2007 Boston Mooninite Panic
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I remember when that happened and how incredibly obvious it was that it was a massive overreaction.
Here. I have relatives who are overly trusting of the mainstream media, and they were convinced that these people were intentionally trying to make the devices look like bombs in order to garner publicity. I tried to explain things to them, but to no avail.
>> Reporter: "Are you afraid that if... uh... you go to prison, you'll get your hair cut?"
>> "Umm. That's a very good question. I think... I think... the laws in this country are still pretty comfy as to... as to that. I think there will... whatever happens, I feel like my hair is safe at the moment. So, any other hair questions are definitely welcome."
This reporter got the assignment.
Also, what balls to be charged with trumped up terrorism charges and stand your ground on the "This is ridiculous, so we're going to be ridiculous" front in the face of reporters trying to make it seem like This Is No Laughing Matter.
It made for an excellent conversation piece for those that knew, and a weird piece of LED art for those that didn't.
Edit: I found pictures! Sorry they were shot on a potatocam (2008 era) but here she is:
See also: Freedumb Fries[0]
It was a bunch of teenage fans doing something creative for fun. Ya know, art!
My recollection is we were pretty solidly past that period by the time this happened, and that’s part of why it was so ridiculous. If this had happened in like ‘02 or maybe ‘03 I think folks wouldn’t have thought it quite so silly that the authorities responded the way they did.
edit - here it is, beautiful
Unamerican name: Check
Suitcase with wires: Check
What more proof do you need he's a terrorist?
I'm sorry, that's not a hair question.
The show is usually pretty self-aware when it comes to jokes about terrorism and post-911 hysteria, so it was surprising to see this one played straight.
It reminded me of the meme that went around in 2007 - "If it isn't an American flag, it's probably a bomb".
Left me wondering do they have any idea how many people every day set down a bag and forget about it at Disneyland? If we really cordoned and reported all of these, the Anaheim PD and local FBI would never again do anything else.
Goodness, I'd better clean up my desk. Someone might think it's a bomb!
And here's the vertical video audience cam that was baleeted from that reddit thread https://archive.org/details/347815378-136606309415117-736687...
The older version feels more (to me) like what an actual episode might have been like and is more poking fun at the context in which the panic took place. The 2023 one is a little too zany over the top directly referencing the panic itself including appearances from the artists.
Never once did the thought of 'danger' entered any of our minds.
[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/102868.102869
[2] https://uruseiyatsura.fandom.com/wiki/Tomobiki_High_School
- "At one point, Jackson showed Gregory Exhibit No. 60—a photograph of an Iron Maiden poster that had hung in Willingham’s house—and asked the psychologist to interpret it. “This one is a picture of a skull, with a fist being punched through the skull,” Gregory said; the image displayed “violence” and “death.” Gregory looked at photographs of other music posters owned by Willingham. “There’s a hooded skull, with wings and a hatchet,” Gregory continued. “And all of these are in fire, depicting—it reminds me of something like Hell. And there’s a picture—a Led Zeppelin picture of a falling angel. . . . I see there’s an association many times with cultive-type of activities. A focus on death, dying. Many times individuals that have a lot of this type of art have interest in satanic-type activities.”"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire (2009)
In fact, while he, in hindsight, probably shouldn't have been executed for murder, he absolutely belongs in jail if for no other reason than the refrigerator positioning which doomed his children as much as anything else.
I remember my parents being mildly outraged about this. 18 year old me thought it was fucking hilarious.
