FCC Investigating Hawaiian Missile Malfunction
• On Saturday, the peace-loving citizens of Hawaii were jarred awake with a terrifying emergency text message that stated, “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Making matters worse, it took 38 agonizing minutes before the situation was corrected. Whoopsie! In the interim, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Hawaii’s Emergency management Agency (EMA) sent out tweets telling Hawaiians there was no imminent missile threat. As it turns out, this monumental screw-up happened during a routine drill run after a shift change, and the unnamed employee who mistakenly sent the alert has been temporarily reassigned to other duties.
On Sunday, in response to this inexcusable situation, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (seen here in more carefree times) issued the following sternly worded statement, which read, “The false emergency alert sent yesterday in Hawaii was absolutely unacceptable. It caused a wave of panic across the state — worsened by the 38-minute delay before a correction alert was issued. Moreover, false alerts undermine public confidence in the alerting system and thus reduce their effectiveness during real emergencies.
He continued, “The FCC’s investigation into this incident is well underway. We have been in close contact with federal and state officials, gathering the facts about how this false alert was issued. Based on the information we have collected so far, it appears that the government of Hawaii did not have reasonable safeguards or process controls in place to prevent the transmission of a false alert. Moving forward, we will focus on what steps need to be taken to prevent a similar incident from happening again. Federal, state, and local officials throughout the country need to work together to identify any vulnerabilities to false alerts and do what’s necessary to fix them. We also must ensure that corrections are issued immediately in the event that a false alert does go out.”
