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Wikileaks Publishes 500,000 9/11 Pager Messages
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks is preparing to release 500,000 intercepted pager messages from a 24-hour period encompassing the September 11 terrorist attacks. The messages show emergency services springing into action and computer systems sending automated messages as buildings collapse. Wikileaks implies this data came from an organised collection effort."
Pagers still exist? Granted they never caught on in the UK, but I've never, not even once, seen an actual functioning pager in use. I guess text messaging took over any utility pagers would have over here.
Every conspircay theorist in the world just simultaneously orgasmed. All those messages to pick through; I'm sure they'll be able to prove it was the US Government/Al-Qaeda/Joseph Fritzel/The Cookie Monster/Scientologists all along.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
First the global warming emails, and now this? What next 7 foot lizards are real now?
What is the point of this story on slashdot? It's not tech related, has really very little news value, and idiotly suggests some kind of conspiracy.
Can there be moderation for editors please? I love how comments can be modded to oblivion, but useless editors and stories can't.
What next 7 foot lizards are real now?
Yes.
Reply to That ||
Now watch Obama try to censor the TRUTH of Italian conspiracy against AMERICA that is PROVEN BEYOND DOUBT by these NEW REVELATIONS!!!!!
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
I'm sure this will lead to rational debate, as well as this information being added to our view of those tragic events as a whole and will finally lay to bed some of the misconceptions that have surrounded the events of 9/11, rather than becoming the source for thousands of snippets of information that will get used in barely contextualized, ill-thought out, and poorly worded conspiracy theories.
Also, when you bring me my pony, make sure it's pink.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
This seems to be a really good move on the part of Wikileaks. Its one of those things, where in the digital age, that information lasts for a long time, but I think the significance here is that this data was collected within a day of the attacks. What this does is give us a clearer picture of lots of things, including emergency response methods and efficiency, the way people react to catastrophic events, and information that may have previously been unknown, and things like that. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Sep 11. and simple data being released to the public is always a good thing. Yes, there will be both ends of the extremist section, both conspiracy theorists and their counterparts, who may try to find specific data to backup their preconceived theories, but its still a good thing. Just browsing over to the TFA and their shortened excerpt, I found one very interesting message.."WTC HAS BEEN HIT BY AN AIRPLANE AND A BOMB." This does nothing as far as credibility and in situations like that people are known to panic and see and hear things that aren't there, but regardless, it will be interesting to see where this leads. Data by itself sometimes can be useless, but in context can have implications you don't expect.
This seems to be a really good move on the part of Wikileaks. Its one of those things, where in the digital age, that information lasts for a long time, but I think the significance here is that this data was collected within a day of the attacks. What this does is give us a clearer picture of lots of things, including emergency response methods and efficiency, the way people react to catastrophic events, and information that may have previously been unknown, and things like that. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Sep 11. and simple data being released to the public is always a good thing. Yes, there will be both ends of the extremist section, both conspiracy theorists and their counterparts, who may try to find specific data to backup their preconceived theories, but its still a good thing. Just browsing over to the TFA and their shortened excerpt, I found one very interesting message.."WTC HAS BEEN HIT BY AN AIRPLANE AND A BOMB." This does nothing as far as credibility and in situations like that people are known to panic and see and hear things that aren't there, but regardless, it will be interesting to see where this leads. Data by itself sometimes can be useless, but in context can have implications you don't expect. My personal opinions are far to complex to list here, but people should learn how to use logic and think for themselves.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Who needs to make backups anymore? The NSA has all your data and communications stored for you. Maybe they should sell backup services to fix the budget deficit.
"computer systems sending automated messages as buildings collapse" 8:46 a.m. - "Ow, something hit me!" 8:47 a.m. - "Anyone else smell smoke?" 8:47 a.m. - "Admin has logged off" 10:28 a.m. - "System failure"
2001-09-11 09:05:13 Metrocall [0902425] C ALPHA HQFPSCORP2:Backup Exec Job Failed
That one brings a tear to my eye.
