According to the FBI, terrorists have noticed that Americans will go crazy and attack themselves (shutting down public spaces and transit, evacuating busy areas, subjecting innocents to search, detention and questioning) if you leave a "suspicious" bag in a public place. This is thanks to programs like New York City's "See Something, Say Something," which generates thousands of calls about "suspicious activity" every year, not one of which has ever led to an actual terrorism arrest. Of course, leaving bags of water or socks is an errand that's a lot less risky than planting bombs.
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Well, at least they aren’t blowing people up. I’d rather be really, really annoyed than dead.
3rd Revision:
Fuck it: You win.
Never led to a terrorism arrest? Didn’t those street vendors say something when they saw Faisal Shahzad’s car smoking?
The article is describing the “report a bag” alerts, not someone seeing a vehicle producing smoke. And no, those report a bag programs have never done anything.
So if bags filled with innocent items are a sign of terrorist activity, then carrying bags containing innocent items must be a sign that you are a terrorist, so the FBI obviously needs to tell the TSA to watch for and arrest any air travelers whose bags do not contain bombs and weapons.
Makes perfect sense!
“Around here you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place!”
Outsourcing your terror to the terrorized.
It had to come to this one day. It’s still technically a terrorist threat, but it’s hard to prove intent when someone leaves random crap on the subway.
The Mooninites took Boston this way, without firing a shot. The city fell into their hands like an overripe Magic Mushroom.
“attack itself” The metaphor with the human immune system and allergies are glaring. Now how does the “hygiene hypothesis” fit in there…
So… If they haven’t arrested anyone how do they know it’s “terrorists” doing it and not, say forgetful people, bums, litterers and high school kids pulling pranks?
Why use explosives to blow up people who are already so unstable themselves?
Basically, everything from the city’s own traffic monitoring devices to cartoon depictions of fictional firearms on tshirts are now dangerous.
“Land of the free” indeed.
Girl, that bag is the BOMB!
I really had to check if this was an Onion article or not…
Oh but, your summary is your own conclusion, and not that of ABC’s.
Well, the terrorists must be laughing, this is like playing chess with an imbecile that have just realized “oh wow, I can think 1 move ahead” after 8 (or however many years) of analyzing the board for just the current move. And sorry USA, you are that imbecile. And there are many many moves ahead that a chess player can analyze!
How do you like your “New Mental Battlefield” now, Colonel John Alexander?
Perhaps he meant “mental” in the “insane” sense.
This is not a new idea. Read Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp, published in 1957.
Ummm is littering a terrorist act now?
A tactic of Guerilla warfare is to “Wear the enemy down” and the panic/petty rent a h-tler authority trip after 9/11 is a ripe target for it.
And really, it’s not any ‘brilliant’ tactic.
Remember “Call of Duty”? The TV series about the Vietnam war?
Had one where a sniper shot at an ‘official’ style gathering in the middle of the jungle. Except the sniper shot the Chaplin, not getting the “Rank” right, or it would have been the General. The General knows this and is so enraged he has the whole hillside covered with shells that just shake the jungle up.
Two black soldiers were commenting. “Look at it this way… Sniper spent, what, 8 cents on that bullet? Those shells cost Uncle Sam $20,000 each and this sh-t has been going on 8 hours now. They spend pennies and kill one of us, we spend $8 million trying to kill him…”
Also see the short story “Weapons of Mass Distraction” by Richard A. Lovett.
This has been ongoing since 9/11. We’ve consistently been damaging ourselves more than the terrorists have damaged us.
This is exactly what terrorism is. Where’s the story here?
you don’t need bombs when people freak out over a bag
I’m curious. Have you, Cory Doctorow, ever received any backlash from any of these things you out ala W1n5t0n? Long thorough investigations at customs? Etc.
I would imagine with your history with greenpeace, the EFF and your public stature no. After all, thousands would rally around you and not allow the car to move, so-to-speak.
Just curious, and once again thank you for letting us see the real cost of all this from another perspective.
Who said homoeopathy doesn’t work?
Clever. :D
The really scary thing is this part: “The potential terrorists would be watching the response.” So by dropping bags of bottled water, would-be terrorists can practice their attacks and get useful feedback from actual law enforcement responses. All they have to do is plant these things for a while until people start getting lazy, then use all that intel to drop a real bomb every once in a while. That of course will scare people even more. Repeat cycle until we spend all our time and resources chasing down bags. Very effective. Time to move out into the country.
