It was indeed very sureal. Everyone was calm and quiet, no crazy panicked mobs, just orderly, slow, methodical evacuation... Of course the first thing to go was cell phones, just from the sheer volume. I did manage one or two calls to loved ones. There was a smaller queue of people in Radio Shack snapping up every single radio they could find... others were going to grocery stores to get water and food, still others went to bars. It was so fucking surreal, I guess the shock of what happened hasn't sunk in my head yet, but I just can't stop watching CNN. I was listening to the radio all day, hoping for more bits of truth.... I was in the subway at the time it happened, going downtown. The train stopped and got turned around. I had no idea of what had happened. When the conductor announced that we were going back to 14th street, of course we asked questions, we were told "Go home, be happy you're alive!" Being in a shitty economy like this, I was seriously worried about being late due to another subway fuckup... I just barely got a job after three months of being weaned off the .com nipple... I didn't realize the severity of it, until I got above ground and saw the huge plume of smoke and the missing WTC towers... When I got out, people were just walking around aimlessly, then eventually they started heading north. I ran across a Radio Shack and managed to pick up a small shortwave so I could find out what had happened. I walked, and walked and walked, people saw I had a radio and asked what I heared, and I stopped at places turning it up letting them hear the news. Of course some of the glory sucking weasels on 770AM(?) WOR would try to twist things to make themselves look good. Some asshole reporter/dj/etc named "Ed" was dropping that he'd been in Vietnam, and how this is a tragedy, how he knew all along that Bush was going to go to the SAC base in Alabama(???) though he earlier said he thought Bush would go to a mil location in Fl, just being an annoying prick and not getting the news out but rather basking in the tragedy of it all.... What pisses me off is that these fuckers managed to hiijack four planes by using nothing but knives. How the fuck could a bunch of guys do that? Nobody fought back? Nobody charged at them? And the silliest of all things, now, they will heighten security further. Great. Didn't work before, certainly didn't work today. How do they expect metal detectors, silly questions such as "has your luggage been in your sight all day long", and id checks to prevent attacks like this propagated by suicidal religeous fanatical assholes? If they had any sense, they'd have everyone on the plane carry guns. The second anyone tried anything, everyone would be able to stop them in seconds. This attack was possibly the biggest "hack" of the century. The bastards lost very little. Used our own resources against us. Very effective. I'm very outraged at this - a bunch of guys with knives did this! I hope Bush has the balls to nuke'em back to the stone age! This is amazing. The NSA spends, what, $4.5 billion of our tax dollars a year? The CIA $2B? With all that surveilance, with all that heigtened security at airports, with all that sigintel and humintel, a bunch of rag heads with knives managed this! Why do these fuckers have a salary? Go ahead, turn the USA into fucking Cold War era Russia. Put face scanners everywhere. Give everyone travel visas to just pass from one town to another. Put metal detectors up our asses. Go ahead. But don't tell me you could have prevented something like this by doing so. Don't tell me your future lockdowns, curfrews, heigtened security checks, road blocks, id checks, or any of that would have, could have, or ever will prevent this sort of attack. Admit the truth oh dear government. You're useless. Sure, bring in the reserves, bring in the troops. All you can do with them is clean up the debris. Go ahead put destroyers in the east and hudson river. Fly F14's around Manhattan. It's still already too late for those that perished in WTC 1,2, and 7. It's not like the ragheads are likely to come flying migs to NYC and shoot missles or come by boat - if they had such resources at their disposal, they wouldn't have done it this way. Had you allowed us citizens concealed carry guns through airports, had even a small percentage of those on the downed airplanes carried guns, this would have never happened. But no, instead of arming us, you make us weaker, disarm us further and further, so that we can be even more vulnerable. You stupid fucking morons! What a waste! Hope someone got a clue from this, but I doubt it. Hope the Echelon engines pick this up, and someone, somewhere, with a bit of sense will wake up and get a clue. Don't disarm America! Let us arm ourselves. Do it for the children we will be able to protect from these nuts! Yes, you, Jeff Gordon, trolling for bits of info to find someone to drag into the courts for your perverse pleasure, you can make a real difference instead of wasting our money on mock trials of defenseless lunatics who write stupid manifestos. Suggest this to your handlers. Let us arm ourselves. Let us defend our country against these suicidal insane ragheads! And yes, that concludes my $0.02 of bitching and ranting. Sorry. I had to vent. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------ On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, dmolnar wrote:
I'm living in west village, which is mid-to-lower manhattan. No panic yet, streets are orderly and very sparsely populated, almost deserted. Everyone seems to have either gone home or found someplace to wait it out. Roads lower than about west 11th seem to be closed; St. Vincent's hospital seems to be taking injured (although I don't see too many coming in right now. I don't know if that's a bad sign).
My roommate tells me that the ferry line reaches 4 across from 53rd to 23rd...and back again.
I've heard speculation about curfew, martial law, etc. etc. Nothing like that has been confirmed AFAIK. Then again I've been avoiding the radio and TV for the last few hours.
As to whether cypherpunk technologies assisted in this tragedy -- please explain how anonymous remailers affect airport security? I am personally more worried about the lack of cryptography and system security.
I didn't learn about what happened until walking into work this morning. On the way up people were crying and the headlines in the elevator talked about FAA grounding all planes. I thought that the ATC computers had finally given up. What happens if in the next attack the terrorists take control of the ATC system?
-David