Germany conducts first nationwide emergency warning day in decades | Hacker News Reader

Germany conducts first nationwide emergency warning day in decades

m.dw.com

64 pointstejado110 comments

Correction to the article: the annual test day will be the second Thursday in September, not always the tenth.

I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used. Surely many people don't have the app installed? I'd never heard of it and I've lived in this country the whole time it's been available.

> I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used

Because of utterly dumb people in charge: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/warntag-zum-ziv...

> Unger: Ja, die Niederlande zum Beispiel setzen auf dieses Cell-Broadcast-System. Wir haben davon Abstand genommen, weil die Mobilfunknetze - wie man etwa an Silvester sieht - im Fall der Fälle nicht ausreichen. Hinzu kommt ein datenschutzrechtliches Problem. Wenn man direkt die Handys ansteuert, werden auch Bewegungsdaten erfasst. Wir setzen daher auf die App...

To roughly translate: cell broadcast has a data protection problem, because directly notifying cellphones leads to movement data being recorded. Also cellphone networks don't have the capacity, as can be seen every new year's eve.

Just... what the fuck! What an utterly incompetent idiot.

> *Anmerkung der Redaktion: In einer früheren Fassung hieß es, der Bund habe wegen vermeintlicher Kapazitätsprobleme der Mobilfunknetze und aus Datenschutzgründen Abstand von einem Cell-Broadcast-System genommen. Das Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe hat diese Antwort nachträglich korrigiert

They basically revoked this comment about capacity. The new reason is that mobile service providers don't offer this type of broadcast in Germany and that it's checked whether this can be implemented in the future.

If that was the truth I don’t understand how anyone would come up with the first statement, which is just to precise to be a miscommunication or whatever the reason is. That just sounds like damage control. I am really disappointed at how bad the whole test went through today. Hopefully they get everything sorted out ASAP.

Privacy report of NINA: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/de.materna....

Sure looks like they take data protection seriously by including advertising trackers...

Data is the new oil...

What? It's a broadcast system. You stuff the packets into the antenna with as many watts as you can. Add a public key if you must.

Why is it checking who gets the message?

It is not. They should use cell broadcast, it's privacy-friendly, efficient and as reliable as anything else involving a mobile phone.

Feedback: this comment might have fared better if it hadn't contained completely unnecessary insults.

As a fellow German, I can understand the anger, though.

Basically, we don't have a warning system anymore, because the pieces that are left are mostly being dismantled (sirens, tv and radio) and all they seem to want to replace it with is an app that doesn't reliably work when the network is fine.

Lets be honest, if catastrophy should strike here, we would be last to know.

This x100. It's an utter catastrophe. We had a fully working siren network (at least across Western Germany), and after the end of the Cold War it all got left to rot to pieces - estimates for rebuilding it are well into the hundreds of millions of euro range.

And then the whole radio clusterfuck. AM radio got totally torn down years ago to "cut costs", there's always discussions to dismantle plain old FM radio too and only serve DAB+ instead, which doesn't have nearly the buildout level compared to plain old FM radio.

I'm sick of this shit. Three decades and all what we had went down the drain. It's the same for coronavirus response - back in cold war times we had massive rolling stockpiles of everything, especially of PPE... but again, it all got eliminated to "cut costs".

If I understand correctly, DAB+ transmitters use less power than FM ones, but DAB+ receivers use more power than FM receivers. Considering the number of receivers versus transmitters, this doesn't appear to be a good trade-off to me.

AM even more so, although AM transmitters can be really power-hungry if you want to cover an entire country with one of them.

> We had a fully working siren network (at least across Western Germany)

East Germany had a fully working siren network as well. And it was tested every Wednesday at 1pm.

The siren of a nearby village in the former GDR is still tested every Wednesday at 18:00.

I really am struggling to understand why it's a big deal? Honestly asking, what's the thought process behind the worth of maintaing one? TV channels and radio stations will just broadcast a breaking news thing. Websites will have notices. I'm entirely unclear why you'd need an emergency broadcast system? Or place so much emphasis on its importance?

