WI: 9/11 happened in 1995

What if 9/11/1995 was the day that that 9/11 happened? How would Clinton respond, how would Gingrich response, and what effects would this have on the 1996 election?
 
At this time AQ is still operating out of Sudan. Unlike the Taliban if something like this happens Omar-al-Bashir would be perfectly willing to give the US Bin Laden's head on a silver platter to save his neck. So Bin Laden probably goes into hiding before this happens, where I don't know
 
What if the attempt on Mubarak’s life in the 90’s worked? Would the brotherhood have a bulwark 16 years earlier?
 
In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.
 
In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.

Is this because the internet was still in its infancy, as far as public usage went, and therefore the genie would be much more easily put back in the bottle? Or because you think Democratic First and Second Ladies are so much more inclined to totalitarian overreach than Republican politicians and bureaucrats are?
 
In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.
Ehhhh, no.
 
In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.

This is...dystopian. Even by AH standards. I suppose every population center has torture centers and secret police too?
 
At this time AQ is still operating out of Sudan. Unlike the Taliban if something like this happens Omar-al-Bashir would be perfectly willing to give the US Bin Laden's head on a silver platter to save his neck. So Bin Laden probably goes into hiding before this happens, where I don't know

Probably Afghanistan, even though the Taliban wasn't as strong in 1995 as they were in 2001. If Bin Laden is planning something that huge, he probably has contigency plans for when Sudan boots him out, as they did OTL.

In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.

I wonder why Hillary Clinton never thought to support such measures when she was senator during/after 9/11?
 
In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.

And how would this be enforced when the US already had public Internet? You're also forgetting that most other countries would continue to allow public Internet access. If you somehow got this dystopia, it would really set the US back on the world stage.
 
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In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.
"War on terror" people and "think of the children" people don't overlap as often as one would think. Bob Dole supported the Vietnam War unti the day that Saigon fell, but then ran a "don't think of the children" campaign in 1996.
 

nbcman

Donor
In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.
It would be impossible to cut off the internet in 1995 when about 14% of the US population had internet access according to a Pew Research study in October 1995. AOL alone had close to 5 million users.
 
"War on terror" people and "think of the children" people don't overlap as often as one would think. Bob Dole supported the Vietnam War unti the day that Saigon fell, but then ran a "don't think of the children" campaign in 1996.

There was some minor attempt to gin up Security Moms in the early 2000s, but as the article states, that didn't really go anywhere. Lots of women are obviously concerned about terrorism, but I doubt that they frame it as a "what about the children" issue, the way they might frame drug abuse or internet-porn that way.

"As a mother, I just worry, I mean, with all this stuff you hear about going on, what happens if my kids' school gets blown up by Al Qaeda while they're in gym class?"
 
The patriot act OTL was a SEVERELY toned down version of democrat proposals for increased security policing from the 1990s. This was OTL's 1990s, with nothing on the scale of 9/11. With an earlier analogue to 9/11? Well it'd probably be significantly worse than even what I said earlier in the thread.

This is...dystopian. Even by AH standards. I suppose every population center has torture centers and secret police too?
You think there's no secret police in the US? How naive. What do you call the FBI?
 
The patriot act OTL was a SEVERELY toned down version of democrat proposals for increased security policing from the 1990s. This was OTL's 1990s, with nothing on the scale of 9/11. With an earlier analogue to 9/11? Well it'd probably be significantly worse than even what I said earlier in the thread.

So tell me, how would the US deal with massive negative public reaction? More importantly, what would happen as public Internet spread across the world?
 
The patriot act OTL was a SEVERELY toned down version of democrat proposals for increased security policing from the 1990s. This was OTL's 1990s, with nothing on the scale of 9/11. With an earlier analogue to 9/11? Well it'd probably be significantly worse than even what I said earlier in the thread.

Now how will this realistically pass? Including passing the courts. Imagine AOL, Compuserve, the early dot-com boom companies, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, probably some telecoms, and pretty much everyone involved in computers, video games, technology, etc. suing to block such a law.

Declare them to be domestic terrorists of course.

IIRC there is no legal definition of domestic terrorism and there is no such thing as a designated domestic terrorist group. All sorts of domestic terrorists from anti-abortion criminals to ecoterrorists to neo-Nazi terrorists are all simply terrorists according to the law.

Also, who says the internet would spread around the world in ttl?

Because it did by 1995. If you're a company operating in multiple countries and you have a website on the early internet, you wouldn't want the US to cordon off the internet for "security".
 
The patriot act OTL was a SEVERELY toned down version of democrat proposals for increased security policing from the 1990s. This was OTL's 1990s, with nothing on the scale of 9/11. With an earlier analogue to 9/11? Well it'd probably be significantly worse than even what I said earlier in the thread.
Could you post a link to info about these Democrat proposals?
 

nbcman

Donor
Declare them to be domestic terrorists of course.

Also, who says the internet would spread around the world in ttl?
Really? So the alt-US government in 1995 is going to brand people who are primarily checking e-mail and looking at poor quality porn on the interweb as domestic terrorists? This isn't an ASB scenario where there is magic controlling the thoughts of the US populace. You seriously think that the Clinton administration is going to propose this?
 

nbcman

Donor
The patriot act OTL was a SEVERELY toned down version of democrat proposals for increased security policing from the 1990s. This was OTL's 1990s, with nothing on the scale of 9/11. With an earlier analogue to 9/11? Well it'd probably be significantly worse than even what I said earlier in the thread.


You think there's no secret police in the US? How naive. What do you call the FBI?

Are you implying that the Aspin-Brown Commission (appointed by Mr. Clinton) or the IC21 study (Republican led) was recommending actions that were more extensive than the Patriot Act? Or is there some other proposal that you are referring to?
 

Deleted member 96212

In terms of surveillance the US would look like OTL's PRC, minus the internet bits because no civilians allowed to use the internet. No civilian internet use, having to be 25 *and* need both a license/specific economic or job-related reasons to own a personal computer and Tipper Gore/Hillary Clinton allowed to do stuff that makes fahrenheit 451's world seem like a world of free speech -- no videogames period for starter.

It always frustrates me when I see scenarios like this and one or even a good amount of people say that the most likely response would be something over the top that not even an unreasonable person, nation, or world leader would actually consider.
 
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