9/11 tragedy pager intercepts | Hacker News Reader

9/11 tragedy pager intercepts

911.wikileaks.org

135 pointstchalla144 comments

Each successive anniversary of 9/11 is a reminder to us that we need to get over it, we should have gotten over it long ago, those who planned the act triumph more greatly with each year that passes with us not getting over it, and if we don't get over it soon, it will be too late to ever gain back the liberties and freedoms so cheaply given away on that day.

Just imagine if we were in the late 1950s, and still obsessed with defeating the Nazis, and remaking our entire society to protect against the threat from Hitler.

That's where we are today in America. That's how pathetic we are.

I really agree. The irony is that this 'attack on freedom' was responded to with freedom being curtailed.

I also find the contrast with Norway's response to the 2011 massacre quite interesting (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07/comparing-how-...).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY"

Except the Norway massacre is completely dissimilar to 9/11.

Brevik was a lone weirdo. He didn't have a base and support in other countries. He didn't have an army of thousands backing him up.

>He didn't have a base and support in other countries. He didn't have an army of thousands backing him up.

The Norway massacre is dissimilar, but these points here are the same. There is no, and never was a "global terrorist network". That's all fantasy to sell more useless war to american citizens.

Well, yes and no. There is certainly no "global terrorist network" as put forward by some with, as you suggest, a hidden agenda, a vast network of those "out to get" the USA.

But there was and is global co-operation between terrorist groups, which is why sometimes IRA members turn up in Colombia[1], and there is a definite link between global organised crime and terrorism (whether it be ETA buying guns from the mafia or FARC being funded by cocaine exports).

The fantasy really is the belief by many in the US that terrorism equates to a hatred of America, which in reality is not the case.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia_Three

Well, it's not like a recognised army, more like a franchise operation.

But there were disparate terrorist organisations that co-operated and co-ordinated. Both with each other and with rogue states.

AFAIK, Brevik co-ordinated only with himself.

Well said.

Nazis were defeated as such, so there was no way to have them as some sort of 'imaginary enemy'. So failing that govt invented another one - USSR. And that worked both ways, US was such an enemy from the USSR's point of view. USSR collapsed (an event, just like defeating Nazis) - time to look for another 'imaginary enemy'. Since it was hard to use a country this time, let's pick something less tangible - terrorist organisations. This can't be easily defeated, and also allows to 'attack' countries that supposedly are home for such 'terrorists'.

Just my POV into all this. And I'm not picking on US, it's just that it's most prominent there...

hmm you probably couldn't be faulted about thinking that all this was imaginary until you get a grenade thrown at you - I was part of an NGO team in Kabul, Afghanistan that was targeted by a grenade thrown from a motorcycle (tandem) that providentially didn't explode.

But the presence of violence in Afghanistan is not evidence of a broader existential threat or a globally organised campaign. Its evidence of a country that has had decades of war and death. This [1] survey suggests that many Afghans don't even know about 9/11. What threat are these people to the USA?

[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/19/think-tank-afghans-don...

And how is that an example of terrorism? By your own admission you were in Kabul, Afghanistan, a country that neither called for nor welcomes the U.S., it was an invasion. I would expect hostile action in an invaded territory (unless you were a muslim NGO, in which case I'd retract).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan#Invasi...

"Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism

Exactly. This is the thing that frustrates me the most about the reporting about Iraq and Afgan wars: anyone who fights back is part of the terrorist organization. I imagine if Russia plopped down bases, artillery, tanks and so on on american soil, citizens would probably attack them in the hopes of driving them out. That's not terrorism, that's defending your country from an unwanted foreign invader. Some might say that's the duty of any able bodied citizen.

How exactly was the USSR "imaginary"? And how was it invented by "govt"? Do you mean the US government? Please try to formulate your thoughts more clearly, and please study history more carefully before proposing sweeping theories.

I'm not saying that USSR was imaginary (I was born there). I'm saying that USSR as an enemy to US was more or less 'imaginary'. (Same goes the other direction as well, BTW). Did USSR attack US on a massive scale, and on US soil? Like Germany attacked Poland during WW2? Was the threat as real as it was being presented to the masses?

"Did USSR attack US on a massive scale, and on US soil?"

No, they did not. But is that because the USSR was never a threat? Or, was it because the US correctly assessed the USSR's threat and planned accordingly? I won't say that the M.A.D. deterrence strategy was the correct strategy, but I think it would be silly to say that there never was a threat of global war. There certainly were moments where that almost happened. It's worth noting that while both the US and USSR drew up battle plans for potential war, only the USSR had a preemptive strike as a key part of its primary plan.

>Or, was it because the US correctly assessed the USSR's threat and planned accordingly?

Absolutely not. Read/watch some Noam Chomsky and/or various BBC documentaries like "The power of nightmares". The USSR was falling apart. Yes, they had nukes and could have nuked us but the threat was vastly overblown precisely for the reason the GP states: to give us a boogy man to be scared of.

The USSR was falling apart in the 1960's during the Cuban missile crisis? I've actually studied the downfall of the Soviet Union and the notion that it fell apart simply because of economic or political pressures is rather simplistic.

The problem with the USSR over it's entire existence is that it had trouble maintaining legitimacy. The Communist Party effectively ruled the country but it's legitimacy was derived from revolutionary nature. The further the Party strayed from the promotion of world-wide Communism, its entire modus operandi, the more clear it became that it actually ruled for itself.

With this in mind, the Communist Party had to maintain a state of constant belligerence with the United States and the Western world and had to promote international Communism with every chance it got. International Communism had to be its end game and this entailed, ultimately, war with America.

