The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is Interested in Operation Blackjack
June 19th, 2009A U.S. Department of Homeland Security user (host: bcp3.cbp.dhs.gov, ip: 63.167.255.153) conducted the following Google search: operation blackjack.
The DHS user visited Operation Blackjack: The Story of Terrorist Nuclear Attacks on Major Western Cities. Twice.
I’ve avoided following the Blackjack/Jackblack developments too closely on here because I’m pretty sure that the point is to study the people who are paying attention to it. And yes, I’m up to speed on all the latest nonsense. There’s no need to send me any more story suggestions or emails about it, UNLESS you know who is behind it.
Next week, we have record U.S. Treasury debt offerings that might not go so well. There’s also Ardent Sentry 2009 underway now, and running into next week. And… Wait for it: The Summer/Winter solstice.
The fact that these events play out at the same time as the Blackjack/Jackblack game/viral marketing/social experiment is probably just a coincidence. In fact, I wasn’t planning on mentioning this at all because whoever is behind the Blackjack/Jackblack thing is probably getting off on watching all the activity on the message boards.
But then Boeing took a look.
And now DHS is sniffing around.
Personally, I don’t think it’s viral marketing. I can’t imagine that there are more than a couple of thousand people on the planet even paying attention to this ridiculous stunt. I also seriously doubt that it has anything to do with any sort of pre-attack planning. I mean, come on you guys, snap out of it… My best guess is that it’s a sociology project and that the topics involved with it finally attracted the attention of DHS and others.
Who’s behind it? I have no idea, but I bet DHS is going to find out.
“My best guess is that it’s a sociology project and that the topics involved with it finally attracted the attention of DHS and others.
Who’s behind it? I have no idea, but I bet DHS is going to find out.”
I have to agree. It seemed like a really ambitious art-graphic novel project for someone with a crypto-bent. I don’t know The Telegraph at all, but I suspect it’s a fairly well-funded paper, so I have to be impressed that they’d take this kind of graphic-novel-art under their wing. Kudos to them!
Unfortunately, I also now suspect it’s all going to unravel on them, one way or the other. Either the US Feds will bog this down, or the artists behind it will be forced to fess-up to the scheme.
Ah well…a feather in their caps either way.
Folks at another forum say:
It looks like a social experiment created by this guy ( http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49212 ), who wrote “The darkness that lies behind our obsession with doom”: ( http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/justin_williams/blog/2009/05/05/the_darkness_that_lies_behind_our_obsession_with_doom )
“So many are obsessed with the apocalypse and fancy they see it in every bug, every conflict and every economic hiccup because they equate the destruction of civilisation with the End of All Our Problems – global, local and personal. Plunged into negative equity by the house price slump? How about a wipeout at the hands of some crazed bioterrorist to end your mortgage nightmare? Staring redundancy in the face? A spot of global thermonuclear war ought to loosen labour conditions. Tired of queueing in the post office for your child benefit? Heh, there’s always catastrophic global warming or the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 to trim the numbers.”
^^