Failures Mark First National Test of Emergency Alert System 451
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?
Government failure? (Score:5, Funny)
Those words never go together. I am shocked.
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Each failure is an opportunity to learn and improve.
The real failure would be to not identify failures and not improve - then we'd have to be blasted about it by the sensationalist media, trumpeting how inept government is.
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I say at work, this is why we test. Debugging finds bugs. That's kinda what it's for.
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
^ This
Testing for something and finding that the test didn't pass is NOT a failure of a system. It's exactly what it said - a test. Now they know where the faults are they can work on fixing them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Testing for something and finding that the test didn't pass is NOT a failure of a system. It's exactly what it said - a test.
And when the test fails, it is, indeed, a failure of the system as a whole. What was the intended outcome? (A nationwide alert.) Was the outcome achieved? (No.) This is almost a "by definition" kind of concept, you know. You test something and it doesn't work, that means IT FAILED.
The only way this test didn't fail "because it was a test" is if you think the important operational criterion is the ability to test, not the ability to notify people in an emergency. Or maybe you are confused by the use of the
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, you do know the difference between DEVELOPMENT testing and ACCEPTANCE testing, right?
The national alert system is a product in development. This was a test to determine what is working and what is not working. You can simulate and test individual pieces all you want, but until you get the opportunity to test the entire system, you have no idea what links in the chain are broken.
This country is full of fucking idiots that have no clue how engineering is performed. Just keep your misinformation to yourself and stop trying to make those around you dumber.
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what the word "Test" means, right?
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Damn straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
We should leave emergency notifications to the free markets! You want to know about disasters and what to do? Well, just subscribe to a disaster notification service. I'm AT&T or your cable companies will provide that service as part of a package of some sort. And we all know what superior service cable companies have over pathetic government!
Re:Damn straight! (Score:4, Insightful)
We should leave emergency notifications to the free markets! You want to know about disasters and what to do? Well, just subscribe to a disaster notification service. I'm AT&T or your cable companies will provide that service as part of a package of some sort. And we all know what superior service cable companies have over pathetic government!
We already do! There is no law preventing any organization from creating such a service. Our options are "free market and government" or "free market only"...Sorry for posting a serious reply to satirical comment, but one of my pet peeves is when the government steps in to solve a problem and conservatives reply "the free market would have done it faster/better/cheaper".
No, they wouldn't have, and they didn't. That's why the problem existed.
Even better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Where's the mod for "Brilliantly sarcastic"?
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those words never go together. I am shocked.
Yeah... except it was the private broadcast companies that failed to properly show the alert not the goverment.
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Informative)
>private broadcast companies ... failed ...
Been waiting for people would say that.
The engineer at the local PEP (Primary Entry Point) in our state was standing at the transmitter site, watching the equipment, when the test began. He was on the phone with FEMA, as a matter of fact.
The test never came through. The (FEMA-supplied) equipment never responded. As a result, most of central Alabama never even got the test.
The failure was on THEIR end, not ours. We had done TWO statewide tests just prior to the national one and they worked fine. Don't blame us, dood. :)
Re:Government failure? (Score:5, Informative)
I was at the PEP in our area. The CAP message that FEMA sent out was coded wrong. They sent out the CAP message using the format they dictated last year, not the newer format dictated this summer. Most of the equipment I know threw out any message it did get, and it simply didn't forward it to any downstreams.
Those who supported the backup method of the older EAN system, which they were supposed to foward regardless of the CAP messaging did so.
10136: EAN NATIONAL EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION 'LP 1(L1)'(MI-TXPEP) ORG=PEP
'Wed Nov 9 14:03:00 2011 EST' to 'Wed Nov 9 14:18:00 2011 EST'
Forwarded : 'Wed Nov 9 14:00:34 2011 EST'
United States(000000) District of Columbia, DC(011001)
All in all, in our area, we had 1 TV station, 2 radio stations, and 1 cable system (out of 5) that did any type of notification -- wether it came from IPAWS or EAN. That's a failure in my mind, as we were supposed to have our older EAN system as a backup.
