In the end, the girls didn’t end up getting charged. Of course, you could argue they should have been more careful, and I would believe you. They did leave a strange box on the steps of a courthouse; a little more context would have been a good idea. In the same way, Adult Swim could have clued in the city of Boston somehow. I’m imagining a sticker on the sign with a URL on it would have done a lot to dispel confusion.

But none of this changes your point, and I can’t believe more people aren’t up in arms about this. Our security and peace of mind, far from growing after the WTC attacks, have become so brittle that a piece of nerdy stoner humor has caused the government of a major city to get in the panic room and slam all the doors. That’s crazy.

In related news, there’s a pretty good paper that sends up the plane-liquid-ban here: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html . Maybe I can soothe my rage by buying stock in Ziploc, CVS, and Walgreens.

But I like to think this is because they had to stop laughing. Goddamn, I’m embarrassed about my former and future home city.

I’m thinking the answer most people would have was a variation on, “the authorities should’ve recognized this as a prank or publicity stunt and advised concerned citizens as such.” But that assumes that nobody would think of hiding a genuine bomb amongst several decoys.

I think the worst thing about this is that they did force the whole thing to come to a stop, even after they realized what it was. This does seem absurd to close it down, unless they assumed that they’d still get calls on this.

I kinda forgot to bring my Joe story back around to this, but the point I wanted to make there was that I know what ATHF is, so it didn’t seem threatening to me. But even so, there’s no reason such devices couldn’t have been bombs, right? But if you accept that, then you have to wonder 1) why someone would bother making bombs so visible, and 2) if these things can be bombs, then there are just billions of places someone could hide any number of bombs without our knowing.

But my point is nearly not the reaction of the Boston authorities, specifically. It’s more that mobilizing and locking down a major American city appears to make sense for a couple light boxes. The only reason you can even make the “if they did nothing, they’d be blamed for incompetence” point is because the base level of fear in the country is way, way up. If it wasn’t, the official response would’ve been to call Harry to get in his truck and drive down to whatever location and pull the thing down. I mean, compare it to stories of librarians in Des Moines, Iowa making contingecy plans for terrorst attacks. How is this even a discussion, if not because of the blanket of fear?

And on Adult Swim’s delay: eh, I bet those hours were spent calling lawyers and ad agencies. If so, I can only sorta fault them for their CYA time. You have any other info on that?

I’d actually suggest the level of CYA is way, way up, not fear. We raised the bar so high for what our government is supposed to do that we automatically assume someone needs to be fired or some politician allowed this to further their own agenda, whether that’s start a war, make money, get some intern action, etc ad infinitum ad nauseum.

And yeah, I know my suggestion probably fit the extrema of opinions, but we seem to be bouncing between the two anyways….

And anyway, you’re really just emphasizing my point. “Silly light boxes” translates into “world’s a-crumblin’” fairly easily when you’re convinced you should fear. I pride myself on being able to see different points of view, give arguments equal weight etc., but the more I think about this, the more I think that you are just really screwed up, now. I don’t mean this condescendingly; I’m saying this has been done to you, for someone else’s political expediency.

If these devices were a problem for you, then you really have no hope or expectation of safety. Forget the configuration of the light bulbs for a moment, so we can remove the “what’s the big deal with cartoon characters” element: What terrorist implanting devices is going to be polite enough to put a series of LEDs on an explosive device to make it visible for hundreds of yards away? It’d be like a thief sending you a postcard to let you know he’d be robbing your house next Tuesday.

And don’t tell me “the whole point would be to make them visible to increase the terror,” either. I’m pretty sure a dozen well-hidden explosive devices that exploded simultaneously around Boston would pretty well do a job of terrifying people, I don’t think you need to add four extra D batteries to make a bomb any scarier.

So, you look at a bunch of lights near a bridge, and you think “how could they do that? Obviously people are going to think it could be a bomb.” Then where is your safety? A box visible in broad daylight, and lit up at night, could be a bomb? Then how can you possibly live with the thought that the spot thirty feet around the corner, just as explosion-sensitive, just as magnetically-implantable, but hidden from view, could just as easily hold an explosive device right now? Is there any way you can tell me that the terror hasn’t won?

1) The city didn’t go bat**** insane with fear. A few bridges were shut down and caused some local traffic problems for a couple of hours. Even those who were told “there’s some sort of suspicious device” didn’t tear their shirts off and start making final desperate amends to God, which is how (too) much of the Web painted things.

2) Yup, these things were up for two weeks. Which means that for two weeks, people zoomed past them and didn’t think anything of ‘em. Key point being “zoomed past.” The initial report came in during the daytime, when the lights weren’t up, and they came about a device that was posted on an overpass (if I recall).

I don’t think somebody phoned in with an “There’s a BOMB on the BRIDGE!” report. I think they saw Something Odd and thought it couldn’t hurt to make a call and say so. I imagine, but don’t know, that a patrolman in the area was asked to take a look-see and when he couldn’t identify it — come on, I watch Adult Swim too, and I didn’t immediately recognize what it was — the predictable thing happened.

