Aqua Teen "hoax" in Boston

[Squink]

Two fake pipe bombs found not part of marketing stunt

The two devices found in an office at Tufts-New England Medical Center and attached to the Longfellow Bridge yesterday morning were not the marketing devices that sparked a daylong panic in Boston, but simulated pipe bombs, police officials said last night.
Boston bomb scares:
“There were two conventional pipe bombs that were found at the same time that this started to unfold,” said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.
…
In the hospital incident, investigators believe a former hospital employee planted the phony bomb in an office at 185 Harrison Ave. He has been identified but has not been charged, the sources said.

[Skywatcher]

@RogueRacer

That’s actually a very good idea. If that was a dog trained to detect explosives, a lack of a positive response should have made their diagnosis that much quicker and easier.

I’m not sure but it looks like they’re investigating a park.

[lowbrass]

eBay is rocking already:

T-shirt

Joke sign

I think the real ones are gonna get grabbed up pretty quick - looks like they’re going to be worth quite a bit:

Real sign

[mrklutz]

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – FDR

He said it much better than I could, way back in '33.

[DocCathode]

First, I admit to having skipped a lot of the thread.

But, I’d like to add something from local news. Of the reported 56 signs put up in Philly, cops could only find one. The comissioner says that the signs are turning up on EBay. Apparently Philadelphians know viral marketing when they see it.

[lowbrass]

@tdn

You should visit some time.

No thanks. I prefer reality, where we don’t imagine that others conceded a point just because we wish they had.

[Asimovian]

@Sal Ammoniac

So would it be your position that everything these vandals did was okay, aboveboard, peachy-keen with you?

You guys who agreed with RogueRacer should read his post more carefully. He acknowledges that to initial inspection, this thing looked like a bomb, and that a certain percentage of the bomb-disposal people on his team would take the prudent step of shooting it with a disarmer – which is what the Boston police did. Fortunately, they have to be a little more prudent than Joe Internet who thinks it’s not a bomb because he happened to see a picture on the Internet of something else.

If their prudence causes a highway and subway line to be closed, it’s a massive inconvenience to thousands, and the mayor is right to be mad. And you can better believe they’ll get money out of the Cartoon Network on this account – which is better proof than I can offer of their wrong-doing.

I just want to be clear – you’re still of the mind that the employees hired to place these signs knew that they looked like bombs and intentionally placed them in suspicious areas so that they would create a panic, therefore justifying their arrest?

[RogueRacer]

@Sal Ammoniac

You guys who agreed with RogueRacer should read his post more carefully. He acknowledges that to initial inspection, this thing looked like a bomb, and that a certain percentage of the bomb-disposal people on his team would take the prudent step of shooting it with a disarmer – which is what the Boston police did.

Sort of. The point I was trying to make is that while it did have a few things that could be used as an electronic trigger mechanism, it didn’t seem to have much room for explosives. We would have been more worried about it being designed to kill a person (such as an EOD tech) rather than it taking down a bridge.

In answer to a few other posts about dogs, no we did not have dogs assigned to my unit. We would occasionally work with dogs when working with other agencies. I have no idea if Army EOD uses dogs at this point.

Lute Skywatcher, true enough. I’m just saying that dogs would have been a good idea if they had them.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

@spoke-

It was on the face of the overpass, where it would be highly visible to traffic (you know, like an advertisement). It was not underneath the overpass, where you would plant a bomb if you were looking to blow something up (as any cop with sense should realize).

Argh! As I’ve said a hundred times already, this device *was *underneath the highway. It was mounted on the steel support, the thing that holds the highway up and keeps it from crashing onto the subway, bus terminal, and commuter-rail line below. Just where a bomb would be, in fact. Just the reason why people reacted the way they did, and why they were obliged to show the extra caution that those devil-may-care Dopers know not of.

[Hogwash]

What’s the Straight Dope regarding the legality of selling one the signs on eBay? Is the item classed as stolen property or is it considered ‘abandoned’ like litter?

[lokij]

@Sal Ammoniac

First of all, how you’re seeing it on the web is not how it looked in situ. Plus your mind has been properly primed. Imagine that you don’t have any foreknowledge, never having heard of the viral advertising concept, and you merely look up and see a couple of D-cells and some wires, attached to a dark oblong. For me, just the fact of seeing D-cells and wires hooked to something on a highway support would set my alarm bells to ringing. I don’t know a damn thing about explosives, and the average American doesn’t either, thank God, so I’d have no idea how much explosive was actually dangerous to the structure. But I’d certainly say something to the police.