When Gorbachev took control and softened relations with the United States, as well as shifted control of the country from the Party to the Government, he actually weakened his right to rule and that is one of the many reasons he was ultimately deposed.

While it is certainly true American politicians used the Cold War for political ends, It's simply not true that the Soviet Union was no threat, or that the threat was even vastly overblown. The documentary you mention is comical in that is is both fear mongering and condemning fear mongering.

A country with nukes which is falling apart seems scarier, to me, than a country with nukes which is not falling apart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov suggests that they did come very close to nuking the US. Is this what you call a "vastly overblown" threat?

It wasn't to give us a boogy man, it was just that the whackjobs that thought the USSR was a huge boogyman (before we turned it into one) were listened to. There's a decent section on this in the book Drift.

Many people wanted the US and UK to drop nuclear bombs on Russia shortly after WWII. That was a real threat to the Soviet Union.

See, for example, Bertram Russell

> "If the whole world outside of Russia were to insist upon international control of atomic energy to the point of going to war on this issue, it is highly probable that the Soviet government would give way on this issue. If it did not, then if the issue were forced in the next year or two, only one side would have atomic bombs, and the war might be so short as not to involve utter ruin."

The US had plans for sudden nuclear attack against the USSR. (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/To_Win_a_Nuclear_War.h...)

The US government in the 50s and 60s wildly overstated the strategic threat from the USSR to the United States, notably the infamous bomber and missile gaps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

Ironic that we bitch out the government taking our liberties while we pour over the personal correspondence of the victims of a tragedy.

Democracy is a mirror. If you don't like what you see, start by changing yourself. If privacy is important to you, then don't read the personal pager messages (illegally obtained?) just because they are posted on the internet and everyone else is doing it.

It's not personal if you broadcast it unencrypted more than a few meters, sorry.

Yes, it is. If someone leaves their journal lying in a coffee shope, I won't read it. If my neighbor leaves their Wi-Fi open, I won't hack it. If someone is talking a few meters away, I won't use eavesdropping device to listen to them, and if someone sends an unencrypted communication, I won't read it just because I have the technical ability to do so.

May I am slightly mixing my definition of personal with private, but where is the respect for other people?

"It's not personal if you broadcast it unencrypted" is the same line of thought as "she was asking to get raped". Just my opinion.

With those ethics you would have a problem working for a 3 letter agency.

>If someone leaves their journal lying in a coffee shop

Not even remotely near the same thing. Can we agree to stop making crappy physical analogies, please?

> If my neighbor leaves their Wi-Fi open, I won't hack it.

It's not "hacking" (or even a little bit unethical) to associate to an open AP - it amounts to an advertisement of a free service available. Really you're not crossing any creeper lines there unless you start rifling through the other computers connected to that AP.

"Not even remotely near the same thing. Can we agree to stop making crappy physical analogies, please?"

No, that is exactly the same thing. Private correspondence has the expectation of being private. Just because you have the technical ability to do something, doesn't mean you should.

> it amounts to an advertisement of a free service available

No it doesn't. Especially if it's unintentional.

>No it doesn't

Yes it does. See how easily something can be refuted when it isn't backed up?

You might have an argument if it's unintentional, though.

Others have opined that unencrypted radio broadcasts can't reasonably be considered private (they're certainly way less inherently private than words written on paper in my view), but I would add that the magnitude of the attack gives us a greater right to read them.

(The same way we typically don't feel guilty about reading Anne Frank's private diaries following the Nazi atrocities and her death in a concentration camp.)

I don't think you can directly compare Hitler and the Nazis with an amorphous terrorist organisation.

It was pretty easy to tell when Nazi Germany was defeated - formal surrender, Hitler shoots himself etc. How do you tell if AQ and its various offshoots have been defeated?

It is my hope that sometime in the future, when we finally go 5 or more years without an attack, some of these restrictions will be rolled back.

>How do you tell if AQ and its various offshoots have been defeated?

Well, how do you tell they exist at all? Because some government that's taking your rights claim they do. Yes, some actual terrorists did 911. And since then? Nothing. The only "evidence" we have of any activity at all are some clear entrapment cases by the FBI. If there really are active terrorists groups trying to attack the US why are the only cases we actually hear about clearly entrapment?

> And since then? Nothing.

I think there are some Londoners who might contest that.

Nothing against the US by these supposed "haters of our freedom".

Fort Hood Massacre?

A lone crazy person. This is the exact kind of "omg they're EVERYWHERE!" thinking that's turning the US into a police state.

If the contention that an international organisation has been deconstructed, or never existed, it barely matters where a subsequent attack actually takes place.

>Well, how do you tell they exist at all?

The videos of their figurehead? The word of various countries involved? The guys which have been caught red handed trying to pull off something? (Hardly "entrapment".. need I mention the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber? Both were AQ operatives)

Also, please learn what "entrapment" means. It doesn't mean what you think it means.. for absolute starters, entrapment is when you convince someone to commit a crime they otherwise would not have.

>The videos of their figurehead?

You mean the videos where he said he had nothing to do with 911? Or you mean the ones that were globally criticized for appearing doctored?

>need I mention the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber? Both were AQ operatives)

Haha! Exactly my point. The "shoe bomber" was a lunatic who worked with one other person and claimed to be working with AQ. I bet anyone who the CIA would actually classify as AQ never heard of this guy before his silly little stunt.

>Also, please learn what "entrapment" means.

