Proposed Legislation Is Mooninite Fallout

theantipop writes "Ars Technica has a story about the Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act, a bill introduced recently by the Senate. The bill aims to 'amend the federal criminal code to include a number of new clauses meant to up the ante on wasting government resources. The amendments include extensions to the prohibitions on the spread of false information and mailing threats, increases to maximum prison terms, and allowances for civil suits so that local and federal governments can attempt to recoup expenses related to an incident.' This is undoubtedly a reaction to the Great Mooninite Scare of 2007."

Comments

Watch out for DHMO

[Kelson]

Hmm, "prohibitions on the spread of false information...."

Does that mean that if another city starts considering legislation to ban dihydrogen monoxide (like Aliso Viejo, California did in 2004), that the government could seek damages from the mainainers of DHMO.org?

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[72beetle]

prohibitions on the spread of false information....

Like the existence of WMD's?

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[dgatwood]

Yup. Government officials are only allowed to make themselves look like complete morons. God forbid anyone else should be allowed to do so.

Frankly, I think this bill gets dangerously close to thought crime. Making a threat is already illegal. Doing something that a f*ckcing moron thinks is a threat should not be. If you are too mind bogglingly stupid to look at the mooninite thing and realize that it is probably not a bomb, you not only do not deserve to be in any position of authority, but also probably do not even deserve the life support that they must be using to keep your body alive in the absence of a central nervous system (both parts).

The best one was Boston police blowing up a traffic counter. Seriously, there is one very massive sucking sound caused by the vacuum between the ears of the people who are reacting to these "credible threats".

Here's a counterproposal. Make it a crime punishable by termination and fines for any person in charge of any government entity to waste taxpayer resources. THAT would be a useful law. It would make it possible to can people in civil service for gross ineptitude, a condition which unfortunately seems all too prevalent in those circles, and for which which no viable solution currently exists due to fundamental brokenness in government hiring practices.

We can start by arresting Congress plus the entire Executive Branch and starting over from scratch.

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[Mistlefoot]

And Canada has just been sent a bill.....to pay for the money spent investigating our "poppy" quarters after US agents thought they were being 'bugged' due to the red embedded on the coins.

How could we be so careless.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070507.wspycoins0507/BNStory/National/home/

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[Cyberllama]

Honestly, does anyone who followed this incident believe that anyone other than the Boston PD/local government/etc was to blame for the wasted money?

These were not "hoax devices". A "hoax device" is meant to fool you. This wasn't meant to fool anyone, but fools were nevertheless fooled by it. A similar incident occured a couple of years ago when someone staged a protest outside of an army recruitment office dressed like prisoner from one of the famous abu-garib photographs. Wearing a black hood, standing on a crate, with wires hanging from his arms.

Apparently in that situation they also called in the bomb squad and charged the protesters with a "hoax device" because apparently wires are serious business and EVERYONE should know that you can't just go attaching wires to things this day in age and not expect the bomb squad to be called -- EVEN IF YOUR MIMICKING A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH THAT HAS BEEN SEEN ON NEWS BROADCASTS ALL OVER THE WORLD AD NASEUM FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS.

The appropriate response would be to start firing people. Clearly there are people in positions of power who simply do not belong there. These are people Who do not have the common sense that god gave to most creatures with an intellect greater than a tuna fish. Who can't look at protester with wires attached to his arms and say "Oh yeah, I've seen that photograph before" or who can't look at a god-damned light-bright for a popular tv show and say "Neat advertisement". Who can't understand that something INCH THICK composed almost entirely of LEDS does not have explosive potential. There is simply a limit to how tiny explosives can be, you need something capable of exploding -- some kind of fuel.

The city of Boston fucked up, big time. Instead of admitting their mistakes like men/women and firing the people responsible, they're going to go after their innocent victims in court and try to pass laws to put the burden of their stupidity on the public at large. Beware: If we mistakenly identify something completely innocuous as a bomb, it will be your fault for owning that innocuous item! Nice going, guys.

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[Sj0]

Come to Northern Manitoba. The weather's fine. In fact, so fine that it simply doesn't compare to the weather my father and grandparents faced when they were younger.

The proof is there, and that proof is short sleeved shirts in March or April in Thompson or Flin Flon.

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[1u3hr]

The WWII booby trap was baited so obviously that it might as well have lit up with track lights and neon like in a Warner cartoon. Pistols. Ration packs. Binoculars...

So if it looks like a bomb, or if it DOESN'T look like a bomb, you treat it as a bomb. So you just spend your life hiding under your bed because absolutely anything outside is likely to be a bomb? Or maybe your bed is a bomb....

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[Sj0]

There are no Mooninites in Boston! Never!

Isn't it scary how the Iraqi Information Minister sounds like the guys in charge of the US right now?

"The terrorists are stupid. They are stupid [dramatic pause] and they are condemned."