IE, not the immediate shutdown of the whole city in a Terror Alert, but the dispatching of the bomb squad, who (judging from conversations I’ve had with people in that line of work) almost certainly started up the truck with the belief that it’d turn out to be nothing. It almost always does, but going out to false alarms helps them to be prepared for the real thing. Plus: it’s their job.

3) Police, when speaking to the press, described the sign(s) as “hoax devices.” This wasn’t to deliberately scare the public or to justify their actions. It’s because earlier that same day, someone had planted a phony pipe bomb at his place of work as a joke, prompting the evacuation of the entire building. Either the spokesperson was mixing up his reports, or they imagined that the hoax bomb was part of this thing.

This would also further explain why the police took this stuff seriously. It also suggests that any bloggers blaming the media for “intentionally fanning the flames of fear” with disinformation are, well, full of it. It was a statement from police and the media had an obligation to report it, as part of the story.

4) In a live press conference the morning afterward, the Mayor explicitly stated that the two wingnut corporate shills (sorry, “artists”) who placed the signs were just a couple of stooges looking to make some extra money and were acting on orders from an ad agency; he supported letting them off without a warning. Later on, after the two had their first appearance in court followed by a session with the press, the Mayor changed his mind.

Why? Because they acted like idiots. It was pretty clear that their actions had caused some pretty serious consequences, but they clearly couldn’t have cared less. That is, tossing a banana peel on the sidewalk is all fun and games, but when someone slips and breaks their arm, the fun’s over and you need to appreciate what’s happened.

I am amazed that bloggers have, by and large, let Turner and Cartoon Network off the hook. I’m not pissed off about the city’s response and I’m not pissed off about the two stooges they paid. I’m pissed off that one of the largest communications companies in the country thought (in effect) “Hey, lots of people look at that bridge overpass; let’s stick an advertisement up there. Of course, we won’t ask first, because they’ll either say no or worse, they’ll demand that we pay them.”

I’m glad that the CN suffered serious consequences in the form of $2M and a big-name resignation. Not because I demand justice, but because I know that if they simply shrugged and apologized, then Nike, Wal*Mart, Exxon, McDonalds, _anybody_ would feel like there’s nothing stopping them from paying a squad of losers $50 each and arming them with a spray can, a set of stencils, and a map of public buildings that (tragically) are doing nothing to help the company sell crap to people.

And I think an apology would have been just fine. Ridiculous, of course — you can’t just apologize in the United States! You have to pay millions and millions for, say, briefly showing a nipple during a football game or, in this case, hanging some Lite-Brites.

Of course, I’m fond of Adult Swim which may color my opinion. If the ads had been for Blue Collar Comedy I might be calling for a death sentence.

While Menino acted like a tool, it was more the news networks like CNN (a Turner network? No!) that made it out to be a lot more than it was. I watched NECN most of that day and it was never more than just “suspicious devices” and the police response covered, not like Wolf Blitzer talking about Terror In Boston or somesuch.

But anything after that is an embarrassment to the city.

As for your later points, yeah, that was the reaction here in Chicago — “Look, you wanna advertise, you gotta pay for it.” No one tried to extort a couple million bucks from Turner Networks and no one closed anything down; they just looked around, found ‘em, and removed ‘em. As far as I know, no one even tried to collect for the value of the advertising; it was just “Nice try, and it’s over.” After the initial response, that’s really all you should have to say. You shouldn’t have to seal off a city to make the point that unpaid “guerilla advertising” is unwelcome. Just enforce the laws you’ve already got.

(My impression is that the dorks who put up the LBs did the whole “hair” stunt at the press conference because, like all defendants, their lawyer advised them not to discuss the case. Was the “hair” thing stupid? Compared to sealing off the city, it was a pretty minor level of stupid. Should they have just said “no comment”? I don’t think it should matter, but since it gave that fartbag Menino an excuse to get all riled up, I guess they should’ve.)

I don’t think the term “extortion” is operative, either. The city wanted to be repaid for the cost of that day’s shenanigans, and also had an interest in ensuring that this sort of thing didn’t happen again in the city of Boston. I guarantee you that if Cartoon Network hadn’t been made to pay an extreme penalty, then ad agencies would have adopted these techniques (and worse) as standard procedure.

No question about it. The ad agency would have put the whole incident on their demo reel, proudly pointing to the number of times the words “Cartoon Network” were spoken on national television thanks to the stunt. “And it’s all FREE advertising! As experts in ‘viral’ marketing, we can turn your $90,000 investment into millions in national exposure…”

It’s the same reason why if you tack handbills up all over town, the penalty isn’t simply “take them down.” It’s “Take them down, and we assess you $50 for every handbill we knew about when we called you.” Otherwise, where’s the incentive to NOT do it? We can’t have a situation where the entire planet is up for grabs for advertisers.

Finally, it’s important to note that Boston has at least one very serious concern where terrorism is concerned: a huge liquified natural gas terminal in the harbor. It’s considerably more valid a target than whatever Midwestern popcorn stand got $48,000 in DHS funds last year. It’s like having a nuclear reactor right on the edge of a major city.

