What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane.
I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of Transportation, will fix this.
Seems like an effective DoS attack - ground all planes in the US by sneaking cheap bluetooth speakers into people's luggage with provacative device names
If you’re a terrorist, I’m pretty sure you can think of dramatically more consequential things to do than cause a handful of planes to potentially divert. That’s a wildly pointless prank for something that will invariably wind up with you being arrested.
Why do that when you could simply attack people waiting in the security line? That would actually cause terror and shut down an entire airport for days.
Nothing. TSA is a joke. At first, the security theater arguably had a legitimate psychological purpose. The airline industry nearly collapsed after 9/11 because people were so scared of filing. But that was a generation ago—the psychological trauma in the aftermath of 9/11 dissipated ago. But we’re still stuck with the TSA because in the meantime it turned into a massive jobs program.
We’d be better off spending TSA’s $8 billion budget on paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
Why would a terrorist want to plant a Bluetooth device on someone else's bag when all it would accomplish is a minor delay of one flight and would result in a prison sentence after security camera review??
Or going into the baggage claim area with a bag containing an explosive device, then acting like they grabbed the wrong bag and putting it back on the carousel, and then leaving.
As an aside, this is something I've only seen in the US. At least in my country the domestic baggage claim area is not accessible unless from an arriving aircraft.
I'm guessing that has more to do with theft though than security.
No, that's because in the US they're handling the international flights separately. It's also the reason why even when you have a layover, you need to clear customs.
Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
In Uganda they make you get out of your car and go through a metal detector before getting to the pre-security security screening at the actual airport... 3-4 layers...
> What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
I make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray. It gets fun when they mandate a pat down in lieu of the millimeter wave scanner but refuse to have someone available for it.
It’s the only way to honestly say you have kept your bags under watch. If anybody tries to send in my bags without me , I immediately speak up in a loud stern voice, “That is not your bag!”
You can't rename most Bluetooth speakers. "Bomb" was the name the selling brand gave the speaker.
By making everyone turn off their Bluetooth, the kid whose speaker had turned on probably couldn't even see the device broadcasting the name. People linked to one by a company made Hellotec but Hama has a similarly named device, and plenty of other speaker manufacturers try to make a pun out of "boombox" by naming their devices "bomb" (iJoy, ZEB-MUSIC, and presumably other such brands).
Maybe if someone asked the passengers if anyone knew about this "bomb" Bluetooth device the kid would've remembered, but in this case I can't blame them. On the other hand, asking passengers if they know something about a bomb is probably the quickest way to cause a panic.
The entire thing seems like a ridiculous overreaction. What kind of terrorist would call their bomb "bomb"? This is "Al Qaeda Free WiFi" all over again.
They did not calculate with the stupidity of some people. I don't blame them. There are just too many mind blowing ways of stupidity to be able to account for all of them. Also it's not their fault other people decide to ground a plane for no reason.
You can modify your regex to only match when it's not a shortened url - then the short one will redirect to the real www.reddit.com address, before the redirect matches.
(Don't have the correct regex on hand right now, as I changed browsers and decided to use Old reddit redirect extension instead of scripting, but it worked in my previous browser)
to do that you have to open the link in new reddit first to expand it, then change it to old reddit. if you use a tool that automatically replaces www.reddit.com with old.reddit.com the shortened links break.
I got permanently banned for the "Christianity is just worshipping a Jewish zombie who is his own father who will save you if you invite him into your head, symbolically drink his blood, and eat his flesh" copypasta, so not everyone can log in :)
The entities that have access to flight manifests have far easier ways to identify who's behind your account. It's not a threat model worth seriously considering.
Internal flights in New Zealand don’t need ID. So if you knew you were going to posting your terrible flight experience, you could fly under a fake name.
People prank others all the time with goofy names [1] (2014) So are we at the point where that will change and devices will have to just assign random sanitized dictionary names? "Connect to my 'apple horse bunny farm'" There are programs that can flood an area with tens of thousands of fake access points (scapy-fakeap). Or thousands of drones for that matter. [2]
> a flight attendant told passengers over the PA system that they "must turn off Bluetooth immediately," or else the aircraft would have to turn around.
