The response here to the MIT student situation is confusing to me.

I don't know if it's because people don't understand how simple and innocuous a detonator can be, or if they don't understand how the size of the bomb has little to do with the voltage required for detonation (9V can set off a massive bomb--ask your favorite weird physics/engineering prof).







We all despise authoritarianism here (I hope), and trading off civil rights for security is rarely a good idea (despite the attribution to Franklin being questionable :P). There comes a time however when the potential risks to the rights of others are so large that we give up our rights quite willingly--not just the mindless bushbots, but solid anti-authoritarian folks. Like you, and me.

The huge flap over Circuit City I found interesting, since that search was not particularly invasive or degrading, but the guy's defiance won a lot of DU support. I asked those who were adamant that the CC guy was a civil rights hero whether they would support removing bag-checks for plane travel. Guess what? They don't. Would they support the removal of metal detectors, pat-downs and other checks to disallow gun possession when entering courtrooms? Even some Gungeon denizens say no. But these are our -rights-. Is security really more valuable than our fourth and second amendment rights in these cases? Aren't those two examples far more invasive and degrading violations of our rights?

That so many DUers who wholeheartedly support CC man would answer "no" and "yes" to those respective questions tells me it's about the scale of the risk. If you're in airport security and you see an object secured to somebody that resembles a detonator (which by any reasonable standard, the girl's art does), your obligation is to detain that person without allowing him or her any access to the device. Period. Doesn't matter how silly you look later when it's nothing close to detonator, and it doesn't matter how many people with the advantage of hindsight say "fucking police state, fucking with a 19 year-old and her harmless Lite Brite." Why not? Because one of two things will happen.

1. If you are wrong about it being a detonator a student gets terrified, inconvenienced, and needlessly harassed by police. That sucks.

2. If it is a detonator, there is no way of knowing how powerful the explosive may be, and dozens or more could easily die in an instant once that person gets near a reasonably crowded area. That sucks a lot harder.

It's not right to ruin this girl's life by arresting her and charging her with a serious crime. She didn't do anything wrong, and now we know that. It is, however, perfectly reasonable to detain her on sight to determine what she had secured to her clothing. What do you think?

Prosecution for what sounds to me a mistake is, in my opinion, an entirely different matter.

and that's, to be polite, foolish. Using common sense is not living in fear, or supporting in any way Bush's nexus of politics and terror.

once they determined she wasn't wearing a detonator, just a circuit board that lit up lights in the shape of a star, and once she explained that her name was Star, and that she had made it for Career Day the day before, and that those ominous words "socket to me -- Course 6" referred to her EE major -- they should have let her go. Or, at the least, the prosecutor should not be pressing charges. Instead, he's grandstanding.

And I wonder if he would be grandstanding if she was a cute white coed, not a bleached blonde of indeterminate race.

It looks quite a bit like a detonator, certainly if you weren't looking at it up close. On another note, assuming intent is what started the wrongful prosecution of this girl, so I'm not sure we should just assume the prosecutor is motivated by racism without some evidence. It's possible, but overreaction in this case I imagine would cross all racial borders.

board. Her device consisted only of the circuit board (with an external rather than an internal battery) --and no transmitting device.

Are we indicting everyone with cell phones now, too? Because a cell phone -- minus a circuit board -- looks as much like the detonator you've pictured as her circuit board does. Her device lacks an attached cell phone (or other transmitter); and an ordinary cell phone lacks an attached circuit board. Neither her device nor an ordinary cell phone is a detonator -- but if one can be charged with a "hoax bomb" for a circuit board, why not for a cell phone?

There's a land mine circuit board trigger device. This image comes from a tutorial on how to make a simple detonator (note the alarm clock is present because this is a -timed- detonator. You don't need any timepiece -or- transmitter to make a detonator):

it out where everyone could see it? And if it looked so dangerous, how come none of the hundreds or thousands of knowledgable techie types that she had crossed paths with for several days -- including all the corporate types at Career Day -- weren't alarmed?

Because it looked like an ordinary circuit board with a battery that made lights flash in the shape of a star.

As to stupid bombers who are inept/crazy enough to reveal themselves and are bound to be caught, they exist. Remember the shoe bomber? A circuit board with a battery attached could be a detonator. When that equipment is secured with scotch tape to someone's person it's absolutely grounds for detaining and searching that person at an airport.