What would you use it for? And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?

What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.

In case of, say, fire at a chemical plant, it may be important that people downwind get notified right away, there might not be very much time to get inside, close windows etc. Same for collapsed dams, radiological accidents, that sort of thing. Sirens can do that very well. Other channels are much less reliable (people might not have a news website open on their computer, might not be looking at their phone to catch that notification, etc.)

Radio is important because it's so widespread and low-tech. Pretty much every car has a receiver that can run for ages, there are inexpensive emergency ones that can be powered by crank and solar, so even in prolonged power outages, as long as the stations remain powered, and someone in your neighbourhood has a working receiver, it's still useful and pretty low-cost, since the infrastructure is already there.

I'd think in case of radiological accidents it would be policy to NOT use them, to avoid panic. I fully expect road barriers / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire to be implemented, if one happens here and word of that gets out.

> TV channels and radio stations will just broadcast a breaking news thing.

Many young people don't even own a radio or TV any more, and even more own one but don't use it regularly.

> Websites will have notices

That assumes that a) the Internet is still up everywhere (by the way, same problem with the apps crap) and b) that people are 24/7 surfing on news websites.

> I'm entirely unclear why you'd need an emergency broadcast system? Or place so much emphasis on its importance?

To announce there is something going on and people to have a look at the TV/radio for more information. That's all.

> And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?

AM radios are incredibly cheap to build - all you need is a loop, a tunable capacitor, a diode, a fixed capacitor and an earphone. When I was a kid I had one as a "build it yourself" kit for children. FM radios are more complex but are literally everywhere - many cellphones have them, virtually every car built after the early 50s, kitchen appliances, bathroom radios, classic radios... DAB/DAB+ radios are relatively new, in fact they are only required to be present in cars after end of this year. And in contrast to AM/FM it is almost impossible to build one out of basic components yourself.

> What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.

There's more need than just a war for an EBS. Stuff like "the power plant nearby is leaking radioactive gas", "the industrial plants are on fire, close your windows", "there's an earthquake predicted, cover yourself", "flooding immanent" or "active terrorist case with a shooter on the run, stay indoors" is some things that I can easily imagine.

You're mixing two arguments, one about total communications collapse and the FM/Radio, one about immediate danger and the sirens.

Total communications collapse - It would have to be over night and total for there to be ANY worth to FM/AM radio. It won't be. It's seems unrealisitic to pretend some sort of Walking Dead scenario would ever be real. If it did happen, the government would also somehow have to still be magically in control of the FM/AM broadcasters.

Urgent Alert - The governments around the world have been organising nationwide lockdowns virtually overnight using existing channels. I just don't see much value even if there were something 'urgent', as it's clear people get alerted pretty quickly about this stuff.

> It would have to be over night and total for there to be ANY worth to FM/AM radio. It won't be. It's seems unrealisitic to pretend some sort of Walking Dead scenario would ever be real.

Just how often did we have widespread Internet outages because someone fucked up a BGP entry again? It's incredibly easy to barf up the Internet, all you need is a way to put crap in the global BGP database. Terrorists, nation-scale actors, cybercriminals all have this ability. In contrast, an emergency AM/FM radio service can be done without anything connected to the Internet - plug a microphone in the input line of the radio signal generator and you are on air.

Also, power outages are not unheard of, even in Germany. As said, FM radio does not require much power to receive it.

FM is still widely used, in most European countries still way more than DAB.

Considering the sheer numbers of FM radios and how long they last it will be decades before DAB takes over. I don't plan on replacing mine until it breaks.

Unnecessary maybe, but also a simple statement of fact.

I'd say it's the reverse. "Daten sind das neue Gold / Öl!" Because of this they don't use somehing like cell broadcast, but an app-based approach. They just don't dare to say so in public, or don't care at all. Do you honestly expect anything competent from any of the current talking heads, making appearances in the mainstream of the presstitutes catering to the oh so sensitive public?