I know very well what it means. Have you not been paying attention? The FBI has brought up two cases where they "caught" someone who was carrying out the FBI's plan with the FBI's materials and money after the FBI convinced them to do it. There is no reason to believe they would have done anything without the FBI's prodding.

December 7th - "A day that will live in infamy"

February 15th - "Remember the Maine"

We will get over when the next surprise attack happens

I'm not sure I follow, what's pathetic about remembering the past? I still see stories about Columbine, VT shootings, and 9/11. Today is 9/11, what'd you expect? My children will undoubtedly learn about 9/11 and probably be reminded on 9/11s of the future. There's nothing wrong with this, it's called history.

I disagree that "the terrorists won". If you actually look at what Osama claimed as the reason in his videos, "all" they wanted is for the USA/foreign forces to get off their land (oh, and for Israel to not exist anymore). It was never an "attack on our freedom".

In the end, everybody lost(except for the military industrial complex): Americans lost freedoms, and quite a few more foreign forces entered the Arabic countries.

True, but they won a small victory: now we get a little taste of what we've made life to be for them. It's small compared to what they go through but it's much more than it was in the past.

"It was never an attack on our freedom." You only believe that because you are not listening to what they are saying to you.

Here is the full text of Osama Bin Laden's letter to America:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

And here is a choice extract that totally contradicts your erroneous belief.

"(Q2) [...] what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God [...] of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to [...] Muhammad...

...It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme."

Him and his kind want to impose a theocracy on the entire world. Under the rules of jihad (outlined in the Koran), once they call you to islam and you refuse to take up islam, they have the right to kill you. http://islamqa.info/en/ref/43087

They are not just opposed to America, but also to buddhism, hinduism and African pagan religions (hence they ran a trade in Black African slaves for 1300 years). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora... The 1951 UN report on slavery documented that 5% of the population of Saudi Arabia and Yemen were slaves. That is almost 100 years after the US fought the Civil War. Non-muslim black Africans are still being taken as slaves in Mauritania and Sudan (which is why the non-muslim south of Sudan seceded from the muslim north last year). Baroness Cox of Britain is still going to Sudan to buy slaves in order to free them. http://groupspaces.com/humanitariancentre/item/205497 Books on sharia law say that slavery is legal under islam.

Over 5,000 buddhists in southern Thailand have been slaughtered by muslim extremists in the past 8 years. That dwarfs the deaths in the WTC, but you probably haven't heard of it.

Bin Laden's letter to America offers up Palestine as a pretext. But his kind have said they plan to take back Spain for islam (it was occupied by jihadis for 700 years, don't you know). It also explains the civil war in Sudan, and the massacres in Thailand. The jihad is also going on in Nigeria, Mali, and Kenya.

It is eurocentric arrogance to ignore what the muslim extremists are telling you they want.

By all means get on with your life, but don't deceive yourself about what they want.

Just to put the events into perspective:

Number of people who died due to Hitler: ~50,000,000

Number of people who died due to terrorist attacks in the US: ~3000

Number of people who die in a car accident in the US EVERY YEAR: ~40,000

Number of children who can be saved EVERY YEAR by bringing US infant mortality rate down to Slovenia's or Czech Republic's (!!) level: ~11,000

How many lives could be saved by directing anti-terrorist organization's funding towards preventing car accidents or other preventable causes of death?

"How many lives could be saved by directing anti-terrorist organization's funding towards preventing car accidents or other preventable causes of death?"

Yeah, but it's harder for the government to spy and control you using infant mortality or traffic safety as an excuse. And using tax dollars for improving infant mortality is socialism, while using tax dollars to grab your balls is patriotism.

Unfortunately, it's not about how many lives can be saved. It's about how many dollars can be gained.

Number of people who died due to military attacks in Afghanistan : nobody knows.

At least 40 000, officially, but "we don't count".

Seems legit.

But we have gotten over it. Getting over it does not mean you forget the people who lost their lives in the tragedy. It means you rebuild and continue to focus on other things that are important to the time or era you live in. I'm reminded of this every morning, when i look out my window and see the new tower standing tall. And if you've heard the debates our presidential candidates are having lately, terrorism is barely mentioned, the focus is on the economy, deficits, etc.

We have? So I can fly back to the US now without having to worry about TSA grabbing my ballsack or blasting me with untested X-ray machines? The patriot act is gone? NDAA?

The US hasn't remotely gotten over it. Long after the orchestrators of 911 have forgotten all about it (or died), politicians in the US will be dreaming up some new way that a terrorist could potentially, theoretically, possibly, attack us and passing laws to stop it.

Getting over it also doesn't mean forgoing security measures. I travel fairly frequently. Instead of speaking theoretically, ask yourself how many times has the TSA really pulled you aside, and how has the patriot act actually changed your day to day living? For the vast majority of people, it's probably not much. I will admit that security lines can be long, so you have to get to the airport a little earlier, but that's a minor inconvenience. I find the x-ray machines to be better than the prior machines that were used, but I cannot comment on whether or not they have been "tested".

Actually, flying since 911 is a nightmare. We used to travel back to the US every year to visit my family. Since 911 I've flown back twice and decided against doing it anymore. I actually get pulled aside every time because i have a "common name". No hint at how I can avoid this happening every time, just sit in a room watching people be humiliated for two hours until they call my name and say "you have a common name".

The new x-ray machines are not even as good as the machines they had previously. Who are you listening to to think that? If you listen to actual security experts (none of which are working for TSA) they'll tell you that this is security "theater". The security is not even slightly better than it was pre-911. It's just now massively inconvenient.

