When Your Only Tool Is A Bomb Squad, Everything Looks Like A Bomb
from the boy-who-cried-wolf dept
A few weeks ago, we saw the city of Boston totally embarrass itself when it massively overreacted to a silly guerrilla marketing stunt gone awry. Apparently nobody learned the lesson as other places are adopting the "when in doubt, blow it up" mantra. In New Mexico, some pranksters placed three CD players in a church on Ash Wednesday, and had them play vulgar messages to disrupt the service (via BoingBoing). The police were summoned, and they soon detonated two of the three CD players, while the third one was taken back for fingerprint testing. This is ridiculous for multiple reasons. For one thing, it should have been clear that the CD players were placed there as a cruel prank, as evidenced by what they were playing. And if some people were going to make a bomb in the shape of a CD player, they wouldn't have them play noise that would attract attention to them. The fact that they took the third player back to the lab is basically an admission that there was no way they were bombs, otherwise they'd have detonated that one too. Stories like these are really disturbing for what they say about the way we handle security these days. With so many out-of-proportion responses, how is law enforcement going to respond when there's a real threat?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The final solution
The answer is to place all assets at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean, fortified with hundreds of feet of concrete. Then all live in the solar system must be terminated.
That is the only way to truly lower the risk of a terrorist ever recurring.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The final solution
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not so sure about that..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not so sure about that..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Not so sure about that..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Not so sure about that..
And this is perhaps the "saddest" statement I have heard. Welcome to paranoia 101. Let me state this in a way that everyone can understand:
When it's your time to go, the game is over. You can choose to either try to insulate yourself in a protective bubble and basically "self imprison" yourself or you can enjoy life.
I remember a quote from a movie called "Under Siege" and the basic paraphrase is that if someone is really committed to killing you, they will. This is true. What is my point, very simple, of course we should avoid things that are obviously harmful to us but we should also not be afraid of everything because it "might" harm us, this sentiment is just a recipe for even more draconian public policy in the name of public safety and "to protect the children". We are buying into the fear culture and those in power are using it to subjugate even more of our freedoms (sorry to sound so "conspiracy theoryish").
Also, I would also like to assert that perhaps their are too many self important narcissistic people walking around the planet that thinks the world revolves around them and they are so critical as to be targets for terrorists attacks. Sorry to crush egos, but unless you are a member of congress or the President, you propbably aren't important enough to be a deliberate terrorist target.
On a final note, if I were a terrorist my goal would be the maximum carnage for the work. Would placing a bomb in a church in New Mexico be a place where you'd expect a lot of people to be? New Mexico is like 36 out of 50 states in terms of population.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not so sure about that..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This is crazy
We've become so paranoid that we think everything is a bomb, next we'll start thinking its okay to torture anyone at the drop of a hat to get 'answers'. which is totally illegal and against the constitution (even though you see the president order it regularly on 24)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sounds like a sales person to me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
hmm...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: hmm...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Real Threats
The Bridge to Gretna
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Actually...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What is Clear?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There is no hope...
C'mon guys. Only in the movies do bombs have blinking lights, countdown timers and play loudly.
Are they really that worried about terrorists? Odds are better that you're gonna get run over by a drunk.
Don't worry about it. Just enjoy watching the fools blow things up and run around like chickens. It's funny. Get a sense of humor about these guys. Are they really that afraid? Or are they trying to appear important and inflate their self-importance?
Chuckles all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thugs
How did they decide that disrupting someone's sacred religious event was something they should do? This is thuggish vandalism.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Thugs
... or perhaps just a bunch of teenagers doing what teenagers do, dumb stuff without weighing the consequences of their actions? What are you basing your "revultionary delusions or "thuggish vandalism" heavy handed cliches on? One mans insult is anothers prank and perhaps we all need to chill the heck out a little more.
I know, I know, everyone should be PC and respecting of the feelings of others. Actions have consequences, etc, etc. At some point, however, we have to realize that sometimes people aren't PC or particulary smart about decisions they make, that doesn't necessarily mean they should be condemned or punished with an iron claw.
