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Aqua Teen Hunger Force Brings Boston to a Halt
An anonymous reader writes "An ad campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force featuring the Mooninites Ignignot and Err caused major security concerns in Boston, MA when magnetic light displays were mistaken for possible bombs. The displays included one of Ignignot flipping the bird (as hard as he could), but Gov. Deval Patrick was not amused."
The article says they got worried when they saw the wires and circuit boards. The knowledgable terrorist will doubtless package his payload in a fashionable briefcase now that he has been alerted to this penchant.
Damn you Aqua Teen Hunger Force! You have DOOMED America!
"Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it can creep."
-from "What It's Worth" -Buffalo Springfield
It really makes me sick that we're at the point where people mistake everyday things for bombs and have homeland security called in. I can't even ride my universities bus holding a wired up circuit board (for a class) without people looking at me like I'm about to blow them up.
Yeah you're right, explosives can be hidden in almost anything. So, the logical conclusion is to knock down all buildings, and bulldoze the entire city completely flat so that anything suspicious will stand out. And you'll have to put the people somewhere else too. Simply making them go naked won't work, since they tend to carry illegal things in their bums.
There's being cautious and there's being retarded.
Yes, because in Soviet America, anything outside normal trains of thought is illegal.
And what do you think would have happened if these things had been bombs, disguised as creepy little advertisements, and the police ignored them? Never mind the damage and loss of life, people would be bitching to high heaven about police and government incompetence.
You're right. If I ever need to blow up a bridge or something, I'll make sure not to disguise the bomb as a discarded cardboard box. Instead I'll make it flash wildly, so nobody notices.
The "You have to take all threats seriously" argument presupposes that either (a) wildly blinking objects with bird-flipping aliens on them are significantly more potentially dangerous than common refuse, or (b) any piece of common refuse should be treated as a threat and lead to bridge shutdowns and bomb squads and pissed-off governors. I can't see either of these being true (though the second one sure would help with the litter problem).
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Well, they got their money's worth on this advertising campaign!
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
I live in Boston, and I can say that the day was very tense.
Why? Because the media put out a big scare story that turned out to be nothing?
which you'd expect no matter what when dealing with batteries and unknown electronics in a sneaky location in a heavy traffic area
Maybe you should just stop paying attention to every little scare mongering story that gets released. Personally I'd direct some attention over to the media outlets for publishing a story with no information, who's only result was to un-necessarily scare people. A few weeks ago it was a strange smell in NYC that everyone assumed was the work of terrorists. I'm sure there's about 20 other stories I'm missing because...I've stopped paying attention to these junk stories.
AccountKiller
" You have to take these all seriously, because who knows if they're threats or not?"
Well, I do. It's obvious that a beer sign, light bright, or flickery street light are not bombs, although you and apparently others in Boston don't know this.
" I'm mad as hell about this ad campaign because when it comes time to pay for all the police activity today, you can bet your ass Ted Turner won't offer to foot the bill."
He shouldn't foot the bill. Any jerk could tell those signs aren't bombs. Turner doesn't owe dick for the local po' being stupid and overreacting.
Please don't try to justify this pathetic overreaction. We've become a nation of fearful neurotic idiots.
If someone wants to blow up a bridge, they will blow it up. They can strap dynamite to their torso and hug support beams. They can drive an explosive-filled car into a stanchion. They can fill a boat with fertilizer and float underneath. No matter how much we freak out over nothing, no matter how many times we give up our rights, take off our shoes, and do other retarded inappropriate useless things.
Even if we were dealing with a coward terrorist who wasn't willing to commit his life, you wouldn't see something with wires and batteries sticking out. It'd be out of sight, or look like garbage.
It's such an irrational fear. How many people have been killed in the past hundred years in the US by little boxes with wires and batteries sticking out? How many have been killed by auto wrecks? It's jaw-droppingly lame, and it's getting worse. We'd be better off panicking about ceiling fans, lightning bolts, or bunions.