And you find getting to the airport earlier is a "minor" inconvenience? Having to get to an hour flight more than an hour earlier? I.e. the waiting time being longer than the flight itself and the entire travel time being close to what it would take to drive is an "minor" inconvenience? What would constitute a major inconvenience?

No, TSA costs a lot of money, creates a huge amount of inconvenience and provides no extra security. A complete and utter failure and only done so we can feel like we're "doing something". We didn't need to do anything. There have only been two attempts since then and both attackers (a) got through the heightened security anyway and (b) failed due to their own incompetence.

Maybe this depends on where you live in the country, but in my area, it's much more about remembering the victims than it is about remembering how we need to bring Al Qaeda to justice.

I don't see what the problem is with remembrance of the dead.

Then why is there a national remembrance of these 3000 dead people and not of the two million other people who died in the US in 2001?

You're not wrong, but gaining back the liberties that, on that day and over the years since, were so cheaply traded away by a cowed and ignorant populace for the idiotic bluster and security theater offered by the worst US president in living memory and his minders and masters... well, that is going to take more than "getting over it".

It would take a massive and concerted exertion of power, by an informed and engaged citizenry, and would probably be every bit as hard as (if not harder than) winning those freedoms was in the first place.

In other words, there's not much evidence to suggest that it will ever happen. Will America ever again see the levels of individual liberty and respect for the rule of law as the America I was born into a few decades ago? (Personally, I still hope, and still vote(!), but I also left the USA in 2004...)

Where did you go? Is it better (i) for civil liberties overall (ii) overall overall?

I don't think we (and I use "we" because I believe it was not at attack only against the US, but one against some values our Western civilization is based upon) should ever forget it.

But I agree we should learn from it, pay attention to our own reactions and realize this is not a war on terror, but a war on intolerance.

Soft power is key here. It's sad I don't see it being employed enough. Plus, it's a lot cheaper than invading a country.

Totally agree ... great post along those same lines here: http://joethepeacock.blogspot.com/2012/09/9112012.html

"I think that many (too many) people feel that, if you don't stop and make a public display of paying tribute, you don't care. And God forbid you don't care about a tragedy, lest you be thought of as a heartless bastard. It's like all these personal moments are made public simply so we don't look bad in public about our personal feelings.

At this point, we are past the grieving stage. We are not grieving as a nation. We are now posturing; making a presentation for the sole purpose of avoiding the appearance of not caring."

2001-09-11 08:46:46 Arch [1612975] D ALPHA PAGE FROM lifeline: alert 8933585 ETS appl nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com ETS RTCE: - Market data inconsistent...Cantor API problem Trading system offline on nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com, run by etsuser on nbetpsd27, pid = 24277

"The hijackers flew the plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m."

"Cantor Fitzgerald was formerly based in the World Trade Center and was the company hardest hit by the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed all 658 of its employees who were in the office at the time (out of 960 who were based there)."

First signs of trouble was a financial trading API.

These were kicking around some time after it happened. I remember reading the first Cantor network failure messages then - they brought the tragedy home to me more than the TV images and statistics had.

They made it human - I could imagine an event, at one of the buildings I'd worked at, wiping out an entire floor - everyone in it and everything connected to it - left me cold and reading it again now I feel just the same.

It's odd that a bot saying "Network Failure" really brings it home more than live images etc. Maybe it's because we are very technically oriented individuals, or is it a wider thing?

Pictures of faces and buildings with which we aren't acquainted likely remain abstract to most people; however, a remote system that was directly related to a person's daily work is something concrete. It doesn't take much of an imagination to go from that server disappearing to realizing that the people who maintain it's various elements are gone as well.

Not surprising really - out of all the systems humans run - the ones most ready for disaster generally are finance, power and telecommunications. This is just because all these systems need ~100% up time with no QOS degradation while needing to deal with massive variability in use (extremely elastic and subject to thundering herds).

  % grep -ic "love you" messages_all.txt 
  964

  % grep -ic "hate you" messages_all.txt
  2

    m-x list-matching-lines "reboot nt"
    7303 matches for `reboot nt`

In case anyone was wondering what the "hate you" messages are:

2001-09-11 22:00:36 Arch [1050490] C ALPHA ||we love you...the event mkt team..not sp..we hate you...|58

2001-09-11 15:42:56 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA I HATE you!!!!

005351897's conversation seemed to be the only one that seemed like a genuine expression of hate, but reading through the whole conversation it seems to be meant in jest, and a monologue about a horoscope:

2001-09-11 09:00:55 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA GEMINI: It's now time to decide where you want to take your affairs of the heart. The sky is the limit, if you so desire. Hmmmm....sounds promising!

2001-09-11 09:02:40 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA GEMINI: It seems that others are to

2001-09-11 09:02:42 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA o self-absorbed to fully appreciate what you have to offer...how appropriate.

2001-09-11 14:12:41 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA GEMINI: Selfish thoughts intrude Tuesday through Thursday as y

2001-09-11 14:12:42 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA ou focus almost exclusively on what you want and are quite vocal in your displeasure when you don't get it.

2001-09-11 15:42:56 Skytel [005351897] C ALPHA I HATE you!!!!

Huh, I kept reading through other conversations. One person was angrily breaking up with someone via pager, but had their anger turn to remorse and desperation when they heard the news, only for the anger and frustration to return when they knew their ex was okay.

I think the easiest way to sift through the text is by searching for specific words or phrases.

