According to Wired, Florida prison officials have blamed a computer glitch for unlocking all cell doors at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami in June. However, a surveillance video obtained by Miami Herald suggests that “the doors may have been opened intentionally.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mxhWVt–cQ

As you can see in the above video, two inmates “came out of their cells” as soon as the doors opened as if they were anticipating it to happen. Some inmates took the opportunity to attack other prisoners using homemade prison knives. One of the prisoners narrowly escaped the attack by jumping from the second floor, suffering “a broken ankle and fractured vertebrae in the fall”

Wired wrote:

Miami-Dade Corrections Director Tim Ryan acknowledged to the Herald that the circumstances around the door-release were “suspicious,” and said officials were investigating whether any staff members were responsible for opening the doors or if a problem lay with the computerised system that controls the doors.

This isn’t the first time such an incident has occurred.  This raises questions about whether a computer system could be trusted at a prison or other highly maintenance facilities. Perhaps, we aren’t quite ready for a computerized world where we only need our phones and an internet connection to unlock doors, and monitor our homes remotely. Maybe, we need to step back a little and do certain things by ourselves – hey we can’t always blame computers whenever something goes wrong.

[via Wired]