Crazy Plane
As much as I complain about the state of things for IT workers, I have to say I'm quite shocked at what Joseph Andrew Stack did today. I'm sure most of y'all have read his manifesto by now. The one thing that jumped out at me is the part where he says he should have walked away from engineering. I really wish he had, maybe he could have found happiness at something else and we'd never have had to know his name.
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It's an interesting
It's an interesting manifesto. This didn't happen in a vacuum, it was the final straw in a long line of frustrations. He wanted to make a statement, and he certainly did, although the message will get lost in the method.
But, on the other hand, if he had just slit his wrists in his bathtub, would the entire nation be reading http://embeddedart.com/?
I skimmed what he wrote, and
I skimmed what he wrote, and I need to read it again. I'm afraid the ISP is going to come under pressure to yank his page altogether....which brings up another discussion point: Should his account (and web page) be pulled because of these events?
Oh, speak of the devil:
"This website has been taken offline due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI. If you want to see the original letter, please see the archived version at thesmokinggun.com: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html "
I'm not surprised. But it
I'm not surprised. But it is a little too late since it is already posted and commented on all over out there on the net. The fact that they provide a link to one cached version pretty much makes removing it moot and the request from the FBI seems rather pointless. But that isn't surprising either since the gov't really hasn't 'got' the whole Internet thing to begin with... which is of course ironic in itself since government funding started it in the first place.
The general consensus now
The general consensus now was that he acted against the government and by the literal definition of terrorism, he acted as a domestic terrorist.
http://tinyurl.com/888dkn
"Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives."
Well, yes he did use his plane as a weapon. I'm not so certain that he had an agenda other than his personal gripe with the IRS. I also doubt if he acted as part of a group, even though a white supremacist group did refer to him as a "White Amercian Patriot."
Justified acts by a desperate man? Definitive no.
An expanded opinion posted
An expanded opinion posted this morning: Austin Plane Crash - http://tinyurl.com/ylgyr6d - Maybe open to debate but calling it what is was.
Joe Stack was a copycat,
Joe Stack was a copycat, and, fortunately, not a very good one. His intent copied McVeigh in Oklahoma City, while his method copied the World Trade Center attackers. He accomplished far less than either. If he wanted to exchange his life for a grand statement that would change the world, it was wasted. Along with it he wasted the life of a good man that he might well have liked, given the opportunity, as well as doing irreparable damage to his own family.
No matter how you look at this, whether you agreed with Stack's gripes or hated that someone would commit such acts of violence against society, it was a waste. Two lives are lost, two people are injured, property has been destroyed, and survivors' lives altered in devastating ways. And nothing positive can come of it. It's just a waste.
--
Jerry Dunham
Grieving for the families
I disagree that Stack was a
I disagree that Stack was a copy cat. McVeigh and Nichols had agendas far beyond what Stack was doing.
At this point, there are so many different variations on the theme of "terrorism" that it is pretty easy to draw parallels to almost any incident. Joe Stack was a pissed off unemployed software engineer apparently, but who owned a nice home (that he tried to burn down with his wife and daughter inside) and who owned a private plane. He hated the IRS and had problems, I guess, with the self-employment tax provisions that caused him to have to pay more than he wanted to pay.
Not wanting to pay taxes is a normal condition. Flying your provately owned Piper into a building where the IRS has their "final resort" auditors makes what Stack did an attempt to murder more than the one man who died.
The glorification of Joe Stack is appalling, but unfortunately, people will clamor to make their personal statements against the government (but you don't see them flying a plane into another building).
Joe Stack's daughter, Samantha Bell calls deadly Austin attack on IRS 'wrong,' but labels dad hero
Joe Stack was no hero. He was a coward and a tax evader and probably alot more. And at least in my opinion, he most certainly was not a terrorist.
You can copy someone without
You can copy someone without ever realizing that your agenda is a weak shadow of theirs, and without knowing how relatively unsuccessful you will be. I guess we can agree to disagree.
As for "people will clamor to make their personal statements against the government (but you don't see them flying a plane into another building)", you just may, now. There may be more copycats out there. The level of infamy Joe has attained will appeal to some. It seems our society has no shortage of off-balance people.
--
Jerry Dunham
Hoping I'm wrong
OK, I may have overreacted.
OK, I may have overreacted. I am troubled by making Joe Stack into a hero and calling him a terrorist. As I wrote, it blurs the general population's understanding of what we are fighting on a Worldwide scale.
McVeigh' and Nichols' acts were at least partially if not entirely attributed to the Waco and Ruby Ridge events. They were acting against the government. The fact that the Murrah Building housed IRS and FBI was less important than it was a government facility.
