Extreme Alert
Civil Emergency in this area until 1:24 PM EST Take Shelter Now U.S. Govern.
If you own an Android phone you may have gotten this message yesterday. For many who did, their screens were locked for a minute or two while displaying this message.
A few hours later, though, Verizon admitted it had screwed up:
"This test message was not clearly identified as a test," Verizon spokesman David Samberg said in an e-mailed statement. "We apologize for any inconvenience or concern this message may have caused."
Local and state authorities got a large volume of inquiries as to what the hell was going on. Eventually, though, they started to distribute messages like "THERE IS NO EMERGENCY. The 'take shelter' message that Verizon sent IS NOT a VALID message. DO NOT CALL THE POLICE." or, more simply, "CURRENTLY THERE IS NO EMERGENCY!!!"
It all had a happy ending.
But apart from the questions this raises in terms of our telecomms companies not being competent enough to keep serious, scary alerts from going out falsely, you know...
If I were going to create a campaign of oh-dear-god-what's-happening chaos, I would see if I could hijack a few strategically-chosen twitter accounts and have a friend in a cell-phone company work with me on this. Together we'd broadcast messages warning of danger and warning of false messages of danger. We'd do our best to confuse the hell out of everyone, and people would run in circles and panic.
We don't need opportunities for our friends in the plutocracy to mess with us this way, eh? I'm glad I have a stupidphone and don't get these text messages.
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