"scared"

2001-09-11 09:46:48 Skytel [002384252] D ALPHA on. The White House has been evacuated. I'm scared do you know what's going on? Robin

2001-09-11 09:49:14 Skytel [007558008] C ALPHA Michelle.Becker@moody.edu|Call me babe if you can I'm so scared!| Michelle Solar Becker Department Manager, Donor Communications Moody Bible Institute 820 N.

2001-09-11 10:13:10 Arch [0910241] A ALPHA ||i'm home there is lots of smoke outside of my window i can't see anything or use my phone i'm really scared please get help HHeller,IBSG-Cisco|144

2001-09-11 10:38:59 Arch [0949322] C ALPHA jebritt|I AM VERY SCARED ANNE ... PLEASE COME HOME NOW CALL ME

"love you"

2001-09-11 09:23:40 Arch [1008791] B ALPHA 08-GETTING REALLY NERVOUS. PLS CALL TO LET ME KNOW YOU'RE SAFE. I LOVE YOU.

2001-09-11 09:28:48 Arch [0939758] D ALPHA 58-THANK GOD YOU ARE SAFE. PLEASE CALL ME. I LOVE YOU, TERRY.

2001-09-11 09:32:37 Skytel [005062181] B ALPHA PLEASE CALL ME AND LET ME KNOW YOUR OK, I AM AT HOME. I LOVE YOU. SUNSHINE 908 806 6384

BTW this is from 3 years ago.

I know it's 9/11 but does this really need to be posted again?

I did not come on HN 3 years ago, so yes, relevant for a number of users (and the majority, probably) since HN has grown significantly over the past few years.

Maybe we should go through the entire backlog and repost all of HN on an annual basis!

The good stuff does get reposted every couple years. I can't say I really mind.

Did you read the news 3 years ago? This was all over the news back then.

There are other news sources besides HN......

NOpe, I do not remember seeing this 3 years ago. I must have missed it somehow. I do not really understand the issue with having a story in top 30 that does not interest you, however. Do you have to click on all of them to feel happy and content, or having one you have already seen before ruins your day ? :)

Besides, the same news viewed 3 years, 5 years, 10 years down the road is not the same news per se, because it gains a different perspective over time. I believe it is valuable.

It's pretty easy for a story to be on the front page for a while, get thoroughly discussed, then drop off before you see it, especially if you're, you know, hacking.

In general I don't mind it. But in this specific case there is nothing interesting here.

How many readers are actually going to download and analyze the entire set?

And even the news media couldn't really find anything all that interesting here, and resorted to making stories out of the pager messages.

If you would like to run the maybe-don't-click-on-stuff-you've-seen-before-or-are-not-interested-in tutorial press the Hacker News logo to continue.

Misleading title - these are pager intercepts (people still use pagers? Who knew?)

Text messages would commonly be referring to SMS for mobile phones.

You'd be surprised how many companies still use pagers for oncall alerts. After all, they're cheap, the batteries last a long time, the coverage can often be better than a cell phone, and most importantly you won't accidentally silence your pager when you silence your cell.

The biggest reason to use pagers over SMS: pagers have a guarantee for arrival by the service provider - if the device is on at the other end it will get through. SMSes have no such guarantees.

We're talking about 11 years ago.

on another note, here's a random message from the files:

|whats up listen tomorrow let me go alone to overnite ok its not cause i dont want you to go is that i need to think about somethings that i need to clear my mind dont get mad or trip i need to do this fo

Is it me or this is wrong? It cheapens whatever mission Wikileaks had. I do not want my private messages broadcast all over the world, especially when I'm a private citizen.

>I do not want my private messages broadcast all over the world, especially when I'm a private citizen.

Then maybe it's not a good idea to send them unencrypted over the air.

Only, because I send something over an unsecure channel, does not give anybody the right to repost it publicly for the whole wide world to see. Even, if (as a coincidence) something as awful happens, as 9/11.

Sorry, but I have to agree with the parent post. Your argument could also be:

> Then maybe it's not a good idea to send them unencrypted over the air.

Even, if the channel is insecure, people used it, believing, that the private messages they sent, were/are/will be private.

I am living in Germany and I really would hate to see, if every postcard ever sent would be there for the whole wide world to see.

Yes: Unencrypted, unsecure, open, readable as a channel, but non the less protected by privacy-law.

People that want their messages private should be minimally aware of the technology they're using to transmit said messages.

Nobody has a reasonable expectation of privacy when sending a postcard, and that's a decent analogy to email and other communications mediums - even HTTP for that matter. Unfortunately, because technology (or, I suppose, the protocols that power it) tends to mask that, most people just make incorrect assumptions.

No, people should not have to make these assumptions or do research into this. That's why it's important for us to design secure tools. Users assume stuff is secure, so it's our duty to ensure their assumptions are true. Let's not give people a false sense of security.

Nobody has a reasonable expectation of privacy when sending a postcard

Expectation of privacy isn't boolean. There's a big difference from a few postal offices reading it and it being published online (which, at least here, would be illegal).

I agree with this entirely. Two guys standing in line at a concession at a crowded football stadium talking might have no strict expectation of privacy, but they might have an expectation of privacy from a particular audience (hypothetically, let's say their wives). When you record their conversion, you are not violating their expectations of privacy, because many people could have heard that conversion. However, were you to broadcast the recording, at that point you have violated the assumptions they thought the privacy was affording them. Some of the hackers here would argue that they shouldn't speak in plain English, but should always speak to other humans in an encrypted spoken language and because they didn't do that they deserve no privacy for speaking in English.

I would disagree with those people.