I put this up for discussion. If the same stunt had been pulled in a high school cafeteria, do you think the end result would have been the bomb squad blowing up 2 perfectly good CD players (or would they have even been called?).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Thugs
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Attack the causes!
So first, find why the are willing to give they life as a suicide bombers. As an outsider I know that american foreing attitude is a pain in the ass for everyone... maybe there you have a clue of how to fix things.
Second, stop believing media bull shit and investigate for yourself. Find really how many people are killed by terrorist acts and compare that to people killed by hunger, diseases, "normal" murders, etc. You'll find out that there isn't such a BIG risk of being affected by a terrorist attack (just compare: terrorist group: little people, small budget; US: lots of people, lots of budget. The won't do any significant damage unless the media helps them by making big the small attacks they are able to do).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Attack the causes!
Someone with a bomb is not necessarily a terrorist. We have more bombs than anyone. A person who kills innocents is not necessarily a terrorist. Our military regularly does that. A terrorist is someone who our government wants us to fear.
I see the victims of drunk drivers regularly. I never see the victims of terrorists. We lose 50,000 people a year to traffic accidents. That's a whole viet nam war, each and every year. We've lost 3,000 troops in Iraq. That's only three months road kill here in the states.
Align your fears with reality, as difficult as that task might be.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Alternate title for ya Mike,
When Your Only Bomb Squad Is A Tool, Everything Looks Like A Bomb
; )
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Look at what happened in Boston. They shut the whole damn city down and spent 2 million dollars because someone finally noticed some LED signs, which had been up for two weeks. Being cautious and being completely batshit paranoid are two different things. They could have pulled ONE LED sign down and took the time to figure out what it was before shutting the entire city down. Then they blame two viral marketing employees and the cartoon network for the overreaction? Give me a break.
Caution in this case should have involved TESTING the radios to see if they had explosives. Why does a city have a bomb squad if they have no bomb sniffing dogs or bomb detection equipment? Surely a swab in a sniffing device, like what is done at many airports, would have turned up any potential explosives.
Let's also not forget that we are going against logic here with the design of the bombs themselves. Who in history has ever made a bomb out of a sign with flashing LED lights that screams "look at me, I'm a bomb, come defuse me!!". Who has made a radio bomb that first played music/sounds which similarly alerted everyone of it's presence before detonating?
I'm ok with caution. I'm not ok with paranoia, overreaction, and fear-mongering. This is where the patriot act kicks in, people. Some stupid kids played a prank at a church, and can find themselves charged as an enemy combatants for placing "bomb replicas" to "terrorize" churchgoers. This was the line the local government in Boston tried to railroad those viral marketers with.
If in the future we are living in a society where bombs in public places are an actual concern, then these reactions will be justified. For now, I would like to enjoy life without being told every other day that some invisible, mysterious bogeyman bomb maker is lurking around every corner. It's bullshit, and it's cowardly to live this way.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Blowing stuff up is fun....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Devices Were Handled Before Bomb Squad
If they thought the players were bombs, they should have left them alone and evacuated the church.
If they thought the players were players and the church had been vandalized, (as appears to be the case), they should have left them alone and not compromised a crime scene.
If I were a church-goer concerned about security, I would ask my church some questions. Churces have regularly scheduled and publicly announced gatherings of sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people. There should be no mindset that just because they're "good" or "charitable", they are exempt. They're prime targets, and have been in the past.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Devices Were Handled Before Bomb Squad
Or, perhaps the church officials didn't think it was a bomb? Perhaps it was the police who overreacted and the church folk just wanted an officer to come by and take a report or something? We are assuming that the bomb squad was initiated by the church, but the article doesn't say that.
