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."

Comments

Video of them putting this stuff up

[frostyboy]

This used to be on youtube, but it's been pulled. It's now up at a safer place. Some local people I know have actually been able to deduce locations from the video and obtain a couple of these "devices." Boston area slashdotters up for some scavenger hunting? athf-lightsnipes-boston.flv

CNN edit

[flogger]

CNN is running this article, but the picture has been edited out the offensive finger.

I find that interesting they will edit a "drawn" finger but will show blody dismembered bodies.

Re:Who's the @**hole now!

[Richard_at_work]

I distinctly remember going to school aged 6 or 7 in Northern Ireland as a dependant of a British military personel toward the mid 1980s and being having a regular 'security' class taken by someone in combat fatigues every week (IE someone from the military). In that class we were shown explosive device designs in use by the IRA at that time - pipe bombs, nail bombs et al, anything we should not ever touch in any circumstance if we found.

I also went to school in Berlin toward the end of the 1980s (yes, I was there for the wall coming down) and there were adverts on TV (BFBC iirc) that detailed carbombs and how to check for them, along with what to look out for with regard to suspicious persons.

Some of us grew up in a security climate vastly worse than the current one. And no, Im not the AC above.

Re:Flashing Lights and/or Whirligigs.

[Dilaudid]

The police apparently learned what bombs look like from hollywood movies and comic books. Modded funny but it should be modded insightful. Homeland and other security types appear to have understood the least important 5% of how to deal with risk - look out for the obvious. This should be a last chance precaution to make sure something awful isn't happening. Unfortunately they appear to have made it 50% of their strategy.

The other lesson they seem to have learnt is how to avoid the precise event that just happened - so airport security bans knives (despite the high probability that a terrorist with just a knife would get beaten to death on an airplane now).
They ban lighters and check the soles of your shoes (in case like Richard Reid, you choose to have an explosive, detonated via a burning fuse, in the bottom of your shoes).
They ban liquids, but not malleable plasticised materials, on the grounds that people once planned to use liquid explosives.

The parrot like nature of the security services is frankly embarassing. I can see two reasons why they do this - 1) fear of getting fired - if a terrorist does something exactly the same way and succeeds a second time then you look grossly incompetent, and will get fired, and 2) security does not attract the brightest sparks. The better wages and conditions in the private sector, IT, meds, energy etc. attract away the intelligent people we need running this stuff.

This ad campaign won't do anything to fix it, didn't even try, but the ad geek who came up with it deserves massive respect. Exposing publicly funded stupidity like this deserves an award. I just hope that many many heads roll.