Hawaii Governor Didn't Correct False Missile Alert Sooner Because He Didn't Know His Twitter Password (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader shares a WashingtonPost report: Minutes after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency mistakenly sent a missile alert at 8:07 a.m. on Jan. 13 -- terrifying residents and visitors across the state -- some officials, such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, rushed to Twitter to reassure everyone it was a mistake. But one Twitter account was deafeningly silent for 17 minutes: that of Hawaii Gov. David Ige. Though Ige was informed by the state's adjutant general that the alert was false two minutes after it was sent, he waited until 8:24 a.m. to tweet, "There is NO missile threat." On Monday, after he gave the State of the State address in which he avoided the subject of the missile alert fiasco, reporters demanded an explanation for that long silence. Ige's answer: He couldn't log in to Twitter. "I have to confess that I don't know my Twitter account log-ons and the passwords, so certainly that's one of the changes that I've made," Ige said.

Comments

Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[JoeyRox]

Why would he rely exclusively on Twitter when there's an entire industry whose job it is to disseminate information?

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[the_skywise]

Hear hear!
It's astonishing that he thinks a simple "I forgot my password, teacher" is a proper excuse for failing to inform people that they're NOT about to be nuked into oblivion!

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[Baron_Yam]

At some point, a communications channel becomes 'official' and 'important'. I would say that when that threshold is crossed, it's a really good idea to have a couple of people involved to ensure every t is crossed and every i is dotted.

And I also think that the fact that Twitter is considered an emergency communications channel AT ALL is disturbing.

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[kelemvor4]

Hear hear! It's astonishing that he thinks a simple "I forgot my password, teacher" is a proper excuse for failing to inform people that they're NOT about to be nuked into oblivion!

It's more amazing to me that anyone would expect a governor to use twitter to notify people about anything. Government folks shouldn't be using partisan websites to disseminate information, they should be using acceptable and established channels. In other news, the governor of Hawaii still hasn't posted to Slashdot on the matter. Maybe the misses are still inbound.. sheesh.

He should have issued a quick news conference and or radio broadcast. If it was more important than that, then the Emergency Alert System. That's my opinion.

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[ctilsie242]

This boggles me as well. A channel this critical to communication, in previous decades, would be regulated and well funded, similar to 911 centers. Twitter is more suited for what someone talks about breakfast, or how they are mad at a ref's call during a football game, as opposed to mission-critical communication. Especially for the fact that not everyone follows the governor, or state officials.

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[rnturn]

BINGO!

I'm not on Twitter. Neither is anyone else in my family. Because state government wrongly assumes that all its citizens are willing to be interrupted by tweets all day long, those that aren't are just acceptable losses?

One might assume that DHS and FEMA would have drawn up suggestions for state and local officials on how to deal with emergency notifications like this. But it appears that neither of those organizations seem to be able to do their jobs.

When we lived in S. OH (many years ago), the entire southern half of the state was paralyzed for almost two weeks due to an ice storm that knocked out power. How did local government inform citizens on the progress of the repairs and when areas might expect power to be restored? They freakin' didn't. The idiots in the public safety department had no plan in place. None. Did they think to pass information along to the local radio stations? Hell no. It was like living a scene out of "Airplane!": "No... that's just what they'd be expecting us to do."

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[skids]

Besides, what self respecting nuclear aggressor wouldn't simultaneously hack or at least DoS local official's twitter accounts? You think social media is going to stay up in a real war waged by a competent adversary? Nerp. It'll crash at the most critical moment. It isn't defense-hardened, folks.

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[kenh]

Why couldn't his "no attack" message have gone out over the very same system that issued the "not a test" nuke warning?

Does the alert system rely on twitter for updates?

Why can a message that says "this is not a test" go out based on a single button push?

Re:Guess he forgot phone #'s to news media as well

[clodney]

I don't find it odd that he would use Twitter to correct a bad announcement - in situations like that you want to get on as many channels as you can, and lots of people will get Twitter with more immediacy than radio or TV. Nor can I get too worked up about him not knowing his password. I have seldom used accounts where I don't know the password, and would need access to my primary machine to get at my password file.

This seems like the textbook example of a learning experience. A brand new system encountered a failure mode they hadn't anticipated, and they are going through lessons learned to correct for the future.