True, but imagine yourself as a Catholic Priest in this situation. What's your bigger concern, preserving the scene so the bumbling keystone cops can come and do their best rendition of CSI OR stop the bad language spew that was probably not making your parishioners feel very close to God (or very comfortable listening to dirty talk in the middle of a church!). Contrary to popular belief, not everyone thinks every impropriety is worthy or a full court forensic analysis.
So funny, I sent a friend of mine a link to this article (he lives in Great Britain). He sent back a message saying "just like americans, you see nothing wrong with shows of extreme violent tendencies [exploding harmless CD players] but the shows of overt sexuality [the dirty talking CDs] send you over the deep end.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And what, you think the bomb squad, and C4 blowing everything up you find suspicious up are cheap alternatives? That is a ludicrous excuse.
What is your definition of a 'suspect device'? Should we now fear anything with wires and a battery as a bomb? iPods, cell phones, baby monitors, laptop computers?? I saw on a movie once that a vending machine was used to hide a nuclear weapon. Should we create a Vending Machine Security Force? Where does it stop exactly?
What other bogeyman should we protect ourselves from? You people sound like the conspiracy theorists you used to make fun of.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What does a bomb look like?
You make a slight mistake. A disguised bomb may in fact have fancy flashing lights, behave like a radio or play MP3s the important thing for the bomb maker is that the damned thing not look dangerous. If making it look like a toy store version of a bomb complete with fancy displays will defuse paranoia then it will be done.
The fancy timers and such are real and the bomb squads in places like Northern Ireland really do try to deal with them so that the evidence isn't blown up.
US bomb squads take the safer route and destroy possible bombs after making sure that the explosion will be either contained or directed in a safe manner.
For a terrorist, a bomb that says hello come over and investigate me is a good idea. It ensures that it will detonate while the targets are busily trying to get it to shut up :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, actually...
I sure don't want to rely on the rest of you idiots who see something that's suspicious and just continue on their merry way.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Is it possible to leave your door unlocked without being robbed? Of course it is. Does leaving your door unlocked increase the likelihood of being robbed? Yes, but not by very much. Does owning a car alarm make it less likely your car will be robbed? Statistically, yes, but other than that slightly higher chance of protection how many of us even pay attention to car alarms anymore.
The thing I find most ironic is that people aren't calling bomb squads for random suitcases, because a suitcase is the most likely thing to be a bomb. A hoax will NEVER be a bomb. Anything that announces itself can be automatically ruled out as an explosive device, because if you designed an explosive that advertised itself, chances are someone would destroy it (like we've been doing with non-explosives). In that church, someone could've slipped C4 in between the pages of the bible, that'd be a more likely explosive, but nobody went around blowing up the bibles "just in case" (though imagine the stir that would've caused).
My point is that we're all WAY to paranoid in this "post 9-11" world. Terrorism happens, it will always happen, there's nothing we can do to stop it with 100% effectiveness. The only thing we can do is save the injured, mourn the dead, and live on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I guess I can watch 24 or some action movies to expand my list if no one is willing to help.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The minute an ordinary looking device explodes and kills people, you and others will be complaining that the police weren't careful enough.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You said: "The moment that our protectors assume something is safe because "they wouldn't have them play noise that would attract attention to them.", is the moment that some terrorist will see that loophole and exploit it."
So what you are saying is, potentially everything is a bomb and we shouldn't assume it's safe. Someone mentioned bibles. You know how easy it is to hollow the pages out in a book and turn it into a 'device'? What I'm trying to tell you people is two things:
1) There have been no bombs detonated since, Oklahoma City (and that whole scene is suspicious)
2) You can make a 'device' out of NEARLY ANYTHING.
So what will you do? Live in fear of everything? I can only assume you people spend your days watching out for "out of place items" and assume they are bombs. That is no way to live. By God, If I get blown up one day, then I hope people will learn from it, but I will not live in fear of that imaginary day for the rest of my life.