We don't even need terrorists anymore. All it takes to shut down a city is cowering, whimpering, losers afraid of their own shadow.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I saw this as I was coming into work this afternoon on our big screen (thank god for the military having most of their televisions permanently tuned to FOX NEWS for the "situational awareness" it provides...) and my jaw just dropped. It's really hitting me lately how much our country is changing, and there is very little that individuals can do about it. I feel like standing on top of a soap box and yelling at people till i'm blue in the face, but I know that's fruitless.
Wake up...
All your base are belong to Google.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Surprisingly only Boston had a problem with this when TFA mentions that these are up in 9 other cities. Likewise I've only heard Boston-based posters complaining about how this was irresponsible and something that obviously looked a lot like a bomb so it needed to be investigated.
I know it's fashionable to complain about these things now, but war on terror or not, this was unnecessary and dumb. It could have been done in any number of ways that did not involve bringing Boston to a halt in the middle of the day. I think the response was the correct one and I hope that if this ever happens in my city the response is exactly the same.
And if these bored TV execs thought about it for more than five seconds and didn't do this - then the terrorists are winning as well? I think not. This is about common sense and basic civil responsibility.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
And what do you think would have happened if these things had been bombs, disguised as creepy little advertisements, and the police ignored them?
Yeah, because our immaculately clean cities have such a serious shortage of more innocuous hiding places, right? Like, say, garbage... Why, I can't even recall the last time I saw a discarded beat-up large cardboard box while visiting Boston.
Hiding in plain sight might work well for ninjas, but we mere mortals should stick to diving for the closet or under the bed when the parents/jealous hubby/mormons come to the door.
The bottom line is, in times like these and in a major city like Boston, you have to take everything seriously.
No. "In times like [foo]" and "in places like [bar]" never count as a good reason. Every generation in the history of the planet, and every city to ever plague the face of the Earth, has believed that it had some magically unique set of trying circumstances.
"These times" represent more of a norm than an abberation therefrom. Get used to it, and just thank Zeus every day you don't live in the West Bank or Mosul or any of the abundance of other places we only know about because the daily news keeps reminding us of how much life there sucks.
Look at the pictures posted of one of these things - they have a row of D-batteries covered in duct tape.
Have you ever seen anything more "bomb-like" than an M-80?
A few D-battery-sized wads of high explosive, detonated in an open area (not the same as a shaped charge or a capped bore-hole!), would do nothing. Someone who happened to touch it at the moment of explosion might get killed, but it wouldn't do much better than that.
When you hear about suicide bombs going off in markets and mosques in Iraq, these involve large backpacks or even vehicles stuffed to the brim with explosives. And they still usually only manage to take out, in a crowd, a dozen people!
While the average Joe may believe what they see on CSI or 24 or whatever they have as the joke-of-a-cop-drama of the season, a real bomb-squad should have a hell of a lot better training than that.
And what do you think would have happened if these things had been bombs
What if? What if someone suddenly replaced the bridges with an exact replica only it wasn't a bridge, it was actually a chameleon nuclear bomb. And what if the police didn't notice? What then eh? What then?
The "what if" argument fails because it immediately deviates from the actual fact, into the fantasy realm of the author.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is what happens when you've had 6 years of being told that the terrorists are out to kill every single last one of us in our beds.
The next time you're about to say "if you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" remember this story, and think about some wacky cartoon guys trying to have a little fun. They are now being threatened with who-knows-what just because we've got leaders that piss themselves at the thought of islamoliberalnazis coming in the night to rape their women, cut their throats and give their kids video games with pictures of naked breasts.
There is a serious downside to buying into the current wave of fear-mongering being perpetrated in this country. I understand that they're doing it to make us easier to govern, but it's going to have consequences that the powers that be cannot imagine. One of those consequences is that we're starting to seriously think our leaders are knuckleheads. And cowards.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Kinda like when I was in High School and they banned backpacks (but not purses, which is a whole other story) from classrooms because bombs could be hidden in them, which, according to the administration, would make for a lot more effort for a bomb squad to find a bomb in case a bomb threat was called in. Of course, this just meant that the bombs would be left in lockers for the bomb squad to search, which I don't see as making things any easier. The high school wasn't being cautious, it was being retarded.
