Yokohama Accidentally Tweets That NK Missile Is Inbound 131
ForgedArtificer writes "Earlier today, the Crisis Management Office Affairs Bureau for the city of Yokohama, Japan had some startling news for its followers; to wit, a North Korean missile was on its way to Japan. The tweet stayed up for about 20 minutes before being removed and replaced with an apology. The city reports that a pre-written tweet was released due to a malfunction in the 'mechanism' that would have released the tweet at the appropriate time."
Apparently (Score:5, Funny)
Must be a Slashdot user.
Re:Apparently (Score:5, Funny)
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There's a story from the USSR that one time an automated nuclear counter-strike system was erroneously triggered and it was only human intervention that stopped it.
Agreed, humans need to be at the switch.
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1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident [wikipedia.org]
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Here are the two relevant Wikipedia Links regarding this series of events that happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_RYAN
There is also a documentary on this called something like Soviet War Scare 1983 that has been on the military channel.
-- Sam
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There is also a documentary on this called something like Dr. Strangelove that has been on the military channel.
Fixed that for you.
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There is also a documentary on this called something like WarGames that has been on the military channel.
Tweaked that for you.
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Re:Apparently (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe.
Though being twitter, I'd expect it to be something more like:
missile coming were all going to die lol
Re:Apparently (Score:5, Funny)
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#ohshit
#NOCARRIER
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It was their "FRIST POST", except their spelling mistake was the whole post.
cabinboy, bring me my brown trowsers! (Score:2)
joshua what are you doing? (Score:5, Funny)
joshua what are you doing?
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What you say?
Pre-written? (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like something serious enough that a pre-written tweet is not the best idea. If a missile were inbound for my area, I'd want a real person to write the tweet, with actual pertinent details, rather than "releasing" a prewritten, generic tweet.
Something that can cause panic like this should not be automated.
Re:Pre-written? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pre-written? (Score:5, Funny)
Depends who operates that "mechanism". If it's a government employee, a few hours to days after the impact. If it's a 14 year old girl with an iphone, about 42ms after the missle was launched...
Re:Pre-written? (Score:4, Funny)
She'd also include an instagram picture of the missile with some pretty effects to boot.
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Not sure if Funny or Informative. Which one more represents "probably true"?
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I seriously doubt it was a mechanism.... Reminds me of a WISP we used to run. When someone missed their payment, we logged in and shut off their radio. Then when they call we say "Oh, it looks like the 'system' disconnected you for non-payment...."
There was no fucking mechanism :D
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Re:Pre-written? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Given the proximity of North and South, ahem, Korea. Me thinks you don't get much lead time...
Good thing then that Yokohama is in, ahem, neither.
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Write it? Not long. Compose it, complete with ass covering? A long time.
I'm sure some committee agreed on the wording. They couldn't get one out in realtime without prewriting it because there doesn't seem to be anybody around anymore who will step up in an emergency and take responsibility.
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You're statement is completely false.
It's rewritten becasue t's part of an automated 24/7 system. I work with Emergency responders, and with people who design these systems. Plenty of people are willing and do take responsibility. People who aren't don't hold those position very long, assuming they could get one.
When talking about the US government, remember a few things.
1) 10's of thousands of project go on every year.
2) the media only reports things they perceive as failures*
3) The people in your governme
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Really? So if you were call officer for the emergency response system in your city and you got a notification that a North Korean missile was incoming, would you hop on Twitter and tell everyone what you knew? Or would you crack open the manual and see what you were supposed to do?
I should have been more specific - nobody wants to take sole responsibility for making public announcements. That's because all you hear about in the media is the failures. If you had taken the initiative and made the announce
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they probably use some social media program that automatically posts to different social networks
Re:Pre-written? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pre-written? (Score:5, Informative)
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Then again, having panic (or outrage) 'on tap' seems to be the raison d'etre for media information centers of democratic governments since at least 9/11, if not earlier.
Re: Pre-written? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually well run corporate social media often implement an approval process for all tweets replies and other comments to avoid spelling mistakes misinterpretation and ensuring that the right corporate message gets across. I'm sure that a committee sat down here and said "what is the best way to write this?" Rather than let some 20 something quickly write something in the spur of the moment that might be wrong. So yes prewritten is probably a good idea, accidentally pressing send however...
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"prewritten is probably a good idea,"
When the shit hits the fan, there won't be any bean counters around. That 20 year old kid isn't going to remember which "button" sends which message either. Might as well let him ad lib it.
"The bomb set us up, we all die now!"
Re:Pre-written? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because we'd hear an air-raid siren in our soundproofed basements?
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This is Japan. They have PA systems all over the place to bring earthquake warnings.
Backing that up with whatever they can lay their hands on .
Apparantly that includes twitter.
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If a missile was inbound, emergency broadcast shouldn't rely solely on Twitter.
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It doesn't. It just so happened that when this bug or error or whatever the hell it was happened, it only posted to Twitter. They have a rather indepth system for informing the population of threats.
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It's standard procedure in automated warning systems.
I suspect it's one of several outlets that get hit when the system is activated.
Remember, it's a 24/7 system so you need to maximize the chance it gets out.
Accidents happen. Would you rather have a rare false positive to the general public, or a increased chance of the system failing ?
Wow, talk about being eager for "First Post" (Score:5, Funny)
Man, I thought the first-post messages on Slashdot were bad.
At least the incorrect messages on slashdot won't incite World War III
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Man, I thought the first-post messages on Slashdot were bad.
