The dark side of flash-mobbing. War of the Worlds may be next.

Tech and telecommunications firms ghoulishly flog automated phone calling systems to the press after every school shooting.

Here (link and excerpt, below), we see the damage those systems can cause, by generating widespread public panic. Moms were told by a computer today that their grammar school kids had gone missing.

Excerpt:

2,100 automated calls wrongly tell Medford parents their children skipped school – Local News Updates – The Boston Globe
The blast of automated phone calls was accidentally sent at about 11 a.m. to parents of students of all ages. The system, which the school district has used for two years, alerts parents of their children’s attendance, emergencies, and other situations.

“It’s an excellent system, this was just a sequencing error,” said Roy Belson, the superintendent of schools. “We’re working on correcting any possibilities of that happening again.”

This emergency system gone wrong might remind you of another broadcast panic…

Update: The Globe reports one Medford, Mass. school went into lockdown after hearing from parents who received the emergency calls.

“The letter just said that ‘we found that many parents were getting these calls, so we followed our emergency lockdown plan,’ ” Jain said. “I think it was a way to keep a record of the students and the parents that were coming” to pick up children.

– Mark Baard