As some other people said, this is just a media event (unless of course, the people involved really are retarded). I hate to break it to people, but there is very little that we can do to stop dedicated terrorists, whether those terrorists are Muslim fundamentalists, the next Timothy McVeigh, or a group of teenagers who are pissed at their classmates. If we try to prevent terrorism from happening by jumping at shadows or taking away freedom, we aren't going to make any progress and will probably just create more terrorists. Does anyone else think that there will be a minor backlash of ATHF graffiti and copycat light ads now that this happened? Hell, I'd almost expect a terrorist to make a bomb in the shape of these ads, but that would be kinda counter productive because it would prove these security freaks right.
Here's your problem. A bomb does not "look like a bomb". People think a bomb is a bundle of sticks of dynamite with a bright red digital timer, preferably bleeping. But bombs don't look like that.
qntm.org
So it the person who called this in - they should be charged for the mess.
Bullshit. Someone (most likely someone who's never even heard of ATHF, much less knows what a Mooninite is) saw an an odd-looking device attached to a potentially suspicious target and reported it. The bomb squad blew one up, and investigated the others. Yes, some roads and bridges were closed, but the city wasn't evacuated, the national guard wasn't called out, no one was rounded up. By the time I heard about this, it was already over. The system worked the way it should.
Turner, on the other hand may have something to answer for. As part of my job, I leave electronic monitoring equipment for days or weeks in pubic places. Even before 9/11, I knew better than to do so without informing the authorities - if I can't inform someone in charge, I attach a note to the device saying "this is a sound monitoring device for project XXX. If you have any questions, call John Smith at (617) 555-8944." I have heard from many colleagues who did not take these steps, and had their $5000 devices blown up by the bomb squad (again, this stuff was happening before 9/11).
If Turner took these steps, and officials got their wires crossed, then yes the authorities obviously overreacted. But if the city wasn't informed, the city took all the right steps. Did you expect the authorities to just ignore the devices because they looked cute?
I couldn't agree more. These were placed on heavily traveled bridges. The police probably couldn't have cared less about what the device looked like, except for the fact that there were more than a half dozen of them strapped under bridges across the city, and they hadn't heard about them. I'm not sure what the chain of events was, but if you're the official responsible for saying "sure, leave the bridge open until we get down there to check it out" and the next thing you know 15 cars went flying into the harbor because the Zakim bridge went kaboom... well, Let's just say I can understand his point of view. And believe it or not, this is all coming from someone who takes immense pleasure in asking people who are so worried about dying at the hands of the terrorists whatever they shall do if they get behind the wheel of the infinitely more dangerous contraption called an "automobile."
I guess it really boils down to how funny people think terrorism is.
;-)
Uhhh...
They placed cute flashing animated signs in various locations around three cities. According to some accounts, they did this two weeks ago, and Boston just now got around to noticing enough to throw a hissy-fit.
And you call this "terrorism"? The only "terrorists" here sit on the city council and behind news anchor desks at the local media. The advertising firm at worst failed to get the proper permits. Whoop-de-do. Fine them $50 and let's all get on with our lives.
I don't really find it funny that a large chunk of taxpayer's money is being spent investigating what is effectively a burning paper bag full of doo doo.
Well, we agree on that much. And I sincerely hope the people of Boston throw the clueless fearmongers in city hall out on the streets as a result.
Also Aqua Teen Hunger Force sucks. there. i said it. god.
Again, we agree completely. But I'll defend their right to free speech to my death.
Of course, with the police and such talking about nailing whoever did it to a cross, what a surprise that nobody stepped forward to quell the madness.