Unfortunately, this is true. They are probably not only observing responses, but also training us as a whole to think that all of these suspicious packages are harmless, setting us up for the real thing.
Between airline passengers giving shoe and panty bombers the beat-down and redonkulous overreaction to movie-plot perceptions of threat, I can honestly say that I’ve never been so unafraid of a terrorist attack. Law enforcement, on the other hand, is getting more frightening by the day.
Big deal. This plan isn’t terror, it’s just trolling.
I actually doubt many would-be jihadists would actually bother with leaving suspicious packages around, because the risk-to-reward ratio is out of balance. There is still some risk of getting caught, what with the ubiquity of surveillance in the city, a paranoid populace, and an enthusiastic police force. And yet, very little reward – you inconvenience some people and cost everybody a penney’s worth of tax money – so what.
If you get caught you maybe get a littering ticket.
That’s a pretty sweet deal compared to getting caught trying to plant a bomb.
If you wanted to cause harm to a populace, how’d you like to be able to panic a city for a day and have them be unable to file any criminal charges against you?
Even better yet is if someone starts trying to press criminal charges for leaving bags laying around, and you actually manage to get your enemies throwing each other in jail for completely inane reasons.
more likely to be CIA tactics to maintain the general climate of fear than genuine terrorism.
@24 Are you serious? The risk/reward ratio is infinite. there’s absolutely no risk: “Oh sorry, thanks. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d gotten home tonight forgetting my wife’s dry cleaning.” Where’s the risk in that? Against that, any loss is relatively huge. And what will the state do? Make it a felony to forget your briefcase on a train?
But everybody knows now that if you are Arab and give the slightest whiff of suspicion NYC police will keep tabs on you. Heck, they keep data on stop-and-frisks that yield no evidence of criminal activity. They are not shy about these things.
That suspicion would include, presumably, leaving an arbitrary package in a public place, especially now that the PD has been tipped to the possibility that this is an intentional tactic. Whereas in the past they might simply put the benign package in the lost-and-found or whatever, I’m pretty sure that they’ll now be looking at surveillance to see if the “culprit” is brown. After all, this is the latest trend in terrorism, and every cop wants to catch a real live terrorist.
So, if I were a radical intent on causing real harm to the US, I wouldn’t bother – I’d keep a low profile until I could get a more substantive op together.
In Jerusalem, there are little well-like holes throughout the city, specifically for suspicious unattended bags. You see one, you throw it down the well, no fuss, no interruption of daily life.
Just make sure not to leave your bags sitting unattended, though, or they will soon be gone.
the terrorists have succeeded in creating a terrorized state.
Don’t let them win. Ignore bags and mooninites.
Wasp is a 1957 science fiction novel by English author Eric Frank Russell.
At the time, it was a light-hearted romp through terrorism where “we” were the good guys and our “wasp” was a somewhat reluctant agent sent out to destroy the bad guys through their own stupidity.
The metaphor was a wasp who weighs about a sixteenth of an ounce crashing a 4000 pound car by distracting the driver.
Our current enemies probably don’t read science fiction, but they didn’t need to – we are perfectly capable of doing it to ourselves.
gmpierce:Our current enemies probably don’t read science fiction
Don’t be so sure. A lot of terrorists are engineers, which is a demographic that traditionally leans towards science fiction reading. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult was inspired by Asimov’s Foundation books, and the Arabic translation of Foundation was titled “Al-Qaeda”.
So basically, the terrorists have given us lupus?
What would Dr House say?
I was born and raised in NYC and I never thought I’d see the day when someone’s discarded lunch bag would shut the city down.
Of course there is potential for a real threat here. So what we you gonna’ do? Ignore it?
What a terrible situation.
the video’s close up of the “suspicious bag filled with socks” tells us everything we need to know.
The bag seems to contain
1: 2 pairs of socks
2: a sweatshirt
3: a cardboard box, of pills
4: a steel thermos cup, with lid
5: a box of de-deodorant
6: assorted bathroom items (cream, sponge, etc)
Back in my day this was known as a “gym bag”
We used to take them to the gym. Occasionally we lost them.