Re:Government failure? (Score:4, Insightful)
Err, Human failure....
I'm never sure why people like to pile on the government. Like any social organization, and Soylent Green, it's made of people. Just like Citibank screwed itself, Enron self destructed, Goldman Sachs enabled Greece to self-destruct, all governments and companies are made of people.
One additional thing to add, government employees rarely get high pay (remember that those $600 toilet seats were paid to private contractors). So, you're blaming fallible humans, a group made more likely to be fallible by the fact you don't want to pay (taxes) to hire the best.
Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Tests are supposed to fine failures
Maybe we could run more "tests" to help balance the budget? =)
Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:5, Funny)
I think the geeks would be better off relying on their own form of warning system
Yeahhhhhhh..... maybe not.
I remember the Internet on 9/11. It went basically this way:
1) IT people talking/screaming with other IT people relating information as it was happening. Information got *slightly* altered from one "hop" to the other.
2) Mailing Lists and IRC channels on fire with reports about everything from aliens, aliens raping people, mad cow disease attack, the Russians invading on the East Coast, ICBM launch confirmed by a friend at an undisclosed military location, etc.
3) Screams of, "But I have not gotten laid yet! It's NOT fair!"
4) Fuck it. Meet me in Everquest. We're taking those bastards down before we die.
The "Enemy" could not have created a better disinformation system if they tried.
Facebook? Twitter? ... Farmville? It would be an even more glorious cluster fuck if it happened twice.
Re: (Score:2)
you'd have heard it on tweets and on cnn. seriously. "omg nukes incoming!!"
Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Under what circumstance would everyone in the nation need to be informed instantly? To warn you the nuclear weapon that's been pointed in your general direction since birth actually launched? That the hurricane we've been watching for over a week is finally going to make landfall? That the [insert party not running the warning button] is holding up some piece of legislation? That someone flew planes into buildings in downtown Manhattan?
Pretty sure we can live without the national wide warning system for a
Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST" (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you understood what he was saying.
I sure did. A national alert system is not only useful for national alerts, but also local ones.
Like the other AC, I can't see any actual use for the system.
In the event of a disaster, you're more likely to have a working radio than a working cell phone.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm a staff member at a public university. Those signed up for text alerts did NOT receive an EAS-related text yesterday.
Re: (Score:3)
Erm a hurricane affects a city or two, at worst a state. Planes flying in to buildings has a even smaller net effect only part of a city.
Neither need *nation wide* emergency broadcasts.
Re: (Score:3)
No there isn't.
Failure is a failure. It's a huge complex system that's never been tested.
The issue seems to have been a software bug.
Of course, I can't think of a reason we need one anymore.
What has ever happened that needed everyone in the nation to take immediate action?
9/11? no. Pearl Harbor? no.
Re: (Score:3)
> It's a huge complex system that's never been tested.
Ummm ... no. It has never been tested on a nationwide basis -- that was the purpose of this particular test -- but folks, we've been using EAS for years at the state level and it works just fine. Those of us who set up the systems (I'm a radio engineer) are completely familiar with it, and it's a no-brainer. It's essentially 70's-era technology. (Ever notice how it the intro and extro sound like old dial-up modem tones? That's exactly what they are: t
Spotty (Score:5, Informative)
I was in the car listening to NPR for this. The NPR (WGBH) station did a nice little lead in story and switched smoothly to the test. As soon as it did I started jamming presets and none of the other station I had programmed got the test. Local Alt Rock station, local R&B station, and the other NPR station all failed to broadcast the test as far as I can tell.
Re:Spotty (Score:5, Funny)
No, the government is just being selective about who they save in the event of a catastrophe. Apparently, they believe that we will need NPR listeners in the post-apocalyptic world. Alt Rock and R&B listeners, they think they can do without.
