Posted on 09/22/2007 6:37:50 AM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
http://home.peoplepc.com/psp/newsstory.asp?cat=TopStories&referrer=welcome&id=20070922/46f49340_3ca6_1552620070922-1497302150
Lawyer: Fake Bomb Charge an Overreaction
BOSTON - The MIT student who walked into Logan International Airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweat shirt claimed it was harmless artwork. But to troopers who arrested her at gunpoint, it was a fake bomb.
Nineteen-year-old Star Simpson was charged Friday with possessing a hoax device. Her attorney described the charge as offbase and "almost paranoid," arguing at a court hearing that she did not act in a suspicious manner and had told an airport worker that the device was art.
(Excerpt) Read more at home.peoplepc.com ...
Your first post to me indicated that your lack of education results in the need to resort to vulgarities. Your continued inability to back up your arguments from either personal experience or documented facts indicates that you can contribute nothing to the debate.
Perhaps all bomb-like strap-on/clip-on devices should first be run by you, to test for believability. We can just have law enforcement keep suspected bombers under surveillance until you give them the go-ahead to make an arrest.
Or, we could simply let the police stop anyone who’s wearing such a suspicious device, until it can be determined exactly what it is that they’re dealing with.
I hope the jihadists are taking notes from this, and not from those who would have a believability index attached to all play-doh/circuit board devices that are being worn by oddballs in airports.
How should they react if they see someone trying to light their shoelace? Isn’t that just as ridiculous?
And yet, someone did try to use a shoe-bomb, as silly as that may sound.
“Many many many folks on this forum or traveling through Logan airport could take one look at that young lady’s breadboard with flashing LED’s and tell you with absolute confidence that it is not a detonator of anything...”
Are these the same folks who might, at one time, have taken one look at someone lighting his shoelace, and told us, with absolute confidence, that it also was not a detonator of anything?
Your confidence in such hubris is truly foolhardy.
You obviously know nothing about Europeans. Europeans’s don’t have the “real security” that you think they do.
Back in 98 at the Frankfurt Airport I saw a security guard standing in the entrance of a restricted area. He was holding what looked like an M4 Carbine. It sure the hell looked like “Real Security.”
“Or is the fault a bunch of sub 100 IQ security weenies who work security because they don’t have the brains...”
You, sir, are an elitist snob, and likely not fit to shine the shoes of these men and women who daily take their lives in their hands, and provide that fine line of defense between civilization and chaos.
I suggest it stems from a substandard IQ.
Well, we have two problems to address. First, was it a stunt? Everyone has leaped to that conclusion, except a few of us. Since you know so much about high explosives, tell me, if you were going to wire up a surreptitious device would you put LEDs on it and hang them outside your shirt so that everyone could see that you had a vest with flashing LEDs? What, in your view, would be the purpose of flashing LEDs in a terrorist device?
Second, it is not the job of security people to get upset. Their job is, well, er, uh, goodness gracious, this is going to come as a real shock, to provide security.
Providing security means stopping genuine threats, and letting those who are not a threat go on their way. It is emotionless. Getting upset is never a part of good security. The real problem is that too many of these jobs are held by egomaniacs who work on emotions and get upset when folks do something they believe challenges their authority rather than just dealing with their jobs.
And the reason that they are despised is because they don't behave professionally.
Never mind a Christmas Tree Shop
How many airport security guards and TSA personnel acting in the line of duty have been killed by a deliberate violent act in the last so many years?
“You just might be the dumbest and most arrogant person I have yet to see on FR, and I have met quite a few.”
I have the feeling that you were called “dumb” quite a bit during your childhood.
I can’t see any other reason for this constant derision of others.
I’m sorry you were never told that you weren’t supposed to eat the IQ test, I suppose everyone just assumed you knew.
But don’t worry... your arrogance makes up for what you lack in intelligence.
I think we have lost the train of this argument. I have never said that the Europeans don't have real security. What I said is that their view of what makes for a secure environment is very different from the TSA view of the world. My experience is that it is much more based on real investigative work, and, in Italy where they had, years ago, the threat of the Brigatta Rosa, carabinieri at the airport with the arms and training to engage armed attackers in armed combat. It was not an idle threat as it had happened in Italy on more than one occasion, IIRC.
My experience is that they also have little use for our "feel good" tactics of searching out shampoos and harassing old ladies whose identity as European citizens is well established.
I believe it may be a case of her being so smart that she could never have even imagined anyone being so mentally challenged that they could mistake her necklace for a bomb.
Try to understand: this was a clerk behind an information counter at an pretty dingy airport who sent up the balloon.
I'm waiting for a picture of this Einstein and their CV to show up........any guesses?
Well, I see you had nothing to say that was responsive to the substantive issues.
Ever since the bombing at the Frankfurt departure terminal (1985) the Germans have paid attention.
No, I am arguing because I am unalterably opposed the the Calvinistic thread that runs deep in FR conservatism that believes that anyone who runs afoul of anyone involved in security or law enforcement needs to be charged, tried, and - they all eagerly hope - jailed.
She didn't have a bomb and didn't claim to have a bomb. To any professional, what she had doesn't even look like a bomb. Let her go for Chrissakes.
“Furthermore, bomb aren’t advertised, EVER. They don’t have blinking lights on them.”
They’re never advertised? Never, ever? They don’t have blinking lights on them? Not ever?
Well, then. If I were a jihadist, I guess all I’d have to do, in your world, is just put some blinking lights on a bomb vest, and stroll blithely through security in any airport. Right? I mean, what idiot would stop me? How stupid would anyone have to be to suspect me? For heaven’s sake, don’t you see the blinking lights?
You defy common sense. Is Star Simpson a relative?
Stand by for the incoming charges of elitism and that you must have a sub 50 IQ to have the effrontery to question this idiot's (you can tell which side I am on) intelligence.
It was one thing for this genius to call it in. The real heroes of this story are our fine security folks who couldn't sort it all out in a reasonable fashion, realize that there was nothing to it, and move along to do their job of protecting aircraft and the flying public, and writing parking tickets.
“Furthermore, once you have decided to investigate because you have nagging but inexplicable suspicions, you quickly rule out that it might be a bomb when you discover that there are no explosives involved, which you do by having trained dogs,..”
So, let’s see if I have this right. You have some nagging but inexplicable suspicions, because you see what could be a bomb, or could be a flashing circuit board attached to someone’s black hoodie, with either play-doh or plastique on the back of this hoodie.
According to your plan, you now must go get a bomb-sniffing dog, to make sure you don’t over-react.
Why not just ask, oh so politely, if the person is a mad bomber? Pardon me, ma’am, but are you a mad bomber?
Thank God we have people in charge of our security who aren’t as smart as you. Intelligence like that would get us all killed.
That's according to the police who have a very hard time admitting mistakes. Among the dozen or so photos released so far there have been none at the Boston Herald that I've seen of this "plastique" made to look like....."plastique"?
As far as what I said about the collective cop unconscious I stand by that. I believe they carry some unconscious guilt load that manifests itself in very conditioned reactions rather than reasoned responses.
BTW thanks for the compliment; I did like that line and please use it freely.
The one I took tasted like oranges.
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