I'm a HUGE advocate of Emergency Preparation. I actually keep disaster supplies at home because I live in souther california (earthquakes) and because of the world political climate. I think it's possible to live your life in a way that you are prepared to take care of you and yours, pay attention to what's going on around you, without living in fear. Had these same radios been found in the church pre-9/11, they never would have been handled this way. At best there would have been a small investigation, and very little money spent on it. The church would have asked Jesus for retribution, and the police would have had a hearty laugh over coffee and donuts.
In this case, the bomb squad was called in, and 2 radios were blown up. A third radio was sent for fingerprinting and DNA testing. DNA testing??? For a prank? Times truly have changed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What scares me...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What I want to say, is that I don't want to live in the world you people are creating here. Suspicion of everything and everyone will not make us safer. You cannot possibly secure everything. Hell, Bush leaves our southern border wide open. He clearly is not concerned.
The government is taking a larger role every year in protecting us from ourselves. We act, and are treated like cattle. We are told on TV to fear, so we do. We fear radios, and signs, and vending machines. We fear taking water on airplanes. We have a war against terrorism in a country that doesn't even know what the hell we are talking about. They are busy fighting themselves for the table scraps left over from our government removing the dictator we helped put in office in the first place.
What you people are fearful of may actually come to pass one day. We are creating a lot of very pissed off people in the Middle East, where only a few previously existed. In my opinion, fearing bombs around every corner is the same as fearing that aliens may come down from the sky and exterminate us all. Could it happen? I suppose, but should we hide out in our basement bunkers, peaking up at the night sky, watching for the enemy mothership?
I will stand and defend this country against the enemy if they come here. I will not fear them or act irrationally in the mean time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
One reason that a number of you think that this incident is overkill is because of the vigilance of other segments of society. Go to Israel or lots of Mid-Eastern countries, where the threat of terrorist action is very real, and detonating just about anything "out of place" is matter-of-course. The consequences otherwise have been learned the hard way.
Furthermore, individuals of Arab extraction have caused lots of deaths in this country...more occur on a weekly basis, and those who are unsuccesful express their rabid desire to kill as many of us as possible. "When it's your to go, you're gone" isn't really an effective way for a society being attacked to perpetuate itself.
Despite your collective nihilistic approach to the very real threat of being killed by terrorism, hiding behind sophomoric catch-phrases does nothing to make anybody safer or improve their lives.
Amen Brother: "We lose 50,000 people a year to traffic accidents. That's a whole viet nam war, each and every year. We've lost 3,000 troops in Iraq. That's only three months road kill here in the states." Not only are your numbers wrong, your math is atrocious. We lost 43,200 people to traffic accidents in the most recent year that stats are available (over 3,000 of which were caused by illegal immigrants), so you are high by about 17%. We lost 58,235 soldiers in the Vietnam conflict, so you are low by 14%. And, using your erroneous traffic fatality number, three months of "road kill" would be 50,000*(3/12)=12,500. That would be a goofy comparison anyway, since those 3,000 deaths occured over 4+ years. But don't let math and rational thinking get in the way of your America-bashing screed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Israel is not the United States. Perhaps the leadership of this countries problem is that we are so empathetic with Israel for some reason. I have nothing against the country but the fact that they are surrounded by countries that hate them yet they seem to show little restraint in using large amounts of force, that may be the reason they are having so many terrorists incidents. It has already been said but the biggest problem with "the war on terror" is that it does nothing more than increase the probability of attack by ticking off more people. If anything, your Israeli example is the perfect case study of how not to stop terrorism effectively. They have been "fighting" a war on terror for years by primarily attempting to beat the terrorists into extinction, and as you pointed out by the continued need for "in-place" explosions, that method has been extremely ineffective.
Very real? Based on what? In the United States, in all the terrorists attacks on our soil commited by non-citizens (all 2 of them since the end of the revolutionary war!), there have been a total of 2981 deaths (approx 2973 from 9/11 attacks, 8 from the first WTC attack in 1993). You can't put a monetary value on life but for a population of over 300,000,000 people (legal anyway), seems a bit extremist to say that 3000 deaths over a 14 year period by foreign terrorist attacks warrants the level of paranoia where blowing up CD players found in pews of churches is not only standard, but defensibly reaonable behavior.
