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 ...
Lock ‘er up, I say. And I’m sorry to see that so many relatives of this stupid girl are here on this forum, defending her and calling the rest of us, the airport security personel doing their difficult jobs and the MIT administrators “stupid”, when we all know who’s really stupid.
What concerns me is that security hesitated to shoot her. If it had been real, she could have detonated and killed many people even as guns were pointed at her.
And I wouldn't call shooting her an over reaction.
Shoot first and ask questions later.
Well, I didn't know I was setting a boobie trap for an idiot like you, but I sure caught you in one.
What stunt you @&*#@ idiot? I merely suggested that I traveled with a kid with his toys. I have made no threats, suggested no threats, plotted no threats, staged no act that was intended to parody or mimic a threat, and had no intent to cause alarm or to pull a public stunt, etc. I, you, he,she, we, you all and they could eat the playdoh without ill-effect because it was, well play doh packed in a can that said play doh on it. (kids do that you know. You do know that kids actually eat playdoh don't you? Please tell me you are not that dumb that you don't even know that?)
Or is your issue the playschool radio with the microphone and tape recorder? Is that the thing that set you off? You do know that kids have those things, or are you so ^*&(#_# dumb that you think we should ban all toys so that we don't have something that terrorists could disguise a bomb to look like? Where do you think that logic is going you $(P*()*# idiot?
Or do you have a logic tree of don'ts? If playdoh + electronic toy then jail. How about playdoh and a playdoh factory set - maybe that should get $1000 fine and a stiff warning. Please fill out your list of what is unacceptable so that the rest of us can be instructed on how the dumbest of the dumb view the world.
You just might be the dumbest and most arrogant person I have yet to see on FR, and I have met quite a few.
And "our" list keeps growing.
My concern too. That’s why I said a .40 to the head would have been a slight over-reaction. The cop would have been completely justified in just drilling her.
It's been done in Boston her name was Victoria Snelgrove.
Why not make a donation: www.victoriasnelgrove.org
Look submariners wife, I was a submariner, and I did not serve this country for 27 years just so that we can go around shooting 19 year old girls because a bunch of untrained idiots cannot tell that a bunch of flashing led's is not a bomb.
Virtually anyone who has the technical capability to serve on a submarine can tell that a bunch of flashing LED's is not a bomb. Half the travelers in and out of Boston Logan airport on any given day have the technical moxy to know that a breadboard with flashing LEDs is not a bomb.
And by the way I was responsible for security of nuclear weapons and had to train my guards on when deadly force was authorized. If any of my guys had shot someone who was not acting in a threatening manner and who merely had a decoration on that flashed, they and I would have been standing before a court marshall on a dozen different charges, possibly including murder.
Hope Mr. Submariner never finds himself in this position, because he will be brought up on very serious charges and if he has a court martial board made up of the kinds of officers that I served with on the boats he will be doing a lot of time in the lockup.
In the United States we don't go around shooting people first and asking questions later, and you do your husband ill-service to suggest that you expect otherwise.
Well, apparently we have another technical genius on our hands here. The only folks who put blinking lights on bombs are the special effects artists in holywood. There are two reasons for not putting blinking lights on a bomb. The first is that blinking lights have nothing to do with cause and effect of getting energy from an electrical storage device (battery) and transforming it to the type of energy that will detonate an explosive. At best it is a useless appendage that increases the probablity of an electrical fault that will keep the device from performing its primary function of detonating the high explsove.
The second reason terrorists don't put flashing lights on bombs is that it attracts attention and causes blithering idiots to think that there might be a bomb there even though flashing lights have nothing to do with the operation of an explosive device.
As this woman, and her idiot persecutors have demonstrated, the worst possible way to sneak an illicit device into an airport (mind you she never even tried to get through security to board and aircraft) is to put flashing lights on it. It atracts all sorts of unwanted and ill-founded attention.
I think her innocence, in fact, is proven by the attention that everyone here says is the foreseeable consequence of her act of putting flashing lights on her breadboard that was not a bomb.
