Via WNZ: MIT Student Arrested For Fake Bomb At Logan
An MIT student wearing what turned out to be a fake bomb was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport and later claimed it was artwork and that she was there to meet her boyfriend, officials said.
Star Simpson, 19, had a white computer circuit board and wiring over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport.
[...]
The battery-powered rectangular device had nine flashing lights, Pare said. Simpson also had Play-Doh in her hands, he said.
The phrases “Socket to me” and “Course VI” were written on the back of sweat shirt, which authorities displayed to the media. Course VI appears to be a reference to MIT’s major of electrical engineering and computer science.
First, off: of the airports at which to test airport security’s aesthetic acumen, Logan International is an especially poor choice.
Still, given the description of the device (and the video at WBZ’s site) and the following response, one has to wonder about how far we have come in the last six years (and I don’t mean in a good way) in terms of overreaction to possible threats:
“She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,” Pare said. “Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force.”
I am not sure that flashing lights on a circuit board qualifies for the potential use of deadly force. Indeed, the incident reminded me of a post at OTB yesterday. It seems as if we have decided that we need to jettison common sense because of what happened on 9/11/01.
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September 21st, 2024 at 2:07 pm
“Airport Employees, Police Mistake Electrical Artwork on Sweatshirt for Fake Bomb”
September 21st, 2024 at 5:31 pm
This otherwise intelligent MIT student is very lucky that the professionalism of the law enforcement officers kept this situation in check. Do you have any idea how these things play out in countries where national security professionals are not so professional? A lot of Americans seem to think these days that law enforcement and national security is a joke; some sort of scare tactic of the Bush administration they loath. Well, regardless of your political opinions, we live in a place that a small but determined group of extremists wants to destroy. They don’t care that you are a conservative or a liberal or even tuned out of politics. They care only that you are not a Muslim, and for that you must die. The professionals at Logan International are prepared to meet that threat, and they don’t have the luxury to determine if some hooded person with a “device” is holding Play-Doh or something else meant to do harm. Rational people understand this and do not prank airport security for this reason. She is lucky.
September 21st, 2024 at 5:43 pm
Maybe if authorities had used deadly force, they could have defended the shooting as performance art.
September 21st, 2024 at 6:13 pm
[...] UPDATE: Others: The Strata-Sphere, The Daily Gut, Jezebel, American Digest, Hub Politics, Hot Air, PoliBlog, Okie on the Lam, Boing Boing, Riehl World View, Wake up America, Pax Nortana, [...]
September 22nd, 2024 at 7:44 am
The Knucklehead of the Day award
Today’s winner is Star Simpson.
September 22nd, 2024 at 10:29 am
What kind of idiots are running TSA. LEDs on a circuit board is no indication of a bomb. Don’t they know what real bombs look like? Haven’t they watched movies or the news?
Everyone knows what bombs look like.
Suitcases and backpacks.
It’s true. Suitcase bombs and backpacks filled with explosives.
They should be arresting everyone with suitcases and backpacks.
They probably should taser them first just to be safe.
Remember that Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed over Lockerbie Scotland was blown up by a Samsonite suitcase bomb and those subway and railyway bombings in London and Madrid used backpack bombs.
Someone should tell TSA to be on the lookout for suitcases and backpacks. That should keep them, and us, occupied.
Another thing, suitcases and backpacks are bad for business. If we just banned them, then everytime people traveled, they would have to buy new clothes, toiletries and gadgets. We would be safer and the economy would boom.
Ooops! I guess “boom” is not the right word.
September 22nd, 2024 at 10:58 am
Star Simpson should change her name to KNUCKLEHEAD SIMPSON, she is lucky they didn’t SHOOT HER. She ought to be made to do 200 hours of cleaning up garbage at the airport.
September 23rd, 2024 at 1:48 pm
It is a pity they did not shoot her. She would have received the prestigious Darwin Award posthumously. Immortality while judiciously thinning the herd. What a concept.
September 24th, 2024 at 2:18 pm
What a country of weak-kneed cowards we have become. Wetting our pants over a piece of flashing electronic jewelry? OMG!
We need to listen to William Shatner and call the “terrified ones” Namby-Pambys and Momma’s Boys, which is what really are. I’m not afraid or terrified and none of us should be.
Do you folks not understand that what the terrorists want to do is terrorize us? Everyone who is terrified is doing exactly what they want us to do. Maybe “traitor” is a better label than “scaredy-cat” for people who think we should abandon essential civil liberties because of a handful of religious fanatics?
Since 9/11 more than 250,000 Americans have died in automobile accidents. In response to something like that, we make cars more expensive due to safety designs and we make people wear seat belts. 3,000 die in a terrorist attack, so we have to go out and have nearly 4,000 of our soldiers die, make 4,000,000 Iraqis abandon their homes, and spent $1 trillion.
Oh, and by the way, where is Osama bin Laden?
September 24th, 2024 at 2:41 pm
Yeah, how dumb of her to not know that a circuit and battery exposed in any manner are obviously signs of being part of an explosive device. I’m sure she was behaving odd too, like when she walked up to the info desk and asked when a flight was arriving. Obviously the type of activity terrorists engage in, especially female 19 year-olds with bad highlights. Golly, they prolly woulda shot her ass if she’d shown up with an Ipod, or god forbid and old radio with wiring coming out of it anywhere. Cuz you know we have shit being blown up in america all the time, just the other week we lost 3 airliners when security didn’t properly screen out an 8-track full of c-4. And god forbid last month when the entire delta skybus line-up was demolished with shitty explosive HP laptops.
Or maybe this is another example of Boston security behaving like fucktards and over-reacting to anything that will help with the boredom of being stuck in logan all day. Especially when you need to justify your security budget each year and disapointingly their really arent that many terrorists willing to blow themselves up in the name of allah, the sanctity of the unborn, or whatever the ideological flavor of the week is.
To every fucktard who thinks she got it coming maybe you out to worry more about what innocent behavior you demonstrate that will get you a cavity search because some bored half-wit decides they want to fuck with you at the airport.
oh noes!!! Osama bin laden is under my bed and wants to make me wear a burqa…where is the TSA and michelle malkin to save the day??? The terrorists hordes are going to swim from Iraq and force us at box-cutter point to give up our way of life. Americans regularly kill each other for tailgating, tailgating for god’s sake. And you pussy’s think a few thousand unwashed cave-dwellers are going to take over the most violent nation on the planet with a population around 300 million meat-eating NASCAR watching assholes. Right…more likely than not your the 30% of the population still supporting the boy king and his idiot parties attempt to scare the country into voting for them from now on. Never mind that whole katrina thing and the fact that neither of our brush fire wars seems to be going anywhere expect for to shit and in a hurry. Your pathetic, get a fucking spine already…in america you should be able to wear a lightable led on your clothes without worrying some high-school drop out is going to have you surrounded by gun toting thugs for questioning.
Happy flying and don’t you fucking dare take toothpaste or shampoo to the airport. (osama loves exploding toothpaste…)