When I talk to my wife or mother or boss over the phone, I just pick it up and talk. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy, and even if I was as smart as you to know how to encrypt things, 99% of people wouldn't know how to. So my point still stands.

Lives can be ruined by exposing private messages, website visited etc., so Wikileaks dropped a lot of notches in my opinion.

On 9/11 I was working for Citigroup in the UK. One of the other services that was working was Blackberry emails.

I remember my team getting an email from a NY employee (who was based at 7WTC) to our group email address asking us to call his wife and tell him he was safe.

There seems to be some really personal stuff in there. Isn't this a huge violation of privacy or am I missing something? Any difference between wikileaks making something like this public and the British tabloids hacking peoples phones?

It's not a violation of privacy if it's leaked by a leftist, it's an inspiring revolution!

I'm pretty sure pagers have the same expectation of privacy as HAM radio. Which is to say very little.

"The following are national US pager intercepts..."

Can someone explain what that means? This is pager data and not sms txt data, correct?

Pager data is generally unencrypted and simply broadcast over the entire coverage area, so anyone with the proper equipment (read: a hacked up pager) can receive any pages broadcast nearby.

2001-09-11 15:12:50 Metrocall [002287221] B ALPHA Frm: Mailer@i3mobile.com Sub: News Txt: .>Pentagon also hit by plane. - Brought to you by Wireless Week and i3 Mobile.

I guess it was not Osama after all.

http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-09_05_200...

Seems to be the most action-packed one..

2001-09-11 03:38:34 Skytel [005105954] A ALPHA CALL MY CELL PHONE INSTEAD OF MY HOUSE PHONE CAUSE I DON'T WANT IT TO RING, AND CRYSTALS BEEN GOING AROUND SAYING STUFF ABOUT YOU AND ME. I LOVE YOU.

grep "help me" ...

    2001-09-12 02:47:34 Arch [0282461] D  ALPHA  |help me moans! |Monie, AFC is bombed.. i am covered with debris ..underground..only my one hand is free to type... aaah... jordan hall also bombed...aaaah

Also, grep usss.treas.gov is really interesting.. Secret Services messages?

Edit 2: Here's a pastebin of all the SS messages apparently: http://pastebin.com/ZhNEtT2Q

It's surprising the Secret Service would use unencrypted pagers...

They have pagers for emergency communications and for broadcast (one to many) communications.

Seriously?

Does anyone else feel like this is a massive invasion of privacy? How does this help anyone wikileaks?

Interesting. A simple analysis shows that first and second most common words are "call" and "please".

"evacuated" is mentioned 4758 times (22nd place) "terrorist" is mentioned 3505 times (48th place) "fire" is mentioned 2176 times (96th place) "love" is mentioned 1671 times (128th place) "john" is mentioned 1393 times (175th place) "alive" is mentioned 187 times "shit" is mentioned 41 times

See top 500 here: http://pastebin.com/Fs6nMyJm

World War 3 was mentioned because it was unclear what was going on. I remember myself thinking that if anyone overreacts, things can go from bad to worse. And if that triggers an overreaction response - things could escalate on its own.

There's so much junk in there. Frustrating to look through.

Not to hijack this thread...but as a non-believer in conspiracies, I was recently discussing with someone about whether or not the towers fell at 9.8m/s.

The claim is that it was 'measured', and determined that both towers fell at close to that rate.

The implication being that a 'non-intentional' demolition of the towers could not have caused them to fall at close to the standard rate of bodies in free fall.

I would love to hear some thoughts on this theory.

a 'non-intentional' demolition of the towers could not have caused them to fall at close to the standard rate of bodies in free fall.

Before you even bother with the claim you are curious about, I suggest you substantiate this particular piece.

Well...the theory goes that if an intentional demolotion can only cause a building to fall close-ish to the 9.8m/s, then a 'non-intentional' collapse surely must be slower.

That doesn't even make sense. What does gravity care for intent?

in case of intentional demolition there are explosive at all levels they blow up and speed up the demolition. So when the airplane hit the building, it should had taken more time than when using explosives, or airplane + explosives.

The energy contained in that much mass falling down is far FAR more than any explosive (more than what would be using to bring down a building anyway).

Each story had about 480MJ worth of energy. That's equivalent to about 1/10 of a ton of TNT. That's each story falling just one floor mind you. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281500000+tons+%2F+110...

For the North tower that's 120 floor equivalents as the 15 floors fell, about 12 tons of TNT.

For the entire tower that's 700 tons of TNT (assuming the mass of the tower is distributed evenly, which it isn't, but it's still a huge amount of energy).

Can you explain this please?

Where did you get the 15000000 tons figure from.

Also..what relation does 480MJ of energy have on the rate at which the building would have collapsed?

Are you debunking the theory that it was explosives, or supporting it?

From here: http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/wtc/about/facts.html That's the weight of the entire tower.

I'm saying that there is more energy in simply the tower falling than there would be in any explosive. So it would not fall any faster with an explosive - there already is much more energy there than needed.

Hrmm....that's an interesting conclusion.

How are you sure that they wouldn't be able to use "more than enough" explosives though? 1/10 of a ton of TNT on each floor, sounds like a lot...but doesn't sound like an enormous amount.

Can you put that in terms that a layman may understand?

Thanks.

P.S. I would love more details, so that I can properly refute these claims based on physics and facts - than just based on philosophy and intuition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Demolition,_Inc. says it took 12 pounds of explosives to demolish a 2,000,000 pound tower.

