[tumnus]

This really was peak marketing idiocy. I knew people who worked at Cartoon Network at the time. Jim Samples' disconnect and subsequent resignation reverberated down the ranks and tanked a lot of careers and projects. Who would think that strapping battery operated devices to bridges with duct tape in any post-9/11 city would be a good idea?

[bagels]

It's outrageous that anyone resigned or was fired over this other than city employees of Boston for lying about a stupid sign.

[miah_]

It was a LED moonite. It wasn't scary at all.

[almostgotcaught]

> battery operated devices

I love when people clutch pearls and say exaggerated things to justify it. What does "battery operated" even mean lolol. Is the phrase supposed to conjure images of IEDs or what? They were battery powered LED signs

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

[joemi]

The very first sentence of the article you linked states that they were mistaken for IEDs.

[willis936]

Should I report every lighted billboard I see on every block for potentially being an IED? Shall I call in every car for possibly being a car bomb? I see people on cell phones in the city constantly. Those could each be explosive devices.

[almostgotcaught]

I'm aware and what we're debating here is whether it was a rational reaction (not whether it happened).

[thih9]

I think in some ways it was - this was a marketing effort, outside of legislation and not consulted with authorities.

A disproportionate response here will discourage other companies from similar guerrilla marketing.

I doubt anyone wants more marketing, and especially unregulated marketing.

[MBCook]

Marketing departments are not required to consult with the local police department in the United States to find out if their campaigns will be an inconvenience.

[thih9]

But can they post ads anywhere and in any form in a public space?

[mulmen]

It also says “mistakenly”.

> On the morning of January 31, 2007, the Boston Police Department and the Boston Fire Department mistakenly identified battery-powered LED placards depicting the Mooninites, characters from the Adult Swim animated television series Aqua Teen Hunger Force, as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), leading to a massive panic.

[netsharc]

Because if someone was planting IEDs, they should be prominently visible, and have lights drawing attention to it...

What IED handbook would these people be reading?

Oh wait, maybe it's the handbook that says "Make them look like they're just for entertainment, so everyone will think they're just harmless marketing gimmicks.". But if so, the handbook should specify they should make it Mickey Mouse, not some obscure TV show...

[mcmcmc]

From an attacker perspective, drawing victims closer to the device before detonation would increase the lethality.

[MBCook]

But if it’s placed on a bridge it doesn’t really matter, your target is the people above on the bridge right? If anything in that circumstance it seems like it would make it more likely to be discovered and stop your plan.

[mrkeen]

They should have just used a key to gouge "THE MOON RULZ" on the mayor's car instead.

[selimthegrim]

I know somebody here in my city, who worked in audio editing for Cartoon Network, and apparently what he heard was that the FBI demanded somebody fall on their sword.

[mulmen]

Why would the FBI have that power?

[selimthegrim]

The point was the FBI combined with the rather inflexible security people in Boston were probably threatening repercussions to Cartoon Network along the lines of their broadcast license

[astura]

Excuse me? Cartoon Network is a cable channel, it doesn't have a broadcast license.

[selimthegrim]

I didn’t ask for specifics but the government clearly wasn’t playing.

[astura]

Your "friend" is just making shit up to sound important. Learn to have some critical thinking skills.

[mulmen]

What repercussions though? That sounds like a threat to abuse power.

[yesco]

That's because it was.

[KennyBlanken]

I will never understand all the apologists.

They were crudely constructed.

There was no information attached to them (one of the things MIT hackers always did was place clear contact information, removal instructions, etc on anything they left somewhere public.)

The devices had large cylinders wrapped in plastic. Sure, they could be batteries. They could also be containers of explosives.

Some of them the character is angry, and giving the finger. Sure fits a "angry at the world" attitude of a bomb-maker.

It doesn't seem to occur to people that bombs can be designed to attract attention, and can be booby-trapped to try and kill bomb disposal teams.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to people that if you are a bomb squad or police commander, you don't have the luxury of saying "oh yeah, that thing strapped to the bridge support for an interstate, phsht, that probably isn't a bomb, that's probably just some weird vidyah game character" because if you're wrong, people die. No. You get people away from it and try to figure out what it is.

Oh, and it turned out there had been a hoax bomb left in a hospital earlier by someone who was acting deranged, and incidents in NY and DC right before all this.

Then a few years later, wouldn't you know...a few miles away, two assholes left a bunch of pressure cookers at the finish line of the marathon, killed a bunch of people and wounded dozens, murdered a campus cop, and then led police on a gunfire-filled chase through multiple towns.

[almostgotcaught]

> The devices had large cylinders wrapped in plastic. Sure, they could be batteries.

They were bog standard D batteries:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic#...

> Then a few years later, wouldn't you know.

This has literally nothing to do with anything.

> I will never understand all the apologists.

Well some people are rational and some people aren't so it's only natural that the latter don't understand the former (ie that's usually how it goes)

[KennyBlanken]

> They were bog standard D batteries:

I'm well aware. How is a bomb squad member supposed to know this, while looking at it stuck to the side of a bridge I-beam, wrapped in layers of black plastic? Bombs are often designed to blow up when disturbed, in hopes of injuring or killing a member of the bomb squad.

