Susan City, CA, is a city outside of San Francisco with about 35,000 people
On Saturday, the city was the victim of a massive cyber attack that knocked out 911, the fire department, the police department and all of the municipal government operations.
The city declared a state of emergency.
An investigation into all of this is pending.
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “The suggestion, of course, is: Is this part of these Iranian cyber hacks? It’s up to a dozen states now that (saw hackers) trying to get into water systems. Now you’ve got a case that they got into emergency responder systems.”
Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM said, “We’re hearing some things about those water system attacks, and I wonder if this is true, too, because we want to be a local government type of country, but then there’s no security. Like they were saying, some of those water systems were 1111 passwords, and that was publicly available. So we’ve really got to look at the vulnerabilities because nobody’s been thinking about this type of thing at the local level.”
Barkdoll said, “It’s also becoming apparent that all of these water systems are using the same software platform that may be antiquated. It might not be terribly robust when it comes to security, and there’s where you get some nefarious parties that are able to exploit that. So it’s a problem.”
Additionally, the city of New Orleans this weekend began using Artificial Intelligence to answer 911 calls.
Barkdoll said, “This is incredibly controversial. You’re seeing all kinds of critics saying this is going to be a big problem. But when you dial 911 now in New Orleans, you talk to a bot. That bot then determines whether your call gets routed to a live person, or just gets routed to some kind of an automated answering service. You can see where problems could start, and this very well could spread around the country because it’s going to be a cost saving.”
Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM noted, “But you can also see when the maniac morons that call up, going, I didn’t get my sauce with my chicken nuggets.”
Barkdoll said, “That’s what New Orleans is saying. They’re saying they are overwhelmed with non-emergency frivolous calls. They’re thinking this AI system will filter a lot of that out. So it’s part of our new world.”
Jansen asked, “How do people not know about how to use 911?”
Barkdoll said, “Local officials will say that all the time. They get a lot of calls that should not be going to 911, but that’s how a lot of people do it.”