So if the person just takes back their bomb threat everything is ok? Or did they think the terrorist labeled their Bluetooth bomb “bomb” and this would disable it?
4. A normal level of risk aversion in one of the most risk averse industries
If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.
How many threats did actually turn out to be real to date? I couldn't find this being published. But how many threats did happen without any indication (only after the perpetrators tell). I can easily recalled maybe 3-4 incidents. So the issue here is do knowing threats really help?
In the simplest possible terms: this is total bullshit security theatre. At no point has there ever been a bomb or even a bomb threat carried out via usb device names. There is absolutely no reason to even look at the names of Bluetooth devices on a flight.
This is wildly inaccurate to the point of being dangerous advice. The goal during a bomb threat call is generally not to challenge, mock, or provoke the caller into a reaction. It is to keep the caller talking for as long as possible and gather information that could help assess the threat and assist law enforcement or security. There is no reliable rule that says a "real terrorist" will hang up if laughed at or that a hoax caller will stay on the line. People making threats behave in many different ways and simplistic tests like this are not a dependable way to determine whether a threat is real.
Looking at the deluge of downvotes, is the clearest example of what is worst with this community. Hardly no argument, no analysis, just social suppression.
The claim was not "ignore threats" and naturally execution matters. The claim was that threat making, and threat execution, are different behaviors. I provided a real example, of a real powerful mechanism of assessment. This was standard threat assessment logic using the best street smarts, that many here clearly lack.
Howlers use the threat as the weapon, while Hunters avoid warning because warning destroys surprise. The terrorist will hang up because the does not care about you, and the threat is real, the joker only power, is the strength of his bluff, so he will be have to reinforce it, specially if met with incredulity...
"All threats must be taken seriously" is politically correct, dont-sue-me, standard operating procedure...not reasoning. It is the safe corporate answer people repeat, when they cannot distinguish procedure from analysis.
Downvoting that distinction instead of engaging with it is cowardice with a ui button. I dont like your opinion, so let me just me muffle your mouth... Instead of engaging with the question: I am dealing with a Howler performing a threat, or a Hunter preparing an attack? Most here went for procedure substituted for thought, and social disapproval substituted for argument.
I was talking about this with someone the other day… How many real terrorism threats have been preceded by the terrorist telegraphing their intentions with a phone call beforehand? My prior is that this number is essentially 0 and we should ignore bomb threats as a society.
Probably not super common but it does happen from time to time.
And imagine ignoring a bomb threat and then it's real, you probably would not want to be responsible for that.
The IRA (Irish terrorists, for Americans confused at the acronym, or maybe confused at what the IRA did) did occasionally phone warnings and occasionally the information was accurate. Code words were used to authenticate the threat.
The PIRA actually do seem to have intended to give accurate warnings when they planted bombs, in Belfast at least. There were inevitably cases when the information was garbled or misunderstood but the use of codewords & the practice of delivering the warnings to a known set of media outlets was at least an attempt to minimise these.
The downside was that the vast majority of warnings were hoaxes - bomb scares were dozens of times more common than actual bombs.
The other main groups - INLA, UVF, and UFF/UDA also got in on the hoax game, but didn't often do real bombs (and didn't always give proper warnings when they did - see the UVF's Dublin & Monaghan bombings for a particularly grim example).
But real bombs were just common enough that the hoaxes from whatever source had to be taken seriously and so they caused huge amounts of disruption, probably more than anything that actually exploded.
The Weather Underground often warned the targets of their bombings via phone call. (I guess their goal was to attack gov't institutions and make a political statement, not to kill lots of people.) This was in the late '60s-'70s.
Logically that probably makes sense, but it would require everyone in the chain of command agreeing to that policy, and there’s no way that would ever happen from a liability standpoint.