Re:Spotty (Score:4, Interesting)
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.....
Re:Spotty (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Spotty (Score:5, Informative)
Came across here at 12:02 MST and the audio stream was screwed up. The audio alerts came thru fine, but the message was extremely faint and unintelligible. About half way thru the 60sec test someone at the radio station cranked the input volume all the way up, horrible high-pitched whine of background noise, but you could at least understand what was being said then. Still, it sounded like trying to tune into a radio station a thousand miles away... The normal monthly tests have never seemed to have that problem.
Re:Spotty (Score:5, Informative)
There are different message priorities. I don't remember what the priority levels are called (it's been about eight years since I've been involved in broadcasting), but the options essentially allow some messages to be stored and rebroadcast later (with a limit on how much later). Higher priority messages go out in real-time; lower priority may be discarded.
The radio station's EAS ENDEC is supposed to manage this for them. In the event of a top-priority message, it just takes over the airwaves in real-time. Middle and lower priority alert the engineer to the situation and let him/her decide when to send the message. If the message is not sent before the time is up, middle-priority messages will seize the transmitter and lower-priority messages will get dropped.
I would expect this message to have been encoded with the middle option -- store it for up to xx minutes, then take action automatically if the station didn't do so voluntarily. This would result in it going out over different stations at different times, and that would be desired outcome.
Re:Spotty (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad these notifications don't reach those of us who don't rely on antiquated broadcast media.
Re: (Score:3)
What they need to provide is a CAP feed of their EAS alerts. Leave it up to hardware developers how to implement it. Or implement it DIY as well. Can't seem to find any public URL, but apparently this is how they provide the information to broadcasters..
Re:Spotty (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [github.com]
Its not really ready for prime time yet, but I should have something that works in a couple weeks.
Re: (Score:3)
Seemed to work fine then. The government obviously doesn't want to help people who are out to lunch.
Failures, what a surprise... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Failures, what a surprise... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably because 9/11 in all actuality was only a threat to a ludicrously, miniscule number of people compared to say... the rest of the country. I wouldn't be surprised if 98% of the country wasn't even slightly, remotely affected by it (ignoring the after side-effects of the shredding of the constitution and soforth).
Re: (Score:3)
Probably because 9/11 in all actuality was only a threat to a ludicrously, miniscule number of people compared to say... the rest of the country. I wouldn't be surprised if 98% of the country wasn't even slightly, remotely affected by it (ignoring the after side-effects of the shredding of the constitution and soforth).
Really?
Is that why pretty much every major city in the US with a bridge or tall building peed themselves and put their respective cities in some sort of watch/lockdown combination?
Re: (Score:3)
Large scale war, last minutes asteroid. Major shifting of certain water feature could impact all coasts.
Re: (Score:3)
UFO attack. Nuclear attack targeting multiple cities. Canadian invasion...
Re:Failures, what a surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
The purpose of EAS is to alert people to take action that can save their lives, not to act as a source of breaking news.
"Incoming missiles! Get to a bomb shelter!" is a valid alert.
"Planes Hijacked!" is worthless. What action that could have been broadcast on EAS would have saved a single life?
Re: (Score:3)
The EAS isn't a news service, it isn't meant for "OMG SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED!". The EAS is a method for rapidly disseminating instructions for the safety of the populace, so more along the lines of, "OMG SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED, and this is what you need to do to stay safe."
The only time I can recall the EAS being activated (And I heard it at the time), was when a tanker car had derailed and was leaking some HazMat, so the EAS was "If you're n
Re: (Score:3)
There was no point in issuing an alert over the alert system. If you were endangered by 9/11, that was because you were (A) in one of the planes, (B) in the Pentagon or (C) in lower Manhattan. Otherwise, you were in basically no more danger than you are on any other day.
For the people on the plane, they were dead already, there was absolutely nothing that could be done to save them. Emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.
