The Las Vegas Review Journal yesterday told the story of Wayne Dobson, a retiree living to the north of the city whose home is being fingered as harbouring lost cellphones thanks to a software bug at US telco Sprint which is giving out the wrong location of customer’s mobile devices.
While it appears funny at first the situation is quite serious for Mr Dobson as angry phone owners are showing up at his home to claim their lost mobiles back.
Making the situation even more serious is that 911 calls are being flagged at coming from his home and already he has had to deal with one police raid.
While the local cops have flagged this problem, it’s likely other agencies won’t know about this bug which exposes the home owner to some serious nastiness.
That a simple software bug can cause such risk to an innocent man illustrates why we need to be careful with what technology tells us – the computer is not always right.
Another aspect is our rush to judgement, we assume because a smartphone app indicates a lost mobile is in a house that everyone inside is a thief. That the app could be wrong, or we don’t understand the data to properly interpret it, doesn’t enter our minds. This is more a function of our tabloid way of thinking rather than any flaws in technology.
The whole Find My Phone phenomenon is an interesting experiment in our lack of understanding risk; not only is there a possibility of going to the wrong place but there’s also a strong chance that an angry middle class boy is going to find himself quickly out of his depth when confronted by a genuine armed thief.
For Wayne Dobson, we should pray that Sprint fixes this problem before he encounters a stupid, violent person. For the rest of us we should remember that the computer is not always right.