This is like the Adam Sandler movie where he says bomb on an airplane.
It's an overreaction, is it not?
A terrorist is not going to call their bomb's bluetooth trigger bomb. Even if they are, are you telling me we have no idea whether there is a bomb in luggage or not?
The other incident mentioned is worse I think. It wasn’t a potential threat, it was stating an opinion.
“a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.”
This feels like one of those rare stories where everyone involved probably overreacted a little, but you can also understand why nobody wanted to be the person who ignored it.
These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
Someone needs to explain to me how the name of a Bluetooth device has any bearing on anything. Isn’t the real security not letting a bomb on the plane?
Also, now anyone who wants to disrupt a flight can switch their WiFi or Bluetooth name to Bomb or “Free Palestine” and the flight gets disrupted? Get out of here.
There is nothing new in that. It's pretty common that people get drunk at the airport or on the plane and make jokes about bombs or something. Then the place is evacuated and flights are disrupted. The culprits get arrested and probably have to pay a fine and maybe some compensation to the affected airlines, but they usually don't get any prison time.
I brought some bathbombs on a trip as part of a thank you gift. My bag got pulled aside for additional screening, and I had to think for a second on what to call them when the TSA person asked me what they were.
Even if you discount the possibility of an intentional threat as silly, this could have been a warning from someone under duress. Turning around was the right move.
How does that scenario work? Someone's under duress because presumably there's a terrorist on board. He lets the crew know there's a bomb onboard. The plane turns around, and the terrorist... lets the plane land safely?
OK maybe the bomb blows up when it crosses some longitude, because this is like the movie Speed, and turning around means the plane never cross that longitude..
If you mean another type of duress, naming your device "plshelp-[seat number]" would be a hell lot more effective..
Not directly, no, but they’ll build a file for what they consider extremist views. Just look back to the Civil Rights Movement era for the list of things people said that would get them an FBI file - we have a long and storied history of surveilling anyone and everyone who says things that go against what political power desires.
That being said, I do think any cabin crew pitching a fit over such a hotspot name is absolutely in the wrong. That’s not a threat, that’s personal opinion, and it’s not the hotspot owner’s fault the crew conflates Zionist ideology specifically with Jewish Faith in general like an ignorant fool.
Try and think of other groups of people and the “legitimate” statements that can be said to them in a hateful way.
You may genuinely believe that it’s wrong to blow up planes, but going up to a random Muslim in the airport and telling them “please don’t blow yourself up” is Islamophobic.
An aircraft is not really public. The Captain and FO have a tremendous amount of power they can wield to make sure a flight passes without incident. A plane is not the place to make statements.
Granted though, the FBI didn’t actually get involved. But why let facts get in the way of rage?
"Airplane hijackings have occurred since the early days of flight. ...Pre-1929, 1929–1957, 1958–1979, 1980–2000, and 2001–present."
"...Between 1958 and 1967, there were approximately 40 hijackings worldwide..According to the FAA, in the 1960s, there were 100 attempts of hijackings involving U.S. aircraft: 77 successful and 23 unsuccessful....
"..In a five-year period (1968–1972) the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days.."
And your conclusion is "Palestinian" movement (that you wrote between quotes)...invented airplane hijacking?
What’s with the ‘so-called’? That’s what the country is called. Israel. But I’m not sure that you’re aware but there was a really big one 25 years ago this coming September. Maybe you heard of it?
Not sure why this is downvoted. This was an example from the same article.
And the answer is that the FBI wasn't involved. That was a threat the pilot made, which comes psychologically from the same place as terrorist bomb threats (and also "eat your vegetables or you'll die early" parenting). You want to control someone's behavior so you threaten maximalist retaliation.
Cognitive dissonance can explain a lot. If you don’t think the current regime is genocidal (whatever that even means) then you might get very concerned that anybody who says it is genocidal is a dangerous lunatic or terrorist sympathizer. Even saying something obviously truthful like “there are good people on both sides” becomes a threatening provocation. Hate is a system.
