Kuomintang legislator nominee Ge Ju-jun: Observations and suggestions regarding satellites, missiles? Five heartfelt recommendations; consider putting warnings on the blockchain.

The following text is excerpted from the statement by Kuomintang's nominated candidate for legislator-at-large, Ke Ju-jun, published on 1/10.

About the National Missile Alert Incident that Never Happened, Dr. Bao Suggests: Five Sincere Observations and Recommendations

Today, it seems that almost everyone in Taiwan, whether local residents or foreign friends, received the national alert that was once hesitant, suspicious, and incomprehensible...

Some people couldn't figure out if it was Vietnam, southern Vietnam, or the south; some couldn't tell if it was a rocket, missile, satellite, or falling object. All of that is in the past now. Let's not be emotional, let's not make comments about how it affects the election. Let's not discuss conspiracies, malice, or hostility. Instead, let's pragmatically organize a few recommendations that I believe can be given to the relevant government agencies for future exploration, review, and revision of the launch verification process, mechanism, and corrections for future relevant alerts.

1. Please Correct the Text Formatting Errors on the Disaster Prevention Warning Cell Broadcast Information Website

To understand who has the authority to send out the disaster prevention warning cell messages (which is today's national alert system) and what kind of content can be published, I was thrilled to discover in the United News Network's article " Receive in 4 Seconds! These 23 Situations Will Trigger a National Alert, Including Emergency Water and Power Outages" that the government has established the " Disaster Prevention Warning Cell Broadcast Information Website," which lists the " principles and content of warning messages sent by various levels of government" for our reference and comparison to determine if the alert we received is false. However, more than half of the text on this website is incorrect!

It's not a matter of spelling or word choice errors, but multiple messages have incorrect spacing, causing many words to be separated incorrectly, resulting in non-existent meanings or words, such as "flyov er" and "ev acuate." If this system is updated in the future or if some genius colleague from an outsourced company uses the information principles and content of this website as system messages and publishes them, it would be a disaster. Please, relevant authorities, update it, okay? The website is here 👉 "Principles and Content of Warning Messages Sent by Various Levels of Government"

2. Please Ensure that the Messages Received by the Public are Within the Scope of the "Principles and Content of Warning Messages Sent by Various Levels of Government," and Not of Any Other Content

Putting aside the formatting or reading errors caused by the spacing, as mentioned earlier, the content that everyone received today is also different from the official announcements and the only two sample content related to "Missile." Could it be that the national alert issued today did not go through the correct mechanism of the disaster prevention warning cell broadcast information service? Or did it not undergo verification by the supervisory unit, the National Disaster Prevention and Rescue Technology Center? That shouldn't be the case, right?

Furthermore, searching with another keyword from the message, "Air raid Alert," only four warning message principles and content related to this are found, but they are also different from what we received (at least from mine).

What kind of warning messages will people receive? What format is truly issued by the government and not by enemies, hackers, or manipulated by countries? The information content on this page is crucial, but the alerts we received today cannot be found here. This will pose significant difficulties when journalists or citizens demand proof in an emergency. I believe this is not the intention of the website. I hope the supervisory unit of the website, the " National Disaster Prevention and Rescue Technology Center," and its governing body, the National Science and Technology Council, will carefully review the " Principles and Content of Warning Messages Sent by Various Levels of Government" and ensure that the public can quickly compare the received messages online to confirm that they are official and respond promptly.

3. Please Consider Recording Each Message Sent Out Through Blockchain or Other Technologies to Prevent Centralized Alterations

First of all, thank you to the disaster prevention warning website for listing the messages sent out on the " Alert Messages" page, allowing the public to review them in case they missed them. However, when we went back to check, we found that today's "Missile" message error was not recorded in the website's history. Instead, only a few words of "Defense Ministry correction" were replaced. I have never received this correction message on my phone, let alone the message template on the site doesn't even have a "Launch vehicle fly over" message template. I wonder which people received the version shown in the image at 15:17:08 and 15:18:05 on January 9th?

If no one received it, and this was just a correction message, shouldn't our government list the incorrectly sent messages in some sort of editing history column? Even social media platforms like Matters and Facebook have an "editing history" feature. Shouldn't the national alert's public record system have one too? I earnestly urge the synchronized publication of the centrally repaired content on the "Disaster Prevention Warning Cell Broadcast Information Website" and the preservation of the versions received by the public, ensuring that such critical information is transparent, open, not altered or deleted, and that the real historical messages are retained.