I think it could be a weather station, or a traffic monitoring device, or a engineering test gathering stress data, or an environmental study on pollution, or a bit of random debris one often finds around highways or, possibly, an ad if it was fucking glowing in the shape of a MOONINITE giving me the finger! I would not jump to the fucking stupid conclusion that it HAD to be a bomb or call anybody. I’m much less worried about bombs than overzealous and litigious police and governmental bodies, thank God.

Yep, Boston. Plutonians all.

[Cuckoorex]

@Sal Ammoniac

So would it be your position that everything these vandals did was okay, aboveboard, peachy-keen with you?

They’re vandals now? As far as I know, no property was destroyed or defaced. Why are they now “vandals”? Emotional appeal, of sorts…?

[Sal_Ammoniac]

@RogueRacer

Sort of. The point I was trying to make is that while it did have a few things that could be used as an electronic trigger mechanism, it didn’t seem to have much room for explosives. We would have been more worried about it being designed to kill a person (such as an EOD tech) rather than it taking down a bridge.

Exactly. The bomb squad has to deal with it the same way regardless. And given the location (over a bus terminal), even a modest bomb could have killed or maimed a certain number of people with shrapnel.

[tdn]

@lowbrass

No thanks. I prefer reality, where we don’t imagine that others conceded a point just because we wish they had.

You know, it’s not so much that the Boston authorities did something - my first thought upon hearing the story was, “better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough”. Their mistake was to immediately start spewing idle threats and arresting people on bogus charges rather than just admitting they made a mountain out of a molehill.

So – should the authorities have investigated or not? It seems to me that in that last quote you say they should have. And if so, then why argue whether batteries and wires look like a bomb?

[DocCathode]

INAL WAG- As a viral marketing device the things were abandoned if not outright given away to finders. As such the former owners have given up all rights and they belong to the person who claims the sign. See the case of Finders V Keepers.

[slaphead]

So these chumps are going to be charged with what? Not filling out DHS Form 123234234/234# - Request for government permission to place object greater than 3 cc within 250 metres of public asset?
That’s great, because it now means anyone throwing away anything bigger than a condom packet in a metropolitan area can be charged with not just littering, but terrorism. The litter problem will disappear overnight, assuming there’s enough cells to lock up 30 million or so people.

Speaking as someone who was living in London while the IRA were going through their nineties campaign that combined 3000lb truck bombs with hand-sized bombs dumped in public trashcans, I think having funny boxes with lights and batteries stuck on the side of bridges is near the bottom of things you should be worrying about. A truck, a car, a grocery bag, or a 32oz soft drink cup is much more likely to be a bomb, and no-one will even notice them until they go off.

RogueRacer may correct me on this, but I was under the impression that even something as small as a McDonalds burger container is quite capable of maiming a lot of people if it was filled with dynamite and scrap metal and ditched at, say, a busy bus stop. If they’re really out to get you, paranoia isn’t much help.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

If I can make a synposis of the argument of the people who believe the Boston police overreacted, it goes like this:

The device in Sullivan Square (the first one found) should not have been seen as a bomb, because:

1. Some people in Seattle and South Boston had seen something else, and those things weren’t bombs.
2. We all have D-cells and wires at home, and they’re not bombs.
3. The device was decorated with a character that should have been discerned, if only the device were functioning and/or ten feet closer and in better light.
4. People should have noticed the device beforehand, and noticed that it was not a bomb.
5. It was a Lite-Brite.
6. Notwithstanding the above, it could have been a weather station.

And people wonder why I’m tearing my hair out!

[D_Odds]

@tdn

So – should the authorities have investigated or not? It seems to me that in that last quote you say they should have. And if so, then why argue whether batteries and wires look like a bomb?

Investigated - yes. Then said, “False alarm. [advertising agency], clean up your mess, here’s a ticket for [something], don’t do it again.”

[Spoke]

@Sal Ammoniac

It was mounted on the steel support, the thing that holds the highway up and keeps it from crashing onto the subway, bus terminal, and commuter-rail line below.

Even mounted thus, it should not have inspired the panic that it did. This is a very thin device. Not something that could have held much of a charge, even if somebody wanted to use it as a bomb. A glance should have told the police as much.

(And this is aside from the fact that it was obviously “guerilla art” of some type.)

[HoboStew]

Folks, these devices have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia (cite). ONE city, and ONE CITY ONLY, flipped out and caused a city-wide panic. It is THEIR fault, not adult swims, that this got blown so far out of proportion.