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
I thought pagers used the cell networks a la text messages; indeed, I thought a pager was essentially a dedicated text message device.
I was in NYC on Sept 11 and the only thing that *was* working that day was the Internet...phones, both land line and cell were unavailable. We were trying to contact my brother-in-law who lived in Manhattan (we were in Brooklyn) and every phone we tried, including the pay phone down the street (still had 'em back then...) gave us the "fast busy signal", indicating "We didn't even try to make your call..."
So we spent the rest of the day IM'ing people as that was the only way to verify who was where. Bad times...bad times.
For that text pager message: "Finished arming the detonating device, Herr Cheney".
After the next major event it will be the twitter stream which will be subject to such analysis
im not dealing with this shit today.i will call johnston in earlyford shut down there plants and im not answering why we are still working.fuck this. FROM: RYDER LITTLEJOHN (x18914) (3
I bet someone felt like a real asshole after sending that. So sorry that one of the greatest tragedies in the countries history screwed up your day.
that a number of Muslim fundamentalist fanatics conspired to hijack four aircraft and flew one of them into the Pentagon, and two others into the twin trade towers in New York.
Now that's what I call a real conspiracy theory.
It would be interesting to see Satellite phone traffic from that day. Iridium also runs a pager service that still works :)
Wikileaks is simply an outlet for sensitive information. So what you're implying is that their privacy wasn't infringed by whichever entity collected the information, but by Wikileaks? That doesn't make any sense. I do see your point, but I think the potential benefits by far outweigh the cons of such a release. Now that the data is out there, nothing can be done to get it back. On top of this, Wikileaks has some serious credibility when it comes to their methods and what and when they decide to release, I'm sure their lawyers have thought out the consequences and variations thoroughly. Their statement as to the source is “While we are obligated ... to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11.” If anything, THIS is what people SHOULD be mad about, that a (potentially governmental) organization has been collecting this data without their consent in the first place.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Until we got the email evidence proving global warming was a hoax, I was ready to almost start believing it. Given that it IS apparently possible for the UN and thousands of scientists across the world to fake something as wide ranging as global warming, I am going to have to re-examine my skepticism of the 911 "truther" conspiracy theory as well. Like the email that brought down global warming, this pager evidence is pretty damned convincing.
Read the Project for a New American Century's statement of principles here. Now read the PNAC letter to Clinton on Iraq here. Note that Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Jeb are all big supporters. Now read about their plans here.
The choice quote is: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
My theory is that they had intelligence stating that the attack was going to happen. Just as many suspect happened at Pearl Harbor, they deliberately stood down defenses in order to get the catalyzing event that they need in order to enact foreign military operations. They may have done this truly believing it was in the best interests of the country, but the truth needs to come out, and those responsible punished.
I don't think they knew that the towers would collapse. It explains the look on George when he was first told we were under attack, and the look on his face during his address.
Was Reichstag fire just as unbelievable as 9/11? It was done to further gov't agenda.
From Wikipedia: The Reichstag fire... is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.
Don't think gov'ts now aren't capable of the same thing, or that they aren't doing it.
But then it's much more comfortable to bury one's head in the sand.
C. Elements of both.
As I understand things, it is unrealistic to think that the Government and related military bodies were conspiring together, as it implies a singularity of intent within a ridiculously massive structure. It's like saying that the Government is one thing when really it's a huge collection of many forces working at counter-purposes, operating from different levels of knowledge and awareness, having different sources of funding and which answer to numerous different authorities which are rarely in agreement, -and for which even the most basic levels of public oversight are cosmetic and generally useless.
