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MIT Student Arrested For Wearing 'Tech Art' Shirt At Airport
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Sep 21, 2007 02:56 PM
from the don't-be-a-jerk-to-the-police,-they-have-guns dept.
from the don't-be-a-jerk-to-the-police,-they-have-guns dept.
SuperBanana writes "According to a report by the Boston Globe, MIT Student Star Simpson was nearly shot by Logan Airport police who thought she was armed with a bomb. She approached an airline employee wearing a prototyping board with electronic components, crudely attached to the front of her sweatshirt and holding 'putty' in her hand. She asked about an incoming flight, and did not respond when asked about the device. Armed police responded. 'Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device and was arraigned today East Boston Municipal Court. She was held on $750 cash bail and ordered to return to court Oct. 29. "Thankfully because she followed our instructions, she ended up in our cell instead of a morgue," Pare said. "Again, this is a serious offense ... I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport."'"
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"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Hrmmmm.... looking at the "device" from the images on the link makes me think the police overreacted. Come on now.... holding her at gunpoint? Granted, it was likely not the smartest move on her part not to respond about the "device" when asked, but once again, I am dismayed that people are getting owned by fears of terrorism and things and people that look "abnormal".
Reminds me of that guy who dressed up as the alien predator in the UK and got the British police all over him. Anyone have a link to the video of that?
Or how about the Muslim men that were asked to leave a flight because they spoke in Arabic?
Or how about the guy who was not allowed to fly with his breadboard that he was using for prototyping. They let him fly with one in its package though if *that* makes any sense.
Pare said. "Again, this is a serious offense
Why is it that airports have special significance? Seriously, think about it. There are many other places with large concentrations of people that we are not spending any money on for security that would be ideal terroristic locations. Would you say that "I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to a college campus"? or how about "I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an art show"? or how about "I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to a concert"? or "I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to a park"?. Is all this paranoia actually making us safer? I suspect what it is doing is making flying more inconvenient for the traveler, more expensive for the airlines, reducing businesses ability to function and more because let's be honest here.... It is not hard to imagine any number of amazingly effective scenarios that terrorists could use that would be far more effective than focusing on airports, so quit with all of the panic reactions already.
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Hrmmmm.... looking at the "device" from the images on the link makes me think the police overreacted.
It's a tough call on when cops should draw their guns. If this was in the frozen food section at Safeway and the person seemed to be acting like a shopper then drawing guns would be an overreaction. In a crowded airport is a different venue and one rife with bomb-related contexts and plentiful warnings that stupid remarks will be taken at face value. The purpose of drawing guns is not to shoot but to immediately control a situation that could be deadly. Shut it down and sort it out in a safe place.
I've had guns drawn on me when I was drunk hiding in the bushes near the scene of what looked suspiciously top the cops like breaking into a car. (it wasn't but it was reasonably confused). I did not blame them for flushing me out that way, cause sometimes it owuld not have been a drunk collge student but someone with intent to escape. Cops just never know what the situation brings when they show up.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to agree with you on this one. To a layperson (e.g. TSA screener), that looks a hell of a lot like a TV bomb, what with all the blinking lights and whatnot. Add in the silly putty (which looks a LOT like plastique) and you're just itching for trouble.
The screeners acted appropriately by drawing their weapons, removing the device, and sorting it out in a safe place. She's lucky she's not dead. There are parts of the world where she would have been killed for this. I don't know what I would have done. Maybe I'd have [Internet Tough Guy]. Hopefully, I'd have run away and not just stand there.
Yes, the airline rules are stupid and pointless. That doesn't mean you strap on a fake bomb and walk into an airport for a lark. Yes, we all know that there's no bogeyman, but not everyone reads
Next on the MIT agenda:
Get a bunch of old railroad flares, tape them to an alarm clock, and mail them to various white house staffers. Should be a laugh.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the person who reported it as suspicious was a person who worked at an Information booth, not the TSA or somebody else (marginally) trained as to what a potential explosive device looks like.