As for the rest, an airport is not the same as a career day gathering of techies. In one situation, a circuit board strapped to somebody is no big deal. In the other, it -will- be seen as a big deal, and rightly so. But let's see if you're right. I'll put up a series of circuit board images, some detonators, some not--do you think you can identify the detonators correctly?

and checking her out -- as I have said already. But I do have a problem with them charging her, and with the prosecutor's grandstanding. I see this as one more opportunistic prosecutor with a ready target. People love to resent college students these days, and especially students at elite colleges.

l'm not going to pretend that I could correctly identify ALL detonators from pictures -- but if I had been able to examine her device close up, as the police did, I would have seen that it wasn't a detonator. And so would you.

A detonator can look like a lot of innocuous things--circuit boards being one possible component. Over-the-counter batteries being another. Would a bomb likely have a little LED star on it? Nope. Would an electrician be able to see which were possible detonators and which weren't based on an exposed circuit board? In some cases. The thing is, you can't reasonably expect security people to -know- what they're dealing with in terms of that circuit board until they've detained the student. "It's probably just wearable art" doesn't cut it--if you see that circuit board and you're airport security, you need to know for sure because the stakes are very high if you're wrong. That's all I'm saying.

The flipside of this is that a clever bomber could fashion a far more innocuous device that would escape detection easily. Does that mean we shouldn't even bother checking the obvious-looking possibilities out? No. Again, that's because "no serious bomber would probably leave exposed elements of a detonator sticking out" just doesn't cut it.

saw it in the days before.

The biggest problem though, as you say, is that almost any electronic device could be involved in a bomb. And the next detonator will probably be hidden in an i-Pod or a kid's toy. But does that mean we're going to indict everyone who carries around electronics? Because that's what this could come to. She's been indicted for the crime of carrying a device that other people thought COULD be a detonator. Where does this end?

We should -certainly- investigate any stand-out device that looks obviously like a detonator. Yeah, any respectable bomber wouldn't expose a suspicious-looking detonator, but that doesn't mean inept bombers don't exist, or that obvious-looking devices haven't been used to deadly effect throughout history.

you would not expect to have extra security at MIT's career day. an airport, on the other hand, is a different story.

no one is looking for threats at career day, at the airport, there are many people looking for threats, real or potential.

I wanted to assume (for the sake of DU) that we have a lot of posters who know precisely what each and every explosive device and triggering device looks like, but after a while, I realized that no one knows, and saying "it doesn't look like a bomb" is much like saying, "he looks harmless", i.e., just an assumption.

That in fact, I don't think anyone can say with validity, "that doesn't look like a bomb" if for no other reason than bombs and triggering devices have no one particular look...

People are acting as if it should have been obvious to anyone that this could not possibly have been a bomb. Well, it got battery and wires.
And bombs all don't look the same.
And a real bomb doesn't have to be huge.
The shoe bomber, for instance, managed to hide it in his shoes.

They have nothing else to show for millions of hours of delays to regular citizens (I would say honorable but people lie so much that isn't true at all), and probably a good billion or more in security costs. They have nothing to show, but they have generated a lot of fear.

I do believe that if anyone wanted to blow up an airliner, or even take it over, they would have done it by now.

Think of all the private airports and how much you could plant in a seven seat plane...of course now I am marked and will probably never be able to fly again for having said that, but fuck 'em I'm getting so tired of this effort to spread vile words of hate and discontent.

If you're motivated and patient enough, you can get around almost any security measures. And in the meantime, if those security measures are too extreme, they'll make everyone miserable to no useful effect. They will be justified by saying "Look! No new attacks! The security works!" but by the same logic they can say "Look! No zebras! The security keeps zebras away!"

But the security measures that call for detaining and investigating this person are totally reasonable in my view, and affect almost no one. Charging her? That I don't agree with.

Is there any evidence that she intended this as a hoax or a prank? If not, then the charges should be dropped, I think.

serious time. "Making a false report of a bomb is felony of the second degree, for which the maximum penalty is 15 years." http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1127519,00.html

Google joke bomb plane- scroll down past latest , and you will see that jokes are treated harshly worldwide. Entire flights are cancelled, all luggage rechecked and horrible inconveniences are caused for everyone. Every single incident has to be investigated and treated the same way.

She might think it's hilarious but she placed security there in a life or death situation, they have to make split second decisions based on very little info.

You walk into an airport with a bomb looking device, I would sure as hell hope the police would be all over it and be prepared to make an example.

If they don't, expect a group of numbnuts doing this all over the country laughing their asses off on how they can make a funny, and someone who does want to really cause damage do a copycat.