It was a stupid stunt, with a moronic response by the authorities. It also worked 100%, due to how moronic the response of the Boston authorities was. There's a difference between quickly closing down the immmediate area, investigating the sign while doing so, and then discontinuing the closures after the all clear, and what they did. They closed everything in a wide area, called in heavily armed units, caused considerable panic, and then gave the all clear while screaming about throwing whoever did it in the abyss. In other words, the decision makers acted like irrational mental cases screaming at the invisible monsters from space rather than calm intelligent people dealing with a potential dangerous situation.
Who's going to see a tiny little add posted on a bridge's support column? I think they did this so the bomb squad would come, and they'd get all this free press.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
That's the way they justify all their bullshit.
"Behavior consistent with terrorist actions."
"Associations with well-known terrorists."
etc
When those vague phrases are the best they can do it means they don't have a shred of meaningful evidence but they want to scare people into thinking they do, so their authority won't be questioned.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Real IEDs do not have flashing lights or a ticking clock on them, unlike the movies would have you believe.
How anyone could confuse these things for anything dangerous makes me wonder how incredibly stupid the people in charge of our security really are.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Unfortunately, a lot of people in power want people to think that everyone is out to get them. It is a lot easier to tighten the screws on a populace that is afraid of some ill-defined enemy because they'll give up rights so you can "protect" them. That's why all of these so-called hoaxes get announced.
For a lot of the people in power, the reason they keep parroting the whole "terrorist" possibility (much like the communist scare of years gone by) is so that they can have even more power. They think that if they can keep the populace frightened enough, they will be able to justify keeping themselves in office indefinately and being able to act with impunity.
In addition, it's a great way to distract people from how badly things are going in the economic and civil rights arenas.
It's like the old saying says - power corrupts, and these people have way too much power and far too few scruples.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
...the Scooter Libby trial, where "copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case". http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml
If there's one thing you can rely on, it's bad news for the Adminstration being accompanied by a hyped-up terror scare that turns out to be nothing.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
...it only took a hours to blow up a LiteBrite but it took weeks to respond to a devastating hurricane?
This is insightful?
Would the "weeks" it took to respond to Katrina include the Coast Guard flying of people off of their rooftops the same day the storm blew through? Or are you thinking more about the days in advance of that hurricane that the mayor of that town and the governor of that state wasted in not actually evacuating the city's residents (you know, the ones not complying with the evacuation order) with their sitting-idle fleet of buses? Why talk about response to a major disaster when you can talk about the choice to live below sea level where hurricanes regularly hit, and then not leaving town when you're told to?
Doesn't matter. You're obviously a trolling twit. Or, you're serious, and also say completely non-non-sequitorish things like, "Isn't it funny that poor people get cancer when the NSA now has ways to back up petabytes of data in a drinking straw?"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
No, the authorities shut down everything, in a massive overreaction to what was obviously an art project or a harmless prank.
My first thought on seeing a big flashing LED display attached to a bridge would be "Ah, MIT students playing again." I'm seriously surprised the Boston police didn't consider that the explanation. Are they unaware of all the previous MIT pranks?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
> I'm from Boston. I stood on the subway for a over an hour (normal ride time: 30 minutes or so) because of these dipshit "indie" artists that did this for Turner.
:]
Dude, grow a pair instead of getting pissy because you got stuck on the subway for a few minutes.
Some dumbass got freaked out by a glorified Lite Brite. I hate to break this to you, but circuit boards don't explode, nor do LEDs, nor do Duracell D cell batteries, nor do wires. If your city gets this freaked over nothing, any sensible terrorist would just plant a bunch of hoaxes and laugh while you all piss yourself.