Which bomb would advertise itself as such.. this is something I’d expect in the movie Airplane!, not something to happen in real life.
What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane.
I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of Transportation, will fix this.
Seems like an effective DoS attack - ground all planes in the US by sneaking cheap bluetooth speakers into people's luggage with provacative device names
If you’re a terrorist, I’m pretty sure you can think of dramatically more consequential things to do than cause a handful of planes to potentially divert. That’s a wildly pointless prank for something that will invariably wind up with you being arrested.
Why do that when you could simply attack people waiting in the security line? That would actually cause terror and shut down an entire airport for days.
Nothing. TSA is a joke. At first, the security theater arguably had a legitimate psychological purpose. The airline industry nearly collapsed after 9/11 because people were so scared of filing. But that was a generation ago—the psychological trauma in the aftermath of 9/11 dissipated ago. But we’re still stuck with the TSA because in the meantime it turned into a massive jobs program.
We’d be better off spending TSA’s $8 billion budget on paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
Why would a terrorist want to plant a Bluetooth device on someone else's bag when all it would accomplish is a minor delay of one flight and would result in a prison sentence after security camera review??
Why stop at one bag for one flight?
> would result in a prison sentence
That doesn’t seem like a significant deterrent here.
This is the type of prank you’d see some asshole do to try and get followers on TikTok, not something a terrorist would bother with.
This is the SNL sketch in question: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamtelevision/video/7276358099089231...
The same thing that is stopping them from suicide bombing the super crowded security checkpoint line before ID checks.
Nothing really.
Or going into the baggage claim area with a bag containing an explosive device, then acting like they grabbed the wrong bag and putting it back on the carousel, and then leaving.
As an aside, this is something I've only seen in the US. At least in my country the domestic baggage claim area is not accessible unless from an arriving aircraft.
I'm guessing that has more to do with theft though than security.
No, that's because in the US they're handling the international flights separately. It's also the reason why even when you have a layover, you need to clear customs.
Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
We need to put a checkpoint before the checkpoint so that never happens!
In Uganda they make you get out of your car and go through a metal detector before getting to the pre-security security screening at the actual airport... 3-4 layers...
> What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
I make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray. It gets fun when they mandate a pat down in lieu of the millimeter wave scanner but refuse to have someone available for it.
It’s the only way to honestly say you have kept your bags under watch. If anybody tries to send in my bags without me , I immediately speak up in a loud stern voice, “That is not your bag!”
A 16 year boy apparently named his Bluetooth speaker “bomb” and couldn’t turn it off, as it was probably in checked luggage. Woof.
You can't rename most Bluetooth speakers. "Bomb" was the name the selling brand gave the speaker.
By making everyone turn off their Bluetooth, the kid whose speaker had turned on probably couldn't even see the device broadcasting the name. People linked to one by a company made Hellotec but Hama has a similarly named device, and plenty of other speaker manufacturers try to make a pun out of "boombox" by naming their devices "bomb" (iJoy, ZEB-MUSIC, and presumably other such brands).
Maybe if someone asked the passengers if anyone knew about this "bomb" Bluetooth device the kid would've remembered, but in this case I can't blame them. On the other hand, asking passengers if they know something about a bomb is probably the quickest way to cause a panic.
The entire thing seems like a ridiculous overreaction. What kind of terrorist would call their bomb "bomb"? This is "Al Qaeda Free WiFi" all over again.
Even better. The news made it sound like it was an intentional act (at best a prank) by the kid.
If it’s a commercial product doing it, I can’t even quantify the levels of facepalm involved.
It was a bomb speaker: https://hellottec.com/product/bomb-portable-bluetooth-speake...
Calling their speaker Bomb was asking for trouble and I’m surprised this hasn’t occurred before now.
It reminds me of when RED released a camera called Weapon, and I heard of people putting tape over the name when going through the airport.