Did you hear that she thought it was a joke? I read that she paid no attention to what she was wearing. Did you hear something different?

What's with DU and this issue?

You seem happy to be daily faced with fear mongering.

By that rationale Jainists could be arrested and prosecuted in Germany for sporting Swastikas.

But I'm sure you knew that. It's possible that charges will not be pressed, but her ignorance is not the standard by which all actions like this should be treated.

If you have a plastic toy gun strapped around your waist because you're dressed as a cowboy and picking up your date at the airport, security better not assume it's a prop.

Just as you can't assume ancient Vedic artifacts are Jew-hating because they contain swastikas. It resembled a bomb, which was grounds for detaining her and assessing the device. Once that's done, if the intent was to make a fake bomb or to cause an incident, you have a case. If neither of those are true, you can't just say "well, that's the way it was going to be perceived, therefore that is the intent."

You can make the argument that she should have fucking -known- how it was going to be perceived. But being stupid isn't necessarily a criminal offense.

intent based on nothing more than that she did something that scared people. As a geeky techie MIT person, she very well might not have realized that a circuit board stuck to her jacket could raise this kind of fear. She was 13 and living half way across the world when 9/11 happened, and may not even have known how much Boston was affected.

this would be high up on the top ten list for the week. The problem I have is that she placed these officers in a very bad position, would you want to be the one having to get close enough to determine whether it was real or not? If it's real you are dead, if it's not then everyone wants to call you a jack booted thug.

DU would be exploding right now and this situation would be as tragic as tragic gets. :( The cops would have had a reasonable rationale for shooting her, but with hindsight the shooting would be looked on (rightly) with such horror that their rationale wouldn't matter a bit. Good on the cops for not going fucking crazy in this case.

any sort of a device. If police thought she was reaching for this device, this genius could have been dead right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

Yes, Swastikas are illegal, but as a religious symbol they are exempt.

at Career Day the day before. Her name is Star, and the battery lit up lights in the shape of a star.

Her mistake was either forgetting about it, or not thinking to rip if off before she went to the airport to pick up her boyfriend.

and in examining the device. However, at that point it should have been clear that the "device" was nothing but a battery with a few LED's attached to it. IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED THERE. It did not, and therein lies the problem.

Because you could hide a detonator in practically anything.

Do we say sneakers look like bombs now, simply because someone hid a bomb in one? Do we indict people for sneaker wearing, and accuse people of deliberately trying to terrify others with their shoes?

Just because they can be disguised doesn't mean they always are. Amateur/inept/crazy bombers exist, as I pointed out to you above.

But not for them to be charging her.

Examining obviously suspicious devices isn't the same as examining every single possible innocuous device that could perhaps be modified in some circuitous way to be a detonator. One you can do without harassing anybody and everybody, and in doing provide an important level of security. The other would be an exercise in futility.

You think it does. I think it doesn't look any more like a bomb than a cell phone does, or a sneaker.

But we agree that security people need to be careful, and that innocent people shouldn't be prosecuted just because they accidentally scared someone.

I don't know what to say to that.

First of all, the word "strapped" is in nothing I said anywhere, but it is being used often by the media in this case -- probably to associate this young women with suicide bombers in Israel.

And second, I didn't say a circuit board looks like a sneaker. I said that a sneaker could hide a bomb, just as a person with a circuit board on a shirt could have a bomb hidden somewhere. The point is that detonators and bomb material can be hidden in any number of places. But they are less likely to be stuck on the front of someone's shirt than to be hidden in an innocuous looking object, like a toy or a shoe.

Again, I'm not saying it was wrong for them to check her out. But it isn't obvious to me why a plain circuit board with no transmitter and with no dangling wires, just wires attached to little LED lights attached to a battery, should be considered more threatening than a plain cell phone.

devices. That's scary. Read: everyone has to take off their shoes; no one can take large containers of liquids, etc, because of one or two incidents.


But what if they let things go which ended up killing a lot of people? It's much worse in Israeli airports from what I have read.

It's a very weird set of questions.

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:eyes:

A device that looks very similar to that can be a detonator. If you walk into an airport with one strapped to you, what should security do, in your opinion?

Are you so sure you would know on first glance whether something was a harmless circuit board or a detonator? If I dig around for a series of pictures and put them up, do you think you will be able to correctly identify all the detonators?

