Vulnerbilities of Interconnection

Mon Sep 16 16:02:39 UTC 2002

On 12:34 AM 9/16/02, Kurtis Lindqvist wrote:

 >Just like the net was one of the prime sources of information
 >during 9-11.

On the morning of 9/11 I was alone in a colo in Reston VA (3000 miles from 
home), and I found it very difficult to get information (other than the 
most basic facts, planes hitting WTC and Pentagon, crashing in PA, 
airplanes grounded, WTC towers collapsing) on that day.  Web servers were 
overloaded, downloads repeatedly stalled.  The big thing the 'net helped 
with most was sending information (via email and IM) to my friends and 
family back home in CA, letting them know that I was OK, and to receive 
information (via email and IM) from those watching TV and learn second hand 
what they had learned from TV.  My cell phone only worked intermittently, 
due to heavy network congestion on the cell network surrounding DC.  When I 
finally got done at the colo and went back to my friend's house in Vienna 
later that afternoon, *that* is when I was finally able to learn details 
about what had happened during the day and see video of the WTC etc. - via 
TV footage.

When I got back to the office, I learned that the big screen TV that had 
previously been located in the exercise room had been moved to the center 
of the office so that everyone could more easily see it, and everyone could 
hear it.  Meanwhile, they all had high speed Internet connections to the 
computers sitting on their desks.  Why bring in the TV if the 'net was "one 
of the prime sources of information"?

jc