And you thought you had enought to worry about:
Self-Diagnosing Machines Ring Amok
(08/19/97; 9:00 a.m. EDT)
By Douglas Hayward, TechWire
LONDON -- Next time you get a telephone call in which the
caller lurks silently at the other end, don't assume you are
being stalked by a psychopath or a spurned admirer. It could be
a refrigerator, a set of traffic lights, or even a public toilet at the
other end of the line.
Welcome to the world of self-diagnosing machines.
Microprocessors are increasingly at the heart of everyday
technology such as automobiles and toasters. But now a new
and potentially dangerous side effect of high technology is
emerging: calls made by machines trying to alert their
supervisors that something is wrong.
Unlike fax machines, many self-diagnosing machines
programmed to report faults do not emit a screeching noise
when they accidentally get thorough to a human listener. They
just stay silent. And that can cause big problems.
Take the example in the British newspapers of a woman who
was woken up in the middle of the night by a silent caller. The
calls kept coming until the worried senior citizen called British
Telecom to trace the source.
The origin of this harassment turned out to be a public toilet in a
park attempting to report a fault to its maintenance contractor.
"The toilet was programmed to ring a number if it was
overflowing or if it was running short of supplies," said Derrick
Clark, manager of British Telecom's London nuisance calls
bureau. "But the number that it was programmed to ring was
the wrong one, so the lady in question got bothered at a rather
inopportune time at night."
BT traced the call -- one of an estimated 50,000 wrong-number
calls made by machines in the past year -- and the problem
was sorted out. Other wrong connections made by remotely
managed machines in Britain include people being bothered at
home by soft-drink vending machines, refrigerators, and boilers.
The problem is that -- thanks to modern software and
communications technology -- the maintenance of all sorts of
machines is increasingly being handled remotely. Complex but
inexpensive microprocessors and software allow everything from
a set of traffic lights to a refrigerator in a medical supplies
center to diagnose its own problems. These machines then use
a dedicated line to ring a preprogrammed number to report the
fault.
Sometimes, however, human error strikes, and the number
programmed into the machine turns out to be wrong. "We all
dial the wrong number from time to time," said Clark. "But as
more and more machines are being built [with these
self-diagnosis facilities], we are probably going to see an
increase in the number of these calls -- unless we can reduce
the amount of human error by people programming the
machines."
BT is attempting to raise awareness of the problem among
manufacturers and maintainers of self-diagnosing machines.
Under Britain's harassment laws, someone making malicious
calls can face six months in prison and a fine of almost $8,000,
although it's unclear if someone who wrongly programs a
high-tech toilet could be found guilty of harassment.
That's apart from the risk of someone dying because a fault in a
machine -- such as a set of traffic lights -- isn't being reported.
"This is possibly a problem that is never going to be solved
completely," said Clark, "but we hope to see it reduced by
cutting down the rate of human error." |