My theory: the media will take any random posting by any internet commenter as some kind of statement of intent by the worlds terrorist overlords.
So, the “terrorists” don’t even need to drop bags, only to post a comment on a forum that they might do this.
Note to homeland security: I am going to kill Superman with Kryptonite, just try and stop me suckaz !
the olympics recently came to my town, that very expensive 5 ring circus that leaves a legacy of debt in its wake. it is very difficult not to connect the slashing of funds to the arts, social services, education, health and programs for woman and children directly to the enormous budget for the party no one who actually LIVES in this town had opportunity to attend. particularly rankling was the BILLION dollars spent on security. a BILLION!, while i’m working with a homeless population that has doubled since we ‘won’ the bid. i’m no organizer of protests,( though i have been arrested, tried , convicted and sentenced for participation in peaceful demonstration), but living in vancouver one can’t toss a rock in any direction without hitting a ‘professional protester’ in the head..there is ALWAYS a group of people angry about something in this town. so, this is what i put out, to several of my protester-type friends…lets buy up every cheap back-pack from here to the border, fill them with newspapers or old clothes or whatever, and just LEAVE them places. the whole city would be snarled, the ridiculousness of the security would be highlighted, and no one would get hurt.
instead they chose smashing window, throwing rocks and alienating the millions who were against the expenditure from voicing their displeasure for fear of being connected to those actions.
menh.
Make sure the protest is well organized. That way it’ll be easier to slip a real one in the bunch, thus justifying the erosion of our rights and confidence. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you ;)
captcha: pliancy doctors
gotta love that!
The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
Eventually we will stop freaking out which is then the prime time to actually bomb the crap out of us.
The best way to eliminate this method of causing fear is for everyone to pitch in and keep our cities clean and well groomed. If there is no trash or places to conceal something, and everybody is always helping to keep it that way, then someone would be stopped within 2 ft of “Forgetting” an item.
And everyone should also always take the time to talk to their neighbors, family, and complete strangers. Engage them, and be polite, yet subtle when interrogating them about their suspicious activities.
Hm, sounds more like what some FBI agents would have incentive to do when their unit risks getting downsized. An easy way to give yourself lifetime employment.
Wouldn’t that make sense? Al-Qaeda just means “the base.”
Anyway, the news article seems to suggest that this was mentioned on a “jihadist web site” which as far as I can tell is basically just an extremist blog (maybe I’m wrong — maybe international terrorists really do organize all their clandestine activities by blogging about them openly on the internet).
It also seems to mention that so far there’s been no evidence of any such campaign.
So not only are we getting wound up over people leaving empty bags around, we’re getting wound up over people talking about how they *might* leave empty bags around.
This is such a non-story. It really is nothing more than some guy on a so-called jihadist website saying what amounts to, “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be cool if we all started to….”
On the other hand, it could lead to a new TV show: Law & Order: Suspicious Bag Squad.
This is conspiracy theory.
I don’t think left luggage causes “fear” or “Terror” just a little concern.
Hell, around here calling the bomb squad out just causes annoyance, not fear. Last week they shut down part of my neighborhood (downtown SF) for a bomb scare (ie: someone’s gym bag.) Talked to a lot of people about it and not a single person was concerned about a bomb being in the neighborhood, a few were enjoying the show, most were just annoyed that they were f-ing up traffic.
I don’t think left luggage causes “fear” or “Terror”
Then you’ve never met luggage made of sapient pearwood.
It would be interesting to see what happens around here when the unnoticed bag or the ignored package blows up. Then you guys would be whining about the police not doing their job or “why do they hate us?”
Besides — often these packages may be dry runs probing defenses, response times, etc. It’s a tried and true tactic in battles, crimes, etc.
“often these packages may be dry runs probing defenses,…” WTF?
“they might be” kind of precludes “often”
Often, they might be left by Santa Clause, or Space Aliens, or the Fairie … or by someone.
And please don’t tell us guys what we’ll be whining about. Just limit it to what we often might be whining about, OK?
Ok… “might be” not often then…. sorry for the shotgun as opposed to the laser language…
Now that you’ve attacked the grammar and not the idea — kudos to you for your withering logical take down. MLA will be so be proud of you.