I'd like to see you work a bomb squad and see how brave you are when you come across a package with some long cylinders wrapped in black plastic and wires sticking out, and how you feel when some smarmy programmer tells you "HAHA YOU'RE SO STUPID IT WAS JUST BATTERIES" after the fact.

> This has literally nothing to do with anything.

Yeah, it does. It shows that Boston police thinking the city might be a target of bombers wasn't so absurd and paranoid after all, and that appearance (the bombs were in cooking pots) means nothing.

[snozolli]

You're right. We should always assume the absolute worst-possible interpretation at all times and whip ourselves into a frenzy over it. Just look at the long list of IEDs with Lite-Brite-style, cartoonish characters on them. You say Mooninite, I say Neon Osama bin Laden.

[bagels]

It's problematic if the fire/police department cause a panic and shut down the city any time they see a battery.

[MBCook]

We can only hope they never go into a Walmart.

[almostgotcaught]

> I'd like to see you work a bomb squad and see how brave you are when you come across a package with some long cylinders wrapped in black plastic and wires sticking out, and how you feel when some smarmy programmer tells you "HAHA YOU'RE SO STUPID IT WAS JUST BATTERIES" after the fact.

I'd really love to know if you've worked EOD or if you're just a smarmy conservative condemning pranksters. Because I believe we're both truly inexperienced (ie you haven't actually done EOD) and we can only rely on common, rational, sense to debate this amongst ourselves.

> Yeah, it does. It shows that Boston police thinking the city might be a target of bombers wasn't so absurd and paranoid after all

That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works. Reasonable suspicion and probable cause and all that don't operate like "we're justified in detaining you if in the future someone else commits the crime we want to accuse you of". No the police, the state, the judiciary, etc have to have proof that you've committed a crime. I mean think about what you're saying: the implication is basically most freedoms should be abridged because it's a complete certainty that in the future, someone, somewhere, will commit some tenuously related crime.

[KennyBlanken]

Of course I haven't done EOD. I don't need to be to know that bomb squads treat stuff like it's a bomb until proven otherwise via x-ray or a tech inspecting it, or it is disrupted by water cannon.

> we can only rely on common, rational, sense to debate this amongst ourselves.

"common rational sense", riiiiiight. You implied bomb techs should assume (or know) that cylinders with wires coming out of them wrapped in black plastic attached to critical transportation are just batteries and could not be a pipe full of explosives.

We're done here.

[marcus0x62]

Being tightly wound must be an East-coast thing.

From the Wikipedia page on the "2007 Boston Mooninite Scare":

No devices were retrieved in Los Angeles and Lieutenant Paul Vernon of the Los Angeles Police Department stated that "no one perceived them as a threat".The many Los Angeles signs were up without incident for more than two weeks prior to the Boston scare.

Police Sergeant Brian Schmautz stated that officers in Portland had not been dispatched to remove the devices, and did not plan to unless they were found on municipal property. He added, "At this point, we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred." A device was placed inside 11th Ave. Liquor on Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland, where it remains.

San Francisco Police Sergeant Neville Gittens said that Interference, Inc., was removing them, except for one found by art gallery owner Jamie Alexander, who reportedly "thought it was cool" and had it taken down after it ceased to function.

[collingreen]

Calling someone irrational for being concerned a random, out of place device might be a home made bomb and then dismissing some home made bombs as having "literally nothing to do with anything" is pretty shitty.

[footrib]

I think the Boston Marathon bombing really is damaging to the case that the reaction was justified.

A lot is being made in this thread of a public art piece. Meanwhile, the real attack that's been cited was executed by leaving a nondescript backpack on the ground.

The other commenter raises a good point that the case being made boils down to being intentionally vague. "Random device." "Cylinders." And that really does fall apart when you describe it as "an LED sign with batteries."

It's reasonable for the bomb squad to investigate. But the likelihood that this was a threat is being grossly exaggerated.

[almostgotcaught]

> random, out of place device

I'll say it again: when people don't just say what the thing was (an LED sign) and instead use vague scary terms ("random out of place device") they are intentionally aiming to deceive. As well, anyone is free to click the links I've posted and judge for themselves.

[collingreen]

Totally agree with this

[immibis]

Did you click on the link and see pictures of the devices? The cylindrical parts are obviously D batteries.

> the Boston Police Department stated in its defense that the ad devices shared some similarities with improvised explosive devices, with them also discovering an identifiable power source, a circuit board with exposed wiring, and electrical tape.

Ah yes. That guy has a 99.99% DNA match to Osama bin Laden. Must be a terrorist!

The only way this makes sense is if you assume any unidentified object is a bomb, which may be logical if you live in Palestine, but seems pretty unlikely in Boston.

You're suggesting the government is should treat every unidentified object as a bomb. I hope you realize how dystopian that is - anyone who creates some one-off or prototype object outside the list of legitimately creatable things will be treated as a terrorist. The Apple 1? Bomb. PiPhone? Bomb. Homemade LED name tag? Bomb. Google Glass prototype? Bomb. Mesh network air quality sensor? Bomb. Hitchhiking robot? Bomb. How do new types of things become approved and not be treated as bombs? Do I have to fill out a government form to declare that my hitchhiking robot isn't a bomb? (What if a terrorist fills out that form and declares their bomb isn't a bomb?)