(Yes, Yes, I know, the German service providers (allegedly) didn't implement it so far, therefore we(allegedly) can't do it. It's not like a superspecial Extrawurst, since it's in use in many other places. I guess, depending on the vendor of the equipment it would be nothing more than a configuration flag to enable, since it's already there, just needs a license for the feature, or something like that. /ENDRANT)

> mainstream of the presstitutes catering

Jeez. No need to resort to far-right vocabulary!

As for the rest of your point, I'm sure you remember "die Antwort auf diese Frage könnte die Bevölkerung verunsichern"...

I'm not far right, just getting older and can't stand it anymore. Not the getting older, but the endless repetition of BS.

(Echt jetzt? Ich verbitte mir diese infame Unterstellung aufs Entschiedenste! Das geht ja so gaaaaa nich!)

I have simply no idea who thought it was a good idea to implement a nation-wide warning system on an app that has ~15k downloads[0]~. We already get warnings through cell broadcast here in Hamburg for the weather (last year we got multiple high wind warnings). I'm very disappointed.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.materna.bbk...

Edit: As a commenter pointed out, it has 1M+ downloads. But I'm still unsure why is there is even an app, when you can use the cell broadcasted warnings, which everyone with a modern phone get, regardless whether they have an app installed.

It has ~15k reviews, but 1M+ downloads.

Any source for the cell broadcast in Hamburg? And what are you using (iOS?)? I only get the alerts over the app, despite also living there.

Android, and have enabled the option in settings.

This seems strange. I have enabled everything, got messages also in the US like amber alert but never in germany incl. Hamburg. I thought this is not used here in germany (see other comments here e.g.)? Do you have some source of your information?

It worked for me, and I got the warnings in German. My phone is all English. I remember clearly, because it threw me off in the beginning. I haven't received any this year, maybe it was a test?

Woe to the people who don't use mainstream mobile OSs or use them but avoid mainsteram app stores.

Even if you had heard of it, it's not reliable due to being a normal app. It's affected by energy saving settings, DND etc. I've had it installed for a while but the time when you actually get notified varies a lot between people, depending on their phone's behaviour.

Cell Broadcast/EU-Alert is the way to go for this and I have no idea why they thought an app would be better.

> I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used.

Maybe the telcos aren't ready? But they wanted to start practicing the other parts of the system?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert

There are a few implementations, but not as many as I would have assumed:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast#Public_warning_...

Probably because politicians are stupid: (german) https://t.co/MgVwxrAYwd?amp=1

Today, somewhere in Bavaria:

I'm at work, phone goes off - significant other on the line.

"Our smoke alarms just went off and i'm running around, trying to turn them off"

I'm like "Ooook, have you been cooking?" - "No, nothing, been working and it just went off, also no smoke anywhere to be seen".

Scratching my head, looking at my watch, 10:39 (alarms where supposed to go off at around 11:00).

So, we currently have 6 connected fire alarms around the house (Hekatron Genius Plus X + Base Funk (radio) module, so they're connected).

They're not connected to anything besides themselves, so i really wondered how and why they'd go off for this test alert.

Thing is, the smoke alarms do have a notion of what time it is as they turn off the flashing light from 9PM to 7AM, so i wasn't quick to dismiss them catching the publicly broadcasted signal and go off too...

Scratching my head even further, i figured i'd give Hekatron a call - the guy on the hotline tried really hard to keep his calm but chuckled and said it basically was just a coincidence and if the one that triggered the alarm would go off again i could basically RMA it.

Lesson learned, coincidences do happen, also people do win the lottery after all :)

Tests like this have been conducted on smaller scale in the past, either on Landkreis (county) level or state level. Some towns even test their fire sirens once per month. What makes this newsworthy is that it is conducted "nationwide". Beside that, it's not such a special thing.

