Would-Be Suicide Bomber Killed by Unexpected SMS From Mobile Carrier | Hacker News Reader

Would-Be Suicide Bomber Killed by Unexpected SMS From Mobile Carrier

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Coming soon to America:

Wireless carriers SMS all their customers 5 hours before any major event that might be a terrorist target!

terrorists disable vibrate, enable auto-answer and start using voltage going into speaker as detonators...

...now automated periodic calls are mandatory in America.

terrorists give up on cellphones, go back to pagers... police now randomly searches doctors for bombs.

First they came for the cell phones, and I did nothing. Then they came for the pagers. Still I did nothing. At last they came for the walkie-talkies, yet I continued doing nothing.

All I thought was "What's any of this got to do with me? I'm just a pigeon!"

As long as you're not driving a bus, we're fine.

* sigh * not many Mo Willems fans here, I guess.

In other news carrier pigeons are now used as the preferred detonation device for terrorists.

This is a re-run from yesterday:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2147409

Any theories as to why the popularity is orders of magnitude higher today? The title, the source? people's mood? Egypt? It is Friday so more people slacking? Time it was posted yesterday vs today (prime time)?

I think the Egypt situation is really big news and since HN is a news site of sorts it brings a lot of people out to comment and vote.

The more times a story gets submitted, the more upvotes it generally gets because more people have already read it. No matter how good a story is the odds are that it won't get past the new page simply because there aren't many people willing to triage stories. And by the time those who see a story in the new queue finish reading it and vote on it, it's often already too late for it to make the front page. Whereas lots of people are happy to vote for a story they've already seen.

Since stories usually hit the front page when their score is around 6, I think it would make sense to give the first five upvoters a share of the karma from the submission. (With the submitter getting the most, and the first upvoter getting more than the fifth.)

It is a good idea, but I feel that your first-five-upvoter share is too strong of an incentive. It will encourage upvoting for the sake of karma rather than to reflect the overall quality of the article. There could be up-vote spam. It could also come in the form of vote herding on the new page because once an article has 2-3 points, there will be a rush for the remaining 4-5 slots. The result is a more cycled-through front page with worse quality articles.

Ha... so you need give people karma if they voted early (in the first 5) on an article that becomes popular, and penalize them for voting early on an article that goes nowhere once it's on the front page.

It would be simpler to just give the first 5 or whatever upvoters a bonus based on the total upvotes the article receives, if someone decided to do something like that.

That would result in people up voting every story.

How about showing a random new article on the front page?

There's lots of random fluctuation with this kind of thing; I wouldn't attribute anything overly specific to it.

I'd say a mix of something fundamental and something random. Probably the same can be said for a product's virality... or just about anything.

Weather?

I'll make a wild guess. The previous title was "Text message blows up suicide bomber by accident". That could easily describe a situation where the planners sent the text too early. Also it mentions the text was sent by the carrier, perhaps adding some credibility (as opposed to some apocryphal story about a friend of a friend getting a wrong number.) Just guesses.

Preferential attachment. It began as a random fluctuation and then entered a positive feedback loop (as it climbed, more HN readers saw it and upvoted it further).

Your comment seems familiar too - sure it isn't a rerun too?

Might just be me though.. Oh, well..

Remember this lesson when you design your protocols -- use challenge/response! Ensure that you're immune from replay attacks and counterfeit signals.

There is probably an app for that.

Actually, I'm working on a library that takes care of that for you and more.

Some background on the story : http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2044838-1,00.h...

Am I crazy or was this story already on HN? I can't find it for the life of me though.

It was on Reddit earlier. That may be where the confusion is coming from.

No, you're absolutely right: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2147409

Good thing too, finding out you're going crazy can't be fun ;)

Sanity restored?

Thank you. The sad thing is neither Google nor Search HN found that.

Too bad we can't connect dup'ed stories in some way (except deep in the comments). Further thoughts about that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1975950

There's a Twilio idea here somewhere...

If true, the SMS might be the only time that a wireless carrier’s SMS message has ever been useful.

Nice story, but it makes no sense. Why would a suicide bomber use a bomb that is triggered by SMS?

I may be wrong, but I believe it's so the suicide bomber can't back out at the last minute. They have a spotter that makes sure they're in position then blows them up.

Then you just set the phone to not vibrate when you chicken out, right?

I might be missing something, but if that's the case then you can't call them suicide bombers! If they are not actually the ones in control of their own death, it's not suicide.

Then it becomes Assisted Suicide....

I'm good with euthanasia and all, but go practice this in an uncrowded field if that's going to be the method of dispatch.

Charles Darwin would have something clever to say about this...

I don't think so -- if you choose to strap a bomb to yourself which you know someone else will detonate, then it's suicide.

I am, however, with Fox News on disliking the terminology "suicide bomber" just because it puts the emphasis on the death of the murderer rather than the innocent folks whom he murders. The suicide aspect is really the least important aspect of the act.

if you choose to strap a bomb to yourself which you know someone else will detonate, then it's suicide.

I wish things were that simple. There are several variations that makes this logic less convincing, from social pressure ('all families must make sacrifices') to outright catch-22 ('if you do not do it, we will kill you and your family').

Especially in the latter case, I wouldn't call this suicide.

If they were caught before they could manually set it off, there is a chance they could be restrained.

Or maybe they were not suicide bombers. They were just terrorists trying to leave the cell phone at the target location and then send a SMS to it.

