Hawaii Missile Alert Worker Fired, Will Sue State for Defamation
news.slashdot.org/story/18/02/03/0233202/hawa...
news.slashdot.orgPosted Feb 3, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC
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news.slashdot.orgRemember that you can sue anyone for almost anything. Just because someone is suing, doesn't mean the case will have any merit.
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What you're forgetting is that this is Hawaii. The gov't will cave in and settle for 6 figures.
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How did they defame him if they never released his name.....
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If the person repeatedly confuses drills with real incidents, maybe the problem isn't the employee, maybe it's the system. Maybe the system is, dare I say it, confusing? If all it takes is for one person to screw up to release this type of alert, it has to be, by definition, inadequate. Maybe the employee is a hero by forcing Hawaii to get their act together.
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What’s interesting is it seemed like they were protecting him at first. Miyagi was taking responsibility and they were framing it as a wrong button being pushed. Miyagi would jump in at press conferences and take responsibility. Then in the past week or so things started to change. Wonder if they started to want to blame him or if HE wanted to push back against their narrative first? I can’t tell. It feels like the latter since he’s going to the media, but that feels like such a dumb move on his part since they were protecting him at first. So weird.
Either way, this whole thing sucks.
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Guys an employee in the Public Trust. Show some accountability, and a spine.
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He deserves to be fired.
Not for what happened in the incident, itself, but for his conduct following it: He acknowledged no responsibility, didn't even attempt to apologize, nothing...he doesn't seem to realize the seriousness of the situation, period.
Dude is an anonymous idiot, and I have no sympathy, whatsoever.
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Sorry, littlejohhnyjewel. You have never made any mistakes in your job before. You're totally right, littlejohhnyjewel.
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It’s not about whether they made a mistake or not. You’re held to a higher standard as an employee in the Public Trust. It’s unacceptable that this individual can’t show some responsibility for what happened here.
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Why this wasn't in the realm of the military is beyond me.
A civilian, poorly trained (or not at all, as it turns out), is supposed to do the job entrusted to NORAD, and the millions of hours of training they've had.
This is bullshit.
The guy, and maybe he is a complete fuck up, should not be taking the heat for this nonsense.
So a person that can’t do a job should be blaming the employer who hired him.
Yes he should not take full responsibility but he is partly responsible.
He apparently sent out two false alerts before. I'm not sure why he wasn't fired after the second one. It's a little crazy he's suing for defamation when he was obviously inept at his job.
Additionally, how can you sue for defamation if your name was never released?
I saw his lawyer on the news making the argument that they released a photo of him (from the back) at his work station, which was identification enough
I was wondering that too.
How do you know it's the employee that is inept and not the system that is inept? Answer: You don't.
Well it's both.
Don't believe everything you read, it sounds like he's being maligned to take the fall.
Absolutely. This reeks of scapegoating. The system was/is obviously severely flawed if it is possible for this to happen at all. Look at it this way - what if there really was an inbound missile and the screw up was the other direction - just as possible - would you blame the employee or the system? I say system. It should simply not be possible for one person to make a mistake that causes this result. If it is possible for one person to do this - that is a very, very, very bad system.
Why? Almost all systems are like that. 2 pilots in the cockpit. 2 people to turn the key to launch missiles (at least in the movies). That’s it. I can drive on the sidewalk and kill a bunch of people by myself. I can pull the trigger by myself.
You mean if there was a real missile and the guy pressed the test warning on accident?
Does it matter?
Either way if it was a real missile we'd be screwed. There is no way of surviving a nuclear blast here. No basements. No bomb shelters.
If someone hired you and said "in an emergency, push this button".
And that's all they told you. Additionally, they didn't show you where the button was and didn't explain what "emergency" means.
And then the guy pushes the button. And in order to keep from taking shit, the guy who hired him says "you're fired stupid employee for not knowing what to do".
I don't know. I think in this case the onus might be on the employer rather than the employee. And the employee, seeing that he is about to be burned alive at the stake for messing up, is fighting back.
Or maybe I'm reading the transcript of what happened incorrectly.
I don’t know what happened. All the stories was a mess. Looks like he was given a lot of leeway for ten years.
Yeah - that's "manager speak" for someone in charge blaming THIS guy because he had no idea of what he was doing.
And even more interesting, this guy has had a job for ten years and nobody bothered going through the drill of what he was supposed to do and when he was supposed to do it.
It would be like the CEO of Enron blaming the janitor for their fraud because the janitor should have read some of the notes they threw away and known that what they were doing was illegal.
I would think it's on both though. If you don't know what you are doing at your job, you probably should ask for help, instead of pretending you can do the job.
If the job is that easy to fuck up, and that important, it is the system that is at fault, not the employee. There should be two people involved in this process so even an incompetent employee can't do this.
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I think the tech should have been fired but the REAL important thing is to fire whoever was in charge of designing and approving the system (whether that's Miyagi or not, I dunno'). Everything about this -- the crappy interface (that may or may not look like the picture they released), the lack of multiple-person authentication, password sticky-note on the monitor, the inability to quickly issue a retraction, and the use of the phrase "This is not a drill" in the drill -- is just so deeply incompetent that it boggles the mind.
In contrast: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/953211275734958080
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Can't. Too big to fail.
Nothing has suggested that's remotely similar to the narrative. These drills were common and everyone else in the room knew it was a drill.
If the "syste" is flawed, it WILL happen again with another employee. But then the "system" is always bigger and overrides the tiny peon joe blows who are just cogs waiting to get shitcanned. By the way, do you really live on Kahoolawe?
With the goats Bro!
If it was well known that he couldn't do the job, why was he still doing the job? That is literally his manager's job - to make sure his/her employees can and are doing their jobs. Especially with a job that is this important.
Blame the person who trained him