They did not calculate with the stupidity of some people. I don't blame them. There are just too many mind blowing ways of stupidity to be able to account for all of them. Also it's not their fault other people decide to ground a plane for no reason.
https://ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/tesancdn/hellottec/2_BH_...
What kind of company doesn’t want to pay $5 per month for a paid workers plan for their website?
Companies that focus on product and not “investor value” through nice looking working websites
A lot of non-software businesses probably outsource their websites to some bottom barrel consultant in LCOL countries.
That, or they're such a small business that they never expected one of their random products to be HN hugged to death.
It probably worked fine until today, and will be back to working fine in a few days.
Oh man, talk about unfortunate set of circumstances. It looks like a cartoon-like bomb too.
I'm assuming that's where the name comes from
Yep, I found the product listing via Google. It says Bomb
Website already HN'd into oblivion it seems
Reddit got there first.
The two are indistinguishable for all intents and purposes.
I prefer the term "hugged to death" which I only ever have seen used on HN.
When did Airlines start scanning Bluetooth devices?
Airlines have kept tabs on Bluetooth and WiFi hotspots as early as the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 incidents (2016)
You'd think they would do this before taking off..
Perhaps it was turned on by being jostled during take off.
Some Karen probably reported it
The Reddit thread on this was equal parts amazing and hilarious.
Real time insights from not one, but 9, redditors on the flight.
Main post: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/57lugEMhxl
All the redditors on board: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/Fh2KoqG4SY
A passenger with a hilariously illtimed username: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/W86tRI6ZVf
Those new obfuscated links prevent old.reddit to work.
Is there a way for you to post proper direct links?
> Main post: https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1tse6mq/ua_...
> All the redditors on board: https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1tse6mq/ua_...
> A passenger with a hilariously illtimed username: https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1tse6mq/ua_...
You can modify your regex to only match when it's not a shortened url - then the short one will redirect to the real www.reddit.com address, before the redirect matches.
(Don't have the correct regex on hand right now, as I changed browsers and decided to use Old reddit redirect extension instead of scripting, but it worked in my previous browser)
You can click on any of the links and replace "www" in the url with "old", then you'll have things more or less like how it used to be.
to do that you have to open the link in new reddit first to expand it, then change it to old reddit. if you use a tool that automatically replaces www.reddit.com with old.reddit.com the shortened links break.
For now!
> Those new obfuscated links prevent old.reddit to work.
Can't you just set the old theme in your profile? That's what I do.
only if you actually log in. not everyone does.
I got permanently banned for the "Christianity is just worshipping a Jewish zombie who is his own father who will save you if you invite him into your head, symbolically drink his blood, and eat his flesh" copypasta, so not everyone can log in :)
I'm one ban away from a permaban thanks to the Navy Seal copypasta
Very interesting, but a hell of a way to dox yourself for being on the flight manifest.
The entities that have access to flight manifests have far easier ways to identify who's behind your account. It's not a threat model worth seriously considering.
Are flight manifests public?
Internal flights in New Zealand don’t need ID. So if you knew you were going to posting your terrible flight experience, you could fly under a fake name.
People prank others all the time with goofy names [1] (2014) So are we at the point where that will change and devices will have to just assign random sanitized dictionary names? "Connect to my 'apple horse bunny farm'" There are programs that can flood an area with tens of thousands of fake access points (scapy-fakeap). Or thousands of drones for that matter. [2]
[1] - https://observer.com/2014/03/park-slope-kiddie-shop-hunts-fo...
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8jn_6EmYxE
Pranks aside, this becomes remarkably scary when you think about all the ways that a malicious/compromised device could cause chaos.
I really don't appreciate you posting my unhashed password to the public like that
> a flight attendant told passengers over the PA system that they "must turn off Bluetooth immediately," or else the aircraft would have to turn around.
So if the person just takes back their bomb threat everything is ok? Or did they think the terrorist labeled their Bluetooth bomb “bomb” and this would disable it?
I guess they assumed there were two scenarios:
1. It was unintentional; someone had a bluetooth device called BOMB for some reason that made sense before boarding the plane. They would turn it off.
