On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 07:53:58PM -0700, Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Reason I am asking: I thought of a most dreadful thing the
> terrorists could do with very little money and make an enormous
> psychological and financial impact on our society. They could
> easily destroy a billion dollars of value for each thousand
> they spent, and might not even need to die. If I post
> the idea, do I run the risk of giving the terrorists a notion
> that they hadn't already discovered? Or would I help
> protect against such a fate by alerting the good guys?
> Would the feds come visit me? spike
I think that in general it is a good idea to come up with dreadful
scenarios in order to make sure they don't happen. But one should think
a bit about to whom one spread them (not that I think Bin Laden et al
subscribe to this list - too high noise level :-). As Adam Ierymenko
said, "I can think of lots of creative terrorist actions. So can anyone
else with half a brain. Thankfully, most terrorists aren't that bright.
Don't share your brain with terrorists". But share it with others.
That said, I think the feds *might* be interested in visits anyway. I
saw some report that one of the new antiterrorist proposals included
"giving advice to terrorists" as terrorism. I wonder how far the
transitivity goes? If I tell you that tankes with ammonia are
transported across Lake M�laren, and you suggest that if somebody blew
them up it would make an awful damage, and then somebody did it, would I
become a terrorist? And the newspaper telling me about the tanker?
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