Eric Rudolph was a domestic terrorist.
Joe Stack was a cowardly man who found no other alternative than to fly his private plane into a building in an act of protest. Now, they'll probably make posters about him and maybe even a movie.
This country has more problems than I care to think about. But the reality is that even if it is a knee jerk response, private aviation is about to see new restrictions placed on it.
A couple of items of note...
A couple of items of note... recent information is that Joe Stack's wife and stepdaughter were not in fact in the house when he set it afire. Apparently he had been going on a tirade the previous night and they stayed at a nearby motel that night. They returned in the morning to find their home ablaze and that is apparently when the pictures of them were taken there.
Also worth noting is that it probably isn't precisely accurate to say that Joe Stack owned either that house or the plane. I would venture to guess he had a mortgage on the house and like a lot of us these days he probably owed more on it than it was worth. Also I would be surprised if he didn't have a loan on the airplane. It is entirely possible if he was unemployed and near the ends of his means (which one might assume given the desperation of what he did) that he was near foreclosure on one if not likely both.
Neither of these things are said to try to raise any sympathy for the man or what he did... just that I think it better to view everything for what it is in order to try to understand it.
OK, he had mortgages and
OK, he had mortgages and loans. This afternoon there was a report of a guy in Ohio who bulldozed his house before foreclosure. But this guy didn't use his bulldozer on the bank or the IRS office.
And I also need to repeat that my rants are largely over the desire to glorify Stack in some way and to refer to what he did as an act of terrorism...he was crazy, nuts, insane.
Oh, no doubt he was crazy...
Oh, no doubt he was crazy... as in the title of the thread.
I don't desire to glorify him or what he did, but we won't learn anything about this sort of thing or figure out how to prevent it in the future without understanding it.
What I am saying is that some people want to imply that Joe Stack was rich (and not paying his taxes just because he didn't want to) because he had been living in a nice home and flying a private plane. But being unemployed, mortgaged to the hilt and having that crashing down on him as well as the IRS makes it a lot more understandable why the guy went nuts.
Here's the reason its important to understand -- Joe Stack's situation is far from unique and people on this forum should be more aware of that than the average person. We all know a lot of unemployed or underemployed software engineers (and other technical professionals), many of whom are on the verge of losing everything. These are people who have worked hard to get education and build skills and experience only to face often repeated hardships such as layoffs. How do we help these people and reach out to them to prevent others from getting to their breaking point where they feel like they have nothing left to lose? This is I believe the true danger of 'copy cats' as has been noted in other postings.
We can't do anything about Joe Stack or the people he hurt, but there are others out there for whom it is hopefully not yet too late.
I understand, but we have
I understand, but we have different perspectives here. If Stack was over extended then something needed to change. Reading his ramblings, he was blaming other people for his problems. That never works.
There was a time in my life where I was unemployed, behind on my mortgage and almost at the end. Then I took a job that was "beneath me" (according to my psyche). I don't like paying taxes one bit, especially because there are so many people out there who somehow skirt around the rules and don't pay as much as they should (fair share).
How do you help the people who are underemployed or unemployed? Matt's doing more than his fair share. But if its the government that is supposed to help, that is counter to why Stack did what he did. In fact, if he was trying to argue for smaller government, I want smaller government too. Tell you what. I've been developing a new company to develop and commercialize new technologies from federal IP. No one gets paid until the deals are done or unless the receiving company agrees to pay a "scout" fee or there is grant money found. Does that help? Probably not.
As for copy cats, if history goes the way I'd expect, there will be increased security at buildings housing government employees AND there will be increased control over small airport and private pilots. How about being required to file a flight plan? How about security checks? How about metal detectors?
There is a huge gap between security at commercial airports and private ones.
“The easy access and lack of security are the result of years of debate over how much threat small aircraft pose as terror weapons and how they could be regulated without stifling commerce and pilot freedom.”
I'd say that the days of owning or renting a plane for an afternoon jaunt in the sky are just about a thing of the past.
I don't expect the
I don't expect the government to understand or to help us techies. I do wish they'd quit doing things that make it worse for us like making it so attractive with tax incentives to send jobs offshore and so easy to replace Americans with cheap imported H1B/L1 workers. But any help is obviously going to have to come from the rest of us, and you are right, Matt is doing more than his fair share, especially since he's been personally affected by a layoff recently himself. Your company has the potential to help when you "make it" and you are able to start hiring people to fulfill your hopefully lucrative contracts.
I don't think increased security at government buildings is necessarily going to help much other than to make people feel better. The only way to protect against an attack like this one or many others one could envision would be to make government buildings underground bunkers.
