ttuttle.net is an Amazon Affiliate. Shop at Amazon through this link and help pay for my hosting!
Questions? Comments? Flames? Email me!
Last week, the Boston police and several other authorities went bananas over a set of what they called "suspicious devices", "hoax devices", or "suspicious packages"--really a set of simple LED ads--that turned out to be guerilla marketing ads for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Everyone who defends them points to the locations of the devices (in highly trafficked areas, near transportation, on bridges) and the fact that they supposedly resembled bombs as reasons to justify such a devastating response. But there are some even better reasons why they should not have reacted this way.
If the bomb squad or their defenders want to argue that the response was appropriate, then they need to be able to argue that the design of these devices and the places they were installed was similar to what and where what a criminal would choose, were he planting a real bomb.
First, and foremost, these devices were not hidden. If a real criminal had planted these devices, and they were intended to cause harm, he would hide them so nobody would notice them, not make them visible to as many people as possible. As it is, it took a couple weeks from when the devices were planted for the bomb squad to find out, even though they were mounted in plain sight. If they were real bombs, they would have been hidden.
Second, the devices lit up. Why would a criminal create a bomb that calls attention to itself? That would just be dumb. Of course, the larger problem here is that most citizens have learned what a "suspicious device" is from movies, where the bombs always have lots of wires and blinking red LED displays that count down, and go "beep-beep-beep-beep" every second, getting faster and faster until the hero cuts the green wire--or was it blue--with 0.01 seconds to spare.
Third, despite what everyone argued, these devices did not look anything like bombs. Look at this picture from Wikipedia. Across most of the circuit board, you can see LED's, which were normally illuminated while the devices were being used. At the bottom, you can clearly see four D-cell batteries. Nowhere, however, do you see anything that looks like chemicals, or explosives, or anything dangerous. Had anyone taken a quick look at the device before water-cannoning it into oblivion and grinding the city to a halt, they would have realized that there is simply nothing there that could explode or otherwise cause harm.
However, there are some ways that Turner Broadcasting and the students involved could have prevented this:
First, don't put things like this up without asking. Even if you know that they aren't dangerous, and you don't think for a minute that anyone could suspect otherwise, ask the authorities first. Even if only one person is unfamiliar enough with electronics or concerned enough about bombs to think it is suspicious, that is enough to get the police involved. And once they're involved, you're going to have a problem, even if the police correctly identify your device as harmless.
Second, if you do put things like this up, label them! It's impossible to say if putting an explanation and contact info on the device would have averted this, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt.
Third, it does appear that on some of the devices, the batteries were covered with a plastic cover, yielding a closed, cylindrical shape about 1 inch around and 1 foot long. In most people's minds, an object of that shape is a stick of dynamite, regardless of color, size, or context. Next time, make the cover clear, or leave the batteries exposed so people know what they are.
Either way, it is just depressing to live in a city--and a world--where people who put up harmless toys like this are accused of trying to incite chaos, and where authorities react to a harmless action like this by putting a city into chaos.
ttuttle.net is an Amazon Affiliate. Shop at Amazon through this link and help pay for my hosting!
Questions? Comments? Flames? Email me!