It was disconcerting to arrive home to that many news vans in front of my house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Simpson
>Shortly after arriving on the MIT campus, she met a student group called MITERS (the MIT Electronic Research Society).[3]
>In September 2007 while a student at MIT, several months after the Boston Mooninite Panic, Simpson created an electronic fashion sweatshirt featuring a colored, glowing name tag.[4][5] While wearing this sweatshirt during a visit to Boston Logan Airport, Simpson was arrested at gunpoint and charged with the possession of a hoax device, a charge that was dropped by prosecutors a year later.[6][7][8] In an echo of MIT's official later treatment of Aaron Swartz, the MIT media office released a statement condemning and disavowing Simpson's actions before she was even released from questioning.[9][10]
>Simpson studied at MIT between 2006 and 2010. She returned to MIT in 2015 to speak about her experience at an MIT conference on the Freedom to Innovate.[11]
>In 2017, MIT established a "disobedience" award to reward forms of disobedience that benefit society, as demonstrated by Simpson while a student at MIT.[12]
MIT Sophomore Arrested at Logan For Wearing LED Device
https://thetech.com/2007/11/13/simpson-v127-n40
>Star A. Simpson ’10, wearing a circuit board that lit up and was connected to a battery, was arrested at gunpoint at Logan International Airport this morning and was charged with disorderly conduct and possession of a hoax device. Simpson was released on $750 bail earlier today; her pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Oct. 29, 2007 at 9 a.m. in East Boston District Court.
>Simpson (a former Tech photographer) was wearing the device, which included green light-emitting diodes arranged in the shape of a star, during yesterday’s MIT Career Fair. Her defense attorney said she was at the airport to pick up her boyfriend who arrived at Logan this morning.
>Simpson approached an information booth in Logan’s Terminal C wearing the light-up device, Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Wayne Margolis said during Simpson’s arraignment today. Margolis also said that Simpson had been wearing the art for at least a few days.
>She “said it was a piece of art,” Margolis said, and “refused to answer any more questions.” Jake Wark, spokesperson for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, said that Simpson only described the LED lights after she was “repeatedly questioned by the MassPort employee.” Simpson then “roamed briefly around the terminal,” Wark said. Margolis said this caused several Logan employees to flee the building. As Simpson left the building, she disconnected the battery powering the device, according to a press release provided by Wark.
>Simpson had five to six ounces of Play-Doh in her hands, State Police Maj. Scott Pare said in a press conference this morning. The Play-Doh could have been mistaken for plastic explosives. [...]
Star Simpson Receives Pretrial Probation
https://thetech.com/2008/06/06/simpson-v128-n27
MIT student Star Simpson gets probation in Logan security scare
https://www.bostonherald.com/2008/06/02/mit-student-star-sim...
Boston Airport Bomb Scare Should Scare Scientists
https://www.wired.com/2007/09/boston-airport/
Star Simpson, one year after Boston airport terror-scare: unedited BBtv interview transcript
https://boingboing.net/2008/09/22/star-simpson-one-yea.html
She's also the genius behind Taco Copter:
From the interview, it wasn't even Play-Doh!
STAR: Sure. That was this little hand-sculpted flower I brought to give my friend at the airport. (holds it up to camera, it's a bright pink rose, hardened clay)
XENI: Well did it look like that, or did it look like a wad of C4?
STAR: This is exactly what it was. It wasn't strapped to my chest, it was in my hand looking very much like a flower. It's hard (taps it against desk and against fingernails). It's not play-doh. (taps, audible) It's baked, hard. And this is exactly how it looked on that day, it hasn't changed shape or lost color or anything. They took it from me and kept it from me at the time. It's been about a year since I had this in my possession. But I chose not to show it to people until now.
I remember this incident and how infuriating it was. It's even more infuriating now that I've read the follow-up interview.
That's mentioned in the quote from Wiki in your parent:
> > In an echo of MIT's official later treatment of Aaron Swartz, the MIT media office released a statement condemning and disavowing Simpson's actions before she was even released from questioning.[9][10]
> On February 27, 2007, a month after the incident, the Boston police bomb squad detonated another suspected bomb, which turned out to be a city-owned traffic counter [34]
As it happened both parties arrived way late, and the deal went down. I'm still a little salty about it after all this time.
This phrasing makes it sound like the army that involved.
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
A disproportionate response here will discourage other companies from similar guerrilla marketing.