She was also reported as carrying a putty-like substance in her hands (which turned out to be Play-Doh.
The police, acting on a tip that somebody was wearing a Rube Goldeberg electronics device and carrying a putty-like substance, jacked her up.
Were this a real terrorist carrying plastics and wearing an electronic trigger, the average person would expect a full-on response from law enforcement. The police, not knowing whether it was real or not delivered a full-on response.
She's a dumbfvck and deserves whatever she gets.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it does look innocuous enough to someone who knows something about electronics. It looks like a solderable protoboard with some LEDs and a battery. She was probably using an NE555 or something similar to flash the LEDs. Harmless enough, although it looks tacky as hell. Someone needs to teach her good construction technique.
However, to a layman that circuit board would be completely incomprehensible. I know from personal experience that airport screeners are also paranoid about 9 V batteries, as I was questioned about a bunch that I was carrying in a bag with some video equipment. Add to that the fact that she was carrying modeling clay, which just so happens to look like plastic explosive (or at least what a layman would think plastic explosive looks like).
Assuming this was a truly harmless mistake on her part, and not some misguided prank, then she has just learned a valuable lesson that all techie types should take to heart: laymen do NOT understand what we do, or what we perceive as "harmless". In their minds, "I do not know what that is" equates to "it may be dangerous". You simply cannot walk into a government facility or an airport with a homemade electronic device in plain view and not expect to be challenged about it!
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok..so anything that isn't in a pretty, professional package...is considered a possible bomb?
Aside from the fact, that I think someone wearing a bomb, wanting to get in as far as possible, would NOT be wearing the mechanism on the outside of their clothing, advertising it for a guard to see....I think we've just with this incident, given the 'terrorists' a good clue how to sneak stuff by. If it doesn't have wires and components hanging out of it...if it doesn't look like a hand fabbed piece of electronic equipment, they probably aren't gonna get stopped at gunpoint for wearing a bomb.
Much like the Boston stunt with the Aqua force whatever team signs....this is horrible overreaction.
I dunno, am I the ONLY one that did not become overly paranoid about terrorists coming to blow me up? This is ridiculous. Even if they did overreact at first....after the situation was ascertained, why in hell did they charge this girl with a crime and set bail? Can police no longer find they made a mistake, and just LET YOU GO without penalty??
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
It's stupid to assume that everyone who has electronics on them is a terrorist, yes, but it equally stupid to assume that just because they're not hiding it they don't have a bomb. How do you know? Crazy people do crazy things.
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh, the seldom-cited 35th Amendment.
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are now holding guns to fellow citizens because of a terrorist attack that occurred over six years ago. It would seem that Al-Qaeda only has to carry out an attack on US soil once every 10 years or maybe even less than that to keep American citizens in a state of fear and panic.
I don't think my country, the UK is any better. We have airports patrolled by armed police; yet they're rarely seen at railway stations and never at bus stations. I guess armed police help to keep the populace in a state of fear which may very well be what our two governments want.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of terrorism is inducing enough fear in the target country that they start making oppressive laws for the sake of perceived security. You turn the target country's leaders into something not wanted by the people, thus creating unrest, thus making it easier to overthrow the country, pressure it into meeting your demands or reduce it to irrelevance.
I mean, look at what 9/11 has caused: Nobody wants to enter the USA anymore if they don't have to, because all foreigners are treated as suspects. People get arrested because they think breadboards are cool. People worldwide aren't allowed to take any kind of pointy object with them when they fly, let alone locked luggage (not to mention that searched luggage sometimes arrives in less-than-pristine condition). The German air force is officially declaring that they will disobey orders because certain politicians want them to shoot down passenger aircraft whenever it is suspected to have been hijacked.
Now compare that to the actual damage terrorist attacks have caused in the meanwhile. The main damage they have caused is turning half of the western world into a bunch of paranoid shitmongers who would gladly take over the killing of civilians if that meant that the terrorists don't get to do it.
