I read too much. This is (obviously) heavy shit.

I also wonder if any of my SMS messages are there.

I’d love to make a word cloud of the messages that changes over time.

Someone has gone to the trouble of collecting all this stuff. It already exists. Whether wikileaks publishes it and makes it available to the whole world or not, we must remember that even before that, some people already have access to your confidential/private messages. They didn’t just collect this stuff for that one day. It’s gone on for years, and is still going on.

If you didn’t want strangers looking at your private messages, it is too late. It was too late the moment you sent it. Even yesterday, before wikileaks published it, other people were already looking at that stuff. There were fewer of them. You just didn’t think about it. As they say, ignorance is bliss.

http://911.wikileaks.org.nyud.net/

Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean it has nothing but positive consequences, and that anyone upset by it is just a whiner. There is such a thing as compassion, and you’re severely deficient.

Also, you could use Mobitex on a damn airplane.

sjwk 7 points8 points9 points 1 hour ago* [-]
Wow. Some interesting snapshots into life on that day, both official and personal. Saw this find referenced elsewhere but not here so dug around to find the records in question:

2001-09-11 10:24:31 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA TWINKLE AND TURQ ARE ACCOUNTED FOR AND SAFE 2001-09-11 10:28:31 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA CALL SPAMP OR SPRINKLE ASAP406-5838 2001-09-11 10:31:03 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA UD REPORTS ANONYMOUS CALL TO JOC REPORTING ANGEL IS TARGET 2001-09-11 10:37:01 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA PLane 5 miles out from cro 2001-09-11 10:37:03 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA wn following potomac staying under radar joc 2001-09-11 10:40:46 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA call joc asap for call waiting 2001-09-11 10:53:46 Skytel [005344006] B ALPHA dcoyer@usss.treas.gov|(no subject)|All admin staff relocated to 1111 18th and accounted for. I’m here and await any instructions. Shawn

Sounds official. Twinkle and Turq[uoise] apparently secret service codenames for Bush’s daughters. No idea about ‘Spamp and Sprinkle’ or ‘Angel’, but sounds like other codenames for people and place. Same number receives other messages about suspect planes.

keanobeano 5 points6 points7 points 1 hour ago[-]

ANGEL = Air Force One

repsuc 4 points5 points6 points 1 hour ago[-]

@usss.treas.gov

US secret service without a doubt. You would think they would all have encrypted pagers.

“It’s harvest time in the garden. Satisfy your hunger. The hidden world is fantastic. Astro”

mean? It seems to be repeated throughout the day. Just looking through, I have found it at 13:10:33 and 20:05:33

Weird.

This needs to be shared and needs to be saved. If nothing more than to use to offset those who are already trying to minimize and alter this events historical record.

There’s no contradiction there; life is sometimes abstract and complicated like that.

They just happened to be in the right place at the right time with their loggers.

My guess is that they waited 8 years to release this, because that’s how long it took for this legacy junk to become pointless to listen to. Who knows how much they’ve managed to log and analyze in the past 8+ years, getting inside info on stock deals and .gov infos.

If we don’t know and have no means of ever knowing who sent a given message, we haven’t broken their privacy. Its like knowing that someone on the internet has a password “orange1″. In fact, my anonymous alternate email address uses that password. I don’t feel that its privacy has been weakened in any way, because none of you know or could ever find out what the address is…

This is a direct dump of pager messages (some encrypted, some not, some private citizens, some government employees) from a single area, from a single day eight years ago. What is important (imo) is not that we have access to this info now — after all, it’s been eight years — but that 1) all this was being logged (including the stuff that SHOULD be encrypted) prior to the attack (which was ostensibly the push behind the whole movement), and 2) that it took eight years for this to become leaked.

09:38:49 Lauren’s father works in the WTC. I may drive her home. I’ll keep you posted. This is really f’d up.

09:43:09 now they got the pentagon. it’s a friggin war

10:00:10 I am so scared! Please be careful!

10:00:57 John, Mike has left the bldg. They can’t reach Chad (son) – he works at the Pentagon and are very worried..LJ

10:01:01 xxx@SOCSO.SOUTHCOM.MIL||We are at Threatcon Charlie until further notice.

10:01:39 RING ALL CHICAGO AIPORTS AND EVERY MAJOR BUILDING DOWNTOWN. BUSH IS DOING A SPEECH. THIS IS SERIOUS POOH..

10:25:10 The second world trade building is gone!!!!!!!!!

10:28:10 Scary stuff going on. I’ll be surprised if its not an Arab. Worried for Farid. Will they round us up? Yikes! D.

Wikileaks did not scrub the data at all. There are full names, there are instructions to call such and such a phone number. The people *are* identifiable.

Regardless, the notion that the entire world might be disecting what might have been a loved one’s last message – regardless if they ascribe it to a face – seems abhorent to me.

These messages do not appear to be exclusively from public officials. They certainly contain private information.

And to everyone who says “Well this is really interesting”. Fine. You’re accepting that society can limit privacy rights in the interest of societal good. In this case the relatively minor good that is your amusement/fascination. If that’s legitimate, all the privacy infractions Britain’s proposing have to be legitimate as well.

There can be no excuse about pointing out the interception of messages. That could have been accomplished without excerpting the text-messages.

Whether there is any ‘applause’ on the part of BoingBoing is largely meaningless. Firstly, there is no condemnation, which is interesting since if it had been the carrier releasing this, I’d expect to see you guys howling.

Secondly, irrespective of whether you condone the actions you have a moral responsibility not to further the message’s spread. I hesitate to use the example, but your callous disregard for the people sending these messages has me upset. Assume for a moment that instead of text-messages, this was illegal pornography. In that case, you would be entitled to report on it, but not to direct or reproduce it. Now explain why the situation should be different for a mass breach of privacy.

Also, this seems to be outside of Wikileak’s mandate, doesn’t it?

BB usually fights against such things, I don’t see why this one gets a free pass.

On the data itself, it reads almost like a scripted, terrifying introduction to an apocalyptic blockbuster. Scary, very scary, even more so when we realise it wasn’t an apocalypse, it was ‘just’ two buildings falling.