

WikiLeaks publishing over half a million intercepted pages from 9/11/2001 - tlrobinson
http://911.wikileaks.org/

======
brown9-2
Am I the only one who feels a little ... wrong reading these?

This isn't a leak in the usual "whisteblower" sense of the word.

Instead it's a leak of communication between individuals that was intended to
be private.

If someone "leaked" emails from Gmail or Facebook, I think most of us would be
angry about it and feel as if some sort of privacy was violated. So why do we
feel different about this - because these messages are eight years old, or
because it's wikileaks?

~~~
anigbrowl
The pager network was/is more like a twitter stream. Messages are sent in a
plaintext stream of the format [date][time][network][destination #][msg
type][content] and individual pages just pull their own messages from that
stream.

I don't really think there is an invasion of privacy, and in any case I think
it has sufficient historical value as to override privacy concerns. True,
someone will probably get divorced due to the revelation of some old affair,
but I am not going to lose sleep over it.

~~~
brown9-2
Well that is how they are designed technically, but I doubt most of the
senders and recipients of the pages were aware of this.

------
martian
Good analysis at
[http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...](http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml?tag=stack)

"It's not clear how they were obtained in the first place. One possibility is
that they were illegally compiled from the records of archived messages
maintained by pager companies, and then eventually forwarded to WikiLeaks.

The second possibility is more likely: Over-the-air interception. Each digital
pager is assigned a unique Channel Access Protocol code, or capcode, that
tells it to pay attention to what immediately follows. In what amounts to a
gentlemen's agreement, no encryption is used, and properly-designed pagers
politely ignore what's not addressed to them. "

------
drusenko
Wow, there's a lot of confidential info in here. After just glancing over one
5 minute interval:

Joe_Brady@Mastercard.com||From:Joe BradyF.Y.I. - Ops is calling a PRT on a SAM
(Settlement Account Maintenance) failure - This is NOT a network issue - Unix
Ops is working this issue - They are looking to fail over to LKS

kfoxwell@lucent.com||Steve, I have an outage in Northampton, PA. They had a
power problem and lost the CNI ring. 21,000 lines effected. call me at
717-227-0334. Kevin

appworx@db02.gefa.capital.ge.com||PROD Chain Fail for SITERICP
Chain=OBI_MF_GL_P

300~MPfetchData:openConnectionToManager:ERROR CONNECTING:192.168.35.97 : www36
connectToServerPort:socket/socket timed out at
/home/crdtdrv/creditderivatives/script/MPfetchData.pl line 342,
<SOCK_192.168.35.19> chunk 178126.

monitor@ccbill.c|HTTPD Frontend front2r.escrub.co|ERROR: could not connect to
front2r.escrub.com on port 80 (httpd). Timestamp: 20010911015701

kaccount.intel.com/service_status.asp Detailed message is URL:
<http://networkaccount.intel.com/service_status.asp> ??does not contain:
SFSA0005 SUCCEEDED

etc etc etc

~~~
oomkiller
Well, thats what you get for sending confidential information over plaintext.
Most of the stuff I've seen is just status updates anyways, probably
irrelevant after 8 years.

~~~
skywalker
It can be irrelevant after 8 years, but could be relevant for someone that
could act on it at the moment it was captured. Maybe for some social
engineering attack.

------
flipbrad
2001-09-11 06:27:40 Skytel [003928287] D ALPHA TOM. THIS IS RAY, MY
CONTINENTAL FLIGHT CANCELLED MHT TO EWR. NEXT FLIGHT IS AT 9:40 AM ARRIVING 11
AM. PAGER NUMBER 1 888 935 8317

EDIT: sorry - the proper place for comments like that is
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7xpt/conspiracy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7xpt/conspiracy_theories_commence_wikileaks_to_release/)

------
catzaa
Is this some kind of joke? On
[http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_25_200...](http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_25_2001_09_11-08_29.txt):

> 2001-09-11 08:26:01 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 93-if you want to say goodbye, i
> will understand but i will always be in love with you. that...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:03 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 2...will never change. if i don't
> hear from you, i probably won't bother you when i get to...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:05 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 3...work. so if you want to talk
> to me, in this case, you will have to make a move first. if...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:07 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 5...how much. i miss you and i
> miss us.

