OT- Re: World Trade Crash and a bit about computers

At 08:37 PM 9/11/2001 -0400, you wrote: Yes. That is the other threat posed by the events of today. Some in our society, the reactionary elements in the federal law enforcement and "national security" agencies, will no doubt try to use these events as an excuse to further gut civil liberties which have already been nearly eviscerated by the miserable failure known as the "War on Drugs." The congressional reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah federal building produced new federal laws greatly expanding the power of the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies to surveil and infiltrate organizations they wish to investigate, even if the organization in question cannot be connected with criminal activity. The same opportunists who capitalized on that tragedy will not doubt try to do the same with this one. Unfortunately, they will probably succeed. It's sad. At the height of the late 80s wave of terrorist airliner bombings, I went to the UK on a high school trip. The security at JFK was a joke. The person tending the x-ray machine wasn't even looking at the screen half of the time. Gate and checkpoint security were not much better. In contrast, in Ireland on the trip home to the US, two guards were glued to the x-ray machine monitor, everyone's passports were individually checked, and every one of us was questioned extensively before we were permitted to through _two_ metal detectors. After that we got to go to another checkpoint to get our tickets back so that we could go to the gate to then have our tickets checked against our passports. _That_ is real security.