1/10 of a ton (200 pounds) of explosives is a staggering amount in comparison. The energy involved in the building falling down swamps the explosives by such a large degree that you couldn't even tell the difference.

Remember that the fire did the same thing that a controlled explosion would do: Weaken the central support. The fire by softening the metal, an explosion by cutting it.

A controlled demolition does not actually explode the building, all it does is weaken the support, and gravity does the rest.

The numbers don't quite tell the whole story here. 100kg of TNT would direct its energy in a roughly spherical shockwave, like a point light source. The 480MJ per storey is directed straight down, like a laser.

So what's the implication?

That the effect of the building's mass is much greater than the TNT-equivalent would apply, in the same way that while a 10 Watt bulb is barely bright enough to read by, a 10 Watt laser will set your book on fire.

Just out of curiosity, the 'result' from that Wolfram computation: 4.807 * 10^8 kgm^2/s^2.

What is that in relation to the speed of free fall of that floor? Is that roughly half? - i.e. in total free fall, you would expect that the floor would fall at 9.8 * 10^8 kgm^2/s^2?

Thanks!

There is no real connection.

Gravity is 9.8 m/s^2. Not 9.8 * 10^8!!! And the result is kg m^2/s^2 not m/s^2.

The result assumes a free fall at 1 g. I multiply it by g in order to accomplish that. (It's on earth, it can't really fall slower. If you want it to fall slower, the only thing it can do is fall, hit something and stop, then fall again - but that has 0 impact on the energy released! The energy released does not care if the building hit something and stopped momentarily in the processes.)

I know the result looks superficially like the units for gravitational acceleration but it's not, it's also multiplied by kg * m. i.e. I multiply gravity by mass and by how far it fell. The end result is the units for energy.

If you look up Joule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule you'll see that it is defined that way.

There is a reason they push so hard to make sure you do the units correctly in Physics - you can gain a lot of insight into what you are calculating if you manipulate them properly.

Ok that sounds good.

So, in concluding...what would you say - based on your analysis here - about the assertion that this may have been caused by a 'controlled demolition'.

If you can just summarize your findings here, into a succinct statement that would be greatly appreciated :)

E.g. "The theories don't make sense, because as we saw here....X, Y & Z." or "The theories DO make sense, because Z, Y & X".

At this point I must defer to civil engineers. I do not have the background in structures to model their collapse and draw reliable conclusions.

Because there are obstacles along the way. Support beams, uncollapsed floors, etc. that will slow down the descent.

As I said, I haven't bought into this theory yet. Just want to get other opinions on whether or not it makes sense in this particular case.

The time taken for an uncollapsed floor to become a collapsed floor in the face of even a fraction of a tower falling onto it is unimaginably brief.

In short, the reason that the towers' collapses looked like controlled demolitions is because controlled demolitions don't rely on the explosives to destroy the building, they rely on destabilising it enough that it falls in on itself. The "controlled" part is just making sure it collapses inwards.

There's a lot of stuff that has to break. Theory being that (at least until there's a certain amount of momentum) the structure of the undamaged building will slow the collapse. Remember, the damage was three quarters of the way up the building, not at the foundation.

I'm no demolitions expert nor am I a physics major, so I can't speak as to how structures of that size behave under those conditions - though I'm sure the conspiracies have been thoroughly debunked by now. But that's the thinking.

Personally I'm more inclined to disbelieve a conspiracy theory simply because there's no way our government is competent enough to keep a secret that big for eleven years - across multiple administrations. But who knows - maybe there're better at their jobs than I'm willing to give them credit for.

Wow....I couldn't have articulated my position better myself. Hence my bringing up this topic.

It's not that I doubt that people would want to (and perhaps have motive) to pull off a stunt like this.

It is the subsequent burying of the evidence and keeping it a secret for so long - something that has attracted more scrutiny than any other terrorist attack in recent history.

Either the gov't is far more sophisticated than we imagine, which I doubt - or the theories are just that. Theories.

I am more inclined to believe the latter.

The government? The one that we "elected" (election between two preselected candidates/puppets? Really?). Or maybe the real one, who's behind the scene, the puppet-masters?

If this was an inside job, there are not so many people (especially public people) who were behind it. They just needed to hire some Arabs (through several proxies) and train them to intercept the airplanes. And I'm sure those Arabs didn't know who was really behind it (they were sure it was Osama who could be an agent or a legend). Then make sure the secret services somehow fail to do their job at time X. Then eliminate/threat/silence those people at lower levels who couldn't understand some actions/lack of actions and were suspicious about that.

It isn't so hard for people with sufficient power and money, don't you think?

> there's no way our government is competent enough to keep a secret that big

Counterexamples to refute the assertion that the US government cannot keep "big" secrets:

(1) A US bomber accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb out of an airplane into the dessert near Albuquerque, New Mexico, triggering a conventional but non-nuclear detonation. This happened in 1957 but was kept secret until 1986 -- a span of 29 years. "It was only in 1986 when an Albuquerque newspaper published an account based on military documents recovered through the Freedom of Information Act." (ref: http://www.hkhinc.com/newmexico/albuquerque/doomsday/ )

(2) The British were regularly reading encrypted German messages by around 1940. The codebreaking of the German Enigma machine was one of the greatest secrets of World War 2, and the British shared the knowledge with the Americans. This secret was revealed in 1974--after 34 years--because of two books by key intelligence figures. (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra#Post-war_disclosures )

In both cases, at least dozens of people--but more likely hundreds of people--would have been privy to the secrets. But these two secrets did not leak for 3 decades.

