The Consequences of Glitches

On Consumerism
By Arthur Vidro
My then-landlord proudly showed me his new car. Why, it even had one of those newfangled car alarms, which back then (33 years ago) would continue for hours if nobody actively disengaged it. He was proud of his new alarm toy and wanted to demonstrate.

“If you say it has a loud alarm,” I said, “I believe you. I don’t need to hear –”

“No, no, don’t take my word. Go on. Touch my car.”

He was my landlord. I didn’t want to lose my apartment. So I touched his car.

WHHHR-WHHHR-WHHHR, screamed the car, making me wince and waking up anybody on the street who might have been napping, but delighting my landlord.

I gave him a thumbs-up and nodded with feigned enthusiasm. “Er, very impressive,” I said after he had turned off the noisemaker. “But what would happen if a squirrel jumped onto the car? Would the alarm go off?” A look of concern crossed his face. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he muttered. He retreated into the house to check his car manual for the intricacies of the alarm.

Like my landlord, we tend to be so dazzled with every new technology that we don’t pause to consider the ramifications and possible pitfalls.

One consequence of car alarms: I used to park my car on my landlord’s street, windows down, and not think twice. Sometimes, if it rained (and in the basement where I lived I seldom heard the rain falling), anonymous neighbors would open my car doors and crank up the windows.

But once alarms came along, everybody became too afraid to touch anyone else’s car. So this Good Samaritan neighborly gesture stopped. Now when it rained, my car seats got soaked.

The absence of car alarms made for better neighbors.

Another pitfall of technology is a little creature known as a “glitch.”

Newspapers in September 2020 reported that North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County incorrectly told nearly 7,000 residents they had tested positive for the coronavirus. Officials blamed the error on “a glitch.”

It’s so much easier to say “glitch” than “computer error” or “product flaw.” But how would you feel if you tested positive for COVID in those pre-vaccine days? And later found out it was all a mistake? Would you shrug it off as a mere glitch?

Some of us would be outraged. But we have been trained to accept any error, no matter how outrageous, if it is couched as “a glitch.”

In 2020, officials in Chicago blamed “a glitch” in the state’s new online system for processing unemployment benefits for having briefly made public the Social Security numbers and other private information of some applicants.

It’s so much easier to say “glitch” than “a design flaw that allowed a breach of security.” But how would you feel if you were one of those applicants whose details had been made available to the public?

Earlier this year, nearly 300 defendants were ordered released after a computer glitch prevented them from getting an initial court hearing within the time period required by state law, according to officials in Harris County, Texas.

So much easier to say “glitch” than “a major error in our criminal justice system.” But that’s not the only way so-called glitches interfere with the criminal justice system in Texas.

In August 2021, a man scheduled for trial on murder charges was instead granted release on bond after Dallas police revealed that material in his case might be among troves of data lost from its computer system. Authorities were racing to determine how many cases had evidence vanish in the 8-terabyte data loss.

So much easier to say “glitch” than “we relied on electronic storage, which in this case failed us miserably.” Evidence stored via methods from the 20th century (such as boxes or filing cabinets) might not have vanished.

Also, note that evidence stored physically, while subject to loss or theft or even fire, can’t be manipulated from a distance. Evidence stored electronically can be compromised by hackers operating from practically anywhere on the globe.

In September 2021, newspapers reported that auditors in Baltimore found glitches in Maryland’s cashless tolling infrastructure had overbilled motorists by thousands of dollars.

So much easier to say “glitch” than “a defective electronic infrastructure.” Also note that in the old days, when an attentive motorist was asked for too much money at a tollbooth, the motorist would realize the mistake right away. Not wait weeks or months before receiving the written bill.

Seems to me a “glitch” is a mistake that, if made by a human being would cost him or her their job; but if it’s made by a computer, we shrug it off casually and resume worshiping our electronic deities.