9/14/2001

To step away from the stuff going on in Washington and New York and to look at something that I am noticing as a side effect of it I guess. Sites like slashdot and c-net have talked about terriorists using things like SSH and other encrytpion technologies to send each other messages. (Apparently Osama bin Ladin is a big cyrpto user) This tells me that they are using the internet, so I was looking at some of the posting on sites like Slashdot and Userfriendly and have noticed that there are a lot that are very anti-american and pro-arabic. Several of the posts that I have read tell straight lies about the sanctions that we have against iraq saying that we are holding out on medical supplies and such from them, when it is well documented that there are no sanctions stopping the influx of food or medical supplies to Iraq, only other things. There are also several posts that say things like “We should not fight back, that will only make things worse” which in and of itself doesn't make them from the terrorists, but it is the way that the messages are phrased and the fact that almost all of them make sure that somewhere in it they put “I am an American Citizen” that tends to make me think that there is also a movement of another sort going on. I am sure that there are people in this country that feel this way, but I cannot beleive that they would carpet bomb sites like these were you can post your thoughts and feelings like this. I mean there are several hundred posts to these sites saying things like this, while the number of posts disagreeing with them is in the range of 20-30. And since according to several polls and surveys America is overwhelmingly for attacks and sanctions against these people I think it should be more the other way around. That is the thing that I am starting to focus on now. The fact that there are no boundries on sites like these and anything could be put on there to swing public opinion toward a goal. I guess this is one of the problems with internet polling and surveys. You cannot limit it specifically to the group that you are attempting to survey.