I also think that all of the controls I've seen proposed on private pilots will be completely useless. If Joe Stack had not cared enough about the law to fly his plane into a building, why would he comply with a law that required him to file a flight plan? Even if he did, how would they enforce it if he deviated from that plan to crash into a building? It would have been easy for him to file a flight plan from Georgetown to some other airport south of Austin which would have reasonably taken him near his target. It isn't like we've got sufficient numbers of Air Force jets flying around close enough to be able to do anything to respond quickly enough to this sort of attack. Security checks and metal detectors for private pilots? Useless. Why? The plane itself is the weapon. What difference would it have made if Joe Stack had to show his ID at the Georgetown airport and go through a metal detector? Absolutely none...
No... if anything is to be done to prevent this sort of thing, it is going to have to be some kind of community outreach to try to get these people help before they do something. That isn't easy, but it is possible. Maybe if Joe Stack had felt that there was someone out there who cared about his plight he wouldn't have felt like he had to do what he did.
I really don't like the idea of living in a world where the rights of the law abiding are strictly dictated by the actions of the lawless.
But you see, its all a
But you see, its all a matter of risk tolerance. As you said, "my company has the potential to help when we make it." That's pretty easy, but at that point, I'll have my pick of people. My tech transfer activity (second company) is all sweat right now. Want in? We'll find a technology that fits your interests. I'm already looking into a new cyber security piece of hardware.
You have been discussing the H1B off shoring problem since I started interacting on door64. Have you written or called your Congressman or Senator?
As for increased security, its not a matter of what you think will protect, I'm simply projecting what may happen. After the Oklahoma City bombing the Federal Building Security Act (or some such set of words) was passed. That's why some if not many federal buildings have those cement abutments in front of them (to prevent truck bombs). Whether or not control on private pilots is useless or not, there is a good chance they will happen. You know that they scrambled two fighter jets last week? Maybe we should have 24/7 fly-overs and shoot planes like Stack's out of the sky.
Community outreach is a soft way of dealing with cowardly insane acts like Joe Stack's. But the real question is what does Joe Stack teach a real terrorist? And that is why there will eventually be tighter security on small airports and private planes. If private pilots have tighter security and more restrictions, how will your rights be affected? I wrote a piece a few weeks ago, My Safety & Security Versus "Your" Privacy
"It is time to banish any thinking that there is a right to privacy when you enter an airport or when you are flying on public airlines or frankly, any other form of public transportation. Short of a mechanical issue, my right to arrive at my destination without being blown up by a jihadist dedicated to exploding himself to smithereens in an act of his exercise of religious freedom is more important than someone else's privacy."
It is absolutely fine with me if your privacy (or rights for that matter) are abridged in return for my safety and my security when flying.
The thing is that enacting
The thing is that enacting "feel good" legislation that creates a lot of hassles for law abiding people but really does nothing to stop the terrorists means the terrorists win. Why is that? Because they've made it worse for us. We are reminded every time we are inconvenienced that it is because of them. And worse, useless measures can create a false sense of security which means that we may be less likely to catch the latest innovation from the terrorists in ways to attack us.
I realize you are probably right that even though all these new restrictions on private planes/pilots being proposed will be completely ineffective, they will probably pass because legislators are more concerned with appearing to "do something" than actually solving a problem. Doing the wrong thing is often worse than doing nothing.
If rights or privacy are going to be abridged, there damn well had better be some real gains from it. If its all for nothing then I can't see how you are happy about that.
Everyone's rights were
Everyone's rights were abridged on the morning of Sept. 11th (reminding again that Joe Stack is a coward and tax evader). I have no idea what you refer to when you write "feel good legislation." This is an asymmetric war for which we were sorely unprepared and missed countless "dots" long before Pres. Clinton took office...it goes back way. And as such, being prepared is difficult if not impossible since the mode of attack is unknown and largely unpredictable. What are the "useless measures?"
How have you been inconvenienced? Airport waiting lines? My answer is too bad because I want the bad guy to be stopped at security. Don't like the 3-1-1? Too bad, I say.
Frankly, and it is far from politically correct, but intense profiling could be a partial solution.
I could see and smell the smoke rising over the skies of Manhattan on the morning of September 11th. My rights have not been abridged to the slightest degree.
We weren't talking about
We weren't talking about 9/11. The "feel good legislation" and the useless measures I am talking about are the clampdown on private aviation which has been proposed by some because of the Joe Stack incident. Requiring flight plans -- pointless for reasons I've already explained and a few more. And requiring private pilots to go through security would essentially put most small airports out of business and increase costs to the ones that survive that would push private aviation even more out of reach. And it wouldn't matter for reasons I've mentioned before and a bunch of others I can think of off the top of my head.
