Future:Media:Change

WikiLeaks.org, a site that specializes in leaked documents for the public good, has obtained 24 hours of pager texts beginning at 3AM on September 11, 2001 and continuing through 3am on September 12, 2001.

I’m all for “Sunshine,” and pushing as much information into the public sphere, but I’m not a fan of the timing of this, starting the day before the holiday, which is a major travel day and continuing three hours into Thanksgiving.

The only reason I felt compelled to blog this is that my natural reaction to information is to free it and share. I’m one of those people trying to get my colleagues to embrace the web ethos and not be so protective over their information and obsessed with timing. Yet, here I find myself upset with WikiLeaks for not considering those factors.

Let’s find the happiness in this mess. In this case, I’m overjoyed to learn the Bush twins were known by the Secret Service code names “Twinkle and Turq.”

“TWINKLE AND TURQ ARE ACCOUNTED FOR AND SAFE,” the message says. Twinkle and Turquoise were the code names used for then-president George W. Bush’s twin daughters Jenna and Barbara.

Now, that is something to be thankful for. I’m off to read My Pet Goat.

The full info is on 911.wikileaks.org.

From 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (US east coast time), WikiLeaks is releasing over half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

The messages are being broadcast “live” to the global community — sychronized to the time of day they were sent. The first message is from 3AM September 11, 2001, five hours before the first attack, and the last, 24 hours later.

Text pagers are usualy carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.

An index of messages released so far is available here.