They also sometimes use people who don't know what's going on as the carrier (e.g. children).

It's fairly common, actually. It gives the control to the organizers, in case the bomber has a change of heart (which people are prone to have when they have a bomb strapped to their chest.)

My assumption is that there was both a manual "detonate" button that the bomber could have activated once in position as well as this SMS trigger just in case the bomber couldn't muster up the nerve to blow herself up.

These bombs aren't made by electric engineers. They just rip out the vibrate motor and wire a detonator to the connections.

Soldiers have found IEDs that didn't detonate because they forgot to set the phone to vibrate. The display reads "1 Missed Call".

The amusing thing is that there are dedicated GSM boards available for almost less than the cost of a cell phone:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10138

$50.

I'm sure you can get a Nokia for half the price and hassle.

Yep, you can walk in to a best buy and pay $15 (cash) for one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/AT%26T+GoPhone+-+Nokia+2320+No-C...

incredible! I was sure there are some under $50, but $15?

NewEgg sells a motorola for $20, just gotta provide your own SIM :P

To be exact, this particular price is likely slightly subsidized by AT&T because they expect to make money on your airtime use. For a better comparison, you'd have to find an unlocked, unbranded phone which doesn't come with a carrier SIM.

Ahem-- I don't think suicide bombers need to worry much about the fine print.

Cheap Nokia GSM phones are probably much easier as they just have to throw in a SIM card and replace the vibrate motor with a connection to the detonator

http://bit.ly/fF3Ggu

I <3 Sparkfun!

You can get cell phones for under $20, and if stopped by the police have a plausible reason for carrying one.

But... not a plausible reason for carrying the bomb it's attached to.

If I was building a bomb activated by a mobile phone, I would try to keep the two separate until necessary.

Maybe if the world wasn't already awash in a sea of GSM phones. As it stands, I'm sure the incremental cost of acquiring an active GSM cell-phone is very much less than $50 (and probably comes closer to free).

Oh, maybe one reason a phone vibrates when switching to vibrate mode is to discourage using it as a detonator.

Change to vibrate, then connect the wire.

Or use a phone that doesn't vibrate when you switch to vibrate.

Presumably whoever is triggering the bomb has a better vantage point to inflict the most damage. From the linked article: Islamist terrorists in Russia often use mobile phones as detonators. The bomber's handler, who is usually watching their charge, sends the bomber a text message in order to set off his or her explosive belt at the moment when it is thought they can inflict maximum casualties.

'watching their charge' - clever.

In addition to the coldfeet scenario, they use SMS in case the bomber is captured or incapacitated, a handler watching from afar can detonate the bomb. That's why lots of suicide bombers blow up at police checkpoints, their handler sees them being detained and remote detonates the bomb.

Maybe they watched The Joker do it in The Dark Knight movie?

Or maybe the writers of The Dark Knight occasionally watched the evening news...

Wouldn't it be more interesting to remotely detonate explosives rather than blowing yourself up with it?

Aside from the difficulty of setting the explosive in a proper location. It is more impresive in the news when somebody kills him/her self.

I've read conflicting accounts from different news articles.

Some articles state the bomber's handler sends a text message to the bomber to say when to detonate the bomb, to maximize terror, but this situation seems like the text message actually triggers the device which seems very precarious and conflicts with the handler theory.

Reminds me of this one here: LIVING ON ZIONIST TIME http://www.darwinawards.com/newsletter/199911.txt

Why does a suicide bomber need a remote control?

From my understanding it's for the handlers to activate the bomb if they get cold feet for any reason.

The bomber needs a remote control so that they can detonate the bomb that they strapped to someone else.

In many (most?) cases, the 'suicide bomber' is being coerced into participating, and can't actually be trusted to fully follow through. The real bomber, the person making and orchestrating the bombings, needs the remote control so that they have control over the detonation.

what's stopping the 'bomber' from just ditching the bomb?

They are likely being watched by whoever has the detonator, and (reportedly) the bombers often coerce the bomb carriers into participating by threatening their family.

Alternatively, the thought of directly disobeying authority figures never occurs to them. Remember that most of these 'bombers' are women (in societies where women are oppressed) or children.

Sometimes they are told that they are just transporting and delivering the device to the actual suicide bomber. Then, a spotter sets them up the bomb instead.

Don't accept packages from AQ!

Don't accept packages from AQ!

This reminds me of my grandfather's motto -- he was a WWII veteran -- "Never accept a drop shipment from Japan".

Why use a real person then, why not just drop a phone in a crowd and then set it off when your safely away?

Because the bombs aren't in phone form-factor, they're big vests packed with nails and shit, just set off by phones. People tend to notice when you walk into the middle of a crowd, drop a large bag, then walk away. Now, in situations where they can pull that off, say crowded busses..., I'm sure they employ that tactic.

Also, I imagine there is a heavier emotional impact associated with 'suicide' bombings.

And because the whole point of a suicide bomb is to send yourself to heaven immediately for killing infidels in the name of Allah. Why would you want to carry on living when you could be hanging around in paradise?

Can they sue the Mobile Carrier for this?

Will the terrorists form an anti-spam team?

Will the TSA ban mobile phones in airports and flights?

Suicide bummer.

I suppose a Darwin award is in order..

In Mother Russia, SMS bombs YOU!

I honestly believed for a split second that this was an Onion article

This is like what people see in the movies!!

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