No ifs; the terrorists have already won. We can do some damage control, but life will never be like back in those innocent days when you could actually take a bottle of coke with you on a plane.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
"and the simple breadboard attached to the outside of that sweatshirt a bomb."
Key words "did not respond". Looking at the "device", it is not obvious that it is benign. Look at the photo of the "breadboard". There is no reason it could not have been a small IED. It would be reasonable to question someone wearing it, and it would be equally reasonable for the person wearing it to thoroughly explain what it was.
The purpose of wearing it was to attract _attention_, so why not explain when it DOES attract attention?
She is intelligent enough to attend MIT, yet stupid or vain enough to wear that sh1t.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
2 - "Sheeple" here? Dismissive much? You're not that much better than the rest of the world. Some people don't have EE degrees or PhDs. That doesn't make you some kind of superior creature with moral grounds to deride everyone else. Heck, they might even have principled reasons to disagree.
3 - Are you honestly telling me that if you saw somebody with wires sticking out of a briefcase at the airport who was ignoring the police you wouldn't be even the slightest bit nervous? And when the bomb did finally blow up you'd think the cops did the right thing, since no terrorist would be stupid enough to let the wires hang out?
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
People shouldn't have to be attacked with guns for being "eclectic" and not worrying about what other people think. She made no threats and followed all the directions... which probably did NOT involve asking her to simply turn the shirt over to security at the first counter she stopped at. You know that ASKING somebody what they're doing without pointing an ACTUAL deadly weapon at them. Now these narrow minded cops are going to deprive the troops of somebody brilliant that can HELP them in their missions!! So who's the terrorist here?
You've got to be fucking kidding me. I saw what she was wearing and trust me, it looked like a bomb. Now you may feel safe traveling with people strapping bomb looking stuff to themselves, but fortunately, you are in the extreme minority on that one!
This dumb-ass girl took a shirt with a bomb-looking device attached to it to a place where you are not allowed to say the word "Bomb" and was surprised when security reacted!???! What is even more shocking is that dumb-ass anarchists on slashdot don't understand why security reacted. Um... maybe it's because the dumb-ass girl had what appeared to be a bomb strapped to their chest? JH Christ! If security doesn't react to that, WTF are they supposed to react to? WTF do you think these guys should do all day, only arrest the bombers AFTER the bombs go off?
Seriously, what does someone have to do for security to react that some slashdotters would find appropriate?
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
bullshit? That's fucking stupid.
People like you are why Libertarians will never win. It's a real shame too because if it weren't for this type of stupidity, I'd be a Libertarian.
It's sad that 90% of the people will bitch to high heaven if this were a bomb and allowed to detonate. "My GOD! Security saw the bomb right there on her chest and they did NOTHING!" Actually, I remember something similar. It was something like, "My GOD! George Bush saw a Presidential Daily Brief that said 'Bin Laden determined to attack America' and he did NOTHING!!" Of course, then they get known as Truthers and fall under the category of Bush Allowed 9-11 to happen.
The other sad part is that if I could go back to 9-11 and warn security to arrest those 19 men with friggin box-cutters, you'd be screaming the loudest. "My GOD! All these men did was have box cutters! WTF could these guys do with just friggin BOX CUTTERS!!??! They were seriously overreacting!"
Next, security is not going to go to the girl with the bomb-looking-device strapped to her chest in a manner reminiscent of a Palestinian visiting a Jewish pizza parlor and ask her to kindly step over the bomb detecting equipment. "Pardon me, Miss? Would you mind if we borrowed that device strapped to your chest so we can test it for explosives? Oh, and if we could borrow that plastique looking stuff too, that would be great."
