[EAS] What's Up in Washington? - conclusion?

[ray at electronicstheory.com]

Ok Folks, here's the scoop:

Of the clients that are monitored, in the state of Washington, we monitor the
MYSTATE client

The 148 CAP messages in 20 minutes time came via mystate - not via apps.fema.gov

There seem to have been 2 contributing factors:
1) Changes in their website
2) A mildly mis-configured box on our end.

The date-time stamp for our box was apparently set for the date that we
installed the box (a fixed date).  Apparently it should have been set up for a
variable string according to an application not that I missed.  (Reminds me that
I need to go back through all the app notes).

In the past that had never been a problem, but I'm told that apparently there
was a change made to the mystate website yesterday, that caused our box to read
every message it had ever received since the day it was installed. Having "newly
found" and decoded all these messages - it alerted me (via email) that it had
decoded 148 CAP messages.

I assume that whatever changes they made at the mystate site COULD in theory be
done at other polling sites as well - so it would be wise to make sure that
everyone has their box configured to an identical standard, and in my humble
opinion - a standard that is predefined by the manufacturer, and unchangeable by
the end user.

In short - you think it is safe to be naked behind closed curtains... until
someone opens the curtains on you.

Ray

Ray Dall
Radio Frequency Engineer