Also, you didn't mention Big Business and, Foreign *cough Israel* Governments in your two options, which combined with the above, all comes together to create what is known as the Military Industrial Complex. --A concept which is largely misunderstood. The MIC is a giant, hopelessly complex, corrupt, world-spanning system in which it is entirely possible for small groups of people to work in secret to enact whatever agendas they feel obliged to visit upon the world. It happens all the time, except instead of pushing unsafe hormones past public oversight bodies and into cow's milk, or selling toxic peanuts or ripping off the public through savings and loans scandals, or selling Palestinian pancreases on the black market, or selling drugs to fund contra rebels, or whatever, this piece of bullshit happened to use airplanes and be more in your face and ambitious than the usual con job. But clearly it wasn't overly-ambitious, because all the goals have been met and nobody got caught.
Bullshit happens all the time, crafty nasty people plan in secret all the time and they get away with murder, we rarely ever find out exactly what the heck happened, and with the exception of the token sacrificial goat now and again, the people responsible never actually get punished.
And nearly everybody continues to believe what the soothing talking heads on TV have to say about it all while disregarding their own senses and while ridiculing those who have the balls to try to think for themselves.
You know? Business as usual.
-FL
I bought a product for about $50 from and ad in a magazine called "Monitoring Times". It was a little device that plugged into the speaker jack of a scanner that could pick up the pager frequencies. The other end plugged into my sound-card input, and software decoded it. I would read other people's pages all day long.
Certainly anyone who had one of these and lived in NYC during 9/11 would have monitored pager traffic. It's not that surprising that WikiLeaks was able to get this.
There are an amusing number of messages to "take your meds". That's NYC for ya.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Too bad it isn't phone calls. They might be more intresting than meeting reminders:
Him: Guess where I'm calling from.
Her: Huh?
Him: I'm calling from ythe plane. I'm on the plane, and calling you. It's a phone, on the plane.
Her: How stupid.
Him: Hold on, we're about to fly through a buil.....
Her: Hello? Hello?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
2001-09-11 08:58:33 Skytel [002399634] A ALPHA Initial reports indictate that AAL11, B767, after initial hijacking on flight from BOS-LAX, has crashed into the side of the World Trade Center in NY. ATCSCC/bl
That was an insane amount of detail at a point when everyone else was going: "It's possible something may have happened somewhere."
7 Skytel [002380116] B ALPHA Frank.Heisler@ubsw.com|FW: Exchange IT Event - CANCELLED| -----Original Message----- From: Bucher, Gisela Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 2:54 PM To: DL-Perot-STAM-Permanent Cc: Subject: Exchange IT Event - CANCELLED
This confuses me greatly. On one hand I utterly despise the terrorists for what they did...but I really hate Exchange too...
There's no place like
You're thinking of WTC-7, which collapsed around five-twenty-something in the afternoon. Was not struck by plane. Officially, struck and damaged by debris from the collapse of towers one and two. WTC-7 was a security hardened building with lots of extra steel and concrete -- it housed the control center for New York City's disaster response, among other security-minded entities -- which makes the "flying debris" explanation questionable in some people's minds.
-kgj
And your name IS smooth wombat???
Yes, I am a New Yorker. Yes, I was in the city that day. My Cellphone was useless, probably due to a combination of losing a major relay point, and everybody in town trying to use their phones at the same time. Landlines were flakey (probably due to losing a major chunk of the infrastructure). My Obsolete and Archaic text pager kept working. (I wonder if the pager "I'm OK, R U OK?"messages I exchanged with my sister are in this archive?)
http://visualizecommonsense.com/
It also had a massive amounts of diesel in it (for the generators) ...
20,000 gallons, if I recall correctly. Which is a lot of diesel fuel, sure could kick up a lot of fire.
The collapse was captured on a number of video recordings: example, example. WTC-7 is on fire, but not massively on fire. When it collapses, the roofline visibly crumples inward: I'm no structural engineer, but to my untrained eye, the crumpling does look like controlled demolition, rather than a steel-frame building burning so furiously that it collapses.
I sure as hell don't know the truth, and I don't expect to ever know the truth. But it seems to me that if there any smoking gun to be found, WTC-7 is it.