At least the incorrect messages on slashdot won't incite World War III
Never seen a flame war break out over God, Not-God, Apple, Microsoft, ClimateChange, emacs vs vi? It's practically WW-III every day here on Slashdot!
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True, but the closest thing we have to permanently damaging artillery is a link to the goat*x pic.
boy that cried fire (Score:1)
no one will believe it when the real one comes
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Who's on second.
This business will get out of control... (Score:2, Funny)
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Twitter fails as warning system. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good test. No widespread panic. Nobody changing their behaviour. No flood of retweets. Thanks to this production test we learned that twitter is not a good warning system.
Had to add this... (Score:2)
I texted the story to a friend of mine before posting it here.... his comment:
"Whoopsie."
I'm still giggling half an hour later.
Smells like... (Score:3)
WarGames.
Re:Of course, here's the thing... (Score:4, Funny)
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Personally, I'd rather not know there was an inbound missile as spending the last few minutes of my life going "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" (are you really going to be calm and phone a loved one [who you can't contact because they're trying to phone you] to say goodbye?) doesn't sound much fun.
Fitting reaction (Score:3)
Ford: If you like.
Barman: Will it help?
Ford: Not at all.
[Ford runs out of the pub]
Barman: Last orders, please!
(THGTTG - DNA)
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If you had a few minutes you could get to a bomb shelter and survive.
My fellow Americans (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
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I can remember my parents laughing when that happened, and I can remember the news (for some reason, ABC News REALLY sticks in my mind) was REALLY offended and angry.
Which may have been part of the reason my folks were laughing so hard.
This is a test. It's only a test. Do not be afraid (Score:1)
Had this been a real emergency, we would be telling you to kiss your ass goodbye...
Retaliation tweet (Score:5, Funny)
lol whops... sry Kim my bad. -Obama
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140 Chars... (Score:2)
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Well, let's see. We'll do a little quick math here. A typical typist does about 40-70 WPM. Really quick ones can top 100. So let's be generous and assume they have one of their fastest on this, and he/she can do 120WPM. Now, when calculating WPM, five keystrokes is considered one "word" (not counting keys like shift or control). At that rate, it would take 14 seconds to type 140 characters, not a mere single second as you so rashly assume. /ducks
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set up us. c'mon, know your memes.
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Or, at worst, have in a text file somewhere. How long would it take to go from "We just got word that North Korea fired missiles" to "Open Text File" to "Copy" to "Paste" and "Send Tweet"? Probably less time than it takes to realize your tweet went out accidentally and delete it.
Or...... (Score:3)
Or their twitter feed got hacked by some NK'n kids and they just didn't want to admit it.
Boy who cried wolf (Score:2)
With so many false alerts, will people believe the real thing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc60XPCXrh8 [youtube.com]
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With so many false alerts, will people believe the real thing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc60XPCXrh8 [youtube.com]
Who cares if they believe it? It's not like they would be able to do anything about it.
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My first thought when I saw videos of that fake EBS broadcast was "this is funny."
My second thought was "I hope some nut-job doesn't kill his/her family to save them from being eaten by zombies."
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If Il quit threatening, people would stop reaching for the "retaliation" button.
Somebody is accidentally going to wipe his country off the map if he keeps this up.
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Their Ghosts can Shell the enemies?
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After the war, the people responsible will be sacked.
Prior Art (Score:4, Informative)
It's the first ever False Flag event on Twitter! (Score:2)
Twitter is really growing up these days.
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He even made some large superpower play chess with its missile defense, at their own expense.
Which also happened to be a convenient pretext to plant anti-missile systems in Japan, South Korea, and Guam. China's nuclear reach just got a bit weaker.
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99 Red Balloons. (Score:3)
Nena seems appropriate here. 99 Red Balloons.
Really, it's that hard? (Score:3)
They pre-wrote a 140 letter missive? Are they using a drugged-out, one-armed sloth as their spokesman?
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Ever tried to communicate in a real emergency? (One where seconds rather than minutes means the difference between life and death?) I have, and it's not nearly so easy as you think to communicate clearly under those circumstances. There's a reason why military folks and 911 dispatchers undergo extensive and ongoing training.
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So, those tweets & texts I've gotten were life-and-death? That explains why they were so incoherent!
Later that day... (Score:1)
... someone hacked Japan's phone and tweeted a racy selfpic.
password: JOSHUA (Score:2)
What inanity! If the early-warning system is connected to the internet, there's this huge chance of somebody else connected to the internet being able to trigger an early warning.
Even if it's offline until the moment -- and only during the moment -- it needs to login and send the tweet, there are so many possibilities as far as hacking the early warning system.
It must have sensors of some kind, and sensors can be quickly and easily fooled. And if the sensors aren't so vulnerable? There are obviously some pe
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Granted some things:
1. I think this North Korea bullshit is way over-hyped by a death-worshipping media circus that wants to keep us all frightened into angst-driven consumerism. I have every reason to believe this is just a new leader going through the sick motions required of a really stupid political organization. With the White House being more or less sedate about N. Korea's nuclear antics, I'm surprised the liars and whores of the media monopoly press are bothering to bug their eyes out this far and d
Accuracy in journalism (Score:2)
The tweet was accurate, but North Korea accidentally the missile.
Re:Oblig: (Score:5, Funny)
Nuclear launch cancelled. Not enough minerals.
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#Fail.
Nuclear is Terran while the pylons is Protoss.
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let's hope the twitter warning is posted after the "launch missiles back" check is done.