I don’t mean to suggest that city officials saw these things and responded as though it was part of an attempt to blow up the terminal. What I mean is that Boston has spent years working out specific plans on how to respond to that broad category of situations that appear to be more than “one dude acting stupid.” If they were making things up as they go, they certainly might have simply shrugged and done nothing. Or, they might have panicked and shut down the whole city and cleared the streets.

They didn’t do either one. Right or wrong, they turned to Chapter 13, Page 234 of their plan, which said that if some sort of coordinated effort has been made to place devices all over the city, particularly in places where people gather and attached to infrastructure like bridges and the subway, shut down the affected bridges and such until the nature of those devices has been determined.

As to the wingnuts and their press conference: judging from their actions, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they hadn’t the intelligence to say “Sorry, but my lawyers has advised me not to comment on this case.” Or (and here’s a breakthrough) they could have (holy cow) simply PASSED UP the opportunity to be on television.

I mean, if you’re caught after breaking into the fourth house in my neighborhood, I might be influenced by the news that you’ve got sick kids and you’ve been unable to work since you got hit by a drunk driver last year and…et cetera. But if you go on the news laughing and complaining that all the XBox games you stole from me really sucked and that I must be the last person in the world not to buy an HDTV…well, guess what: I’m no longer inclined to just let you off.

As for commentary on the blogs…too much of the stuff I’ve seen has been of the slightly smug “My city is SO MUCH SMARTER than Boston!” vein. Actually, closer to the truth, “I am SO MUCH MORE LEVEL-HEADED than ANYBODY associated with this story!” followed by a faux-tearful “Is this how our once-proud country has been affected by the so-called ‘War On Terror’? Have we given ourselves over completely to…”

Which truly doesn’t represent all commentary. But it’s a popular meme and I’m tired of reading it; it’s arrogant and it’s lazy; it’s much more comforting to think that you’re smarter than someone else than to investigate the reasons why they did what they did…and maybe discover that you would have done the exact same thing in identical circumstances.

Just the other day, some bullets were found in a public school here in MA. The administrators put the school in lockdown (kids return to their homerooms and stay there) and then in an orderly way, they sent the kids home early. I think everybody can agree that in a world where school shootings aren’t imaginary, this wasn’t an overreaction. They didn’t overreact by calling in SWAT teams and searching every student for weapons. They cleared the school and then they searched the entire facility carefully.

From my perspective, and with what I know (or think I know) about the Boston “terror” scare, I’m inclined to put the city’s response in the same general category as this. There are several credible answers to the question “What do you do when several copies of the same unknown device have been planted all over the city?” Temporarily shutting down the affected infrastructure is one answer, as is “don’t do anything to inconvenience people until we know precisely what we’re dealing with” is another. But I don’t fault Chicago or Boston for their choices.

The one thing I think we all agree on is the fact that none of this would have happened had the devices contained one little sticker saying “This is electronic advertising from Cartoon Network. Here’s a phone number to call:” If they never thought to add one, then that was irresponsible. If they thought about it but then said “No, we don’t want these things to be connected to us” then that was deplorable.

a) too many false alarms and people will begin ignoring real threats. “Oh look the Boston PD is over-reacting again…” will become the standard response. The addition of blowing up a traffic counter (which are usually registered with the city engineer and labeled, but I’m not certain this one was) just adds to this.

b) Boston police seems to be convinced that bombs look weird. Bombs have flashing lights on them, or are chained to street signals. Bombs are really disguised to look ordinary — backpacks, trashcans, etc… Now the populace is looking for the wrong things.

Yes Boston has targets of terrorists. Every large city has it’s toxic chemical plants, it’s oil refineries, it’s natural gas depots, it’s shipping centers. DHS is very idiotic in assessing threats to these systems and as you point out hands out money for retarded situations. However DHS’s stupid policies don’t excuse Boston PD’s stupid policies.

But I’m sorry, man, it was insanity. Even without being there, even outside looking in, where “outside” is defined as “half a country away and watching the news,” it was insanity. We don’t even have to talk about the specifics of how Boston handled it, the reporting of the event is enough to illustrate my point. I may not be qualified to talk about the personal experience of being at Boston at the time, but I watched/read enough about it to see the effects on, and reactions of, the media and other observers in America. For example, how come nearly every report of some airplane problem or some other as-yet-unexplained violent event end with, “authorities say this has nothing to do with terrorism”? Somehow the default is “people will be thinking this was a terrorist attack, we’d better make it clear it wasn’t.” And given the number of general, everyday violent events in this country is vastly, vastly greater than the number of actual terrorist attacks in the last century, we’ve given a whole lot of power over our country to terror.

Yes, I will say seriously the sentence you wrote sarcastically: this is how our once-proud country has been affected by the so-called ‘War On Terror’. Or by those who defined it, mismanaged it, and manipulated us into it, anyway. If the whole Boston event went by the book, then the book sucks.