Email terrorism

On December 15th our two largest cities get emails threatening their school systems. New York decides it’s clearly an amateurish prank and does nothing about it. LA takes it seriously and cancels about 1000 schools. Most of a million kids stay home, confounding parental expectations, throwing how many workplaces off when at least some of the parents are forced to stay home. How much money was spent searching those 1000 schools for the threatened weaponry?

I guess “prank” is the word. It wasn’t terrorism in the usual sense in that there was no political agenda. No one was injured. But if the motive was to frighten, it was more effective than if a bunch of people had been mowed down. It’s a shock to realize that one person can wreak so much havoc with an email.

One can imagine ISIS (if it wasn’t behind the school emails) taking note of how much chaos can be achieved at such a low cost. The threat of violence is just as effective as violence.

How can we live like this? The powerless are no longer powerless. Everyone who wants to is empowered to terrorize, or threaten to terrorize, everybody else. To disrupt the life of a huge city. Or so it can seem. Is that’s not so, shouldn’t we be told why it’s not?

The opposite reactions of the two cities is unsettling. Which response was the correct one? Which take on reality? How did NYC know the email was a fake? And if NYC knew, why didn’t LA know? Isn’t that part of the story we have to know? It’s not reassuring to find out that at the highest level we’re not on the same page about this increasing threat.

What is the reality of just how vulnerable we are?

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