I doubt anyone wants more marketing, and especially unregulated marketing.
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...
> 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
To some degree, yes. Boston is just 4-5 hrs away from NYC, where just 6 years earlier two commercial passenger jets (from Boston) crashed into the WTC in the deadliest terrorist attack in US history. If you think police departments in Portland or LA felt the 9/11 attacks as acutely as such a nearby place as Boston, then you'd be mistaken.
(Please note that I'm not arguing that our freedom should go away because we need to be protected from terrorists. I'm just trying to show you the mindset of a law enforcement officer in Boston at the time, and that mindset was indeed to be suspicious of things that looked suspicious.)
At the time, the east coast culture felt very tech-backwards too. Tech was still everywhere, but as a counter / up-and-coming culture. There was a reason going to the west coast was liberating for so many. I think these two dynamics helped fuel the massive "WTF" dissonance of this incident, with the BPD coming off as a bunch of out of touch Keystone Cops massively overreacting and then just digging their ignorant heels in.
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.
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.
> 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?)
what about it?
we have 5... thousand.
Here's what I did find:
The 2007 Boston Mooninite Panic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105056 - Aug 2023 (3 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4003940 (May 2012)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
And someone decided to be edgy, and intentionally use this context, by placing something that could be mistaken for a bomb made by a crazy person, exactly in those locations? (Or even do those as decoys, to support a separate attack.)
Of course the early emergency responses were life-critical urgent, with no one having complete information.
And once they did have information, you can see how a company abusing fresh terrorism concerns like that, with what was arguably a hoax attack, for commercial promotion purposes, would still have a lot of explaining to do.
Random kids huffing "Chill out, it's just a prank" doesn't make it all OK.
And all the dissing of emergency responders, who reasonably had to act as if this might be another terrorist attack, didn't seem very fair, nor thought-out.
It might help to look at another Boston terrorism incident, the Boston Marathon bombing. Bombs went off, no one knew the extent of the attack, and, while the crowd was rightly trying to run away from the danger, emergency responders were running towards the explosions, to help protect people.
Why mock that? We need that.
How do you know the specific intent? Why weren't they just innocent hand made light up signs?
The police should have apologized and taken responsibility for instigating an unnecessary panic.
Adult Swim really leaned into the absurdity, and Harvey Birdman S2:E1 "Blackwatch Plaid" (2004) captures a bit of what like: https://www.adultswim.com/videos/harvey-birdman-attorney-at-...
Yes, people were paranoid about terrorism in 2007.
>And someone decided to be edgy, and intentionally use this context, by placing something that could be mistaken for a bomb made by a crazy person, exactly in those locations? (Or even do those as decoys, to support a separate attack.)
No. There’s no evidence of this.
> Of course the early emergency responses were life-critical urgent, with no one having complete information.
Only in Boston. The signs were also placed in LA and Portland without incident.
> And once they did have information, you can see how a company abusing fresh terrorism concerns like that, with what was arguably a hoax attack, for commercial promotion purposes, would still have a lot of explaining to do.
There’s no evidence these were intended to be perceived as a threat. You have imagined this.
> Random kids huffing "Chill out, it's just a prank" doesn't make it all OK.
You say “random kids”. I say “rational adults”.
> And all the dissing of emergency responders, who reasonably had to act as if this might be another terrorist attack, didn't seem very fair, nor thought-out.
Emergency responders have a responsibility to handle reality appropriately. Boston’s response was inappropriate. Being scared doesn’t justify overreaction.
> It might help to look at another Boston terrorism incident, the Boston Marathon bombing. Bombs went off, no one knew the extent of the attack, and, while the crowd was rightly trying to run away from the danger, emergency responders were running towards the explosions, to help protect people.
It doesn’t help to make this comparison. One is a benign marketing campaign and the other was a terrorist attack.
> Why mock that? We need that.
The ends don’t justify the means. First responders have a duty to protect the public which they failed by creating the Mooninite Panic.
First responders are not above criticism.