FC: FBI overreacts, declares alarm after Infoshop web posting?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt () hotmail com>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
Subject: FBI "on the ball" (not) about "domestic terrorism"?
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 14:42:49 -0800

Declan,

 On October 19th, 2002 a message calling for "an explicit and direct attack
upon the war machine" involving monkey wrenching type activities and/or
disruptive "civil disobedience" aimed at various corporate institutions) and
potentially Department of Defense facilities) was posted to Infoshop News.
The posting itself had no specific information about any actual planned
activities, it simply called on the movement as a whole to engage in them,
starting on December 15th.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/10/19/8397714

 At a guess, with little effort, I could find literally dozens of postings
in a similar vein.

 On December 4th, 2002 (a full month and a half later), the FBI's Awareness
of National Security Issues and Response (ANSIR) program posted an email
advisory about this posting... perhaps in response to some repostings of it
elsewhere three weeks later.

 Note the utter and complete lack of any substantive postings on Infoshop in
response to this posting prior to the email advisory being circulated - in
fact, a post criticizing it for a conflict with another call to action on a
separate topic was made on November 25th. In fact, no substantial traffic
was posted in response to this prior to the Tom Paine article calling
attention to the FBI warning on December 16th, and most of the postings
subsequent to that dismiss it as a the product of an "agent provacateur".

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6918

 Does a single individual have the capability to provoke a national alarm?
(apparently, yes) Does the FBI do any serious level of threat evaluation
before distributing alerts? (apparently no) Exactly what value does
highlighting such a post have for security professionals? (none that I can
see)

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt


--
Thomas Leavitt -- thomasleavitt () hotmail com, Sr. Systems Admin For Hire
Resume at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/personal/resume/

Wired since 1981. Internet-enabled since 1990. Web-enabled since 1993.
Older, wiser, and poorer, post-crash. :)

Stop the Stupidity of Michael Savage:
http://www.savagestupidity.com/




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