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Harvey’s Casino Bomb

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Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#111

Post by fedreserved »

stickfigure wrote: post #108
55555 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point! I totally do. I also used to hold this belief. But then the Snowden revelations came out and it was revealed that probably 10,000 people in government were aware of a system that was sucking up all of our data for warrantless search and they had successfully kept the secret for something like 10 years (or more?). For sure it's true that a secret can be kept by three people if two of them are dead. B…

An obvious counterpoint is that the conspiracy was exposed, by Snowden. I think the lesson here is that a "conspiracy" can exist as long as all of its participants believe they are morally in the right. The people involved in the NSA dragnet believed in the cause; when a non-believer (Snowden) got involved, the gig was up. It's easy to believe that a government agency would overstep its bounds to spy on people it (ac…

Just for the sake of argument. Whistleblowing on spying on citizens is one thing. You can expect to go to prison for that one. Whistleblowing if you were apart of bombing the world trade center, I'd expect you to get dealt with Lee Harvey Oswald style. Someone posted this a month or 2 back

The lone gunmen pilot. Created by x files creator. First episode aired march 2001. The plot of the pilot is the us intelligence was going to override a plane and fly it into the world trade center. https://youtu.be/FcZ6HXIOmYE

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#112

Post by abz10 »

beering wrote: post #105
closewith wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely wasn't common knowledge before Snowden. Even the suggestion would have put you firmly in the conspiracy theorist camp to most people.

Consider that Wired reported on NSA's secret mass-wiretap of AT&T communications in 2006! This was a high-profile lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T), which was dismissed in 2009 after new immunity legislation in 2008. That was followed by Jewel v. NSA in 2008 which seems still unresolved. Not to mention the whistleblowing on the Trailblazer Project and New York Times reporting on the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" in 2005/2…

I became known as a conspiracy theorist amount my friends when I told them about this. A week later the Snowden revelations came out and yet somehow I’m still the conspiracy theorist.

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#113

Post by abz10 »

moioci wrote: post #95
Apocryphon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how they got the Unabomber.

I would say that wasn't a slip-up, like getting a parking ticket or something. Several newspapers published his manifesto at his insistence, and his brother recognized his writing style.

I presume he would have known his writing style was unique and expected people to figure it out once he got what he wanted. It’s an interesting read.

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#114

Post by barnesto »

giarc wrote: post #58
kumarvvr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, with any crime, the more people involved, the greater the possibility that human factors will sabotage the operation. The perfect crime has one perpetrator. It is also why its fascinating that people will believe in conspiracy theories that supposedly involve tens / hundreds / thousands of people. Theories that we faked the moon landing always intrigue me. Or that the earth is flat.

>It is also why its fascinating that people will believe in conspiracy theories that supposedly involve tens / hundreds / thousands of people. I have the same reasoning for the 9/11 truthers. Do people really believe that no one on the "inside" has come out to say it was all staged/planned/faked? Hijacking 4 planes and flying them into buildings is going to take a lot of planning. Not to mention that people claim the…

Do you believe the magic of Penn and Teller is actually magic?

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#116

Post by AceJohnny2 »

Ndymium wrote: post #14

In the end he was caught because his van was identified and because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's." I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. You would think if you are going to bomb a place, the first thing would be to not talk ab…

The kind of decision-making that leads one to owing a shit-ton of money to a casino, and then deciding that the best solution is to bomb said casino, seems incompatible with covering your tracks well.

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#117

Post by temp_account001 »

oneepic wrote: post #87
duxup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Harvey got $3 million in cash and gotten away, or just not gotten caught. We would have heard about it. Unsolved Mysteries type shows and news stories would be all over that sort of thing.

His name is John Birges Sr., not Harvey.

He was such a criminal mastermind he managed to frame the casino for its own bombing.

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#118

Post by [deleted] »

Ndymium wrote: post #14

In the end he was caught because his van was identified and because "One of his sons had revealed to his then-girlfriend that his father had placed a bomb in Harvey's." I always wonder at how criminals that otherwise might seem movie-like masterminds are caught as a result of mundane mistakes and outright stupid moves like this. You would think if you are going to bomb a place, the first thing would be to not talk ab…

[deleted]

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#119

Post by stickfigure »

phab wrote: post #60
nerdbaggy wrote: post #5

Here is a great long form about it https://www.damninteresting.com/the-zero-armed-bandit/

And they have a fun interactive game you can play to defuse the bomb too! https://www.damninteresting.com/interactive/zab/

I'm confused by this game - did the original panel have lights? I was hoping this was a logical model of the original bomb, but switching #5 seems to set it off. The article says that #5 was known to be dummy.

Re: Harvey’s Casino Bomb

#120

Post by jefftk »

beering wrote: post #107
jefftk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "we all"? (ex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27989385 )

Wired reported on the EFF suing AT&T over NSA wiretapping telecom traffic in bulk in 2006. And there were other assorted news reports on Trailblazer, the "Total Information Awareness program", etc. from that time. So maybe not in the widespread public awareness, but if you were Googling trying to answer the question, "Is the USA gov't eavesdropping on all communication traffic?" in 2013 pre-Snowden, then the reasonab…

I don't think that's what people thought at the time; see https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/6/5072924/google-engineers-... for something more external. There really was a lot of surprise.

The 2006 lawsuit was about AT&T cooperating with the NSA to facilitate tapping their customers, quite different from the NSA surreptitiously digging up and tapping private fiber.

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