Taiwan’s national-level alarm system experienced an error yesterday (9), causing confusion and anxiety in society. Ku Jujun (Dr. Bao), a candidate for the Kuomintang party, proposed improvements to the system, emphasizing the use of blockchain technology for recording and preventing centralized tampering, as well as promoting decentralized rapid verification mechanisms.
Yesterday afternoon, Taiwan’s national-level alarm system sounded, indicating that a satellite launched by China had flown over the southern part of Taiwan and advising the public to be cautious. However, there were translation and formatting errors in the content, causing confusion and anxiety among the public.
In response, Ku Jujun, a candidate for the Kuomintang party, proposed five improvement suggestions, including implementing blockchain technology for the alarm system and promoting decentralized alarm systems to enhance accuracy and efficiency in future alerts.
Firstly, the issue with the widely discussed alarm this time mainly lies in formatting and wording. For example, the expressions “Vietnam,” “southern Vietnam,” and “southern” caused confusion, and the inconsistency between the Chinese and English versions (mentioning a satellite in Chinese while mentioning a missile in English) further led to misunderstandings. It is understood that China launched the Long March 2 rocket carrying the Einstein Probe satellite. Additionally, errors in spacing within the alarm also made it difficult to read, such as “flyover” should be two words, “fly over,” and grammatically, it should be changed to “is flying” or “flew.”
Secondly, Ku Jujun pointed out that after the Ministry of National Defense discovered the formatting and wording errors, the “Disaster Prevention Alert Cell Broadcast Message Website” (currently the national-level alarm system) updated the original alarm content and added the words “(Ministry of National Defense correction),” but did not send the correction message to the public.
The Disaster Prevention Alert Cell Broadcast Message Website lists the “principles and content of alerts sent by various levels of government” to allow the public to refer to and compare whether they have received false alarms. However, the alarm content received by the public yesterday was inconsistent with the content listed on the website. Therefore, Dr. Ku suggested ensuring that the information received by the public is consistent with the official information to avoid unnecessary confusion during emergencies.
To enhance the transparency and traceability of the alarm system, Dr. Ku suggested recording each issued message using blockchain or other technologies. He called for the promotion of a decentralized alarm system.
Dr. Ku also proposed strict checks on the sending process and verification mechanism of the national-level alarm system, considering the use of generative AI to reduce reading misunderstandings, panic, and potential security threats. He further suggested the establishment of a decentralized and distributed rapid verification mechanism for national-level alarm text messages.
He quoted the suggestion of renowned digital democracy scholar and economist Glen Weyl:
Lastly, Dr. Ku reminded the public of the importance of national-level alarms and related cybersecurity details. He warned that the current technology allows hackers to forge national-level alarms, which could lead to social unrest and severe crises. Additionally, misunderstandings of national-level alarms by the public could result in erroneous collective actions, causing traffic congestion and even casualties. Therefore, strengthening the security and accuracy of the alarm system to prevent such risks is urgently needed.
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