From:Norberto Neves< NN1977@gmail.com>
To: <liferescue_support@aapp.gov.pt>
Subject: Life Rescue Software – My experience
To anyone reading this and/or in charge of the maintainance and development of the Life Rescue software:
I imagine you get emails like this all the time, but I think my experience with your software might still be relevant, and I know it wouldn’t sit well with my conscience if I didn’t send it. So I’ll try to tell my story in the briefest possible way.
Until about a month ago, I barely knew about your product. I just heard it mentioned on some news report, and I memorized little more than “software created to find people in suicide risk through the monitoring of social networks”. I didn’t even get the name. I was like “oh look, another thing to control our whole lives”, and aside from making a Facebook post (automatically reproduced in Twitter and Google +) somewhat representative of that thought, I never thought about it again.
But one night, I was home alone finishing an overdue project, when I heard a loud noise coming from the front door. Before I had time to get up and see what happened, six or seven men barged into my office, some with paramedics vests, others in police uniforms, and all alarmed. No more alarmed than I was, mind you.
I asked what on earth where they doing there, and they told me to relax, that everything would be alright. I started to lose my patience, demanded to know what they wanted, threatened to sue them, swore that someone was going to pay for the damage to my door (which they broke to get in), etc.. One of them explained to me that they came to stop me from commiting suicide, because according to what the Life Rescue software found on one of the social networks I use, I was in danger of killing myself.
I assured them that was completely ridiculous, that what I really wanted was for them to leave me alone so I could get back to work. We argued back and forth, but the truth is that the argument was of little content, so I don’t think it’s worth replicating it here. Suffice it to say, it took me ten minutes to convince them that I wasn’t in any risk.
Then I made an assessment of the damages to my door, and proceeded to curse and insult yourselves in every way I could think of.
Regardless of the broken door (which it could still be shut, thankfully), my life went on with nothing especially noteworthy, until less than a week later, I stopped working to talk to my ex-girlfriend on the phone, at which point I heard the same noise on the door, although this time it was less loud because the door gave in much easier.
There was less people, but all of the present had been there before, and the scene wasn’t much different from the previous one, although shorter.
When I returned to the call with my ex, I told her the whole story, and she confessed that when I dropped the phone to deal with the invaders, she could only hear indistinguishable noises, and got very worried.
The next day, I used one of my coffee breaks at work to go back to Facebook and Twitter, trying to figure out what was triggering Life Rescue, and the only thing I could find was an old post on both networks about a soccer game that I watched at home while doing some less crucial work, in which Benfica was unfairly beaten. The post read, “this is going so badly, we might as well just shoot ourselves in the head.”
Let it be clear: this was only a disappointed Benfica fan, who had no one around to hear him, letting off steam.
Regardless, it seemed to be the only possible reason for two well intentioned break-ins, so I deleted the post on both networks , and tried not to think of the matter again (even though I still waited for replies from the Police, the Paramedics and yourselves concerning the reimbursement I am due from to the damage to my door).
