Look what we have to look forward to arriving back home when the National Identity Register comes online but, inevitably, doesn’t stay online:
Blindside : Blog Archive » Computer glitch at LAX strands 20,000 pax
… In brief: the immigration service computers crashed in the early afternoon so that incoming international passengers could not be processed – or at least, couldn’t be matched against the computerised lists of people with outstanding warrants for their arrest, known criminals and terrorists, and all those other weary, unwanted huddled masses. “You can’t just tell by looking at them,” says an immigration official quoted in the story. Yet, for many years until fairly recently that’s precisely how entry decisions were made.
There are a couple of big things here:
– a major airport’s complete inability to handle a computer crash (by all accounts, thousands of people spent 10-12 hours sitting on planes on runways waiting to be able to disembark, although as they had access to food, water, and bathrooms they may in fact have been better off than the unfortunates stuck in the crowded terminal). No back-up, no alternative.…
- the computer glitch arguably caused greater disruption than some terrorist threats.
….
And not just at the hallowed gates to Blighty, oh no. “Sorry your doctor can’t see you today as the ID Card System has gone down and we can’t tell that you’re not an illegal immigrant sponger.” “Access to your account has been denied : Connection to National Identity Register failed.” etc. etc.