Finally, overreacting would have been closing down the airport... all airports for that matter immediately after putting a 7.62mm round through this stupid girl's skull from a distance. I have to hand it to the security team at this airport. It took some balls to be well within the blast radius of this girl when they told her to show her hands and hit the ground. They could of very easily been the first casualties of a major, multi-pronged attack. They didn't overreact. They underreacted! They saved this girls life and risked their own. They did not have to do that.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it doesn't look anything remotely like a bomb to someone with even a day's worth of electronics experience - or at least, not the visible part. But given the state of things, and not knowing what could be hooked up to that, I understand why there was this kind of reaction. There's a sort of mental threat that people perceive when they see or are asked to deal with something unfamiliar to them - go stick a newbie in front of a terminal and follow your exact instructions and see what happens. Combine that with the general assumption that if anyone has malicious intent, there's a good chance they'd execute their plans at an airport.
Basically, the person in question should have known better. Sure, had you or I been one of the cops in the situation, we would have recognized that the chance of that being an explosive is next to nothing, but not many cops that aren't on the bomb squad are going to have a lot of electronics knowledge. Hell, had the person simply said it's a breadboard, they still wouldn't have had a clue, as the rest of the world would think "cutting board".
And, of course, hindsight is 20/20.
So yeah, I'm going to have to side with the police here. The student should have known better, and MIT students are supposed to be pretty damn smart. To cops that are trained to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, that DOES look like it could be a bomb. Even pre-9/11, wearing that kind of device in an airport would have been suspicious. I mean, who the hell WEARS electronics (excepting a digital watch) anyways?
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop right there, homie. If it were one of your family members wearing this thing [thinkgeek.com], I suspect you'd feel differently. We don't need our government to feel they have MORE license to shoot people because they're nervous. If you are given a gun, you need to be trained. If you work in security, you need to be trained. By all means, tackle her to the floor, contain her, even freaking *tase* her if she resists.
Overreaction is OK in certain situations, but to shoot her? Don't be a tool, please.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Insightful)
There are indeed rules against causing a panic. They're best applied to individuals who have shown such intent. It is unclear whether this is the case. It certainly could have been. But the only information we have so far is that of an official from the security force involved. And even then, we're not seeing anything that gives a clear indication to incite panic. Considering how aggressive physcial security professionals can be.. and the history of this particular security force specifically... I would say there is more than enough to warrant the question whether these rules apply in this case.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics" (Score:5, Insightful)
And newspaper articles are always accurate. And people who overreact to apparent security threats never misreport the facts in order to justify their overreactions.
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics" (Score:5, Insightful)
She wasn't boarding an aircraft. She wasn't trying to board an aircraft. She wasn't even trying to pass through the security checkpoint to get to the boarding areas for the aircraft.
But I heard the police stopped a straw man in the airport who was trying to do all of the above.
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Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics" (Score:5, Informative)
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Airport security don't understand electronics (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well then please go help fix it (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh what's that? It doesn't pay much and the work is pretty boring? Ahh, well then perhaps you see the problem. We are not paying the kind of money nor offering the kind of environment to get top level professionals. If that's what you want, fair enough, but then figure out where the money will come from. Nothing is free. You want good people, you have to pay good money.
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Re:Well then please go help fix it (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the real problem.
The reason we don't pay enough to get really good people is because the job isn't important. The real problem is that we shouldn't be wasting our time and money. Since it doesn't matter if it's done right or not, we might as well not pay too much for it.
The real answer is to cut TSA staff by 80% and go back to airline security as it was pre-9/11. It makes sense to do some basic screening to attempt to make it difficult for passengers to carry firearms and bombs on planes, just to stop stupid terrorists doing the obvious stuff, because you can't stop the smart, clever ones. Smart terrorists aren't going to bother with passenger planes anyway. The most you can do is blow up a plane, now. Hijacking them to use as weapons was an idea that will not work again, and hijacking a plane for transportation or hostages is just suicide, because the passengers will beat you to death.
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Are you sure you haven't been brainwashed? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are people who want you to be afraid, who want you to be willing to accept any level of brutality in the name of "protecting you". Are you sure those people haven't curdled your brain with their scare talk?
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Informative)
While this incident may have been an overreaction, two Russian airliners were brought down on the same day in 2004 with explosives suspected to have been hidden in the bras of two female passengers. It's not that far-fetched.