Note: I am not endorsing any 911 conspiracy theories. I am simply showing that the stubborn meme that the US government cannot keep big secrets is incorrect.

I think a more accurate statement is, the bigger the secret - the more incentives there are for it to be leaked, thereby the more likely it will be leaked.

a) Monica Lewinsky

b) Watergate

c) CIA Renditions

d) Waterboarding

e) More recently, intimate details of Seal Team Six & the Bin Laden raid.

f) Warrantless Wiretapping

Suffice it to say, the larger the likely public interest - is the more likely that leaks will appear.

Those are a military secrets that actually righteous person would be inclined to keep secret, feeling he/she serves his country well. Murdering innocent people is not this kind of secret (it's dangerous lunacy) and would need to involve murders to silence witesses.

Well, believer or non-believer, there are many loose ends in the official theory, and there are many documentary films that are proving a bunch of facts that boldly indicate that this was a planned inside job.

Just think, wouldn't those who run the world spend just several hundred lives and two buildings to gain a so profitable war on terror, the Patriot Act, and a new permanent enemy (the terrorists!) to keep the people in terror and pull more and more of their rights to "protect them".

One of my greatest issues with 911 conspiracy theories are that people believe that the government and George W are capable of planning such a brilliant and perfectly executed false flag attack and then claim that George W. Bush is a complete moron in the same sentence. You can't have it both ways, lol.

That line of logic really doesn't make any sense at all. I personally believe Bush to be a moron, but he wasn't the only person doing stuff in that administration. Every president, great or terrible, has relied on staff below them to assist and advise, and that's not a bad thing.

Hypothetically, if this was a conspiracy, then Bush's involvement would have been at the very most listening to options and then selecting one. For the same reason I can, in the same sentence, say that America invaded Iraq and that Bush isn't a trained soldier.

(For the record I don't believe 9/11 was a conspiracy.)

I've answered to that claim above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504359

Who said George W. Bush was running the show? He was just a puppet. Give the guy some cocaine and he'll say whatever the hell you want him to say. Think about it. Who had the biggest geopolitical motive to invade Iraq for its oil and Afghanistan for its minerals? It's not the people calling shots in front of you, it's the guys with the money behind them.

Another conspiracy theory. This thread with it's parent is the most discussed/hot thread, but it is being buried by someone so it's in the tail of the page. How lucky, the real numbers about who and how much points give/take are not being shown to us, the users.

I watched some of those documentaries. Loose Change was the worst. Shows image of Pentagon, "proving" it wasn't a plane that stuck the building. Image is cropped. Original image shows debris field, including plane's engine.

"911 Truth for Dummies": http://www.911sharethetruth.com/images/cards/CR13-740h.jpg

Quote from 911sharethetruth.com:

"""Initially, most of us fell for their version of the events. But then came the slip-ups. The leaseholder of the World Trade Center admitted on PBS in 'Rebuilding America' that WTC-7 was 'pulled' on 9/11 (See video here in Windows Media Format - http://www.911sharethetruth.com/extras/SilversteinBdg7.wmv), which is the standard slang for controlled demolition.

Look at the tapes from that day when TV anchors, Aaron Brown and Dan Rather first said the very same words about the collapses. Firefighters and rescue workers talked about explosives and bombs going off, all over in the buildings. Recall the horrific images of the over 100-story towers coming down at free-fall speed, defying the laws of physics. Recall the engineers who first stated that the planes and fires alone could not have caused the deadly collapse. Now the evidence is gone, witnesses silenced, and an independent, real investigation never happened. Sure, it is hard to accept that we have all been fooled so long, but only discovering and facing the truth will set the U.S. free.""" - 9-11 Truth Activist of Northern California

I'm a Popperian. Theories must be falsifiable. If any of the 9/11 Truther theories invalidate or improve on the NIST explanation for how WTC 7 fell, you let me know.

As for the politics, whatever. Bush/Cheney allowed 9/11 to happen. And then they capitalized on the aftermath. So what? There's no evidence that is actionable. You're outraged? Big deal. While you're refighting past battles, the bad guys are gleefully stealing your future.

Having said that, the 9/11 Truther groups are basically cults. No different than the La Rouchians, Scientologists, climate change deniers, Clinton Killed Vince Foster, etc. People addicted to anger busy disempowering themselves.

There's a good article out there that I couldn't retrieve within 20 seconds of searching, that points out that Loose Change was made to be a mockumentary, but Avery got approached by Alex Jones or some other conspiracy theory nut job and edited it to be about 911 (was more generic before if my memory serves) and then started talking like it was all true. But this was just a piece to make Avery famous. It doesn't even try to provide any truth.

Hysterical.

Behind every fad or movement, there's someone making a back.

I was wading through them and this seems to be the first reference of attacks by a person.

http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_50_200...

The earlier one would probably be the an automated pager by some bot (?) about Cantor API being offline.

This is a first message on this list, post-incident that was sent by a non-automated system:

2001-09-11 08:50:25 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA A plane crashed thru the twin towers. Real bad..BR

And another one right after: 2001-09-11 08:51:37 Arch [1274589] D ALPHA 94-THE WORLD TRADE CENTER HAS JUST BLOWN UP, WE SEEN THE EXPLOSION OUTSIDE OUR WINDOWS. TERESA...

As someone who has never used a pager, how did you send the text message? Special system with a keyboard? Type it out on phone keys?

It was usually one way. You'd call the number given to you by the person you wanted to contact, and it'd go to a call center staffer who would type out your message. Usually just a name and phone number.

boring..

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