Re: Terrorism Hysteria on the Net

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 07:21 PM 6/10/96 -0500, snow wrote:
>On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, John Young wrote:
>
>> "You bring me a select group of hackers and within 90 days I'll bring this
>> country to its knees, " says Jim Settle, retired director of the FBI's
>> computer crime squad. 
>
>	Give me 15 well trained soldiers(near special forces level) and I
>can do it in less than 60 days. Without touching a computer. 
>	There was a blue print published by Omni Magazine in the mid to
>late 80's written by Henry Kissinger (IIRC). 
>	Give me 15 McVey's with the ability to follow orders and I'll have
>this country in chaos in 2 weeks. 
>
>	It isn't that hard, it is just that almost everyone prefers the
>current system to total death & destruction chaos that follows a strong
>government collapsing.

Doesn't this statement represent something of a bias in favor of today's 
system?  Is the "total death and destruction chaos" a function of the 
collapse of that strong government, or the immediate tendency of it to be 
replaced with dictator wannabes?

In other words, if a "strong government" could be brought down with a 
guarantee that nobody would be able to even begin to replace it, might that 
not be an entirely different matter?


>Society holds itself together in large part not
>because of the rule of law, but becaue most people want it to. 

Doesn't this statement contradict the previous statement you made?  If 
there's "chaos" perhaps that's merely because a small group of people is 
trying to take control.  Most people want peace, but it can be disturbed by 
a minority.


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com