-kgj
The most chilling automated early warning before the human chatter really gets going:
2001-09-11 08:48:46 Arch [0162912] A 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 = 24
Human chatter:
2001-09-11 08:50:25 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA A plane crashed thru the twin towers. Real bad..BR
Repeated automated chatter:
2001-09-11 08:50:31 Skytel [003260422] B ALPHA An Aloha call is starting . This is for a fire at 2WT. Please call into TeleMeeting conference center at -877-913-7943 . If Morgan Stanley has not initiated the call you will hear music until they initiate the call. Dallas Data
Kriston
I understand the need to know what happened. I understand the amount of knowledge that can be gleaned from analyzing this event.
But do we really need to make public the messages of thousands of people full of fear and worry for their lives and loved ones?
This seems to be in rather poor taste to me.
Its one thing for a group of researchers to go over the data, its another entirely to splatter across the Internet where the age of maturity runs about half of the physical age of the person in talking. Already in response to this story their are jokes here that while funny, as a prime example of bad taste.
I'd have to say that this is an example taking the whole Wikileaks thing too far. Its one thing to post emails from money grabbing scum bag CEOs, its entirely different to post a text message from a man to his wife begging her to contact him so he knows if she's alive of dead. Some things really should be left private. And no, just because you can't tie the message to the actual person who sent it doesn't make it private.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So I guess you could have both...
The planes hitting the towers were the distraction to
allow the fake firefighters inside to plant the thermate.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I searched a whole bunch of these for the word "fuck" and couldn't find a single instance. I find it hard to believe that nobody got a page from their girl/boy friend saying why don't you come over and fuck me or a message saying holy fuck a plane just hit the WTC.
This is proof that anything in digital form will find it way into the most undeserving, obnoxious hands possible.
Sure, probably 90% of these messages are pointless and of no value to anyone. The remaining 10% are probably either personal information or are going to cause some people untold grief. Imagine walking into a conversation about a security video that got posted to YouTube only to discover it is the video of your husband or wife being murdered. This isn't much different for some people today.
Bad taste to publish this stuff? Na, this is the Internet. Bad taste is what it is all about. Lowest common denominator sells. If you haven't checked out rotten.com in a while, you are certainly missing something.
...that nowadays we have only two options:
1. The government (bush) planned and executed the whole attack from a to z without any terrorists being part of it.
2. Terrorists planned and executed the whole attack from a to z without any government being part of it.
No middle ground is offered. You are either with 1 of 2. If I were a government with plans to allow/plan an attack, this is what I would do. Along with the official statement, I would create buzz that there's a crazy conspiracy behind it.
Instead of giving people's minds room for free thinking and investigation, I now narrowed it down to 2 choices: are you with us? Or with the nuts?
Please note that it was the Administration following Bush that created Swine Flu and released it into the wild in Mexico and then did nothing to slow its spread after the public got wind of it. Nothing like furthering the Health care control freak agenda.
That's right...go stick your head back in the sand 1800Maxim.
Are you
a) a hell of a dry comedian?
or
b) a really amateur troll?
or
c) the stupidest twat on the planet?
The H1N1 strain of the swine flu has been around since at least 2004 , the year the second term of the bush misgovernment started. Therefore, clearly by your implied logic, bush did it.
OK, it's not believeable because, well, bush is just too damned dumb. Rove & Cheney did it. There - that's quite believable.
Unlike you, 1800Maxim doesn't have to put up with the constant smell of his own sh*t from where he has his head stuck.
[Very spooky, Slashdot. My captcha is "strains"]
2001-09-11 08:46:31 Arch [1426125] D ALPHA FIRE IS/WAS 3 OR 4 ALARMS?
The story is that gblnetnt07 (cabinet 311R) really needed to be rebooted and TG185 has less than 0 ports left
Sheeze! I bet that was your pager.
.
Wonder if any of these are still valid.
