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Fake Cellphone Emergency Alerts About Zombies and Nuclear Attacks Predicted (backchannel.com)
"No matter how solid the system is, history reveals that false alarms -- of zombies, nuclear attacks, missing children -- are inevitable," warns an essay at Medium. An anonymous Slashdot reader summarizes the article: New York's police department is hailing emergency alerts as "the future" of government communications to citizens. But could the same system be used by scammers directing millions of people to a malware-installing site, or "a terrorist intent on causing mass panic (i.e., 'Tsunami imminent, evacuate immediately')... If the government can reach us at any time, who else can?"
The article runs through great moments in the history of false alerts -- including a 1971 incident where the national warning system mistakenly sent out the pre-nuclear attack warning, "normal broadcasting will cease immediately," and warnings in 2013 about zombie attacks in Montana, New Mexico, and Michigan. "To tell anybody that an agency is immune to these attacks would be a grave injustice," said the IT overseer at Iowa's Department of Public Safety.
The article runs through great moments in the history of false alerts -- including a 1971 incident where the national warning system mistakenly sent out the pre-nuclear attack warning, "normal broadcasting will cease immediately," and warnings in 2013 about zombie attacks in Montana, New Mexico, and Michigan. "To tell anybody that an agency is immune to these attacks would be a grave injustice," said the IT overseer at Iowa's Department of Public Safety.
Even if this did happen, I'm pretty sure that the emergency alert handlers would very quickly send out another emergency alert warning to not waste your time crying in the basement or to not visit that malicious website.
I had an old friend that got a old army jeep and army fatigues with a mega phone. He drove around the neighborhood at 5am warning about an attack by the Russians and that people must evacuate. This was in the 60s. From the story one person got hurt in the rush. But the neighborhood loved this guy so he got off. What a prankster. Today you would definitely go to jail. :(
Fake zombie alerts, its all fun and games until someone staggering drunk gets shot in the head. Stay indoors for both real and fake zombie alerts.
would turn them into car alarms.
>and warnings in 2013 about zombie attacks in Montana, New Mexico, and Michigan. "To tell anybody that an agency is immune to these attacks would be a grave injustice, I think most governmental agencies would be well prepared in case of zombie attacks. But I guess claiming immunity to them would be over convidence
God spoke to me
Get cracking people. Someone needs to warn about the extraterrestrial infiltration of the TSA and their plan to scan everyone to find the best subjects for abduction and probing. It might as well be you.
These ridiculous government institutions maintain popular support because they haven't been thoroughly exposed as failures. Hurry up and expose them.
Just make sure that the encryption keys for such a system are stored in a 'safe' key escrow system. Then we know it's safe from hackers. /Sarcasm
Silence is a state of mime.
..was of course "War of the Worlds".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds
I predict medium will publish another worthless opinion piece no one cares about before the end of the week.
If these are the emergency alerts I think they are, I disabled mine after some Megan's law alert 3-4 years ago. It was at 3 AM. For something 500 miles away.
I was lucky in that I'd left my phone in the living room that night, but the internet was all over it and within 5 minutes I'd disabled those damned things.
All fun till somebody gets their head chopped off.
"Robot Richard Simmons on rampage downtown, highway closed, divert via bypass."
Who did what now?
If a zombie nuclear alien warning were to be broadcast, the public would respond...Meh!
I can absolutely see the public getting zombie alerts... but by accident rather than as a prank.
I was involved in setting up these alerts at one mobile carrier. What do you think our test messages said? We lived in fear of accidentally sending our zombie alerts to the general public... but that didn't keep us from using it in testing.
In 2009, in Austin, someone rewrote the messages on some traffic signs to alert about zombies. This has popped up on occasion. (Currently, there are news alerts to be watching for people dressed as clowns that are menacing elementary schools, so zombies are out of fashion right now.)
It does make me wonder how one can tell if there is a real zombie invasion. I'm guessing if there are a lot of people staggering around, and it isn't an ACL or SXSW weekend, one might worry.
This year it's flesh-eating panties, or radioactive panties, or roaming zombie panties. Destroy all panties!
That's 500 messages per month from FEMA: I assume most of them are confined to one of the 550 'emergency alert' districts. Since there aren't 500 terrorist attacks per month or 500 disasters per month, I assume most involve child custody battles turning criminal. I really want to say "Not my job" here.
This is why FEMA wants the smart-phone version of emergency alerts to re-direct you to a web page.
FEMA has messaging rules and message authentication to ensure they don't forward a fake message. The real danger is the communications system being cracked, or being abused by a disgruntled employee.
and scare-mongering, and the U.S. gov would not be hesitant, if they saw potential and benefit in it.
I know I've not given anyone permission to send me messags like that. And if they did start sending them, they'd pretty soon start getting some rude messages back.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"