Additionally it also includes other channels, like national television, radio and warning apps on smart phones.

This is something, that localized test runs normally do not include.

That's correct.

I heard from several people in smaller towns (where this is tested regularly) that today it wasn't tested.

Sounds like a complete nationwide fuckup.

It would become a failure if the problems are not going to be addressed. Discovering problems is why one runs tests after all.

I stand corrected. The interior ministry themselves consider it a failure.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/warntag-115.html

As someone who lives in The Netherlands I was kind of confused by this post as well. We have a monthly nationwide test of our emergency warning sirens and every so often the cell broadcast system is tested as well. I thought every/most countries did that?

Nope. Some do, some don't. Actually, I haven't heard the Dutch monthly sirens recently. (Or maybe my Monday workplace is just too far from them?)

They still test the sirens every month. The loudness is tuned to mostly alert people who are outside -- the expected action on hearing the siren is going inside anyways.

People in The Netherlands are used to this sound, hearing it every first Monday of the month at noon for the last 17 years now.

I wonder how effective this will work in case of real trouble.

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/terrorismebestrijdi...

Bavaria here, and every first Saturday the siren goes off for testing purposes as well. This was supposed to be bigger scale though.

Haven’t heard anything today.

I'm also in bavaria and did hear it. Probably a problem in your city, not in all of bavaria.

I kinda figure that if people heard the lunchalarm going off at a different time, they'd just assume it was Monday noon and it'd confuse the rest of their week.

If I recall correctly in a non-testing scenario the sirens are twice as loud as during a test. Should provide enough of a hint I'd imagine.

Same here. Colloquially, it's the monthly 'Germans invading again' alarm ;)

In Sweden it is the Fikatuta, ie a signal telling that it is time to get some coffee.

(or that the Russians are invading again)

And in Sweden since forever

Actually the same in the Netherlands, except that for a few years we had "silent" alarm tests. This was of course a bad idea (actually letting everyone hear it is quite reassuring, and it's good to know what it sounds like), so this was reverted, although that took longer than it should have.

Meh, the sirens are tested here twice a year. This is the case in many areas. Where my parents live, they are tested every 3 months.

More interestingly, the federal government is realizing that it may have been a mistake to dismantle the sirens in many areas after the Cold War ended, mainly because things likes TV, radio or app messages cannot warn people at night, when their devices are off. I have heard of 3 possible fixes that are discussed:

a) build more sirens again

b) use the mandatory smoke detectors in every home for a warning system

c) use car alarms or car horns

It would be interesting to see how b) and c) are implemented without any concerns regarding security or potential for misuse.

Your are right, that a lot of cities are doing it regulary. The interessting point here is, that there are cities that have no sirens anymore due to the removal after the cold war. So such a nationwide test will help to check the efficiency and to modernize/rebuild the system where needed.

//edit: same info was added to head comment.

Do the mandatory smoke alarms already have some 'smart' capabilities with a communication network, or are they considering using them because they are mandatory, and the 'smart' implementation would come later?

Am in Berlin, heard absolutely nothing, not even a push from the NINA (emergencies) app. Is this thing on? tap tap

Berlin doesn't use sirens, so that part was to be expected. The latter... maybe also to be expected (government app...), but that was supposed to alert. Guess that's why we need to run tests...

This is strange because I always get notifications on heavy rain (where in Hong Kong we call a drizzle)

No, it isn't. NINA failed in large parts of the country, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24430903

Berlin has no sirens anymore apparently. I also didn't hear anything.

Why though?

Look, if the Russians invade, you don't want us letting them know that we know that they're invading, do you? That would just be crazy.

Guess sarcasm dies little by little on this forum everyday.

Yeah, absolutely nothing happened. Also no cell broadcast. Yeah well, I guess Berlin doesn't really matter, it's not like it's the freaking capital or something...

There's no emergency CB system in Germany <facepalm> You have to install the app (which might not work anyway - of my colleagues who had it installed, at least one got no warning).

