation."
$250 million was cut from the levee maintenance program, which ended up costing the country $50 billion.
More on this ridiculous state of affairs here
IE on the Mac is v.5.2.3 and developement basically stopped on it in 2001.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#IE
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
It's called Section 508.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
There can be credible (non-technical) reasons why you were better off using ASP instead of PHP or Perl, namely, the ease of hiring your replacement. If everything is built in ASP, then you can be replaced by hiring an ASP developer. If you add a PHP app into the bunch, your boss now has to find an ASP and PHP developer when you leave (or get fired). Add in python, ruby, language-whatever, and the requirements shoot up. Pretty soon you move beyond the ready stream of low level code monkeys, and need someone with an actual computer science degree (because they generally will be able to pick up any language fast enough), with the hiring cost that goes along with that.
Standardizing on a platform (even if it is a lousy platform) can save you money in the long haul.
Not according to several posters here.
Take a look at some threads further down, some people have used the site successfully after changing their browser's user-agent http header.
The website is too important to wait for a completely new application to be written.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
The Feds and Bush do deserve some blame about the NO situation. My problem comes with trying to pin the whole thing on FEMA or the Fed. States and cities also carry responsiblity to be prepared for situations like this. The mayor of NO and the gov. of LA both appear to have had little to no plan for a hurricane event.
Everyone should know that big gov. takes time. It always has and it always will. That's why people at the local and state level need to have plans in place and be prepared for these events.
I know the NO flooding was a unique event and can't really be compared to any other hurricane scenario, but I've been through a cat 4 hurricane (Hugo '89). The mayor and the gov. of where I lived at the time knew wtf they were doing and were able to manage things until more help could arrive. They had a plan and while not everything went perfectly (does it ever), I think they did quite well.
Such people had more credibility before the disaster than after, when they are clearly being paid to help in a major CYA operation. The cutbacks in levee construction only became "bipartisan" once it was realized they were terrible mistakes. If you want the truth, rather than the shitstorm of BS that is flying around at the moment, there are plenty of newspaper articles covering this issue that are available from the past few years. -New Orleans Times-Picayune June 8, 2004
Bush appoints the (completely unqualified, but old-boy friend of Bush) head of FEMA.
Even worse, Bush fired Clinton appointee James Lee Witt, who came to the job with several years of experience as head of disaster management in Arkansas. Witt revitalized FEMA, and was highly respected by both Republicans and Democrats, but Bush chose to replace Witt with Joe Allbaugh, Bush's campaign manager. When Allbaugh left the job, Bush appointed Brown to this crucial post--another man with no experience in disaster management (or indeed, any evidence of competence of any kind).
"Currently to complete your application online you must be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 or above. We are in the process of modifying the application so that it will be available to additional browsers."
Slashdot Effect in Action. Slashdot Activism is Cool
> Bush controls this aspect of the FEMA website?
> Now that's something I didn't know...
George Bush doesn't care about Netscape users!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
[Bush] should resign, step down or be impeached for fucking the country until it can't respond to a simple natural disaster that everyone saw coming hours or days (weeks?) away.
More than a year, actually. Google for "Hurricane Pam" to read all about it. Over 17,000 hits right now.
For those who aren't familiar with the term, Pam was the name of a simulated hurricane in an emergency-planning exercise that was done by a long list of government agencies in 2004. One recent summary that I read was that they predicted nearly everything that has happened in the last couple weeks; the only major thing they missed was the looting.
Also, the Army Corps of Engineers has done ongoing studies of the situation. You know that 17th-Street Canal whose broken levee was the main reason for the flooding? Repairing and strengthening that section of levee was the top item in the Corps' recommendations for the past couple years.
What happened in New Orleans is exactly in line with the predictions of hordes of engineers who have studied the situation in detail.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I was trying to dig up who made the FEMA website. Was it internal or external to the government?
w ww.fema.gov/library/lib04alpha.shtm .
/ 2001Oct/0075.html
Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20030417184051/http://
There is a comment in the source by Jarrod Dieppa
A web search on that name brings up : http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator
so the person works for http://www.mbakercorp.com/
Baker has over the years obtained various contracts from FEMA.
Also the website http://www.bakerproject.com/fema
has links for FEMA exranet and
other fema information. Their webmaster is bperez@mbakercorp.com
or jdieppa@mbakercorp.com.
Hence most likely FEMA website is maintained
by Baker Corp.
I just tried with Firefox and got the nasty IE message. Then I set the browser ID to IE6/Win5.1 and tried with konqueror. After a few glitches probably attributable to a busy server, it worked!
This tells me that it probably should work with Firefox, but they have set it to give the error when it gets that browser string!
I know some of these guys like M$, but this is ridiculous!