There was some really goofy legislation proposed after the OKC bombing, including controls on diesel fuel, fertilizer and rental vehicles which would have been completely unworkable for a lot of reasons. I'm hoping that common sense will prevail again this time and we won't have a lot of bad legislation enacted that just won't work and will choke private aviation.
I'm not convinced that what has been done that has caused long airport security waiting lines has done much good. Look -- the x-mas bomber got through. Richard Reed got through. There are tons of ways to get through anything that has been put in place. As many dots as we think we've crossed, we are surely missing a whole lot more.
And here's the deal -- even if we stop airliner hijacking, is it going to stop terrorism? I doubt it. The terrorists will find another way. Frankly, things changed since 9/11 that have nothing to do with the government. Hijacking a plane with a box cutter would not work today. Why? Because every man with a pair on the plane (and probably most of the women) would rather risk getting slashed with a box cutter than allow the plane to be hijacked.
Have I ever said anything against profiling? Show me. I know what we could do to put an end to islamofascist terrorism once and for all -- but it is far less politically correct than profiling.
Has the hassle and extra time kept me from flying as often as I used to - Yes. Between that and the much increased cost of tickets I've often decided to just stay home or to drive instead of flying.
The bottom line is nobody in the history of the earth has ever been totally safe, and nobody ever will. We can turn the country into a complete fascist state where the government is our nanny, but we will never get to perfect safety. I've often seen you arguing for smaller government -- arguing that we should turn the US into a more harsh police state than many of the former soviet bloc countries seems to be the exact opposite of that.
Like it or not we've all got to deal with a certain amount of risk and in the end at a certain point we all have the ultimate responsibility for our own security because there isn't always going to be someone else there to protect us.
Never wrote that you were
Never wrote that you were against profiling. You're so anti-immigration because of the H1B visas that you make me look "tame."
No, terrorism will not stop if we stop airline issues. But I feel alot safer than I would without it. I made tons of calls back in 1996-8 period when airlines were still serving meals and using metal utensils.
Security does not equate to nanny state in my opinion. I'd rather discuss this topic over a beer than on line.
Abridging rights and privacy
Abridging rights and privacy of law-abiding citizens is a lot easier than preserving safety and security. Many of the current rules manage the former just fine, while completely failing at the latter, to the rejoice of terrorists all over.
Jane Prusakova
Senior Consultant at Improving Enterprises
LinkedIn Info
How would you solve the
How would you solve the problem of "preserving safety and security" differently?
Terrorists who hi-jacked the
Terrorists who hi-jacked the planes on 9/11 spent years in the US on out-of-date student visas. They did not go to classes for which their visas were granted, but instead attended pilot schools, and only lessons on take-offs, but not landings. It's gotten harder for students to get student visas since 2011, but class attendance is still barely monitored.
The Christmas 2009 terrorist was a known entity - to his home agency, but they failed to broadcast the information to other security agencies.
For the next terrorist attack, a great place to hit in the airport would be the security line itself - there is a huge crowd, everybody is nervous and fiddling with their luggage and shoes; it is easy to blend in and strike. Because of how security is currently configured, the security bottleneck has been moved from the gates to the airport entrance. Reducing the crowd at any given point in the airport, including the security line, would lead to greater safety for all - without an assault on privacy or convenience.
Jane Prusakova
Senior Consultant at Improving Enterprises
LinkedIn Info
For anyone who continues to
For anyone who continues to be interested in this subject, I've just read this article on the Genome of the Home Grown Jihadist
Dr. Phares is a well known author and expert. I read his views carefully. This is what we're up against...not Joe Stack.
"How about metal
"How about metal detectors?"
What we need is "mental detectors".
--
Jerry Dunham
Detecting the problem
And that, sir, is the point.
And that, sir, is the point. It is impossible to stop the domestic wack-job who decides to buy explosives and drive his car through the local "Golden Arches" because they put mayonnaise on his Big Mac, or the idiot who wants to blow up a clinic (you know what I mean), or even an American citizen who decides that he doesn't want to pay his taxes and fly his plane into a building that houses the big bad government auditors who are going to take everything that he bought away from him that he can't afford (I don't care if he owns it outright or is mortgaged to the hilt). If "you" want to stop these types of people, then we are all subject to the type of profiling ("mental detectors") that the BIG BROTHER fearists are worried about.
We have enough trouble stopping people like Zazi in New York City or "Major" Hassan at Ft. Hood (who is more like the group of wack-jobs described above).
In short, we have a serious problem in this country and its called freedom in an open society. Some people are going to abuse those valuable things that we've been given and earned and fought for all of these years.
Everything changed on September 11th, 2001. There are things that will change in the future.