For the Pentagon and lower Manhattan, everyone was already doing what they needed to do:
Re: (Score:3)
This type of system can be useful in something more grand. Such as nuclear explosions in severa
Re: (Score:3)
His point is...Why DOES such a system matter? Please list one case where this system would be needed. If you say nuclear war then it's too late and your already dead.
Zombies.
Re: (Score:3)
Conventional war starting. The supervolcano under Yellowstone possibly becoming active. Aliens landing. Asteroid threats.
Hell, even nuclear war matters: sure it sucks, but 10-20 minutes could be the difference between surviving and not.
Just because major catastrophes haven't happened yet, doesn't mean you shouldn't have a minimal fallback system to deal with them (and the national emergency broadcast system is pretty much the absolute minimum of "unknown threat" preparation you can do).
Re: (Score:3)
Again, what action was appropriate for an alert to urge? Especially an action that would not likely have resulted in more casualties than taking no action.
You are correct that no-one knew what was going on - which is precisely the reason no alert should be issued. What would you have had them say? Everyone get out of all buildings and stay away from all fields?
On 9/11 the only thing that was known was that planes were being used as weapons. Based on that, they took the reasonable position of getting the
Doing it wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
National Journal's Marc Ambinder tweets: FEMA official concedes "glitch"; says that it appears (maybe) to be related to how satellite and cable providers prepped their equipment.
If your emergency broadcast system requires all cable and satellite providers to "prep" their equipment beforehand, you are doing something fundamentally wrong.
Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
You should have replaced cat 2 with a cat 6, if you have one.
Re: (Score:3)
FiOS in DC worked without any issues. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lost Channels (Score:5, Interesting)
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. ;)
Re:Lost Channels (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Let me reply in a manner less snarky and more constructive than the AC above me did.
According to people who know better than me:
http://www.ar15armory.com/forums/Magazine-Spring-fatigue-t94941.html [ar15armory.com]
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-116436.html [thehighroad.org]
Leaving a spring compressed won't do much harm; spring fatigue comes from the act of compressing it. So, as someone said in the first forum thread, "Load 'em up!".
Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
ICBM attack
Seriously: If that happens, you're better off not knowing anyway. At least you won't spend your last few minutes of life scared out of your mind because you know you're going to die in a nuclear firestorm.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fool! Without that alert, how on earth are you going to talk the closest girl to you into impending disaster sex?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm ... interesting :D
Babies conceived in October, 1938 would have been born in the middle of 1939.
According to this, it doesn't appear to have made much difference.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/us-births-1936-to-2000/versions/1 [ibm.com]
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. Thousands or tens of thousands could be spared secondary effects from the heat and blast wave. Just the simple act of not standing in front of a window can be the difference between a horrible death and surviving relatively unscathed. Surely you've seen this famous picture from Hiroshima: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_patient's_skin_is_burned_in_a_pattern_corresponding_to_the_dark_portions_of_a_kimono_-_NARA_-_519686.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Yes, if you're sitting at or near the hypocenter, your opinion holds true.
Don't watch TV (Score:2)
So I would never see/hear an alert anyway. Likely would hear about it on /. or elsewhere online after the fact.
I guess I should plan to get one of those weather-alert radios sometime just to make sure I am not completely out of the loop. :P
Re: (Score:3)
That's kind of what I was thinking when I heard about this test.
I consume less and less broadcast media - be it television or radio - every day.
Unless I just happened to be driving somewhere in a car at the time of the emergency, I simply wouldn't hear the warning.
Re: (Score:2)
Radi..what?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't (I used to have one in my car but it does not work anymore). I do use TuneIn Radio to listen to my favorite stations though, not sure if I would have received the emergency broadcasts.
Total gibberish locally... (Score:2)
Complete waste (Score:5, Insightful)
I do have a cell phone on me all the time, and received no alerts on it.
I can tell you from experience however, that if it were an Amber Alert, I would have been aware of it immediately.
CONCLUSION: EAS is another complete misguided federal program.