2. It was intentional; someone wanted to send a warning and chose this channel - they would leave the device on.
3. The level of tech illiteracy combined with airplane security theater is an affront to all thinking people.
4. A normal level of risk aversion in one of the most risk averse industries
If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.
How many threats did actually turn out to be real to date? I couldn't find this being published. But how many threats did happen without any indication (only after the perpetrators tell). I can easily recalled maybe 3-4 incidents. So the issue here is do knowing threats really help?
In the simplest possible terms: this is total bullshit security theatre. At no point has there ever been a bomb or even a bomb threat carried out via usb device names. There is absolutely no reason to even look at the names of Bluetooth devices on a flight.
It wasn't a bomb threat: https://hellottec.com/product/bomb-portable-bluetooth-speake...
> This website has been temporarily rate limited
Apparently it wasn’t a threat - a kid had a commercial Bluetooth speaker that names itself as ‘bomb’. No one on the plane did anything intentionally.
[flagged]
This is wildly inaccurate to the point of being dangerous advice. The goal during a bomb threat call is generally not to challenge, mock, or provoke the caller into a reaction. It is to keep the caller talking for as long as possible and gather information that could help assess the threat and assist law enforcement or security. There is no reliable rule that says a "real terrorist" will hang up if laughed at or that a hoax caller will stay on the line. People making threats behave in many different ways and simplistic tests like this are not a dependable way to determine whether a threat is real.
Looking at the deluge of downvotes, is the clearest example of what is worst with this community. Hardly no argument, no analysis, just social suppression.
The claim was not "ignore threats" and naturally execution matters. The claim was that threat making, and threat execution, are different behaviors. I provided a real example, of a real powerful mechanism of assessment. This was standard threat assessment logic using the best street smarts, that many here clearly lack.
Howlers use the threat as the weapon, while Hunters avoid warning because warning destroys surprise. The terrorist will hang up because the does not care about you, and the threat is real, the joker only power, is the strength of his bluff, so he will be have to reinforce it, specially if met with incredulity...
"All threats must be taken seriously" is politically correct, dont-sue-me, standard operating procedure...not reasoning. It is the safe corporate answer people repeat, when they cannot distinguish procedure from analysis.
Downvoting that distinction instead of engaging with it is cowardice with a ui button. I dont like your opinion, so let me just me muffle your mouth... Instead of engaging with the question: I am dealing with a Howler performing a threat, or a Hunter preparing an attack? Most here went for procedure substituted for thought, and social disapproval substituted for argument.
"Threat Assessment and Management Strategies: Identifying the Howlers and Hunters" -https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/4183175-threat-assess...
You are supposed to take every threat as real. Which is also why calling in a fake threat is considered a big federal crime to deter clowns.
I was talking about this with someone the other day… How many real terrorism threats have been preceded by the terrorist telegraphing their intentions with a phone call beforehand? My prior is that this number is essentially 0 and we should ignore bomb threats as a society.
Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omagh_bombing
Two: https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nye/pr/2012/2012nov08.h...
Three (not sure if the caller was the one planting the bomb here): https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/01/bomb-aimed-a...
Probably not super common but it does happen from time to time. And imagine ignoring a bomb threat and then it's real, you probably would not want to be responsible for that.
The IRA (Irish terrorists, for Americans confused at the acronym, or maybe confused at what the IRA did) did occasionally phone warnings and occasionally the information was accurate. Code words were used to authenticate the threat.
The PIRA actually do seem to have intended to give accurate warnings when they planted bombs, in Belfast at least. There were inevitably cases when the information was garbled or misunderstood but the use of codewords & the practice of delivering the warnings to a known set of media outlets was at least an attempt to minimise these.
The downside was that the vast majority of warnings were hoaxes - bomb scares were dozens of times more common than actual bombs.
The other main groups - INLA, UVF, and UFF/UDA also got in on the hoax game, but didn't often do real bombs (and didn't always give proper warnings when they did - see the UVF's Dublin & Monaghan bombings for a particularly grim example).
