The internet was developed in the US as a military tool to facilitate communication in the event of a nuclear war. Its disparate strands proved crucial last week as people tried desperately to contact friends and family in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, phone systems were overloaded and hundreds of thousands of people who were confronted with busy signals went online instead. Websites were established by Prodigy, Yahoo! and many others to help people find loved ones who survived the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Visitors were able to check the whereabouts of people they knew who may have been close to the attack scenes. Lycos, another Internet portal, also created an information page labeled "US Attacked: What You Can Do" which offered a multitude of links to charities and links to victim assistance groups.
An information site for tourism and entertainment in New York City, ny.com, put up a list of survivors and also launched a general information site for New Yorkers, featuring phone numbers for employees of various companies located in the World Trade Centre to call. It also provided numbers to report missing persons and links to subway and railroad sites, blood centres, and city message boards. Amazon.com, Yahoo! and Paypal.com were just three sites which established online donation facilities whereby members of the public could donate money to the relief effort.
The New York Post set up a resource site for city residents presenting missing persons information as well as ongoing news coverage. CNN continues to feature a Victim Information Page of resources for New Yorkers and those wishing to help. The New York Times is providing links to various resources on its home page and is also hosting a list of all known victims and a list of the tenants of the World Trade Centre towers.
In the hours after the attacks, Internet traffic surged and access to many US-based news websites like the New York Times and CNN was virtually impossible, so overwhelming was the interest in the worst terrorist action in history. The Irish Times website ireland.com saw traffic to its breaking news service almost treble during the week while RTE replaced its entire site with pages devoted to the attacks.
BOGUS MAIL: It took less than 24 hours for the virulent and fraudulent spam to arrive in email boxes all over the world. The email attempts to collect donations to assist in the rescue effort typically refer to an "Express Relief Fund" or "Victims Survivor Fund" in the address or text of the messages. In one case, an email purported to be collecting donations on behalf of the Red Cross but directed recipients to sites completely unrelated to the aid organisation, according to the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email.
TRACKING THE TERRORISTS: America Online has handed the FBI email records for accounts belonging to the suspected hijackers. AOL Time Warner's online division stores logs of when instant messaging users are on the network. It also can access email correspondence under certain situations. Although an AOL spokesman wouldn't provide details, he denied reports that the company had agreed to install a Carnivore surveillance system. The FBI developed Carnivore to allow it to wiretap communications that go through Internet service providers. Other US ISPs also acknowledged that they were working with the FBI to turn over specific information that may be relevant to the case.
INTELLIGENCE FAILURE: The current emphasis on technology over human intelligence-gathering and an information overload may help explain US intelligence agencies' failure to forestall the worst terror attack on American soil, according to surveillance experts. "Our raw intelligence has gotten weaker," said Anthony Cordesman, an anti-terrorism expert with the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. His comments echoed those of former Secretary of State James Baker, who told CNN that "it would be well. . . to consider beefing up some of our intelligence capabilities, particularly in the areas of human intelligence."
TALIBAN SITE HACKED: A website thought to belong to the Afghan Mission to the United Nations was repeatedly hacked last week. At one point the site was defaced with a message reminding visitors that there is £5 million bounty for Osama bin Laden. Another defacement of Taleban.com reproduced an FBI fact file on the United States's prime suspect for the atrocities. At the time of writing, the site was had been taken offline.
MIRCOSOFT MOVE: The judge overseeing the Microsoft antitrust case has given the company and the Justice Department an extra four days to submit a joint report that had been due in court on Friday. US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly extended the deadline until tomorrow when a report outlining how both sides think the case should be handled going forward will be submitted, Microsoft said in a statement.
PC SALES WILL TUMBLE: Shipments of consumer personal computers worldwide are set to tumble 10 per cent this year as opposed to a year ago, market research firm International Data Corp (IDC) has said warned. The decline would mark the first year-on-year drop in personal computer sales since 1986, according to industry data, and would be far below the flat growth rate forecast earlier.