I know, I know, let me save you the trouble and spew some Bushisms, we haven't been attacked because the current "war on terror" is going so well. Pass the absynth and booze I think it's time to go off to happy land if you believe that one.
BTW, let's dispell some of the comments where people have called comments made by people sharing my world view "naive" or sophomoric. I volunteered for several years as a medic for the local sherriffs department bomb squads and SWAT teams. Prior to 9/11 the procedures and policies for dealing with 99.9% of suspicious packages favored analysis and containment over in-place exploding however the emphasis in recent years have led to a much more aggressive stance in several areas of police work, and that is my fear. On this site we have discussed SWAT teams assisting in seizures of bootleg CDs, using bomb squads to detonate CD players that had already been handled extensively, what's next? With every level of accepted escalation of police use of force comes a corresponding decrease in your ability to truly be secure.
Absolute power does corrupt absolutely
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeah, seems like since the late 70's, when Iranians kidnapped 444 of our citizens, that the majority of Muslims (Arab or Persian or whatever) just loved us to pieces. Figuratively and literally.
Nice try at sounded intellectually enlightened, though.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
First of all, I believe the Iran hostage crisis involved 63 hostages held for 444 DAYS, not 444 hostages.
Also, do you remember why the Ayatollah and company came into power (the folks who did the kidnapping)? After WWII the US basically backed the son of the Shah of Iran at the time (who supported Hitler) to overthrow his father. "Our Shah" turned out to be utterly despised by much of his country and some argue the only reason he stayed in power as long as he did was because we backed him. Now, after he was finally overthrown by the zealots, I mean Islamic revolution, they were pretty recentful of years of US intervention in their affairs (Hmm, that sounds a little familiar).
At any rate I in no way think the Iran hostage crisis was appropriate but my point is that our government wasn't innocent and the true victims were the hostages who had to pay for bad policy. No different than the American, Israeli, Iraqi, Lebanese, and other innocent civilian populations that must suffer because of hedgemonic and arrogant leadership.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: skh, you're numbers are wrong
No. The Iranian hostage crisis involved 66 American hostages. 52 of them were held captive for 444 days.
"Nice try at sounded intellectually enlightened, though."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Yeah, seems like since the late 70's, when Iranians kidnapped 444 of our citizens, that the majority of Muslims (Arab or Persian or whatever) just loved us to pieces.
Many people are 'pissed off' and for many reasons. Some reasons are enough to get people to take actions.
In the 1970's, a few people were pissed off over the action s of the 1950's (ousting an elected leader).
The killing of family members and destruction of property going on now will be the seeds that grow into future problems.
If the US can't afford the present 'protection efforts' (aka borrowing to pay the bills) - how will the future efforts be paid for?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stupid question because answer is so obvious, they will nuke the whole city
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Since you engaged me:
I suppose you think we should fear Germany too, since we once fought a war against them.
I'm particularly interested in the weekly attacks in the United States nobody but seems to know about but you, and the ones that should make me fear radio and sign bombs in this country. Please enlighten me.
You can question my patriotism all you want, if that's how you wish to attack my position. Smacks of redirection to me.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
who's...
The agencies behind this type of response are not without culpability either. These knee-jerk responses by bomb squads are politically motivated. They report ONLY to political figures, so their actions must, in order to protect their jobs, be aimed toward protecting those Politicians. If our public service agencies were really geared toward protecting the public, they would use investigation as a prerequisite to other actions, not as an afterthought. An example: a suitcase was recently detonated by the bomb squad in a Texas store's parking lot. The suitcase was fired upon after it had been x-rayed and could not be identified as a bomb. Instead of opening the case to find that perhaps someone had lost their suitcase, they destroyed it. This action was NOT in the interest of the public safety. It was, in fact, a crime against the property of the person who did lose the suitcase. It was perpetrated by those responsible for making the Politicians look like they were protecting someone besides themselves. I'll bet that if the person who lost their suitcase turned up to claim it, they would be arrested for a "crime" by the very agency that destroyed their property instead of being apologized to and compensated for their loss. This shows the real disparity between what should be done and what actually occurs.