"There are no terrorists in Baghdad. Never!"

"That there are terrorists in Iraq is just a lie, and the media is lying."

"The terrorists are committing suicide at the gates of Baghdad."

Anyway, I agree with your point. Everyone needs to stop being such pussies all their lives. There's a greater risk of dying terribly simply driving down the highway than from terrorists. This is because the police and CIA really are paid to do their jobs and they do a good job, despite Rove et. al. trying to sabatoge them for purely political purposes. People need to grow a pair and stop begging politicians to exploit them to obtain unneccessary government powers.

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[dgatwood]

The WWII booby trap was baited so obviously that it might as well have lit up with track lights and neon like in a Warner cartoon. Pistols. Ration packs. Binoculars...

Yeah, and if we were in the middle of a war zone, that level of paranoia might not be unjustified. In Iraq, if it looks even slightly like a bomb, it probably is. In Boston, if it looks only slightly like a bomb, it is probably a children's toy. If it has a rubber hose sticking out, running across the street, and is chained to a light post, it is probably a traffic counter. Even if the city didn't put it there, it is still probably a traffic counter, and you should then attempt to find out why it was placed there without notifying the city. If a package has someone's name on it and/or a delivery company, it might make sense to pick up your cell phone and CALL them and ASK them what the heck it is and ASK them to pick it up BEFORE calling in the bomb squad. And so on.

I'm not asking for people to do stupid things like opening a suspicious package. I just want people to be liable for their failure to exercise even the slightest modicum of common sense in ascertaining whether something is a threat or not, and more importantly, to be liable for the excessive use of personnel, force, and other resources in eliminating a perceived threat. If 99.999% of these situations are harmless, the right approach is always to use the minimum number of people necessary to keep other people at a safe distance, then examine the suspicious object and try to figure out what it might be.

Look for identifying markings. Call somebody and have them Google product numbers. And so on. If your gut reaction when you see a woman walk off without per purse is to shout, "Hey, you dropped your purse," you're one of the good guys. If your gut reaction is to watch the woman walk away, then wonder why she didn't notice that she forgot her purse, wait five minutes, then blow it into a million pieces, you might very well be part of the problem. :-D

If the ATHF thing were the only bomb scare mistake they made, it would be somewhat amusing... but a traffic counter? Seriously....

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[Jtheletter]

Yes. The idiots that put up the devices in the first place had to know that they would be inciting public panic. They knew darn well that after 9/11 the government cannot afford to get caught with its pants down, so they have to take every threat seriously. That includes panicked individuals calling in on tip lines reporting blinky signs in places that are not authorized. Personally I think those responsible for the advertising campaign should be fined 10x the amount the city spent, and the ones that installed the devices should have to spend a few weeks in a P.M.I.t.A. prison.

Yes, that response sounds entirely proportional and appropriate. And for the city workers who installed a traffic counter that was later incorrectly suspected to be an explosive device and detonated by the Boston Police Bomb Squad, those workers should have the exact same sentence right? They had to know that in this post-911 world ANYTHING with a wire, placed anywhere in the city could be a threat, even if the city itself ordered the placement of the device.

Or maybe, just maybe, you're a complete jackass who can't think for themselves and recognize that there were a lot more failures in these incidents than by the people who placed devices that were not bombs and were not intended to be interpretted as such. Even the legal definition of hoax device under MA law states that the device must be INTENDED by the placer to be interpretted as a threat in an effort to cause panic. No intent means no hoax, no matter how hard someone squints their eyes and declares something a bomb that doesn't look, function, or have anywhere near the same mass & volume as a bomb. And placement of something is not the only factor that should be used in determining if an object is an explosive, just being under a bridge does not make something a bomb, ask any homeless person. And let's say we give the bomb squad the benefit of the doubt and say the first 5 LED signs they found should have been treated like bombs, what about the next 5 that were identical, at what point do we establish a pattern of non-threat? Never? "Well, the first 99 devices we found all turned out to be harmless tape recorders afterall, but we're still treating number 100 as a live bomb because the others could have all been distractions from the real one." Yes, very plausible indeed. Putting them under bridges may not have been the smartest move by these artists, but to lay the blame 100% on them is rediculous. If we don't hold the people in power accountable for their failures as well as their successes then we only encourage incompetence.

As a resident of Boston, what I took away from this incident is that if you wanted to plant a real bomb somewhere in the city, you could easily distract the bomb squad for the entire day by leaving harmless electircal items under multiple bridges. Leaving you free to pull off a real act of terrorism while the police spend the ENTIRE DAY "defusing" the same harmless device over and over. Although you may have to wait a while since it will take them over 2 weeks to even notice that there are devices attached to bridges. Pathetic.

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[kalirion]

B: "Sir, if you don't put down the gun, we'll shoot you."

