Place: Boston

Time: Yesterday

The entire city of Boston was brought to a standstill, gridlocked traffic and closed streets and subway. Two men have been arrested for bringing the entire city to a halt. How did they do this? Well, it was remarkably simple. 3 weeks ago, they took part in an advertising scheme for Adult SWIM, a TV channel which shows adult cartoons, and it comes on after the Cartoon Network closes for the night. The show in question is “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and it features an assortment of talking fast food items, including this guy.

Suddenly, the place goes mental, as someone decides to report this sign as a “bomb”. Well, they actually report several of these signs as bombs, and the next thing you know, 9/11/01 paranoia goes into overdrive. The bomb squad goes out, they start closing streets and making press reports and blowing these signs up with shotgun-weilding robots. And the next thing you know, the two men are arrested and charged!

So, how to bring a city to a standstill? Get someone to hang a few dozen brightly lit LED signs all over the place, then leave it a few weeks. At night, they look like:
Now, how the heck anyone would think one of these was a bomb, even during daylight, is quite bizarre. Sure, there are some wires, and batteries. But it’s hardly bomb-like. And, once the first one turns out to be nothing but a light up sign, all the other ones that get called in can be checked out by two guys without issue.

The mayor and the police and the Attorney General’s office in Boston are going mental, however, and are demanding the 2 guys pay for the entire cost of the day’s over-response.

But… and here is the issue… the Boston officials are screaming for blood because the city wasn’t told about the locations of the signs. The obvious implication is, therefore, that if you simply call up Boston and get permission to hang up a whole raft of signs, or, indeed, bombs disguised as signs (but you would want to place them somewhere useful rather than randomly about the place), that would be fine, as long as you got permission first!

Can anyone else see the major security issue here? Aside from the cheap and easy way to close down a city by reporting a fire hydrant as a bomb, or a random car, or a fly poster, and a really easy way to close down a competeing marketing campaign that is doing better than your own for less money, you also have this bizarre way to do terrible damage to an entire city’s infrastructure. You just need a permit first.