That said, the perpetrators of the acts cited in the article should be prepared to pay a real price for any actions they commit that is against the interest of public safety. ANY person that sneaks onto MY property or any public property that I use on a regular basis and plants ANY DEVICE risks being shot as a Burglar, Sniper, or Terrorist, and deservedly so. The mere fact that they have to "sneak" around should be a wake up call to them that their actions are not in any way serving the public. I'm certainly not going to wait around for someone trespassing on my property to prove that they were "only playing a joke." The joke's on them. Play on your own property. It is that type of behavior that encourages Terrorists, and gives them not only an incentive to continue, but a "defense" as well.
There are places designated for advertising and as such are safe places to advertise. Just because the ad agencies are running out of interesting ideas does not mean they have the "right" to commit acts against the public safety. They are victims of their own success in that they have saturated our lives to such an extent that their messages are being ignored as noise. That's why there are buttons on some DVRs that allow commercials to be skipped over during playback, and MUTE buttons on our entertainment devices. They were requested by CONSUMERS, the same people the advertisers want to reach. If the ad agencies can come up with a new idea, then get permission from the owners of property to display this "data", then I applaud them. If not, they have become criminals against persons and property, and should be stopped by any means necessary to provide for public safety.
"Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. Don't do it! Don't do it!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
fun for the squad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not so
What better way to attract people to a small explosive device than to place it on top of something that would attract attention to it, and then detonate it when it is moved or deactivated?
This technique goes at least as far back as WWI and has been used heavily since.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Added for education purposes
It is a sad fact that one would have to be so concerned over a CD player playing a vulgar message, but really, in todays day and age where bomb making materials abound, and the internet has so many recipes for destruction to offer, who shouldn't be a little more careful?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In the case of Boston, the advertisers and/or Network should have been fined for multiple counts of littering or other charges related to placing stuff where permission was not given. The Boston authorities wanted to charge the two sign placers with placing Hoax Bomb Devices, and throw them in jail, even after it was clear they were part of an advertising campaign. When that didn't work, they went after the network for the money they pissed away in while overreacting
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sleepwalking Towards a Police State...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sleepwalking Towards a Police State...
Amen!
This all reminds me of the anthrax scare a few years back. At the time I worked on a volunteer rescue squad in a non-descipt suburb in NJ. At one point we were answering 4 or 6 calls a day for "suspicious powder". For every response we dispatched at least one police car (crowd control), a fire engine (decontamination), and an ambulance (patient care). This went on for about 3 months until people finally learned that sometimes if it looks like dust or flour, it really is dust or flour.
It also helped that that SOP for potential anthrax contamination at the time involved stripping the subject down and hosing them down with a low pressure fire hose (think icy cold water being splashed on you while you stand in a plastic pool set up in the middle of the street trying to keep your private parts private). After the word got out mysteriously the reports of "suspicious powder" started to fall too. Maybe that's the answer for suspicious devices, OK, let's treat every fracking one of them as though they are an explosive device at detonate where they lay (in peoples houses, airports, churches, cars, whever!) I wonder how long until people start using their brains before employing a blasting cap.
Btw, to those who used the IAD example, has it really reached the point where this is an appropriate and reasonable comparison, New Mexico churches are just as dangerous as a street in Baghdad?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Real Devices
The only device I can recall offhand looked like a stray piece of wood with a few old nails left in a carpark. You might want to start phoning the bomb squad every time you spot a bit of 4x2 lying around where someone might pick it up, it could be a bomb.
Similar devices include the explosive-packed coke can, McDonalds burger carton, large paper cup. You can pack a good amount of C4 and a movement trigger into any of those.
