Hawaii Distributed Phony Image Of Missile Warning Screen
Gov. David Ige’s office sent out a screenshot of menu options for emergency warnings that it thought was real.
Officials in Gov. David Ige’s office released what they now say is an inaccurate image of the computer screen an employee was looking at when a false missile alert was sent out to hundreds of thousands of Hawaii residents and visitors.
The image, prior to Ige’s press conference Monday evening, was eventually published by news organizations around the country such as , and .
The point was to show the public exactly what the worker saw when he clicked on the screen, sending out a cellphone alert that spread widespread panic and fear across Hawaii.
However, state officials now say that image was merely an example that showed more options than the employee had on the actual screen.
鈥淲e asked (Hawaii Emergency Management Agency) for a screenshot and that鈥檚 what they gave us,” Ige spokeswoman Jodi Leong told Civil Beat on Tuesday.聽聽鈥淎t no time did anybody tell me it wasn鈥檛 a screenshot.鈥
HEMA Administrator Vern Miyagi texted her the image, Leong said, and she subsequently provided it to the media.
Richard Rapoza, HEMA’s public information officer, said that the agency gave the governor’s office the screenshot without his knowledge.
鈥淚t was not handled officially through our office,” Rapoza said Tuesday. “That’s on us. That’s on our office, that an error was made in the way we handled the governor’s request.鈥
鈥淭he governor’s office wanted to know what did this look like and it should have been more fully explained to them. I personally apologize,” he said.
HEMA can’t publicize the actual screen because of security concerns — the system could then then be vulnerable to hackers, Rapoza said.
On Tuesday, the state emergency agency provided what Rapoza described as a “more accurate” look at what a worker might see.
It lists the actual options the worker had Saturday morning during what was supposed to be a drill. It also includes a new “false alarm” option that the agency added after the the false alert, according to Rapoza.
The staffer who triggered the false alarm has been temporarily reassigned.
The confusion over the image comes as Gov. Ige and HEMA face scrutiny over their handling of Saturday’s massive malfunction, and as they work to restore public trust in their leadership.
The first image sent out was widely criticized online Tuesday for what many believed was a crude, “jumbled” design prone to cause mistakes. But that was before state officials disclosed that the interface wasn’t real.
This is not the kind of interface you would expect to see for something this important.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz)
I was pretty sure terrible UI/UX was the cause of that missile alert, but sweet beard of zeus, it's so much more terrible than I had imagined.
— Josh Pigford (@Shpigford)
OMFG. This appears to be the interface that was at fault for the ballistic missile alarm on Hawaii. It is way way worse than I possibly could have conjured up in my wildest dreams.
— Per Axbom (@axbom)
Apologies for the profanities: As a UX designer I鈥檓 literally losing my shit.
— The archbishop of aphorisms (@jonmaimon)
Whatever the real interface looks like, it requires the employee to click through a second warning prompt before sending out the alert, according to state emergency officials.
The drill has been suspended while the state investigates further what happened, and any subsequent tests will require two HI-EMA employees to press the button, they add.