> 2001-09-11 08:26:09 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 4...not, then i get it. i told
> you i'm not stupid. I LOVE YOU!! so much in fact, i hurt with...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:07 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 5...how much. i miss you and i
> miss us.

Sounds like either an affair or someone paging the script to the
Young&Restless….

~~~
aaronsw
I've gotten almost that exact txt. Girls really do write like that.

~~~
w00pla
And some guys...

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1odyq)

------
anigbrowl
A surprisingly detailed and informative news summary of this story:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...](http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml?tag=mncol;txt)

------
akamaka
In case you found the title confusing, these are intercepts of pager text
messages sent on 9/11 (possibly leaked from some US goverment agency?).
There's no explanation of what geographical area or what network providers are
covered.

~~~
blantonl
There is readily available software that allows you to intercept pager
communications. The two protocols mostly used by the paging companies are FLEX
and POCSAG, and the nationwide paging networks all operate(d) on the 929-931
Mhz band.

The two most prominent intercept applications are: \- POCFLEX, a DOS based
software package that requires a 4-level FSK interface to the scanner \- PDW,
a windows based software package that uses a soundcard to recover the pager
text from the scanner baseband.

You can download both packages here:

<http://www.discriminator.nl/software/index-en.html>

Most likely someone setup a few radios and archived all pager texts from the
different major nationwide paging networks, and then consolidated the data
into one set of files.

~~~
yters
is this common practice? why would someone collect all this info at this point
in time?

~~~
Kadin
I suspect, although I don't know of anyone doing this myself, that there are
people doing this all the time, just as a hobby or for the hell of it. The
equipment required is minimal and so are the storage requirements, so you
could easily log everything. Even in 2001 it wouldn't have been cost-
prohibitive.

There are probably people sitting on years worth of data, just because that's
a hobby for them. 9/11 is probably one of the only dates that's of interest to
the general public.

------
vaporstun
2001-09-11 08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA Someone just told me there was an
explosion at

2001-09-11 08:47:48 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA wtc....BR

This appears to be the first transmission about the actual attack.

(Edited to remove garbage in between from other pages)

------
eob
Can someone who works on Wall Street explain how pagers are still used? I had
no idea that anyone had pagers anymore.

~~~
nollidge
Still have pagers where I work. We (developers) share one and rotate it around
the team (each person has it for a week) for application support. As far as I
can tell, it's better than any of the alternatives.

~~~
ruby_roo
Better than email on a mobile device?

~~~
nollidge
No return on that investment. Hardly anything can be solved via e-mail. Call
comes in, 99% of the time I need to log in remotely to solve it.

------
motters
Interesting, but do we know that these messages came from a reliable source?

~~~
stilist
How do you know anything on Wikileaks came from a reliable source? Or anything
on the web or the news or from your friends?

You basically have trust, first-party confirmations, alternate sources giving
consensus, and guilty reactions—none of which can be relied on for accuracy
either.

------
torpor
This really looks like a wonderful opportunity for visualization freaks to get
their blit on .. I'd love to have this massive database visualized in some way
..

~~~
anigbrowl
I wonder how that would function, ie whether a collaborative tool could be set
up to sort through them. I can see easy analysis possibilities employing
spreadsheets, but it would be most useful for historical research if there
were some way to tag them, filtering out automated status messages and the
like.

~~~
Vivtek
That's already going on at the Reddit post, e.g. an import into MySQL for
querying, filtering out the numerical-only posts, and so on.

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ilkhd2
I do not think that is gonna lead to something useful, people can fall into
"chinese syndrome" syndrome, when a movie predicted what hapeened a week
later...

Yet it is very chilling to read.

~~~
lsb
We're currently T -4 hours from the raison d'être.

~~~
Uchikoma
1 point by lsb 6 hours ago | link We're currently T -4 hours from the raison
d'être

