{"id":204754,"date":"2017-10-15T11:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-15T09:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=204754"},"modified":"2017-10-13T16:31:46","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T14:31:46","slug":"sharing-fake-weather-warnings-in-south-africa-could-land-you-in-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/204754\/sharing-fake-weather-warnings-in-south-africa-could-land-you-in-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing fake weather warnings in South Africa could land you in jail"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a municipality on South Africa\u2019s East Rand warned residents of an impending tornado, an unofficial weather service\u00a0posted a correction<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cBREAKING: FALSE tornado warning SMS apparently sent out by Ekurhuleni EMS. Do not distribute as it is a criminal offence under SAWS Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ekurhuleni emergency services and disaster management spokesman, William Ntladi, told Africa Check that the message was sent by a manager at one of the municipality\u2019s customer care centres.<\/p>\n

It was a mistake and the City of Ekurhuleni\u00a0apologised for the error<\/strong><\/a>, Ntladi told Africa Check.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message was sent out before the information was verified. It\u2019s not as if this person did this intentionally to cause panic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, could the culprit be facing a criminal charge like Gauteng Weather tweeted?<\/p>\n

The\u00a0South African Weather Service<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is a government agency under the department of environmental affairs and the authority for weather and climate change information in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0South African Weather Service Amendment Act of 2013<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0states that it is against the law to publish or distribute \u201cin any manner whatsoever any severe weather warning\u201d which is believed or suspected \u201cto be false or misleading\u201d.<\/p>\n

The South African Weather Service\u2019s communications manager, Hannelee Doubell, told Africa Check that \u201ca false or misleading message may, according to the South African Weather Service Amendment Act, \u2018incite public reaction which may lead to the undue mobilisation of resources, public alarm or evacuations, or economic loss arising from such actions\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is also\u00a0against the law<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to impersonate or pretend to be an SA Weather Service official, or publish or distribute any severe weather warnings that \u201cuse the official corporate branding from the Weather Service, or corporate branding closely resembling that of the Weather Service\u201d.<\/p>\n

First offenders could be fined up to R5 million or be sent to prison for a maximum of 5 years, Doubell said. If convicted again, the person could be fined up to R10 million or sent to prison for a maximum of 10 years, or both.<\/p>\n

When asked whether they would lay a complaint with the police, Doubell said: \u201cWe are looking into this at the moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Africa Check asked the\u00a0National Prosecuting Authority<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>if anybody has been prosecuted for such an offence before. (Note: We will update this report when they respond.)<\/p>\n

Doubell said the Weather Service saw the tornado warning on Twitter, \u201cand it was brought to our attention by various Twitter and Facebook users, some of which received a similar message on SMS or WhatsApp\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said the Weather Service does not send warnings out to any public WhatsApp group. \u201cThe public should always verify with the official SA Weather Service accounts.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0SA insurance premiums could be hiked as much as 15% due to storms: report<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a number of storms ravaging the country over the past week, South Africans need to be very careful about what they are posting and sharing on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":204756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-204754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204760,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204754\/revisions\/204760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}