cyber-"terrorism"?

[Owen Lewis]

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Mitchell <pete@dmed.demon.co.uk>
To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Sent: 19 September 2002 12:36
Subject: Re: cyber-"terrorism"?


> Owen Lewis wrote:
> >
> >
> > AFAIK, globally, there was no recorded incident of a catastophic system
> > failure - or even a serious parametric failure - occasioned by Y2K. But
> > perhaps your experience was different?
>
>
> Quite a few local failures were reported. I know of at least one
> hospital admin system that stopped allowing appointment bookings.

It's not possible to comment in detail without knowing the full details.
Prima facie, it is hard to see why this should have been necessary.

> In one particularly nasty case, the maternity clinic system at a
> Sheffield hospital miscalculated mothers' ages and failed to order
> amnios for mothers in the highest-risk group. When the bug was
> discovered, 150-odd women - by now well advanced in pregnancy - had to
> be recalled for urgent amnios.

> At least four Down's babies were born as a direct result of the Y2K bug,
> and at least two women had to have distressingly late terminations.

No, they were born because their parents, knowing the risk, chose to
conceive them. I make no comment on the ethical position of conceiving a
child with the view that, if it's pre-natal development does not produce
some desired perfection, well one can always destroy it. The only point I
would make is that the exemplar children were not conceived or born as a
result of Y2K but as a result of some complex of matters unrelated to Y2K.

In any event, what you describe is scarcely a serious parametic failure of
the computerised system, but seems to be some more or less culpable human
error in either not preventing a minor failure  or not reacting
appropriately in the few days after it had occurred.


Owen