Parent
Re:"Yeah, those suspicious e-lectronics". (Score:5, Informative)
When an employee asked about the device, she "walked away without responding" according to the article. At that point, it would negligent for them to ignore her as a potential threat. It would be one thing if she was assaulted, tazed, shot, etc., but they arrested her without incident and later released her on bail once they verified that there was no real threat.
Parent
Now they say there was no putty. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've done a fair amount of electronics and if I had seen her wandering into the airport I would have thrown my carryon at her head and dived to the floor from a distance. She's an idiot.
My young son has grown up around computers and electronics. He's generally not been exposed to TV or government-sponsored fear-mongering. It would not occur to him that he needs to protect himself from people like you, who would violently attack him if you saw him wandering about with silly putty in his hands and a breadboard hanging off his belt.
But I guess there is no "Land of the Brave" any more. I'm going to have to go home and explain to my son how your terror is restricting his totally harmless lifestyle. How's it feel to be working for Usama?
Parent
from MIT, but not very smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm, I think as an art project I'd like to create something that I definitively know is not a bomb but really could look like a bomb to the average person, and maybe even people whose job is security at the airports. As a matter of fact, I think I'll try this out for fun and go to the airport and see what their reactions are. Geez, this'll be fun.
This MIT genius almost became a SBC. I think security at airports is lousy, and it's mostly a joke, but this is hardly a prank I'd consider pulling, and while this "artist" is likely to get mileage out of the alleged overreactions of security, I have no admiration for what looks to be if not stupid, an incredibly mis-guided caper.
These are the idiots who goad people trying their best to do their jobs into making split-second decisions, but have magnitudes more time to create accusations about why the split-second decisions were wrong, or violated their civil rights, or something to make "bad people" look bad. Arrrrgggghhhh.
Notably about this student, she's 19, meaning she's certainly old enough to have understood the gravity of 9/11 being 13 at the time. She might think it's funny, she ought to apologize. </i> (from last post)
Re:from MIT, but not very smart (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:from MIT, but not very smart (Score:5, Insightful)
- Security people are paid to have NO sense of humor.
- Bad guys are known to probe security with plausibly-deniable bogus threats, in order to identify weaknesses, before perpetrating the real action. To counter this, when security detects such a probe they must react in a way that takes the bad guy out of circulation, rather than letting him continue to probe until he finds and exploits a weakness. If that means such "artists" as this one who deliberately probe security become "collateral damage", too bad. They knew the rules when they performed their "art". (But it's still up to security to distinguish between deliberate probes and accidental appearances, to avoid penalizing true innocents.)
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What the hell's wrong with Boston? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the hell's wrong with Boston? (Score:4, Funny)
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Hey that's a great plan!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Boston (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Boston (Score:5, Funny)
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cue the slashbots (Score:5, Funny)
Academically bright but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Academically bright but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for ya.
Parent
We are defending this person? (Score:5, Insightful)
She clearly wanted to provoke a reaction. She was holding clay in her hand, she was wearing a circuit board that may have looked like a bomb and she WENT INTO AN AIRPORT.
Hello?
Do we automatically defend every artistic tech person or only the sane ones?
Unless some other information comes forward, this artist wanted to be arrested.
And she was.
Normally, I presume over-reaction by the TSA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Her choice of "artistic expression" isn't immediately recognizable, and therefore has to be treated as a threat.
The editors substantially modified my story... (Score:5, Informative)
Key facts:
I am rabidly for freedom, privacy, and personal rights. I'm quite set against abusive use of police force. This was not even remotely an unreasonable action by the airport police, and it has NOTHING in common with the whole "mooninite" incident, save similarities in the type of device.
Talk about dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
As to the girl herself - how dumb do you have to be? What would convince someone to question the arrival time of a flight while wearing electronics and handling putty? How about some common sense? I hesitate to say "she's lucky she's not dead", since that implies that deadly force would have been justified in this case, but at a certain point it's hard to have pity.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to paint a squirt gun black and walk into a kindergarten, then complain when the teachers can't distinguish my toy from the real deal.