The student had nothing strapped to her, because the device was a thin piece of plastic that she could sew on her jacket with a few stitches at the corners. But using the word "strapped" allows you, and people in the media, to imply that there was something else underneath the circuit board and to associate her with suicide bombers who strap explosives to their bodies.

she put together a very basic circuit.
And apparently she can't even solder.

MIT. That particular device doesn't look impressive to me at all.

and I can barely do division

... relation between the two.

Lucky for me math isn't really about numbers.

(And I turned down MIT for grad school, if that really is the important thing to you.)

my apologies

high school for three hours) :)

That airport security could really learn something from Disney. I saw Disney in action once. Some guy was going from stroller to stroller stealing. Once Security showed up it took them less that 60 seconds to muscle the guy behind closed doors and probably 2 minutes after that they had a cast member out there by the strollers waiting on the owners to come back to be pointed in the right direction to reclaim their belongings. It's likely only a handful of Disney patrons even knew something happened.

In contrast airport security and the TSA are clumsy and stupid. These are the kind of people who would kill the fleas on the family pet by gassing the pet. A little targeted finese would do them a world of good and quite frankly would get a lot of people back on airplanes that have decided to opt out because of security hassles.

Next time you're there, note the guy who's being dunked every 6.25 seconds as your boat passes. Those Disney guys don't screw around!

:) :) :)

Are we that evolved that anything different startles us and makes us want to destroy it? Jeesh.

She was perfectly within her rights to wear electronics on her clothes. A bomb would have been concealed anyway. Plus, I understand she was not even through the baggage check, which is little different than walking on the sidewalk. People really need to grow more brains and mellow out.

That's my point, what's yours?

Anything can look like a bomb, but that does not give people a right to threatten others with guns because something looks different.

This looked no more like a bomb than anything else

Again I submit a challenge to you--let me put up several circuit/breadboard images and you see if you can accurately point out the actual detonators.

By making it such a media circus, what should have been a simple stop and question (as you put it, detain), has blossomed into a massive media slander campaign.

Yet, the same media refused to report disparaging views of Bush to a similar magnificent degree. MoveOn simply asks a question, and senators vote to condemn the depiction of a general as possibly dishonest, yet where's the Senate's outrage over this United States citizen and MIT student's defamation?

Most people, including politicians, don't care about anything other than what affects them. We are not the norm here on the DU.

too seriously to excuse ANY stunt like this student's.

LEDs, breadboard, batteries, circuits, are everywhere. Now it's a crime to let expose them? I don't get it.

Reminds me of the Futurama episode when the Bender the robot was looking at Robo-Porn, which was pictures of electronics schematics. Really, why are electronics any more intimidating that something a bomb would ACTUALLY look like -- a suitcase or a backpack? I will never understand it apparently.

Would they give that kind of warning?

I'm afraid that these security people may not be very sophisticated, and that if there were a real suicide bomber, ever, they'd miss them.

"It was an inside job, they should have stopped her - how could they let someone with something like that slide by? Because bush's third cousin's sister's X boyfriend's best friend worked there!"

:rofl:

A lose-lose to some.

You wear something no one else has worn into an airport, with wires and play-doh, and then wonder why you are stopped? Hell, I used to get watched by security at the airport because I wore a trench coat and hat when no one else was doing that (it was just my thing).

They are trained to look for abnormal things, and let's face it - that was abnormal.

You can tell just by looking at it--it doesn't look anything like a bomb. Just like Ted Bundy didn't look anything like a killer.

:D

and still love the Bo Diddley album cover too...

But hey, it works. . .

From the first pic, you don't have enough scope to accurately determine it as a detonator, but it certainly contains several vital components.

My main issue is the fact that making a simple Switch-ignition detonator makes the use a breadboard impractical and cumbersome. They should have looked at it if it bothered them, but the charges are absurd. . .

I don't think subsequent charges and jailtime are right, though. Since you brought up the Circuit City mess, I think the key difference between the two is that CC guy didn't show probable cause for detention. There are also specific laws that apply to airports that don't apply to public places in general. The law was on CC guys side, whereas it wasn't for the girl at the airport. I think that accounts more for the difference than any perceived risk. I also don't think people who were defending the CC guy were holding him up as a hero, but rather arguing that stores do not have the right to detain people without probable cause. That was the main point of most of the arguments I was seeing, and it was my point as well. I didn't think CC guy was a hero, I just thought CC was wrong. I don't understand how that translates to also supporting getting rid of safety measures at airports. I'm for safety measures at airports, and I'm also for not giving stores legal authority to detain for no reason. I don't see those positions clashing in any way.