Digital Mayhem - a small taste

Caught this on Yahoo - a story about a digital TV box sending out what appeared to be a distress call at sea. Helecopters and rescue boats launched off Southern England's coast, trying to find the source of a 'distress signal', when it was actually eminating from a faulty digital tv box in Portsmouth.....think of the cost of that one mistake? (Apparently this is the second time a digibox has gone dodgy.)
What would happen if 'terrorists' or even genuine digital meltdown occured to create such things on a mass scale? Doesn't bear thinking about. I do hope the powers that be will be spending lots of time thinking about it though....of course, going on the complete lack of forward thinking in areas such as file sharing or digital security, I somehow get the feeling that no-one has thought about it at all.

The really funny thing was, while the box was busy calling out thousands of pounds worth of rescue technology and resources, the woman who owned the box was out at the cinema. A truly brilliant real life advert for digital television.