I am amazed by all the bomb experts on this thread. I guess I’m one of those who aren’t smart enough to recognize what every possible bomb might conceivably look like. Guess I’m also one of those who isn’t smart enough to realize that some explosive devices can appear as harmless as say, a clear liquid. I pray to God that all the experts who are quick to excuse this idiots behaviour aren’t involved in our nation’s security in any capacity...
Many of us would suggest that 2nd degree murder is a bit more than a slight over-reaction.
And the Play Dough in her hand would look much like a plastic explosive.
First, it is not your job to know what a bomb does or does not look like. It is, however, the job of the so-called trained security experts at Logan to know what a bomb doesn't look like.
And there are a lot of folks around here who have a lot of experience with electronics and take one look at the picture and tell you what it is, and therefore what it isn't.
One thing that a bomb does not look like is a battery wired to an off-the-shelf integrated circuit driving a bunch of flashing LED's as the obviously complete circuit.
No Sugar Cane?
Hey, I know, how about trying to light a fuse in the sole of your shoe as “art”!
How about shouting “Allah Akbar” at the top of your lungs while reaching into your backpack as “art”!
Sorry, not a single iota of sympathy for this ijit.
You've obviously never traveled through European airports with real security. They even quiz you about the batteries in your cameras. And yes, they most certainly take interest in battery powered toys - and you will take the batteries out - if you want to make it as far as the metal detectors.
She is not a psychologist trained in responses to Rohrshach blots. Since she is an engineering student at MIT who knew enough to know how to build the thing, and we are justified in presuming that what she intended to build was what she built, and that what she actually built is a reflection of her intentions. You cannot hold her responsible for what others might have thought it looked like, but wasn't when she actually made no effort to disguise it to be what it wasn't rather than making it look like what it was which is what she intended it to be.
She cannot be held responsible for the fact that security guards and FR security nuts spend too much time watching the boob tube and too little time learning the useful arts of their trade to know that what was built to not look like a bomb looked like a bomb because they were all too ignorant to know the difference.
Here is how stupid it is. Our world, your FR world with you sitting at a computer terminal attached to DSL or cable lines hooked to the internet is a world of flashing lights, wires, batteries, electrical circuits, LED's integrated circuits, etc. Our senses are overwhelmed with the existence of electronic things. Of the literally billion of interactions that you have with these devices, how many do you believe are bombs? How many actually turn out to be bombs? Have you actually ever seen the internal workings of a bomb, wired up a bomb, designed a bomb or operated a bomb.
Yet on the basis of common experience that almost nothing is a bomb, your and their first reaction to a bunch of flashing leds is that it must be a bomb, because of the belief that bombs have flashing LEDs and that flashing LEDs leads to a heightened expectation of it being a bomb rather than almost zero probability of being a bomb.
How do we get through our daily lives?
Her actions were no different than the Flying Imams.
They were playing head games so was she.
That little witch exposed the response of that airports security for dealing with a potential suicide bomber so there was a loss to that airports operational security.
If I were the Airports Security Boss I would push to escalate the response to such a threat. I would instruct officers to go ahead and shoot first under similar circumstances.
Post notices to that effect and forget it.
You need to understand it is all move and counter move in counter terrorism.
Establish a fixed response and wind up with a bunch of dead innocent folks.
For the Flying Imam’s situation. The next time someone or several start acting up in concert the passengers need to swarm them.
Have a couple fellows sit on each of their backs till they stop squirming.
Especially when it comes to Grand Juries and Trials our citizenry needs to support such actions by being very tolerant towards an aggressive “Violent” response to perceptible threats. We need to get back to the old ways in a hurry.
W
I don’t think it was a hoax, or that she had any intention of such. She’s clearly an idiot who didn’t think things through, but I don’t think she went to the airport with sinister motives in mind.
I don’t have a problem with her detainment, but charging her with a terrorist act is overreaching.
A double tap to the head to make cetain the bomb (hoax or not) isn't detonated.
Case closed.
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