A story on Forbes called Inside The UAL Story Debacle provides some insight to today’s information security disaster. In brief, an “investor information service” reporter used a search engine and uncovered an old story on UAL bankruptcy. The problem was that the story was over six years old but the reporter filed the story online as current events.
Ooops:
Minutes after the story was filed, Lehmann, a Forbes columnist, was alerted to a problem when non-subscribers jammed his switchboard with requests for the full text. “We’re not in the business of providing fresh news,” Lehmann says. “And consequently, we knew there was something wrong here.” Lehmann said his employee was not negligent in picking up the Sun-Sentinel story because it had no date on it and appeared current beside new content tracking Hurricane Ike in the Southeastern U.S.
This is a silly line of reasoning. It reminds me of the lawsuit against McDonald’s for hot beverage warning labels. Does a reporter really need warning signs on the page, within the article, or perhaps even in order to figure out what time it is? The Forbes report suggests there were numerous references to 2002, including the URL, but the reporter clearly missed all of them. Unfortunately, once the bad data was filed it spread like a virus into markets and caused a melt-down for UAL shares.
This UAL disaster is similar to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. It is an excellent example of how powerful information technology has become, especially in terms of magnifying human errors — the Internet is always crowded.
A simple solution, such as checking the official UAL site, could have averted the disaster in security and fact-oriented populations. However the reality is that facts fly out the window when everyone starts running for the door. A more likely focus will instead be on how to criminalize or at least dissuade speech that is directed and likely to incite a technology riot.
In related news, Google has announced it is expanding search to historic newspapers…