Just your average 4 star rated warning app https://xkcd.com/937/

> Air raid sirens sounded for one straight minute starting at 11 a.m., testing their tones full blast before varying the pitch of the tone.

The sirens are tested in Lyon, France on the first Wednesday of every month. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary but interesting that Germany hasn’t done it in so long.

As others in this thread have noted, sirens are tested (at least) once a year locally. What makes this special is that it is a centralized test for the whole country with other channels being tested as well (TV, Radio, mobile app).

Where I live, it was rather underwhelming. I probably would not have noticed if I hadn't known about it before which may be a bad sign, to be honest.

Same in Prague (first Wednesday of each month). I've been on calls for work the past couple times, people always ask me what the background noise is.

Here it's a siren, and then a spoken message (in Czech and then in English) telling people the emergency broadcast system is being tested. It goes on for a good 5 minutes.

At the start of the lockdown they blasted this [1] children's song over the broadcast system to try cheer everyone up

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YWcQRKNyjM

AFAIK the sirens that still exist in Germany are also still tested regularly, or at least this happened in my home village until recently, now I'm not sure when I heard that last time.

The "problem" is that most sirens had been removed in the 90's when it became less likely that Germany would be steamrolled by Soviet tanks.

Sirens turn on every year on 1 August (and sometimes also September) in Poland too, has something to do with Germany 81 years ago.

That would have been 15 minutes ago and it seems that nothing happened.

The sirens definitely went off in NRW.

Same here in Dresden. I was actually worried for a second because the alarm wasn't followed by the usual "this is a test" announcement.

Not all cities have a sirene. Do you have and apps like NINA or KATWARN?

You need an app? In The Netherlands they use whatever emergency warning system is built-in in iOS and Android.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202743

It can't be done with an app. Those are always subject to power saving, do not disturb, etc.

Any country that doesn't use cell broadcasts is doing it wrong.

It has to be both - many people don't have a mobile phone, and a landline can't easily do the same, but may have a wifi-only device.

Mine has, although they scrapped the weekly tests on saturday some years ago. Someone probably forgot to press the button.

I'm German and literally just heard the siren and was like, wtf? Then I check hn and here we go! ha.

This is routine next door in Austria: https://www.bmi.gv.at/204_english/skkm/warning.aspx

Though I must admit I was very surprised the first time I experienced it (I hadn't been forewarned).

Not on the same scale but, in France, fire alarms are tested every first Wednesday of the month at midday sharp. Though you don't hear them from everywhere so it can still be quite a shock after a few years of not hearing it.

Sweden tests the emergency sirens the first Monday every month at 3PM. It's kind of weird when we have dismantled most every other kind of preparedness.

I remember when I was growing up in the UK in the 80’s we had siren tests from time to time. It seems strange now living in the real Cold War.

And the official national warning app (NINA) failed

Well, I mean, that's what you do tests for.

There's been an official response now: The system was overwhelmed because instead of just one nation-wide alarm, several local institutions used the system for local alarms. Which is scary: The number of local alarms was three I read (very uncertain about that number). And the nationwide alarm came 31 minutes late. That seems unreasonable, but yeah I guess the test was productive at least.

The whole system is flawed. They should take a look at how Japan has implemented the J-Alert system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Alert

Cell broadcast is much more suitable than a stupid app if you want to warn people in a certain area.

Yes, obviously using the phone network is the better idea. But realistically the goal of these projects is not to create a working system. The goal is to create something "new" to leech money off the federal and EU projects, which they succesfully did.

Why is that the better idea? What if it is hacked/DDOSed, or something?

Even better, then you can pay your pals in the consulting companies even more to fix it.

It just finished. Felt a bit weird actually.

Oh wow. Living in a medium-sized city in Germany (300k inhabitants), I did not recieve a single message over any channel.

What a great emergency warning system!

Nobody I talked to today noticed.

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