9/11 pager messages reveal how banks responded to attacks

[babsbunny]

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/911-pager-messages-reveal-banks-response-attack/

By Sahil Kapur
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 -- 1:01 pm

"An Aloha call is starting . This is for a fire at 2WT," paged a Morgan Stanley employee at 8:50 AM on September 11, 2001, four minutes after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. It was the first pager message about the horrific attacks, according to CBS News.

Over half a million intercepted pager texts from that day are being unveiled by Wikileaks. It's intended to be a virtual re-enactment of 9/11, as they're being posted to the organization's website and Twitter feed between 3 AM Eastern Time today and 3 AM tomorrow, at the same times the pages were sent.

[FarCenter]

1. Over half a milliion pager messages -- these appear to be from all over the country

Apparently somebody has the ability to record all the messages from the satellite downlinks to pager relays.

I wonder, who could that be....

[wroberts189]

3. Yep that is the REAL story here...who recorded all this? They get all the phone calls too? nt

[RoyGBiv]

16. Pretty much anyone ...

Pager traffic isn't encrypted unless it's a "secure" pager, which these aren't. Most aren't. As stories associated with Wikileak's doing this indicate, there's a standardized form judges use to provide law enforcement personnel authority to do so.

You can download software to do it on your home computer, in fact. Storage is the only real problem.

It is interesting that all these messages were captured, but not necessarily for the reasons that might be inferred given the subject. There are likely logs like this all over the place. These were kept because of what they're about. Now the interesting question is who leaked it and why.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. I wonder how many of them amounted to "Sell! Sell! Sell!"

I'd bet a bunch.

[Hekate]

4. Probably more like "shut down trading" and "turn off the computers".

[FarCenter]

5. Every major corporation in the NY area would have activated it Businss Continuity Plan

After the World Trade Center bombing in '93, there was a lot of planning for what is now called Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

Remote data centers and operations centers were set up and infrastructure was dispersed nationally and even internationally.

[yodoobo]

12. Here the link to download them all

http://911.wikileaks.org/

Its actually not that big of a file. About 12 meg.

[bbinacan]

6. I worked for Morgan Stanley at the time.

I was not in NYC, but our backup facilities were ready to go the next morning, if trading were to resume. I admire MS for this.

[UpInArms]

7. reading it makes me cry

http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-18_05_2001_09_11-18_09.html#0

2001-09-11 18:06:06 Metrocall <1699041> A ALPHA
e alright. my nervers are one edge. someone said that D.C. is closed down and they are rerouting VA. just come home i love you nat

[wroberts189]

8. kick nt

[Blue_Tires]

9. this may sound like a dumb question, but

under whose authority are these messages being "released" and what is the legality of intercepting and then releasing to the public??

More info here: Good to know even Pre-Katrina, FEMA was run with the same decision-making efficiency and attention to detail as a fourth rate Soviet-era bureaucratic clusterfuck

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml

As the World Trade Center and Pentagon were ablaze on September 11, 2001, the U.S. Secret Service's presidential protective detail was informed that a "Korean airliner has been hijacked" en route to San Francisco, prompting already-skittish agents to worry about another wave of terrorist attacks.

That morning and afternoon, Secret Service agents assigned to protect the president and his family found their pagers constantly buzzing with alerts both true and false. There was a false alarm about a car bomb in downtown Washington, D.C., a report of "two Arab males detained" after asking for directions to the presidential retreat at Camp David, and reassurances that "Twinkle and Turq" -- code names for the Bush daughters -- were safe and accounted for.

This unusual glimpse into the events of 9/11 comes from messages sent to alphanumeric pagers that were anonymously published on the Internet on Wednesday. The pager transcripts, which total about 573,000 lines and 6.4 million words, include numeric and text messages also sent to private sector and unclassified military pagers.

It's impossible to tell whether the logs have been faithfully reproduced in their entirety. But there's evidence they have been: I spoke to three journalists working on September 11, 2001 whose correspondence appeared in the logs or who were familiar with the messages circulated in their newsrooms that day. All three say the logs appear to be legitimate.

This trove of messages is likely to become a boon for historians, a new source of concern for privacy advocates, and, depending on the details, a point of embarrassment or pride for the government agencies and corporations whose internal conversations have been divulged. The files were posted on WikiLeaks.org, which has made a speciality of disclosing confidential documents and boasts that it is "uncensorable."

[yodoobo]

11. no authority whatsoever

and it appears to be illegal to publish this.

But its out there now anyway.

I think that wiki-leaks is hosted beyond the bounds of Federal law though. I know there have been other controversial releases before this one.

[Blue_Tires]

13. could the networks be held liable?

Arch Wireless, Metrocall, Skytel, and Weblink Wireless?? A quick google search shows they are all still running except for Weblink (bankrupt in 2003)....

And I know I'm supposed to be used to it in this day and age where the 11-year-old next door can blow up your computer or a state government server and steal whatever, but I'm kinda unnerved at the concept of "Hey we intercepted a shitload of pager messages from everyone in or near the Towers and Pentagon, (including key government officials) on 9-11! And to add insult to injury, lets post them all online for sheer shock voyeur excitement!"

And if they had THAT many, then it's possible some database has most, if not all from the metro areas of both cities?? exactly HOW wide could the scope conceivably go?? For me personally, the personal privacy angle far outweighs any gawking reverence for what people were dialing when the first plane hit...

[yodoobo]

14. I wonder the same thing

These systems are somewhat archaic nowadays, but still certainly in use.

Because this was a business system, its mostly business oriented txts.

After I downloaded the entire database, I did some sort and filtering. I've found literally hundreds of pages sent from coworkers - including several from my boss at that time.

I have to think that there is going to be some very large business's out there that are very angry...not to mention the secret service which was coordinating some of their agents activities that day.

Nowadays, this sort of txting has been supplanted by SMS/Cell phone txts which are used by business's and personal use alike. I shudder to think if some of my personal txts are sitting in a database somewhere and may be published on the Internet someday.

[yodoobo]

10. Not just banks

I was surprised at how much IT dominated the pages.

I was able to find several messages sent from coworkers at my company (big IT company). We use a standard format for certain automatic notifications and another format for personal messages so they were easy to recognize.

Rather surreal looking at it.

[onethatcares]

15. how often do you think the messages will be played on

faux news? with voiceovers just to keep fanning the flames? By the time they get done running them it'll seem like it happened last year while Obama was president :sarcasm:

Oh, and I'm not making light of a disaster either.