Europeans will be sent official alerts on their mobile phones if they are near a terrorist attack or natural disaster under an EU plan to replace the traditional emergency siren and reduce the risk of fake news causing chaos.
The lack of early warning for passersby at the time of the Westminster and Paris attacks, and the risk to lives posed by unofficial and inaccurate communications, prompted the move.
MEPs are expected to pass legislation on Wednesday obliging EU member states to implement the so-called Reverse 112 system which will alert people to threats and advise how to stay safe.
Tomorrow will mark the 3rd anniversary of #ParisAttacks 🇫🇷.
👉 The EU will soon set up a new warning system called #Reverse112.
☎️ Citizens will receive real-time alerts if terror or a disaster strikes. Watch and learn more: pic.twitter.com/M148PgCQu7
The system will replace the traditional emergency siren and is similar to the system that exists in the US, which was tested recently.
According to the EU, the lack of early warnings around the time of the Westminster and Paris attacks, and the risk to public safety posed by unofficial and inaccurate communications, has prompted the decision.
The new European wide alert system, called Reverse112, has now been approved to be introduced in all member states in the EU, including Ireland.
Each state will have 42 months after the legislation comes into force to rollout the system and each government will be asked to work with mobile phone providers to help implement it.
What is Cambridge Analytica? The firm at the centre of Facebook’s data breach.
Published on Wired | By Issie Lapowsky
“These are things that, I mean, it sounds
a dreadful thing to say, but these are things
that don’t necessarily need to be true, as
long as they’re believed,”
Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix
In a series of undercover videos filmed over the last year, Britain’s Channel 4 News caught executives at Cambridge Analytica appear to say they could extort politicians, send women to entrap them, and help proliferate propaganda to help their clients.The sting operation was conducted as part of an ongoing investigation into Cambridge Analytica, a data consulting firm that worked for President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The video follows an investigation by The Guardian and The Observer, along with The New York Times, which revealed that Cambridge and its related company, SCL, harvested data on 50 million Facebook users, and may have kept it, despite promises to Facebook that they deleted the information in 2015. Cambridge and SCL have denied these accusations, and in a statement to Channel 4, the company also denied “any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called ‘honey-traps’ for any purpose whatsoever.“The video evidence suggests otherwise.
In a series of five meetings and phone calls beginning in December 2017, a Channel 4 reporter posed as a fixer for a client they said was working to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka.
Cambridge Analytica is a company that offers services to businesses and political parties who want to “change audience behaviour”.
It claims to be able to analyse huge amounts of consumer data and combine that with behavioural science to identify people who organisations can target with marketing material. It collects data from a wide range of sources, including social media platforms such as Facebook, and its own polling.
With its headquarters in London, the firm was set up in 2013 as an offshoot of another company called SCL Group, which offers similar services around the world.
A full investigation must be carried out into a UK consultancy firm which helped take Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta to victory, the main opposition coalition has told the BBC.
Published on BBC
Cambridge Analytica say they played a massive role in the election of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, left, who beat Raila Odinga, right, last year.
National Super Alliance (Nasa) official Norman Magaya accused Cambridge Analytica and the ruling party of trying to “subvert the people’s will”.
Cambridge Analytica bosses were apparently caught on camera boasting of the control they had exerted in Kenya. The company denies any wrongdoing. Mr Kenyatta’s Jubilee party have downplayed the impact of the group, saying they employed the company’s parent company, SCL, to help with branding.
Cambridge Analytica is a company that offers services to businesses and political parties who want to “change audience behaviour”.
It claims to be able to analyse huge amounts of consumer data and combine that with behavioural science to identify people who organisations can target with marketing material. It collects data from a wide range of sources, including social media platforms such as Facebook, and its own polling.
With its headquarters in London, the firm was set up in 2013 as an offshoot of another company called SCL Group, which offers similar services around the world.
The reputation of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (ANTAC), a Ukrainian anticorruption NGO, was called into question in May 2017, when a video featuring a report from the American “News24” network appeared on YouTube; the video reported on investigations into the finances of Vitaliy Shabunin, the head of the ANTAC board.
A few months later, in September 2017, Ukraine’s NewsOne featured a live broadcast of a sitting of the US Congressional Committee on Financial Issues in relation to alleged corruption in the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). The hearing focused largely on the conduct of Valeriya Hontareva, who had championed reforms of the banking sector to prevent misuse of the system by business tycoons. The panelists suggested that Ms. Hontareva was herself corrupt and being investigated by the US Congress.
Reports that leading figures fighting for more integrity in Ukraine might themselves be corrupt are, of course, disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is the fact that both of these stories were completely fabricated.
Google is funding a robot journalism project in which computers will write 30,000 stories a month for local media.
The Press Association (PA) news agency received £622,000 for its Reporters and Data and Robots (Radar) scheme.
Radar will benefit “established media outlets”, independent publishers and local bloggers, PA said. One expert said it was unlikely to replace traditional reporting, although the project, which launches in 2018, will also use human journalists.
“Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but Radar allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up to a volume of local stories that would be impossible to provide manually,” said PA editor Pete Clifton.
He added that the news media was in need of “cost-effective” ways to produce local stories.
Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but Radar allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up to a volume of local stories that would be impossible to provide manually,
Robot journalists have already been caught out by fictitious information. Last month, an LA Times program published an alert about a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in California. It was dated 29 June 2025 and in fact related to an earthquake that took place 100 years earlier – the notification had been published erroneously by the US Geological Survey.
Geary Sikich looks at the rise of post truth, alternative facts and fake news; considers the impact on organizations; and looks at how business continuity planners can rise to meet the challenge.
If you want senior management to pay attention, give them something that challenges their focus – and understand that their focus is not on how many computers you have or RTO, RPO statistics. It is on business survivability: will we be in business tomorrow given the issues that we face today.
Some of the most recent issues facing organizations are post truth; alternative facts; and fake news. Some definitions will help to form the basis for why these terms are may create a crisis for leadership today:
Post truth: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:
‘In this era of post-truth politics, it’s easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire.’
‘Some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age.’
Alternative facts: is a term in law to describe inconsistent sets of facts with plausible evidence to support both alternatives. In some jurisdictions, there are rules governing how a party can state two versions of the facts, such as an absence of the person’s knowledge on which one of the alternatives is true.
Some of the most recent issues facing organizations are post truth, alternative facts, and fake news
Fake news: (also referred to as hoax news) websites deliberately publish hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news; often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, fake news websites seek to mislead rather than entertain readers for financial, political, or other gain. Such sites have promoted political falsehoods in Germany, Indonesia and the Philippines, Sweden, Myanmar, and the United States. Many sites originate, or are promoted, from Russia, Macedonia, Romania and the USA.
The impact of these forces can create upheaval in an organization, leading to reactive response and diversion of attention instead of focusing on achieving the goals and objectives of the organization.
