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- Hacker News
- > Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't.
This is the wrong prism through which to confront the problem. Technology is neither good nor evil nor neutral - it is a tool lacking agency, to be manipulated by people.
You might as well ask if it's possible to design a gun that can only be used in self-defense, or a knife that can only be used for cutting vegetables and cannot hurt people, or a car that will solve all traffic fatalities. That's impossible. There are certainly designs which improve outcomes, but not designs that definitively solve those problems (i.e. addressing author's use of the word "cannot").
So take your pick: the easier problem of settling for improving outcomes, or the harder problem of building an inclusive and equitable society, where people have a position they can take pride in, a community that they support and which supports them, and where violence (of both physical and other kinds, like aggressive alerting) is a last resort. The solutions for the hard problem aren't found in technology, but in the humanities.
by solatic - Can't believe it's 2026 and people still believe this nonsense about technology being neutral.by lins1909
- Regarding the Egyptian messages, if you care about these things you simply avoid doing business (especially in regulated industries) in the third world. The fact is that, even before the incident with the messages, cell providers had to sit down with the "men with guns" to even be able to operate in the country.by jcarrano
- > Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't.
Isn't the obvious answer decentralization? Have persons necessary to send that message in different places across the country/outside the country needing to sign it for it to be sent. All taking the responsibility of following protocol in these cases.
by Banou - I think that is right and with the way Ukraine and Iran is going, we will need smaller decentralised data centres etc too. Its coming from a sad, bad place but it may be better and more democratic, less centralised.by century19
- I’d go further, and predefine the available messages and bake them in - $place is {under attack|on fire|underwater|beset by the whooping palsy} etc. - and then the decentralised send no longer needs distribution of a message, just an ID and enumerated metadata, like location.
Then the men with guns come and you can earnestly say “well guys, i know you want to declare the eternal republic of Basingstoke, but all I can do is send a warning about a tornado in Slough, is that close enough?”
by madaxe_again - > In truth, having experienced fire-starters, I'm not bothered about the contents of this latest message from the UK Government. Given the overstretched fire service and the imminent threat across most of the country, my personal opinion is that it is proportionate.
Certainly, if you give up so easily because of a fantasy that some generic PSA becomes the sign to not burn your toast where all the other signs fail, no wonder you need the whole 10 steps to indicate "the impossible"
by eviks - > Should multinational corporations instruct local executives to be loyal to their parent company or the rulers of the country they live in?
Legally, to the rules of the country. That is not even a question.
But if we talk about morality, the answer is to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what it implies.
There is no moral nor legal reason to follow the parent company when it in conflict with the rule of law. People are starting to attribute to corporations a power that they do not have, and that is very dangerous.
(The article is good, thou, and opens a lot of interesting questions)
by Frieren - "the answer is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights"
Egypt explicitly rejects this.
by stephbook - Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders (the Nuremberg defence, “we were only following orders”).by chrismorgan
- It's really difficult to see what technologies will be enablers of state power. IMO, the techs ushering in 1984-levels of control are wifi, cheap cameras, and LLMs. The three technologies on their own are beneficial, but taken together they're going to make Big Brother seem impotent.by laughing_man
- And drones.by conception
- I think of it as, we've had a hurdle where computers were too slow to organize the data humans produced, but have since crossed it. LLMs and CV also enable analysis of fuzzy data, which hasn't been possible before. This makes me uneasy, to say the least.by xpct
- Hard disagree. Plenty of new technologies have readily apparent straight-forward application for government use.
You're arguing your point by naming a technology that speculative fiction regularly foresees advancements in, and loves using in stories as the enabler of more intrusive state power.
More surveillance records, better processing and recall of those records are like THE THING when it comes to more law enforcement and passive coercion by the state.
There is honest to goodness disruptive tech that takes time for society to adapt to and reveal where state power wants to go. But those are the vast minority. I think it's a pasttime of industry to play ignorant to how their products will interplay with the government's obvious motivations.
by dogleash - ”Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused…”
Staged rollout with engagement metrics that cancel the alert if it’s not alerty enough.
Stages: one town, then a city, then one county, then everyone. Can be complemented by picking a percentage nationally as well, or picking two different towns (Croydon vs Barnstaple.)
Engagement: Poll at each stage as to whether the message was useful, or counted as an emergency, or was read for more than X seconds, or opened more than once.
The alert system also has four levels:
(1) National and (2) Imminent Threat (think “we interrupt this programme to bring you breaking news…”);
(3) Public Safety (“Charlie says” but more specific); and
(4) missing persons / Amber alerts.
The use of the we’d-rather-you-crash-your-car-than-not-get-your-attention klaxon should be reserved for the first two, and its use for the “no barbecues plz” warning should probably have been avoided.
by gorgoiler - That ignores the men with guns, who would probably say that their alert is very important.