Your conclusion does not fit the facts. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Millions heard it.
2. Using all communication methods to broadcast a message of national urgency is hardly misguided. It's a common sense idea.
3. They'll add other methods soon enough.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
In the Mountain time zone it was noon, and I was in my car and on the way to lunch.
Oregon (Score:3)
My wife was watching her soap, and it didn't happen. I heard almost none of the Western States got the alert.
I don't understand the purpose (Score:2)
What kind of conceivable emergency would effect the entire country? Nuclear war?
Re:I don't understand the purpose (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You seemed to have answered you own question. Unless you think nuclear war somehow doesn't affect the entire country.
You think a massive nuclear war (with whom?) is just suddenly going to happen without any prior warning? About the only possibility I could see would be some kind of computer failure that launched all Russia's remaining nukes, then you'll see it on TV just in time to realise that you're going to die.
Take My Breath Away (Score:2)
Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test.
Are you sure it wasn't "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin? (Proof [youtube.com])
Re: (Score:2)
I've never heard Paparazzi and thought it was Take My Breath Away. Some people are hateful about Lady Gaga, and I don't get why. Yeah, she's not a good singer, she's a lousy dancer, and her songs aren't all great. She's a pop star; that's the schtick. She brings the circus to it in a way nobody else has, though, which dare I say it actually makes it art.
Lady Gaga (Score:2)
Why Not Just (Score:3)
Why not just use whatever variety of pipes they used to shout about the upcoming test?
I heard about the upcoming test from at least a dozen different sources, but was completely unaware of it when it actually happened.
Didn't hear it here (Score:2)
I spent all day in the library where there are no TVs or radios.
Also, I'm not in the US at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
test? what test? (Score:2)
I was aware of the upcoming test but haven't followed it much being at work which means not watching TV and not listening to radio. Our 2-ways at our facility are not Part 73 broadcast, and I don't think Part 90 business or public safety radio services were part of this (wasn't scanning at the time except media 2-ways that were chasing story of a downed airplane in SF bay but it turns out it was a unmanned large balloon). I don't know of any amateur radio groups were involved (I don't think so, wasn't liste
Dentist (Score:4, Funny)
I was at the Dentists and one of my fillings started broardcasting the alert.
Yes, I heard it... (Score:2)
TiVo completely overridden (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Terrible news (Score:5, Funny)
Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test.
The terrorists have won
EAS Shows Linux Login Prompt (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
That's because it's a whole different system that's been tested frequently for 50 years.
This one is designed to be triggered from a single location, not a number of regional offices, and to ensure that all channels of communication get involved, using minimalist additional infrastructure, as modern budgets don't look like cold-war "do it all the way or we're speaking rooskie in a week" budgets.
Re: (Score:2)
Cox Communications (Score:5, Informative)
I was watching the test on a friend's Cox Communications cable service, and they also switch to a shopping channel (cable channel 8) for emergency alert activations. Their cable system apparently is incapable of showing the alert on all the (digital?) channels, so they simply show it over analog shopping channel 8 and have a system in place to switch everyone to that channel automatically whenever an alert is triggered. It's a bit annoying if a test is scheduled during, say, an important football game... er... episode of Mythbusters... whatever. On the other hand, it is even more jarring than the alert tones, so you'll certainly know something's afoot.
If you have one of their Motorola digital cable boxes, when it goes into emergency alert mode and auto-switches to analog shopping channel 8 for the message, the front clock display changes to "EAS" as well. If you're suddenly watching the shopping channel and "EAS" is displayed on the cable box *and* you have the wonderfully annoying (and intentionally so) alert tones, you *should* be able to figure out that now's the time to read or listen. At least, that seems to be the general idea.
I did notice that I didn't get the alert over cable until after I'd finished watching it on OTA TV (and chatting about it afterward), so chalk up a minute or two of additional latency to the cable company.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Really? All I got was rick astley on every channel....
Does that constitute a national emergency?