StoryCast '21: EP 21/21 The Y2K Prison Bug

Unreliable Witness | Storycast

Sky News

True Crime, News, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 728 Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2021

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The biggest, and very first story of the year 2000, involved a bug that was expected to impact tens of millions of lives all over the world.
But unlike the Covid-19 pandemic of today, The Millennium Bug, or Y2K for short, was a computer programming problem, with predicted Armageddon-like consequences.
In the months leading up to the year 2000, people feared the world was on the brink of disaster; that planes would fall from the sky, cardiac pacemakers would stop, and nuclear reactors would shut down. The problem was devastatingly simple - computers were never programmed to read dates beyond 31 December 1999. And the inability to do so, at 12-midnight on 1 January 2000, could lead to a global computer crash.
Governments around the world spent an estimated $500 billion trying to fix the problem.
Each individual nation had their own unique concerns.
In Russia, the military moved to protect the software that secured their nuclear weapons systems.
And in Western Australia, the Ministry of Justice feared an overly automated prison system would fail, allowing the opportunity for thousands of inmates and the state’s most dangerous prisoners, to escape.
So, they hired Matthew Hackling, a young, unassuming cyber security engineer, who was then dispatched to the state’s most notorious prisons.
Could Matthew win the race against time to prevent this millennium catastrophe?

In 2021, Sky News is marking some of the century’s biggest news events through the personal stories of lives defined by unforgettable moments from the last 21-years. The Y2K Prison Bug is episode 21 — and the final instalment of StoryCast ’21.

CREDITS:

The Y2K Prison Bug was written and produced by Rob Mulhern.
Recordings and original idea, by Tom Gillespie
with special thanks to Matthew Hackling.
Archive, Simon Windsor
TV treatment, Victoria Hudson-Grant
Digital, Tom Gillespie
Head of Radio, Sky News, Dave Terris
Design and graphics, Brian Gillingham
Social media, Sam Gould
Press and Marketing, Alexandra Horton
Email: [email protected]
For more on this story, visit www.skynews/storycast21
#StoryCast21

Transcript

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0:00.0	Battersea Power Station, Buckingham Palace. Just two of the stunning sites you'll see on your Cancer Research UK Shine Nightwalk in London on the 20th of September. But nothing will beat the sight of people coming together and beating cancer. One step at a time. Whether you're taking on the 10K route for a loved one or future generations, you'll be helping to power progress against cancer. Step up and sign up
0:22.7	at ShineWalk.org today to get 30% off your entry. Together we are beating cancer. T's and C's apply.
0:32.2	I'm Jane Secker and this is the last and final episode of Storycast 21.
0:38.3	When we set out to make this series, we asked our journalists and producers to share with us the one story they worked on,
0:46.3	which has stayed with them more than any other this century.
0:50.3	The responses were many and varied, and we took from these ideas to bring you a selection of personal stories from just some of the century's biggest news events.
1:01.0	But 21 years ago, as we readied ourselves for this new century, we found ourselves reporting on what was then expected to be the biggest story of our times.
1:13.6	Something not unlike the COVID-19 pandemic of today,
1:17.6	and that this story had the potential to impact everyone all across the world.
1:23.6	The very first story of 2000 revolved around what was then a worldwide effort to combat a global computer bug.
1:32.8	Episode 21 of Storycast 21 tells one man's story from that crisis.
1:39.5	This is the Y2K prison bug.
1:50.6	Music the Y2K prison bug. The so-called Year 2000 computer bug has generated fears that anything from nuclear missiles
1:56.6	to interbank trading systems could fail when 1999 turns into the year 2000.
2:04.1	My name is Rob Mulhern and I'm the series producer of Sky News Storycast.
2:10.9	Back in December 1999, people were pretty nervous about the dawn of a new millennium.
2:24.3	Experts had long been predicting that on the stroke of midnight, on the 1st of January 2000, the computers that managed not only our economies, but our lives, would fail.
2:32.3	The problem is systems thinking zero zero, the shorthand for 2000, is instead
2:39.0	1900.
2:41.0	Organisations have spent months and years aiming to avoid this.
2:45.0	No one had seemed taught to programme computers to recognise dates beyond the 31st of December 1999.
2:53.6	Often they thought it was 1980 or 1976 and sometimes the systems didn't handle that change very well at all and crashed.
	...

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