Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.