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Univ. of Illinois Goes War-of-the-Worlds On Students
theodp writes "'Strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.' (Orson Welles, 1938). 'Active shooter at BUILDING NAME/INTERSECTION. Escape area if safe to do so or shield/secure your location.' (Univ. of Illinois, 2011). An alert message sent out Thursday to 87,000 emails and cell phones warning recipients to escape from an 'active shooter' at the University of Illinois was an error, the Office of the Chief of Police confirmed. 'The alert sent today was caused by a person making a mistake,' explained an email. 'Rather than pushing the SAVE button to update the pre-scripted message, the person pushed the SUBMIT button. We are working with the provider of the Illini-Alert service to implement additional security features in the program to prevent this type of error.'"
It meant to say "Reactive HOOTERS at State & Main."
It's part of a new network detection system for big, non-artificial breasts detected by a camera system. The roll out is initially for Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, the AI is being perfected by the NCSA guys.
But Schroyer said some students were shaken by the initial alert and criticized the university for taking about 12 minutes to send an email confirming it was false.
"That was unacceptable in my opinion," he said.
Really? 12 minutes is too slow? The thing sent out 87,000 e-mails (which takes a while no matter how big and distributed your mail system is), and the person who made the error probably didn't notice until either they got the e-mail or somebody who did told them.
I think 12 minute response time for something like this is pretty impressive.
Do you want to cancel the alarm?
[Cancel] [Cancel]
Bert
How about prompting for a CONFIRMATION before spamming thousands of text messages/emails out?
Sounds like UI needs a better UI on their emergency notification system.
It sounds like they have no way to test the message other than it sending it out to every address in the alert list.
Let's say in this case after updating the message templates, the person hit 'save' rather than 'submit'. On the bright side, then no message would have been sent. On the not-so-bright side, no message would have been sent!
Don't you want to know before there's an actual emergency that your emergency message is working? Not that this incident was an intentional test, but shouldn't they have a test after updating the message template?
No, we live in a society that THINKS they have to pre-prepare texts and emails to warn students of this. To be honest considering the time it takes to fire off an email saying "get the hell away from here" having prepared messages for this is kinda dumb in my not so humble opinion.
I wonder what the odds are in fact of getting shot at school...
The really scary part is that we live in a society where the police have to pre-prepare texts and emails to warn students that someone is shooting up their school.
"pre-prepare"?!?
antipaucity
Clicking one wrong button lead to 87,000 emails being sent out saying there was a gunman on the campus and you're asking if the system is broken? What would it take for you to be sure the system was broken, if pressing the wrong button actually unleashed a gunman onto the campus?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Now I have to watch some George Carlin when I get home :(
No, we live in a society that THINKS they have to pre-prepare texts and emails to warn students of this. To be honest considering the time it takes to fire off an email saying "get the hell away from here" having prepared messages for this is kinda dumb in my not so humble opinion.
I wonder what the odds are in fact of getting shot at school...
But schools are gun-free zones. No murderer would ever carry a gun into a gun-free zone and start shooting! It's not allowed.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
To turn keys that initiate the Minute Man launch sequence...
But this system can be triggered by someone with poor hand-eye coordination. This is why developing your FPS skills are more important than ever!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And this is why "[SAVE MESSAGE TEMPLATE FOR LATER USE] [SEND MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY]"
is better than "[OK] [CANCEL] [ABORT] [ERROR] [RETRY]"
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
You don't think it makes sense to sit down ahead of time and think of appropriate wording for an emergency email before an actual emergency occurs? Quick... where should we tell them to go? or should we tell them to stay put? What's the best way to word this to get their attention, but without creating too much panic?
In an actual emergency, you wouldn't want to take even 5 seconds to think of those answers.
The really scary part is that both the authorities think they are properly protecting citizens by sending electronic messages and the the citizens think they are properly protected by receiving said warnings. To the point that if authorities don't send any they are considered accountable or accomplices and if citizens don't receive any they are feeling safe.
In this case FPS skills apply whether the warning is mistaken or not.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
>a user could have typed the message in themselves
They set up a template so that, in the stress of the moment, the person sending the message wouldn't forget to include some important detail (e.g., location of the emergency, what to do, etc.)
Clippy:
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm an alumni of the U of I, and I work here as well. I get these notifications. I thought I'd bring up 2 points:
Overall, I'm satisfied with the system and I was impressed by the very explicit letter from the chief both explaining the error and accepting the blame for the mistake. She also detailed the upcoming efforts to address the error. I'd like to see the same level of accountability from my ISP or phone company.
The Internet has no garbage collection
I suspect the chances of getting shot on the way to or from school are higher - and the chances of getting hit by a car on the same journey a lot higher still.
This has nothing to do with War-of-the-Worlds, except that there was false panic. The Orson Welles broadcast was done as a fictional story, this incident was an accidental broadcast of an alert.
Next up, a headline saying "Oncologist Pretends to be Orson Welles with Wrong Diagnosis!"
"Active shooter" is police jargon for a Columbine-type situation.
The opposite isn't "passive shooter", but the term signifies (at least in some jurisdictions) a situation in which immediate action needs to be taken, rather than, say, waiting to call out the SWAT team.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
By having the same form used to generate templates as used for sending real messages, the developers had already made a mistake in their application's workflow.