But real bombs were just common enough that the hoaxes from whatever source had to be taken seriously and so they caused huge amounts of disruption, probably more than anything that actually exploded.
The Weather Underground often warned the targets of their bombings via phone call. (I guess their goal was to attack gov't institutions and make a political statement, not to kill lots of people.) This was in the late '60s-'70s.
Logically that probably makes sense, but it would require everyone in the chain of command agreeing to that policy, and there’s no way that would ever happen from a liability standpoint.
The IRA bombs in civilian areas in the uk almost always had phone calls that preceded the bombs going off.
This is like the Adam Sandler movie where he says bomb on an airplane. It's an overreaction, is it not? A terrorist is not going to call their bomb's bluetooth trigger bomb. Even if they are, are you telling me we have no idea whether there is a bomb in luggage or not?
Andddd now everyone knows that an arbitrary text string in a device hostname is enough to ground a flight.
The other incident mentioned is worse I think. It wasn’t a potential threat, it was stating an opinion.
“a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.”
To be honest calling the police and saying you have a bomb planted on flight XYZ and want 100000$ or you'll detonate it, is probably also enough.
But bombs apparently use bluetooth now, so he can't detonate it from more than a few metres away...
> he can't detonate it from more than a few metres away...
Reliably bond detonation is on the roadmap for Bluetooth 8.
This feels like one of those rare stories where everyone involved probably overreacted a little, but you can also understand why nobody wanted to be the person who ignored it.
These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
> These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
What do you mean?
Oh gosh, sure, terrorists always name their devices "bomb" in the open.
Why would it land in New York instead of St John?
Better food and theater.
Presumably the logistics of being back at a major hub
What a usability nightmare this site is: 3-4 popups before I could even read the title. No thank you. And this is with an adblocker turned on.
Don't these sites realize how many users they're losing?
IM THE BOMB AND ABOUT TO BLOW UPPPPPPPP
Someone needs to explain to me how the name of a Bluetooth device has any bearing on anything. Isn’t the real security not letting a bomb on the plane?
Also, now anyone who wants to disrupt a flight can switch their WiFi or Bluetooth name to Bomb or “Free Palestine” and the flight gets disrupted? Get out of here.
There is nothing new in that. It's pretty common that people get drunk at the airport or on the plane and make jokes about bombs or something. Then the place is evacuated and flights are disrupted. The culprits get arrested and probably have to pay a fine and maybe some compensation to the affected airlines, but they usually don't get any prison time.
There are simpler ways to disrupt a flight.
Are there? Setting a device name might be the lowest effort thing I can think of.
Just wait until you hear what a bad joke while waiting in the TSA line can do to you day.
I brought some bathbombs on a trip as part of a thank you gift. My bag got pulled aside for additional screening, and I had to think for a second on what to call them when the TSA person asked me what they were.
Even if you discount the possibility of an intentional threat as silly, this could have been a warning from someone under duress. Turning around was the right move.
How does that scenario work? Someone's under duress because presumably there's a terrorist on board. He lets the crew know there's a bomb onboard. The plane turns around, and the terrorist... lets the plane land safely?
OK maybe the bomb blows up when it crosses some longitude, because this is like the movie Speed, and turning around means the plane never cross that longitude..
If you mean another type of duress, naming your device "plshelp-[seat number]" would be a hell lot more effective..
> How does that scenario work?
It’s funnier than that. If they had turned off ‘bomb’ the plane would have just carried on.
The event is bizarre.
... I can't believe what I am reading...
"Bluetooth speaker name had been set to a "four-letter word, [...] BOMB".
Luckily, it wasn't named "Nuclear Bomb from Cuba" because US Authorities would not have other choice than to nuke Cuba.
Seriously? What those people are doing when they see a fence with "ASS" painted on it? Do they believe that too?
> "Free Palestine, F Zionists"
Does the FBI usually get involved when someone says these words in public in the US?
