Hawaii Worker Blasted False Nuke Alert Thinking It Was Real: FCC

HONOLULU, HI — On Jan. 13, a state emergency management worker in Hawaii thought a missile threat drill was real and broadcasted an alert to cellphones, TV and radio stations, leading to statewide panic that the state was under nuclear attack. That's according to the Federal Communications Commission, which obtained the worker's written statement that state officials provided.

While some officials used social media to correct that an attack wasn't imminent, it took 38 minutes for officials to send a second alert retracting the warning, because Hawaii did not have a standardized system for sending such corrections, the FCC said.

At the time, the state was testing alert capabilities. The worker for the state Emergency Management Agency fired off an alert without authorization from a supervisor amid widespread fears over the threat of nuclear-tipped missiles from North Korea.

The federal agency, which regulates the nation's airwaves and sets standards for such emergency alerts, criticized the state's delay in correcting it.

"There were no procedures in place to prevent a single person from mistakenly sending a missile alert" in Hawaii, said James Wiley, a cybersecurity and communications reliability staffer at the FCC. There was no requirement to double-check with a colleague or get a supervisor's approval, he said.

In addition, software at Hawaii's emergency agency used the same prompts for both test and actual alerts, and it generally used prepared text that made it easy for a staffer to click through the alerting process without focusing enough on the text of the warning that would be sent.

The worker, whose name has not been released, has refused to talk to the FCC. The employee still works at the state Emergency Management Agency but has been reassigned to a job without access to the warning system.

The FCC said the state Emergency Management Agency has already taken steps to try to avoid a repeat of the false alert, requiring more supervision of drills and alert and test-alert transmissions. It has created a correction template for false alerts and has stopped ballistic missile defense drills until its own investigation is done.

Officials previously painted the event as an accident. Gov. David Ige faulted a state worker who “pressed the wrong button.”

The FCC did not come to the same conclusion.

The employee in question heard a recorded message that began by saying "exercise, exercise, exercise" — the script for a drill, the FCC said. Then the recording used language that is typically used for a real threat, not a drill: "this is not a drill." The recording ended by saying "exercise, exercise, exercise."

The worker did not hear the "exercise, exercise, exercise" part of the message and believed the threat was real, according to the employee's statement. He responded by sending an alert.

By TALI ARBEL, AP Technology Writer

Photo credit: Caleb Jones/Associated Press