Re:Talk about dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Get it? It's a light-up star on her nametag, and her name is "Star".
It sounds like a ticket person outside asked her what it was and she ignored/didn't notice them. Don't know what the silly putty was about. The ticket person did exactly what they were supposed to do when something is suspicious and called the police. The police responded exactly to protocol.
It sounds like the police is running on a little too much testosterone when he said "she's lucky she is in a cell, not a morgue"; that's the sort of thing which exacerbates a media situation. He should have shut up an let a PR person handle it. I'm sure they would have shot her if she started running or something, but she had no reason to.
The police responded according to protocol. The girl did a thoughtless thing (should have answered the ticket lady's question about what it was). In the name of good security, you sometimes have false positives. If there was a mistake made and it so obviously wasn't intentional, the police should search you, question you, and send you away with the crap thoroughly scared out of you.
My frustration here is when the police take a simple, thoughtless mistake (she was just on her way to career day!) on some poor college student's part and blow it up into an international media incident, make it sound scary ("We almost shot her! blah blah blah"), and charge her with a crime (hoax bomb device) that obviously is false.
The definition of hoax is "humorous or malicious deception" according to my dictionary. Unless the bit about the Play-Doh ends up being a significant part of the story, you *really* have to stretch things to make her actions sound malicious.
Parent
OK, let's put it this way... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is either a bomb, or it is not.
I can either choose to take action, or not to.
If I choose not to take action, and it does happen to be a bomb, then innocent people will die, the world will be in chaos all over again, and I'll probably go to prison for dereliction of duty. If it is not a bomb, then at best nothing will happen, but much more likely I'll get at least a reprimand for negligence and at worst will lose my job for the same reason.
If I choose to take action, then at best I will prevent a major catastrophe, become famous for quickly and bravely acting, and in general be the hero of the day. And if it is not a bomb? Well then probably I'll be able to justify my actions anyways, on grounds of reasonable assumption and the surrounding situation where time can be critical. At the worst, all I'll get is some trolls flaming me on Slashdot.
I'll go with the second option, thank you.
All of this misses problem #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, are we honestly so stupid to believe that terrorists are going to go walking around with wires all over their clothes? They're going to put the fucking bomb UNDER their clothes. It's not going to tick, it's not going to beep, and there's not going to be an obvious bright LED countdown clock.
This isn't 24, it's real life.
There's nothing wrong with questioning the kid or examining the device - that's just common sense. But there is exactly zero reason to arrest the kid once it's clear that it's nothing but a blinking T-Shirt. It's not a "hoax device", it's a blinking T-shirt.
"Hoax device" (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's a hoax worth prosecuting over the person involved had damned well better state or firmly imply that one object is, in fact, another. In this case as before in the Mooninite issue it was a third-party who made a mistake about an object that was never intended to be misinterpreted. This makes it a misunderstanding. You tell the person why you made the mistake, probably suggest that in light of this mistake they avoid doing it in the future (although that's entirely up to them, of course), apologize explaining that you were only trying to do the right thing, and send them on their way.
In other words: "Oh, we're very sorry, but from our laymen's point of view it looked like it might be a bomb of some sort. I'm sure you can understand where we're coming from with this and, in light of this fact, why we reacted the way we did."
The lack of an intent to deceive is really the issue here. The Piltdown Man was a hoax, this is just a misunderstanding.
Re:Insane (Score:5, Funny)
You're right. I'm flying (out of Logan FWIW) next week and plan to show up at the airport wearing nothing but a sign reading, "this is not a bomb."
And I'm not eating any beans between now and then, just to be on the safe side.
(If I wanted to be a troll I could make some comment about how fast the police respond to a 9-volt battery and some wires at the uptown airport, but they never seem to catch the folks with the real guns at the downtown bus stops.)
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