Teehee...
juicy stuff 003951473 002461139 005385065
08:51:11 Metrocall [0623896] C ALPHA goodmorning I love you hope you slept good Have a greatday!!me Ps I m going back to bed (your side) naked think about it XXXOOO
BTW Pagers are still CRITICAL for Oncall support!
2001-09-11 15:56:37 metrocall [1543818] c alpha i want to suck you and fuck you. i want you to lick me, too! i'm wearing a see-thru outfit.
According to my count, the following words appear more than 2000 times:
alpha: 299534, skytel: 237233, arch: 122616, metroca: 73973, num: 72115, tone: 63352, com: 43040, call: 36191, from: 33065, this: 18987, has: 17926, all: 15899, sep: 15773, down: 15761, weblink: 14934, will: 14215, new: 13903, frm: 13723, test: 13269, txt: 13082, page: 13077, sub: 11974, have: 11060, been: 10876, center: 10687, number: 10512, your: 10444, update: 10292, york: 9740, home: 9562, alert: 9338, critica: 9334, server: 8994, trade: 8846, connect: 8807, informi: 8465, error: 8330, machine: 8208, cnn: 8013, world: 7967, message: 7947, news: 7901, that: 7894, time: 7815, edt: 7743, reboot: 7515, due: 7484, cabinet: 7339, cmp: 7339, status: 7332, mail: 7320, gblnetn: 7307, periodi: 7256, sequent: 7199, tkt: 7176, can: 6971, sev: 6833, service: 6514, ibm: 6409, now: 6206, today: 6054, evacuat: 5838, site: 5670, problem: 5289, network: 5111, system: 5102, ncc: 5101, www: 5057, everyon: 5031, sent: 5018, office: 4914, need: 4815, abs: 4745, socket: 4719, terrori: 4701, check: 4605, breakin: 4573, element: 4549, mpfetch: 4503, tue: 4412, line: 4409, get: 4394, asap: 4387, greater: 4325, contact: 4284, outage: 4224, any: 4218, phone: 4196, pls: 4183, custome: 4180, http: 4159, msg: 4139, unable: 4081, meeting: 4076, unch: 4027, subject: 4015, sendq: 3995, monitor: 3967, process: 3946, know: 3773, city: 3681, code: 3650, fyi: 3641, calls: 3616, plane: 3602, availab: 3553, yahoo: 3553, just: 3538, current: 3492, report: 3485, back: 3467, open: 3411, closed: 3407, team: 3406, being: 3399, bridge: 3375, timed: 3362, when: 3356, data: 3343, per: 3339, att: 3324, work: 3308, support: 3268, inc: 3266, updates: 3213, complet: 3205, job: 3198, reports: 3079, info: 3052, minutes: 3049, until: 3034, net: 3019, file: 2989, root: 2953, noc: 2952, issue: 2944, msn: 2933, failed: 2910, they: 2889, working: 2852, email: 2804, tomorro: 2795, case: 2723, access: 2678, operati: 2654, switch: 2652, ticket: 2630, sybase: 2611, still: 2599, alerts: 2503, emmc: 2484, our: 2484, informa: 2477, cdt: 2472, see: 2458, day: 2435, follow: 2406, script: 2405, their: 2397, investi: 2391, buildin: 2365, cell: 2338, pentago: 2318, fire: 2316, room: 2284, emergen: 2282, confirm: 2280, about: 2275, tuesday: 2272, name: 2266, event: 2260, opencon: 2258, sock: 2255, creditd: 2251, come: 2250, crdtdrv: 2250, alarm: 2245, chunk: 2245, possibl: 2240, web: 2229, sales: 2221, loock: 2217, attack: 2216, hudson: 2212, high: 2198, prob: 2187, says: 2173, only: 2136, west: 2134, request: 2133, followi: 2107, user: 2099, applica: 2076, let: 2076, account: 2061, nationa: 2050, going: 2046, device: 2014, morning: 2011, immedia: 2002
Wait a sec. Just how did they *acquire* these messages? Especially the ones from *official* sources! Moral: There IS no such thing as privacy any more.