What do they say "I've made up my mind - don't confuse me with the facts."
What is so maddening about Y2K is the sheer impossibility of picking the facts out of the "news." So many purveyors of alleged facts are just not credible--they either have their own agendas or are inadequately skilled at investigative reporting.
Take this one: y2knewswire.com.
Some excerpts:
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Our investigation and analysis of Y2K-related news has demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that all the following are true:
Compliance "progress" has been at least partially achieved by redefining systems as non-mission-critical, thus avoiding the effort of repairing them.
The power industry is suspiciously sharing "template documents" that give utilities pre-approved language to use in their press releases and press conferences. Also: NERC has no system in place to downgrade electric utilities that do not resolve "exceptions" before 1/1/2000.
Claims of compliance are often (up to 50% of the time) proven false after being put to the test.
[There are more items listed. I picked off the easiest targets, which are also most relevant to the conclusion drawn.]
Or, to summarize:
The public is not being told the truth about Y2K. Problems are minimized or covered-up and "progress" is over-stated, redefined and described in pre-approved terms.
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What are we to make of this? It seems obvious to me that the points made don't warrant the conclusion drawn.
RE the business of redefining the criticality of systems. I recall seeing one list that was generated by asking people to identify their mission-critical systems. As a result, there was some utterly silly stuff on the list, like some secretary's office supply shopping list because she kept it on her computer. I recall laughing about it at the time and inferred that nobody was willing to say that anything they were working on was not mission critical. It seems inevitable to me that organizations would have started with long lists, then as the realities of time and money sunk in, redefined things to what was truly critical.
RE "template documents." Organizations routinely use these things for communicating sensitive information. It's expensive to wordsmith and vet external communications and risky not to. Boilerplate is routinely used, even 'benchmarked" from one organization to another.
RE claims of compliance being wrong up to 50% of the time. Duh! Send this one over to the grammar thread! Patients die during routine surgery up to 50% of the time. Kids grow up to be criminals up to 50% of the time. Virtually all employees take sick leave up to 50% of the time. So what!
There's nothing inherently suspicious in those points--nothing that can't be easily explained away. The report's cavalier conclusions destroy all credibility with me. Which is not the same as saying that suspicious things aren't going on, much like the old saw--just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.
If a report in one instance either pads the findings to justify a conclusion or can't properly draw a conclusion, what is one to make of other information provided by that report. Pretty hard to accept it at face value.
And then there's the problem of figuring out what really happened, even if you have the resources and the skills to investigate. [Ever been on a jury? Ever try to assess whether someone was discriminated against? Ever try to determine which kid started the fight?] I will be interested in seeing what the "snitches" report. I don't mean to pooh-pooh what they're doing or discouraging you from participating--it's worth a try-- but I wouldn't be very confident of the site's ability to verify anything.
Karen |
