Xblog

I appreciate the fact that Boston Logan airport was where the disastrous events of September 11th, 2001 all started, but that doesn’t give you a license to be an idiot. BTW, in case you haven’t seen it this is apparently what a bomb looks like. Yup, it’s a bread board with some wires and a battery. Apparently there are some eight or so LED’s positioned on the sweat shirt that flash (‘cause just like movie bombs, real live bombs have lots of menacing looking flashing lights to draw attention to themselves). Oh, and apparently she had some play dough in her hands (although that is far from clear at this point).

Weird people walk in to airports all the time. It’s just a fact of life. Hang out in a big airport like Logan for a few hours, and you get a fair sampling of humanity. A portion of humanity looks really weird (at least from any one person’s cultural context). Somehow, you don’t hear stories of kids getting arrested in airports because they’ve got shoes with flashing LED’s in them. As far as I know, noone has had their Nintendo DS confiscated from them. But if it isn’t all packed up in a nice consumer oriented fashion… it must be a BOMB!

And yes, this isn’t the first “improvised electronic device” incident. There is a genuine fear of any electronics that didn’t come preassembled in a nice package at the store.

Some people have defended the authorities on this matter, citing the fact that officers cannot be expected to be familiar with bread boards and other electronic paraphernalia. I’d actually agree they can’t be expected to be familiar with this stuff. What I’d expect to be familiar with is what bombs look like and maybe be a little familiar with the widely reported fashion trends at the city’s world famous technical school. Yes, this might have vaguely resembled a bomb in a summer blockbuster maybe, but it doesn’t take a genius to think that it doesn’t exactly fit the mold of anything particularly dangerous. Seriously, at worst I could imagine the thing being considered a radio of some kind. I’d actually have been okay if an officer had approached her and casually asked her a few questions, just to get an idea of who she was, on the grounds that the he thought she looked unusual, but drawing a gun? Seriously?

I’ve seen people make comments that “after 9/11, it’s just stupid to go to the airport wearing this”. Yeah, because we all know that on 9/11 we were attacked by people armed with…. box cutters. Oh, and before 9/11, the worst incidents we’d ever had were from a truck bomb made out of fertilizer and various other chemicals and a van bomb made out of urea pellets and various other chemicals (are we seeing a trend here?). No electronics necessary, just our beloved automobiles.

Sure, you always want to look out for the “new” attack, but honestly, anything that could be done with that bread board could be much more effectively disguised as a cell phone, a children’s toy, or whatever. I doubt anyone on a terrorist mission really wants to take the time to wire up a bunch of flashing LED’s to draw attention to themselves.

And of course in typical Boston fashion she was arrested for “possession of a hoax device”. I’m not kidding you.

The overall sense I get these days is that the Luddites are back. As some kind of blow-back from all the scientific advances of the last half century or so, a mistrust and outright fear of science and technology has taken hold on a level that I’d normally imagined to be the stuff of Hollywood thriller/horror/disaster flicks. This has got to stop, or pretty soon we won’t be able to wear the clothes they sell at ThinkGeek. There goes my idea for picking up my wife at the airport with a scrolling LED belt buckle with her name scrolling by.

P.S.: Note to TSA: the wife says, “thank you”.