H: "I'm not holding a gun!"

B: "Sir, put down the gun now."

H: "I don't have any weapons!"

B: "PUT DOWN THE GUN, THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!!!!"

H: "For the last time, THERE IS NO GUN!"

*BAM BAM BAM*

B: "Well, we knew he didn't have a gun, but he never showed up in court for conceiled weapon's charges 10 years ago, so that's why we took him out."

(And yes, some of this was stolen from The Boondocks X-Box killer episode)

Re:Watch out for DHMO

[dpilot]

So it was our job to do so?
We were anointed probation officers?

But more to the point, and where we are today... When Congress attempts to do something by passing a law, we speak quite fervently about the unintended consequences of that law. Anything any of us does has consequences, some intended, some not. The pragmatic issue is whether the unintended consequences outweigh the intended ones.

This wasn't rocket science. GHW Bush knew what the unintended consequences would be, and at the time he spoke of "fine tuning" the military and economic strength left for Saddam Hussein. The goal was enough to maintain a nation, but too little to threaten neighbors. Perhaps he stopped pounding them a little early, but he also knew the risks of landing just where we are, today.

The real problem with the Iraq war isn't now, and didn't start back in November. It began even before the war. Even if you forgive the entire intelligence fiasco, the entire thing was under-resourced. Even after toppling Saddam Hussein, we might have had 30-90 days to make their lives better, and we *would* have been welcomed as liberators. Instead, our soldiers watched their people loot, we didn't have the proper strength, training, or policies to do correct policing anyway, and it seems that "Iraq reconstruction" was really a feeding trough for US corporations. (Instead of putting Iraqis back to work, which *would* have helped more than most anything else we did.)

There's no good way out, now. Perhaps re-instituting the draft and getting our strength there up to 500,000 might do the job, but it's also possible that the well is SO poisoned after 4 years of fiddling around that even a real strength buildup wouldn't do it.

H. G. Wells would be a felon

[RingDev]

And all of the actors form War of the Worlds would be locked up...

And yet it still wouldn't make us any more safe from a real terrorist attack. Huh.

-Rick

Re:H. G. Wells would be a felon

[mabhatter654]

except under those conditions the Moonite incident clearly fails to be covered. While the Boston govt did overreact (1), the cartoon network people contacted them as soon as they heard about it (#2 fails) and made themselves available to answer questions (#3 fails)... which the Boston PD REFUSED to acknowledge and continued to propagate the false info. The Cartoon Network people also did this in several other cities with no police problems. This was clearly deliberate, planned mismanagement by the Boston PD.. any law needs to take that into account with even harsher punishment for being wrong.

Wait...

[Aadain2001]

So, if a local/state government agency overreacts and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that you basic citizen wouldn't even look at twice (see Mooninites), they can sue the group/person/etc that they overreacted too for large sums of money? How is this not a gigantic loophole just asking for $$$$$ to be "recovered" from people/groups that disagree with said government agencies?

If a group posts fliers and holds rallies against some government official because he is corrupt, couldn't he simply call in the police/feds on the group as a "possible terrorist group", ransack their offices, etc, run up a huge bill and then sue the group out of existence under this new bill?

Re:Wait...

[Chris Burke]

If a group posts fliers and holds rallies against some government official because he is corrupt, couldn't he simply call in the police/feds on the group as a "possible terrorist group", ransack their offices, etc, run up a huge bill and then sue the group out of existence under this new bill?

Yes! This is one step shy of being the domestic equivalent of the "enemy combatant" doctrine (I say doctrine because as far as I know none of our laws refer to the concept of the "enemy combatant" and that's just some new thing Bush made up). With enemy combatants, they can simply declare you to be one and at that point your guilt or innocence is irrelevent. The mere fact that they thought you were an enemy fighter is enough for them to do whatever they want.

Here, they at least aren't able to ignore the fact that you are actually innocent of plotting any real terrorist act, but they are still able to punish you for the fact that they merely thought you might be a terrorist. So all they have to do is say that they thought some activity of yours was terrorist-related, and when it turns out not to be, any expenses they incured "figuring out" what they already knew are your problem. So your innocence is irrelevent in the sense that you are still punished, just not as severely.

This is going to be fantastic for anyone who enjoys abusing their law enforcement powers. Imagine being able to accuse any woman wearing a short skirt of being a prostitute, drag her down to the station, and when it turns out there's no evidence of her being a prostitute, you can then charge her with the crime of making you think she was a prostitute. That short skirt was very deceiving! Okay, well, actually it wasn't even that short of a skirt. But it doesn't matter how stupid the inference is, the cop says he thought it was true! Ah, such a glorious time it is for fascists. If this bill passes, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the same principle is applied to other crimes like prostitution.

Re:Wait...

