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Failures Mark First National Test of Emergency Alert System
An anonymous reader writes "The first full-scale test of the National Emergency Alert System failed on Tuesday at 2 PM. Some radio and television networks did not air any alert, while the performance of others was inconsistent. 'Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test. Some Comcast subscribers saw their cable boxes turn to QVC before the alert, while Time Warner Cable customers in New York did not see any alert at all.'" If you were tuned to any American broadcaster at the time, did the alert system reach you?
... because that is exactly what you would expect in a test of such a large system. The real surprise is if it would have worked without any issues on the first go round.
and from what I heard, FiOS all over the place worked without a hitch. It might have to do with the fact that Verizon's infrastructure was built inside the last decade.
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The local cable broadcaster here lost approx 10 channels after the test, including CNN, FOX, and DISCOVERY. They all switched to the NAT GEO channel without audio for upwards of an hour after the test ran.
In addition, the test video was jumpy, kept blacking out, audio kept dropping out, etc.
All in all, if it had been a real emergency, losing the 2 major news channels would have been real motivation to start loading ammo and supplies and gassing up the bug out mobile. ;)
So Time Warner NY failed to implement the national emergency system that we use in the event of an *inbound ICBM attack*? When it had been announced for weeks in advance?
Curse their sudden but inevitable betrayal.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The alert is sent to a primary station in each area and daisy chained to others. WHQR is, I think, third in a chain. The alert hit there at 2:00:39. It got the start and stop "duck farts", but not the message itself. The scuttlebutt is that FEMA messed up the head end audio.
I dunno..I remember an OLD special on MTV (back when they actually played music)...with Aerosmith Unplugged...one of the first unplugged specials.
Those guys rocked in acoustic!!
I had it recorded on VHS back then, I wish to hell I could find that whole 30 min special ( or longer if it exists) out there somewhere either to buy or download.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I was wondering what kind of situation could make such a system necessary. When a disaster happens the whole world is watching the news channels and sites within minutes anyways.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Government negativism has reached a questionable new high. Most often the criticisms are not even quantified (as in this story), not compared to private industry (where possible) (e.g. Social Security fraud), and not compared to historical or global norms. The economy sucks and the public is united only in being unhappy about it, in which they feel some solidarity, yet can't form a consensus on what to do about it.
except fire drills and things like that where they tell you the time it'll occur and even stage evacuations to pass "the test". I once worked at a new facility where strange tripod sensors were all around and we were told to not use certain equipment for the week. It was only much later that I learned those sensors were some kind of environmental sensors required before long term occupation of the building was allowed.
I agree that properly run tests are supposed to find failures and proper procedures solve the problems found and future tests find other failures if there are any. Ten years after 9/11 and this is just coming about is my question. Remember how the dead hijackers were given visa extensions something like 3 years after the enacted the attacks? I think it was the 2008 election before Bush and his party started talking about immigration issues.
I think the geeks would be better off relying on their own form of warning system instead of relying on a government operated one. Maybe something tied in with HAM operators and their data passing system. Handhelds and base station radios are not that expensive these days.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
IPAWS has a (just barely out of development AFAIK) private RSS feed that you need a special pin code or something for. It is just for broadcasters. They also have a private SOAP server that you need some X509 certs for to pull public CAPs from (this is a superset of EAS alerts).
IPAWS eventually will have a public RSS feed for EAS messages, but they don't seem as concerned about making sure that it will be properly provisioned to serve millions of clients hitting it up constantly.
I'm developing an OSS application to feed IPAWS messages from their SOAP server to a public xmpp server: https://github.com/talisein/Stormee
Its not really ready for prime time yet, but I should have something that works in a couple weeks.
"The right to do something does not mean doing it is right." William Safire
Absolutely right. Heard several comments that the old grey boxes did a better job at decoding the gibberish than the new blue digital boxes. And CAP Compliance, now that's a hoot! Despite the mandate for broadcasters to have CAP compliance by the end of September, the FCC could not even put together the rules for CAP in time, so they just kicked that can into next year. Anyone criticizing broadcasters should note that they have been doing EAS successfully for years, saving lives through tornado warnings, flash flood warnings, and missing child alerts. They only time it was totally screwed up was when it originated from our capital. I believe when the dust settles we will find out that FEMA originated the test badly and set off a chain of events from decoders that did not know what to do with a badly formed audio recording that was passed down from station to station to station to station. Seems to me that in a true national emergency we want the folks in DC protecting our freedom and safety while leaving the warnings to the TV and radio networks. EAS really only makes sense on the local level, not national.