Take a look at the article. The issue is more complex.
by gcr - > How would you design a system that simultaneously achieved all these goals:
> Rapid sending of messages
> Careful checking of the content of messages
> Ability to quickly target a specific geographic area
> Inability to mistakenly send a test message
> Requiring strong proof that the message is authentic before sending
> Resilient enough to work after significant damage to infrastructure
> That networks have the ability to vet and ignore
> That networks are compelled to send
> Which can only be used for good
> And cannot be used for evil.
Considering the last two, I'm assuming this must be tongue-in-cheek.
I think that the best approach for public utilities is to design them in such a way as to minimize, or preclude if possible, their ability to choose their customers or level of service. We want them to have a set of rules/instructions, written beforehand and publicly available, that everyone can point to after an event that says, "well, those were the things they were supposed to do, so they did them." The entities that write the set of rules are separate from the utility: the utility solely exists to implement the rules/instructions as efficiently as possible.
There's obviously a reasonableness factor here: it's impossible to foresee all situations. The effort spent on specifying exactly what should be done should be proportional to the potential impact of that possible decision.
by djoldman - > Requiring strong proof that the message is authentic before sending
"Before Sending" is the lynchpin here.
The receiver needs to be performing verification, and have the ability to blacklist sources.
Which requires distributed infra.
by protocolture - Paraphrasing from Plato's The Republic, when the rulers and their auxillaries raise children with proper balance in the body and soul, there will be no need to deliberate on what is the right legislation, for the legislators themselves will be just in their duties.
In the end of the day, we need proper education, not only in technical excellence, but also societal awareness, what it means to be good and how to uphold oneself to such a standard even if everyone around them does not. This is how you defend against the men with guns.
by fyredge - What standard do we use to teach "what it means to be good"?
- "To rear a child and give him an education is easy, but to put a good mind into him is impossible... By teaching you will never make the bad man good." — Theognis of Megara (Elegies, lines 429–438) (quoted by both Plato in Meno and Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics)
Or:
"Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret." ("You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will always return.") — Epistles, Book I
- Technology cannot solve social problems. Societies can solve social problems using technology, just as they can without using technology, but ultimately it is the society that solves the problem.by cjs_ac
- Yep. The event in Egypt that this article opened with is an example of a state of exception, and it has been used effectively by rulers for a long time. Not just autocrats, but, even more importantly, by elected members of a government with checks and balances, as a way to bypass those checks and balances. The phrase was coined by a Nazi philosopher who proceeded to lay out the groundwork for the subversion of a constitutional parliament, which then worked effectively. It has been picked up by others like Agamben to analyze similar things throughout history (the Patriot Act for one).
It's fundamentally not a matter of technology.
by viccis - If tech can cause social problems (there are multiple books on this) then it can solve them too - the only modern tech industry we've ever known has been dominated by players attempting forms of lockin to capture rents and amass enormous fortunes, of course the technology of this society isnt generally helpful to the society at large.
- Hmm... technology sure seems to create, or at least to expose, a lot of societal problems, and does solve a lot of problems in exchange for a lot of money. Not sure the true rule is as stated.by cwmoore
- > But it is easy to see why some people feel this might open the gateway to messages which, at best, are irrelevant
If you're in South Korea, you can expect to get around half a dozen emergency notifications every day. Typical contents include "it's cold, so dress warmly", "roads are icy, so drive carefully", and "Mrs Kim, 79, suffers from dementia and was last seen in Seoul wearing a black coat".
You can set your phone to filter these out, but then you'll also miss the notification about North Korea commencing artillery bombardment.
- Every government should only put people who have worked in a SOC in charge of these systems. There's no way to take the cost of useless alerts seriously unless you've spent some time tuning them and living with the tradeoffs.by khafra
- > You can set your phone to filter these out, but then you'll also miss the notification about North Korea commencing artillery bombardment.
Considering most of SK's population is in Seoul, and Seoul is within range of NK artillery, wouldn't most people be aware before the notification came anyways?
by t-3 - A somewhat similar situation here in Poland. While the volumes of these messages are much, much lower (the most i ever got was one or two a week. Normally there is maybe one every month or two) they are typically about bad weather.
Something like "stormy weather, be ready for electricity interruption". So of course "Armed drones have been seen in the area, don't touch any suspicious objects on the ground" message arrived I opened it on next day...
by Roark66 - > You can set your phone to filter these out, but then you'll also miss the notification about North Korea commencing artillery bombardment.
Do you know why there aren't more granular controls? On my phone in the US the toggleable alert options are:
Extreme Threats
Severe Threats
AMBER alerts (child abduction alerts)
Public Safety Messages
State and Local Tests