[Jtheletter]

To be fair, we've always had this. If you happen to be a Russian spy (or whatever) trying to steal state secrets or blow up bridges, I'm sure they wouldn't give you a jury of your peers. They never have. No, you're going to have one of those friendly counseling session with the bright lights and the big, mean, sargent [...] Practically speaking, nothing has changed.

I beg to differ. This sort of behavior is now established in law. That, I would say, is a huge difference from the oldschool wink-wink "interrogation" of suspected spies. Oh, and also your US citizenship is a moot point nowadays, your habeas corpus is removed regardless.

Re:Eh?

[geekoid]

Because ti is problematic to recover costs when they respond to a 'false alarm'. As the moonities where. Now if they make a mistake, you can still get sued! well, not now, but if the Bill passes. I would contact your reps.

A story from the military

[RingDev]

Once when I was in the military, stationed in Okinawa, we had a situation. The political environment wasn't exactly good for us right then, a drunk Marine had hit and run a local Prom Queen, we had a few large groups of protesters at the base gates, and it looked like the newly elected official for the island was going to push for moving the Marines out of Japan. So anyways, on night while walking home from the base PX (err, a mall for ya civies) I saw a bulging cardboard box sitting by a mail box in front of one of the Barracks (it caught my eye, but it was a ways off). When I got to my barracks I told the Duty that there was a box by the mail box in front of the other barracks. It was like hot potato. Given the social/political climate at the time, it very well could have been a bomb, and no one wanted to be the one to go poking at it first. After way to much drama, I wound up going back out with a budy to look at it.

It was a pair of boots in the box.

I still don't know who the clown was who left his boots in a box by the mail, but it had the Duty on the verge of calling the MPs, Hazmat, and the OOD.

Point being, sometimes innoculous crap is just that. The bitch of it though, is that some times it isn't.

-Rick

Re:A story from the military

[mike2R]

With apologies to Rory Bremner.

If you're menaced by a lout in a bar with a broken bottle, who do you want to come to your rescue? Do you want a nice, reasonable, New York Times reading diplomatic type, who'll ask everyone to sit down and discuss it?

No, you want a bigger lout with a bigger broken bottle.

And that's the United States Marine Corps.

Re:A story from the military

[kalirion]

If you're menaced by a lout in a bar with a broken bottle, who do you want to come to your rescue? Do you want a nice, reasonable, New York Times reading diplomatic type, who'll ask everyone to sit down and discuss it?

No, you want a bigger lout with a bigger broken bottle.

Personally, I'd prefer an honest bouncer. You just can't trust where louts with broken bottles will look to get their kicks next.

Re:I'm sorry, that's not a questions about hair.

[iminplaya]

...but have legislation preventing the solutions from being released to the general public.

Yep, right here

Re:Boston

[e4g4]

And the real kicker is that a bomb, should some city in the US fall victim to one, is going to be precisely that: a ladies' handbag, a cardboard box, or even a pile of trash (as a number of IEDs in Iraq were). What it sure as hell isn't going to be is a bloody lighted sign placed in a location visible to any/all passersby. If you want the bomb to stay in one place until detonation, in an area that gets high people traffic - would you put a whole bunch of leds in the shape of a pop culture icon on the fucking outside of it? Sure, maybe one or two discreet leds to show armed/unarmed status. Surely the one thing we should have learned from the many Al Qaeda sponsored terrorist attacks around the world is that these people are not idiots. If they're smart enough to con an otherwise reasonable person into blowing themselves up, and they're smart enough to build a massive, worldwide, decentralized terrorist organization, then they're abso-fucking-lutely smart enough to conceal a bomb in an urban environment. I'm pretty sure that a number of the higher-ups in the "war on terror" underestimated the capabilities of Al Qaeda et al, even after 9/11, simply because a large majority of them come from so-called "third world countries" and more or less lack formal (as in western style university/corporate/military) training. And yet, the engineering and combat tactics by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have continuously and dramatically improved.

Frankly, this whole post can be summed up as me yelling "Learn some fucking common sense!" at the current administration (yes, yes, this was Boston local government - but it was the Bush administration that injected them with fear and paranoia), but I suppose I should know better, given that anyone actively seeking (and attaining) high public office is already clearly lacking a common sense gland.

*to the parent*: btw, didn't mean to get all serious in reply to your comment - it was hilarious. One question though - who carries a rubber chicken in their pocket? :-P.

Re:won't happen

[FLEB]

This will never happen. It would open the door for the government to artificially get excited about any action someone does and then declare it a "terrorist act".

This junction is where I lose your train of logic.

Make it retroactive apply it to the government!

[ukemike]

They should make it retroactive and then apply it to the Department of Homeland Security. We know that politics has been the motive of raising the alert level.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-10 -ridge-alerts_x.htm

This would criminalize this deplorable government behavior. It would also make it illegal for the government to make up BS about WMDs in some poor country who's oil we want.