4. Actively Review the Sending Process and Verification Mechanism of National-Level Alerts to Avoid Misunderstandings, Panic, or Being Manipulated by Hackers or Malicious Entities or Countries Again!

Of course, we must once again thank the existence of the "Disaster Prevention Warning Cell Broadcast Information Website," which allows us to know (although there are many errors to be improved). However, it is surprising to find that the decision-making process for sending out a message system that affects the actions and awareness of 23 million people, possibly disrupting people's behaviors, affecting the stock market, and even influencing elections, is described with only a very brief diagram. Is it possible that for such serious matters affecting 23 million people, the dissemination process is so simplified? Shouldn't there be a more detailed process for reference in a government bulletin or administrative procedure? If there is, can it be fully displayed on the "Disaster Prevention Warning Cell Broadcast Information Website" to help people understand whether there is a sufficiently complete and trustworthy verification and mutual trust mechanism to effectively send out correct alert messages and prevent situations like the "incorrect notification in Kaisanli" or the "Vietnam, southern Vietnam, south | satellite, rocket, missile language confusion" from happening again? Additionally, it can also use generative AI to assist in generating and checking for word combinations that may cause misunderstandings, like the confusion between "Vietnam, southern Vietnam, south," hoping that such incidents will not happen again. For example, is "all of Taipei North Korea" referring to the entire Taipei, North Korea, or South Korea?

5. Can We Start Considering a More Decentralized, Distributed, and Rapid Verification Mechanism for National-Level Alert SMS Broadcasting?

Thanks to an event held by the NTU EiMBA Student Association, one of the world's most renowned digital democracy scholars and economists, Glen Weyl, happened to be discussing the "missile" incident just before the end of his speech with the well-known tech host Lu Yizhen. When asked for his thoughts on the "missile" incident, Glen mentioned that although he was a foreign traveler, he still "correctly" received the national alert because his phone was on roaming for internet signal. However, when he received it, he could only understand English, so he indeed interpreted it as a missile and was shocked for a moment.

When the host asked for his thoughts on the matter, Glen gave some excellent advice: If we could have aerial detection and verification of unidentified flying objects done through a consensus network from multiple locations and points, such as multiple weather stations, observation stations, air quality index detectors throughout Taiwan, and other diverse network mechanisms, it could introduce more decentralized verification practices. Whether it's the trigger for message dissemination or the automatic verification and consolidation of message content text (such as initiated by multiple branches, fairly compiled by scientifically verified AI artificial intelligence), perhaps society wouldn't have to deal with the guessing games and attacks of conspiracies and malice.

Did We Really Forget, or...

On July 9, 2019, at noon, people across the country received a message that there was a local dengue fever outbreak in their area (Kaisanli), causing confusion and panic. A few hours later, the then-mayor of Tainan, Huang Weizhe, posted on Facebook stating that this was a system error that caused the incorrect alert, and took the opportunity to promote the local Kaisanli cuisine...

At that time, I wrote an article on Medium titled "This Is a Presidential Proclamation, Did You Receive It?" — On the Kaisanli Error Notification Incident and Presidential-Level Deceptive Alerts, explaining the importance of national alerts and the cybersecurity details to be aware of: first, hackers currently have the ability to forge national alerts, and incorrect alerts can potentially cause chaos and crises at any time, so mobile alerts can "be hijacked and disguised as false 'national alerts' by malicious individuals or hackers through academic and technical means." It's crucial to be cautious; second, receiving national alerts can lead to misunderstandings that result in incorrect collective actions, causing anything from traffic congestion to loss of life. Care must be taken.

Conclusion

Ultimately, receiving a text message and discovering that it was a flawed national alert, I initially wanted to criticize it emotionally because I was truly frightened, confused, and angry at the moment, overwhelmed with various emotions, and thought of writing an angry article, pointing out whose fault it was. However, upon reflection, if I were to speculate and criticize who might want to exploit this nationwide notification for personal gain, then I should not criticize this flawed national notification with the intention of profiting. Otherwise, wouldn't that be self-referential — equally bad? Therefore, at this late hour before the election and with such a long, illustrated, calm, speculative, minimally critical, and constructive article, even though few may read or pay attention to it, I still leave it as a record, hoping that someone of goodwill will see it, value it, and even improve it, making the relevant systems more secure, safe, and better, so that there will be no more debates on whether to issue or what was issued. When it comes time to respond, everyone can respond quickly and effectively.

Dr. Bao, at 02:12 on January 10, 2024, glad to still be alive