Then of course there's the car bomb. Any car parked anywhere could be packed with half a ton of explosives.
Speaking of cars, I was driving down our street yesterday and noticed someone had placed one of those 'car counter' things. Metal case strapped to a powerpole. plenty of room for an explosive charge and a good quantity of ball-bearings. It even has a pair of rubber strips which could detect stop-and-go traffic conditions for maximum effect.
In a post-911 world, these things all need to be reported and disrupted by the appropriate agencies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Real Devices
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Read the thread above and...
We have so sanitized the environment that the typical American can't recognize a real threat. So everything is a threat.
The good part is that anybody living in this level of fear will probably die of hypertensive stress. Unfortunately, their paranoid fear may make them do something irrational first. Maybe take out the ice cream man because his tinkle bell was suspiciously off key.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Suspicious devices
Now with these they would probably be clasified as "suspicious devices" whose only purpose could be assumed to be a bomb or to make people think it was a bomb concidering the phone call. Everyone knew they wern't really bombs but they had to be treated seriously because a theat had been made.
With the cd players they had an obvious alternate use (even I would find the idea of little old church goers being shocked by bad language seeming to come from this air inside a church slightly amusing - let alone what a bunch of bored young kids would think). So there was a slightly malicious obvious reason for them to be there, no threats made and they had been safely moved by untrained civilians? What on earth made them suspicious?
The only purpose of fear like this is to keep people in power which is why the theory that the US government did the trade towers attack was potentially plausable - as unlikely as this is they did use the attack to their advantage to get the population behind them.
The only good thing I can say is that despite his best efforts John Howard (our prime minister) hasn't managed such a sucess as Bush has - I havn't heard of anything in Australia being blown up since that prank in my hometown - I just hope Howard himself doesn't try blowing anything up to stay in power.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This sounds familiar
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
...from the Book of Armaments
...get a grip.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
An after thought
These were the classic pipe bombs. an 8" length of 1-1/2" diameter pipe with caps on each end ... inside was the detonator, explosive and shrapnel.
They worked & made the 3rd page of the city newspaper. Not sure if the story was picked up by anyone else. In those days a minor terrorism incident was noted and forgotten once the police said they were looking for who dun it.
More recently a terrorist was stopped crossing into Washington state. Maybe he would have made the national news if Customs hadn't searched the car...
With the war on terrorism as it is today those simple pipe bombs would have been world news. Much more effective as an anti-terrorism measure was the way the media handled it at that time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Stories about terrorism that only I know about?" I'm not going to go look all of them up, but there are stories about Islamic radicals causing death and destruction in the US continually. The asshat in NC, IIRC, who ran over ~12 students on campus. The recent shootings by the Islamic terrorist whose father said that he was "a good boy." The guy who blew himself up outside of a football stadium in OK (?). The Islamic extremist who shot up a Jewish temple in Seattle, IIRC. The Islamic asshat who shot and attacked the ticket counter employees at an airport. The commune of Islamic (American) radicals in GA who advocate sharia over US law.
Ignoring the reality of Muslim extremism isn't going to make them like us. They want us dead. The only reason that we haven't seen more carnage here in the States is that there aren't enough of them here yet. Look to Eurabian countries to see how the US will look in a decade.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The reason you haven't heard about those "terrorism" incidents is that in US they are classified as hate crimes. US doesn't make a special category for Islamic hate, they lump it in with KKK, White Supremacist, Black Supremacist Anti Gay, PETA, ELF and any other crime that is based on dislike of another group.
If you reclassify all the "Hate Crimes" as terrorism (which they are) you will find US domestic terrorism to be reported virtually every day. Of course most of the US domestic terrorism is not Islamic & quite a bit is attacks on Moslems by Christians.
This doesn't help advance the War On Terror of course so it is quietly brushed under the carpet unless the perps are Moslem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Duck and cover
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fido,
Workin Class Dog
[ link to this | view in chronology ]