Not directly, no, but they’ll build a file for what they consider extremist views. Just look back to the Civil Rights Movement era for the list of things people said that would get them an FBI file - we have a long and storied history of surveilling anyone and everyone who says things that go against what political power desires.
That being said, I do think any cabin crew pitching a fit over such a hotspot name is absolutely in the wrong. That’s not a threat, that’s personal opinion, and it’s not the hotspot owner’s fault the crew conflates Zionist ideology specifically with Jewish Faith in general like an ignorant fool.
“Free Palestine” isn’t exactly fringe. In fact, outside America and Israel, I’d bet it’s the default stance
Something can be a “virtuous” statement while still being an expression of hatred.
Someone shouting “free Palestine” at random Jews in Europe, for example, is just being an antisemite.
Why? This makes no logical sense.
Try and think of other groups of people and the “legitimate” statements that can be said to them in a hateful way.
You may genuinely believe that it’s wrong to blow up planes, but going up to a random Muslim in the airport and telling them “please don’t blow yourself up” is Islamophobic.
Do you agree with that?
> “Free Palestine” isn’t exactly fringe. In fact, outside America and Israel, I’d bet it’s the default stance
That's certainly not true in many European countries
> when someone says these words in public in the US?
Depending on where the plane was, it might not even have happened in the US.
In the UK you can get arrested for saying less.
An aircraft is not really public. The Captain and FO have a tremendous amount of power they can wield to make sure a flight passes without incident. A plane is not the place to make statements.
Granted though, the FBI didn’t actually get involved. But why let facts get in the way of rage?
> A plane is not the place to make statements
Sounds like they should only be made in freedom designated zones a-la Bush-Cheney
The "Palestinian" movement _invented_ airplane hijacking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings_an...
So yes, the FBI will get involved in this case. In this context it is something to worry about.
Biased much? You could have used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking
That says:
"Airplane hijackings have occurred since the early days of flight. ...Pre-1929, 1929–1957, 1958–1979, 1980–2000, and 2001–present."
"...Between 1958 and 1967, there were approximately 40 hijackings worldwide..According to the FAA, in the 1960s, there were 100 attempts of hijackings involving U.S. aircraft: 77 successful and 23 unsuccessful....
"..In a five-year period (1968–1972) the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days.."
And your conclusion is "Palestinian" movement (that you wrote between quotes)...invented airplane hijacking?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking
Looks like the first one was a Hungarian in 1919.
Which is kind of ironic, considering modern terrorism was basically an invention of the Zionist movement in Palestine.
And when was the last time such a hijacking took place outside of so-called “Israel”?
> so-called “Israel”
What’s with the ‘so-called’? That’s what the country is called. Israel. But I’m not sure that you’re aware but there was a really big one 25 years ago this coming September. Maybe you heard of it?
u/fortran77 used the phrase so-called “Palestinian” movement (slightly edited since), so I simply responded with the same rhetoric :)
Of course, I somehow doubt that you would have a similarly strong reaction when Palestine is erased.
No evidence of that, of course, but your comment stands.
No that was because they hate our freedom, not because of decades of occupation and war all over the middle east funded by US taxpayer dollars.
The government of Israel has more freedom of speech and control over the US than voting citizens do.
Not sure why this is downvoted. This was an example from the same article.
And the answer is that the FBI wasn't involved. That was a threat the pilot made, which comes psychologically from the same place as terrorist bomb threats (and also "eat your vegetables or you'll die early" parenting). You want to control someone's behavior so you threaten maximalist retaliation.
Imagine getting your jimmies this rustled over expressing antipathy for a genocidal regime, and sympathy for an oppressed people.
Cognitive dissonance can explain a lot. If you don’t think the current regime is genocidal (whatever that even means) then you might get very concerned that anybody who says it is genocidal is a dangerous lunatic or terrorist sympathizer. Even saying something obviously truthful like “there are good people on both sides” becomes a threatening provocation. Hate is a system.
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