'Bomb on Board' Wi-Fi Network Causes Turkish Airlines Flight To Be Diverted (reuters.com)

A Turkish Airlines flight from Nairobi to Istanbul was diverted after the detection of a wi-fi network called "bomb on board" that alarmed the passengers, the airline said on Thursday. From a report: In a statement, Turkish Airlines said the flight made an emergency landing at the Khartoum airport in Sudan, but the flight was safely resumed after security inspections on all passengers and the aircraft. Individuals can create personal wi-fi networks on devices such as mobile phones and name them what they want.

Comments

Re:They need to start prosecuting these fuckers

[SensitiveMale]

It's a childish joke, and nobody has ever been arrested for impersonating a federal officer because of it. And before anyone says the obvious joke, no, they are not the FBI either

You're 100% correct. Now, the next time you're in a TSA interview make a few childish jokes about bombs and how you're carrying a package someone outside gave you.

Time and place my man. Time and place.

Re:They need to start prosecuting these fuckers

[eddeye]

The minor action isn't what needs to be stopped, it's the extreme over-reaction that needs to be addressed. If I'm driving down the road and forgot to turn off my turn signal, and suddenly I've got road blocks and swat teams and snipers ahead trying to stop my car, we don't say "!ow guess he shouldn't have left his turn signal on, look at that huge commotion he caused, we gotta do something about those turn signals!" Yes the signal was a problem and you might want to do something about it, but it's the extreme over-reaction that really demands some examination, because there's no reasonable justification my turn signal should lead to an evacuation of two city blocks.

Your turn signal isn't a potential threat to human life. If you can't see the difference then you shouldn't be allowed to fly.

What's the difference in these scenarios?

• passenger tells crew "There's a bomb on board"
• passenger hands crew a note that says "bomb on board"
• passenger scrawls "bomb on board" in lavatory
• passenger advertises "bomb on board" wifi network

95 times out of 100 these are all nothing. But you have to check them out. When human lives are potentially at stake, you can't ignore such statements. Do you want your pilot / cabin crew to make the decision "Well it says there's a bomb, but it's probably just a joke. Let's ignore it."? No. It's their professional obligation to take all possible threats seriously.

Now there's a 99.99% chance this was some idiot who forgot to change their default network name, or who was trying to be funny. Even so, you can't ignore it. If there's .01% chance the bomb is real - some deranged attention seekers advertise their intentions, hoping to get caught - you have to treat every potential threat as legitimate. Is getting to your destination a few hours later really worth risking hundreds of lives?

There's a lot of bad security and overreaction in the world. This is not one of those times.