You don't want to help the terrorists win, do you?
it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a problem like this might happen
A filing cabinet left out on a sidewalk would be overlooked for weeks in some parts of Boston and most other cities, and yet pose a much more significant danger.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Also, let's look at terrorism from the point of view of your Joe Sixpack Homeland Security Officer (JSHSO), or any other dude from the executive branch of the govt., They sit all day on their asses (a lot more positions were created after 9/11), get payed loads of money (more $$$ was budgeted for war on terror) and are waiting for the terrorists to attack. Well, according to the probability mentioned above, the chance of a large terrorist attack is very slim, and JSHSO is getting pretty bored. He was trained to sniff out terrorists, pop their eyes out and skullfuck the empty sockets. So are we really that surprised that they will see terrorists in every Middle Eastern person, a bomb in every blinking light, and will pull the 'OMFG! TERRORISTS ARE COMING!' trigger on every shadow. This gets their blood going, they get a high when they get to close down half a city. Then they realize how stupid they are and arrest someone so they can turn them into a scapegoat. This justifies their job position, they get to go home at the end of the day and tell their kids that 'Daddy stopped Osama today, he disarmed bombs with blinking lights that had nazi jihadists flicking Americans off'
It is pretty obvious that the terrorists already won. They wanted us to be do this and we are doing it. It is about time to smarten up. If we really want to live longer and safe, we should not smoke, drive more carefully, watch what we eat, watch our step when we get in and out of the shower and other stuff like that.
"You have to take these all seriously, because who knows if they're threats or not?"
Do you wear an earthed metal hat whenever you go out and the weather's a bit dodgy? Have you plastered your children and housepets in flexible Faraday cages?
Go look up the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack, and then the chances of being hit by lightning.
If you always wear lightning-proof headgear and earthed metal underwear in the rain, then rant away.
If not, your response is fact-free, emotion-not-intelligence-prompted horseshit caused by media over-reporting and sensationalising that has no place in a serious debate.
Seriously - what the fuck makes idiots assume that just because three people got killed by terrorists in Buttfuck, Arkensas that suddenly now everyone has to have chips in their heads and hand in their genitals for safe keeping by the government?
Look up the statistics - you're more likely to be hit by lightning than killed in a terrorist attack. So if you don't spend the same amount of time worrying about lightning as you spend worring about "t3h T3rr0R1sTs!!11!1!" you're being a nervous jumpy fuckwit.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
I would expect an interesting time at the next shareholder's meeting though (and hopefully a huge fine to spur the conversation along).
And I would expect it to go something like "Holy shit, that ad campaign got more attention that we ever DREAMED it would! The resulting increased receipts from the ATHF movie more than cover the cost of the fines we had to pay, so free hookers and blow for everybody!"
so free hookers and blow for everybody!"
We're all in the wrong business, aren't we?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The only fine that is justified here is for the trespassing and vandalism. Nothing more than that should be paid. Let the idiots who decided this was a hoax (it was NOT a hoax) and the idiots that decided it was a bomb (it was NOT a bomb and didn't even look anywhere near like a bomb ... as determined by officials in some other cities like Seattle) pay the fine. Or better yet, let them lose their jobs so people can come visit Boston some day in the future knowing that the city isn't going to overreact.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
NO ... you stood on the subway for over an hour because your city is run by a bunch of incompetent jackasses that only know how to overreact and create a panic over a bunch of blinking lights that had been there for days with no problems. You stood on the subway for over an hour because someone saw that one of these signs was flipping the bird and them and got pissed off and called in (on a payphone) to the city and claimed it was a bomb (this act being the hoax act).
You'll probably have a lot more of this in Boston in the future, too, if you don't admit that it is the fault of the city and do what it takes to get some major turnover to get some competent people running the place. Remember, it didn't cause a panic in any of the several other cities they showed up in. The rest of the country is laughing at Boston and all those headless chickens in police uniforms running around. The feeling you should have right now is one of embarassment and shame (if you're supporting those city people that did this).
No it didn't. The devices were there for days. And they were in other cities, too. It was the stupid incompetent police/city officials that shut things down. The rest of us are laughing at Boston.
He should be there for trespassing and vandalism. That's the first crime that was done. The next crime was days later, and was done by some yet-unnamed incompetent city official who, unlike his counterparts in other cities, doesn't have a clue. The police really arrested this guy to try to cover up their own incompetence.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars