Originally posted by Chairboy
You said that the people who made the ads were the ones who called these in as bombs to generate press coverage. Are you retracting that claim now?
Past that, are personal responsibility and judgement concepts you understand?
What level of paranoia is appropriate? Don't weasel out, here are specific examples, tell me if the bomb squad should be called into any of the following:
*A blinking safety light, like this: http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/588964/2/istockphoto_588964_road_safety_3.jpg
* An abandoned car on the side of the highway (it could contains hundreds of lbs of explosives!)
* A car battery sitting on the side of the road
* A cup of coffee sitting on the edge of a trash can
* A trash can
* An ATM
How about a computer that someone has abandoned in a dumpster?
Or a flashlight left on a counter?
Here's a situation: You come out of a store and find that your car, which you had double parked, has been towed away and detonated because "it could have been a carbomb". Do you applaud this? Or is it an overreaction? And if you applaud it, does that mean you're saying all double-parked cars should be treated as bombs and detonated?
What about an envelope with a piece of blank paper and a little white powder in it? Think you should be paranoid about that? How could anyone let something like that cause a terrorist alert? You want to be the one that takes the bet that it's just powdered sugar and not anthrax? I know a few postal workers up here in DC that would've lost that bet.
How can anyone be worried about a lite-brite? Geez, lets see - we can make explosives that are liquids, jels, powders, or solids and they can set them off with a cell-phone. Somebody sees a strange object magnetically stuck under a bridge, I think I'd rather they call it in and have it checked out before I drive over it. I don't care if it looks like the energizer bunny.
The idiotic thing wasn't the planting of the things, it was not telling the proper authorities either 1) ahead of time, or 2) immediately after they realized the things were being mistaken for something dangerous. If it turns out that they called in the alert as a publicity stunt when their ads didn't get noticed, that deserves jail time for someone.
