MIT student arrested for wearing circuit fashion
Once, again, Boston has been subjected to a bomb scare concerning an odd circuit board.
Star Simpson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, was arrested at gunpoint Friday morning at Logan Airport when authorities suspected she had a bomb strapped to her chest.
Simpson was wearing a black sweatshirt that had a circuit board with wires, green LED lights and a 9-volt battery attached to it. When an airport employee asked about her shirt, Simpson walked away without answering so the employee called the authorities, the Boston Globe has reported.
The back of Simpson's sweatshirt said "socket to me...Course VI," a reference to MIT's electrical engineering and computer science program.Simpson is a second-year student in the electrical engineering and computer science department of MIT's School of Engineering, according to the MIT Web site.
It is unclear whether Simpson was wearing the circuit board sweatshirt to intentionally provoke an incident.
Simpson was not immediately available for comment.
Last January, Boston authorities shut down several streets after people noticed circuit boards with lights throughout various parts of the city. They turned out to be part of an Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerrilla marketing campaign.
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
arrogance and stupidity given the current state of affairs with
regard to airline travel these days.
Perhaps this student might want to reconnect her neural network
and pay attention to airport security measures these days if one
wishes to fly without a hitch.
And in the immortal words of Carlos Mencia...DeDeDE!
lacking common sense (what we typically see at the MIT's,
Harvard's, Columbia's, etc) or she was looking to provoke an
incident. This may have been in concert with her boyfriend who
had already arrived and departed the airport. Today I expect they
would have spoken by cellphone as soon as he was on the
ground.
Sad they thought it was a bomb. Where are the fake sticks of dynamite? Shouldn't there be some kind of count down display if this was a hoax?
Sad she is proud of that circuit. I hope it does more than just light up. There are tee shirts out there that mimic the pong game of old.
1. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Hysteria
2. 9V LED and Plah-Doh
3. Heart Medication
That's 3 by my count. Oh...btw...I got stopped on the trip BACK for exactly the SAME REASON. Not only did they NOT have the previous incident on file - but when the kid (I swear to GOD he wasn't over 17) assigned to search me came over he asked me...I'm not kidding..."Do you know why you were pulled aside?" I said I had a metallic hip replacement that set the detector off....so he swiped the portable wand up and down my leg and I was free to go.
You folks feeling any safer out there now??? TSA is a JOKE and don't even pretend to think otherwise.
As for the comment "she's lucky she isn't in the morgue" - someone better lose their job over that. Murdering a 19 year old woman in cold blood for carrying toys is still illegal in this country...last time I checked anyway.
Cheers!
government removes your common sense."
In the real world, where actual bomb-makers build real-life
bombs that are intended to kill people, bombs don't have wires
sticking out of them and little blinking lights. It's only in B
Hollywood movies that bombs have wires sticking out of them
and blinking lights. In the real world--you know, the one where
the Feds are trying to catch real criminals--bombs do not look
like Hollywood special effects. They look like nondescript boxes
or backpacks.
Common sense says that a bomb actually has to have an
explosive attached to it--you know, a part that goes "boom."
Wires and blinking lights, by themselves, don't go "boom."
If the TSA can't actually recognize what a real bomb looks like, I
fear for all our safety. Were these people trained by watching the
James Bond movie "Goldfinger" over and over again?
lights and beepers.
Of course, this girl was a fool for not simply dealing with it when
they asked her what the deal was, but still, the fact that her
blinking shirt caused such great concern that they arrested her is a
sad indication that these counter-terrorist folks are a little too
eager to do their jobs.
It was merely a breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery. There was nothing to give any indication whatsoever that this device was a bomb. No pipes, nothing large enough to be a charge, no sticks of dynamite (real or fake), or any trigger device. They should be far more concerned about the potential of a hidden bomb in a backpack, suitcase, or box, in which you can see no wires. These airport staff and police officials need to be given more training so that they can recognize the difference between a real bomb, a hoax bomb, and what this student was carrying - which appears to be exactly what she said it was - electronic art. These charges are ridiculous.
http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/minimize-the-risk-of-a-personal-security-failure/
It's CYA, not security that motivates this kind of abuse.
Just because something does not have a large, stereotypical chunk of gray putty hanging from it does not mean it's not dangerous. From a split-second decision required standpoint, how was a security guard supposed to know if she had wires going through her shirt to something hidden somewhere under her clothes? How about if a radio transmitter was part of her rig? (IEDs are routinely triggered with cell phones or other transmitter gear).
Whether you like it or not - and I don't - even joking about bombs is punishable in airports now. What she did was at least that, or she is so benighted about the state of the world, esp. security in our airports, that it's scary to think of people like that driving. Or voting.
You also whine because security guards are "unemployable" or aren't electronics and explosives experts. Guess what, you Starbucks elitist whiners: we have a lot of airports to secure, and when hundreds of people are waiting to get on a plane, it's not a security guard's job to know that those resistors and LEDs are just a stupid kid's pathetic bid for attention; their job is to get that person aside, determine whether a threat exists, apply relevant regulations and rules, and in parallel to keep smart, innocent travelers moving onto airplanes. Speaking as a traveler, I wish they would take MORE people out of line immediately; one moron who can't read simple instructions holds everyone else up all the time.
Yeah, so maybe the terrorists are smarter than your TSA guard. Then again, Richard Reid was no genius; and your average terrorist - think FL idiots some months ago - isn't either. So, since like most whiners the supercilious ones here only complain rather than actually offering a solution, what *should* we do? Remove all security checks since duh, that guard can't even distinguish an inductor from a capacitor at 100 feet? After all, security is soooo 2001 when it comes to the Crackberry I'm-so-important set. Frankly, my opinion of the security guards rose after reading these comments, because they probably have to deal with jerks like this all day long.
- What I'd REALLY like to do...
- by Dr_Zinj October 2, 2007 8:41 AM PDT
- Is walk into every airport in the U.S. and fire everyone wearing a TSA uniform.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(20 Comments)Then I'd like to convict everyone in the Department of Homeland Security for felony criminal malfeasance and lock them away for life in maximum security.
And I'd do the same for all the supporters of the so-called Patriot Act which was anything but.