Comments on: The Boston LED Party

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:27:25 +0000

“Why is it so hard to believe that a circuit board with batteries, wires, and a few other components might look like a bomb to a reasonable bomb expert?”

Umm..cause theres no freakin explosive material. Nor is there any unidentifiable mass on the sign (I refuse to use the word “device”) that could be mistaken as explosive material.

Are a circuit board, batteries, and wires really the criteria for labeling something as a bomb? Did a bomb expert actually inspect one of these signs to determine it was an explosive? If it was actually determined an explosive, where are these “experts” being trained? If it was determined NOT an explosive, why did public officials continue to inflate public panic?

By: Paul Ohm

Paul Ohm — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 17:16:59 +0000

James,

The Turner mea culpa doesn’t do it for me. Even if they pay for the investigation and promise never to do it again, it seems like a slap on the wrist and a tiny price to pay for week-long wall-to-all coverage.

I take your point about what happened after the police figured out that the devices were harmless. Perhaps the police should have worked harder to calm things down once they knew what they were dealing with. If the “high officials” switched from public safety to fear mongering at some point, shame on them. But I’m also willing to believe that the flow of information up and down is imperfect in cases like these.

By: Jeff Lipshaw

Jeff Lipshaw — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:01:41 +0000

I’m willing to bet a Law & Order writer is already creating an episode in which the stunt causes a death, and Jack McCoy goes after the network executives after pleading out the two performance artists.

By: James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:36:28 +0000

Certainly, the initial investigation was reasonable. But the police didn’t incorporate new information about the harmlessness of the Mooninites as it came in, and high public officials continued to make obviously false statements about the devices and their makers (particularly after Turner came forward and took responsibility). Instead, with the help of a panic-monging media, they shut down Boston. You can’t do that. That’s the-terrorists-have-won stupid. That means all that the bad have to do is leave random junk lying about here and there and the Americans will work themselves into a state of crazed fear.

By: KipEsquire

KipEsquire — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 14:32:11 +0000

“I’m much more sympathetic to the prosecution. Something went awry in the execution of this stunt, and it sends the wrong message if it goes unpunished, much less uninvestigated.”

So now we punish people because what they did “feels wrong” rather than because their conduct met the specific elements of a specific provision of a specific penal code?

And you think we’re the ones who “can’t put their finger on the problem”?