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The next few days are going to be critical. Make sure you don’t get caught up in the hysteria. Let your head make the decisions for you and try and feel comfortable going against the tide. Attacks on civil liberties are already being made on the basis of security. This must not be allowed to continue. Privacy (from surveillance, and to use cryptography) remain fundamental to online freedom, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise… There is no good reason for taking away our right to privacy.

Donate on the Amazon Red Cross Disaster Relief Page.

Today’s newspaper front pages: UK: From the guardian’s website, all the front pages in one place. US: From poynter.org: a collation of the American press’ Front Pages.

The first piece comes through to Barbelith: The World Trade Center:”I don’t think I will ever be able to forget how that felt – when that first tower fell, I swear that I could feel the lives of those people disappearing… Most of the day, I just felt hollow and empty, and frightened about how the world was going to change.” Matthew Perpetua is in New York.

I’ve temporarily started a dedicated forum on Barbelith for people who want to talk about New York and Washington that also collates all the posts to date.

I’m opening up the Barbelith Webzine for first person experiences and reactions to the situation in New York. E-mail me your experiences and thoughts.

September 11th 2001 was the busiest posting day ever for Blogger, as thousands of people ran to the web for information, discussion and to put their experiences in view of the world. Ev also launched a short-term Attack Search Page so that the world can get first hand accounts of what’s happened and what people are saying about the attacks. The same trend – running for information from the web – seems to have gripped the planet, resulting in the largest stress on the Internet ever – unfortunately with many people using the free, international space to blame and threaten countries, religions, ethnic groups and cultures across the world. Various sites have taken the strain of getting information out to the people, including Barbelith and Metafilter as major sites like CNN and BBC News temporarily collapse under the strain. To all New Yorkers – friends and strangers alike – while we fear what is yet to come, our hearts are with you at this time. And via Brainsluice, the picture that says it all.

There’s only one thing in the news worth even discussing today, and that’s the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. It’s impossible to get through to almost any news sites at the moment, but the Guardian is still up and running if you need to know what’s going on: Guardian Special Report. I’m going to refrain from comment until things have calmed down a bit, but in the meantime, if you want to discuss it, I suggest getting over to the Underground where various issues are being discussed.