So…
Do we leave these packages be or do we call them in?
I guess it depends on where you let the risk fall… on the general public who might not notice the bag, the non-expert individual who may remove the bag at their own peril or the relative expert paid to take the risk public safety person.
Playing whack-a-mole with unattended bags is surely a fool’s errand, but it doesn’t answer the main question of the bags that are left.
You’re right, my whole comment was kind of tongue-in-cheek, because that’s how I feel about the whole issue.
But the first part of my response was poking fun at the grammar instead of the opinion. My apologies for the offense given.
The second part was not. Is an unattended package on a street corner more likely to be left by a terrorist, or Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or someone who just forgot to pick it up and left it there? How many nines to the right of the decimal point do we need for that?
As to my response to the situation described…
Well, if it’s not noticed, there’s no question about calling it in, so it’s really two choices, and I think I would be the non-expert individual who would make a non-expert evaluation, and either check it out or call it in, depending on what I thought was appropriate.
If it was a backpack in an airport, I’d call it in.
If it were a cooler on a street corner on a hot day, I’d probably open it and look, but again, it would depend on what I thought of the situation.
Yes, I could quite possibly get people killed, but I’m a lot MORE likely to do that any time I get behind the wheel. Or cook dinner for friends.
(They know my cooking)
Here in the UK,
1) an unattended bag would not cause a problem as you wouldn’t see it under all the rubbish in the streets. Problem will disappear completely soon when we stop paying the bin men.
2) we have now found something to fill in all the pot holes in the road, closer to Jerusalem.
At this rate we will run out of things to moan about, except the weather.
Though I’m all for taking back our civil rights and moving beyond our reactionary anti-terrorism policies, it’s not accurate to say America’s policies haven’t stopped any terrorist plots. The recent failed Times Square bombing immediately comes to mind. Someone “saw something” and “said something” and the bomb was found. Granted, it had failed of its own accord, but one must concede the authorities were alerted for valid reasons.
Use the ridiculous, paranoid system against itself. Makes sense.
Well, at least they aren’t blowing people up. I’d rather be really, really annoyed than dead.
3rd Revision:
Fuck it: You win.
Never led to a terrorism arrest? Didn’t those street vendors say something when they saw Faisal Shahzad’s car smoking?
The article is describing the “report a bag” alerts, not someone seeing a vehicle producing smoke. And no, those report a bag programs have never done anything.
So if bags filled with innocent items are a sign of terrorist activity, then carrying bags containing innocent items must be a sign that you are a terrorist, so the FBI obviously needs to tell the TSA to watch for and arrest any air travelers whose bags do not contain bombs and weapons.
Makes perfect sense!
“Around here you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place!”
Outsourcing your terror to the terrorized.
It had to come to this one day. It’s still technically a terrorist threat, but it’s hard to prove intent when someone leaves random crap on the subway.
The Mooninites took Boston this way, without firing a shot. The city fell into their hands like an overripe Magic Mushroom.
“attack itself” The metaphor with the human immune system and allergies are glaring. Now how does the “hygiene hypothesis” fit in there…
So… If they haven’t arrested anyone how do they know it’s “terrorists” doing it and not, say forgetful people, bums, litterers and high school kids pulling pranks?
Why use explosives to blow up people who are already so unstable themselves?
Basically, everything from the city’s own traffic monitoring devices to cartoon depictions of fictional firearms on tshirts are now dangerous.
“Land of the free” indeed.
Girl, that bag is the BOMB!
I really had to check if this was an Onion article or not…
Oh but, your summary is your own conclusion, and not that of ABC’s.
Well, the terrorists must be laughing, this is like playing chess with an imbecile that have just realized “oh wow, I can think 1 move ahead” after 8 (or however many years) of analyzing the board for just the current move. And sorry USA, you are that imbecile. And there are many many moves ahead that a chess player can analyze!
How do you like your “New Mental Battlefield” now, Colonel John Alexander?
Perhaps he meant “mental” in the “insane” sense.
This is not a new idea. Read Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp, published in 1957.
Ummm is littering a terrorist act now?
A tactic of Guerilla warfare is to “Wear the enemy down” and the panic/petty rent a h-tler authority trip after 9/11 is a ripe target for it.
And really, it’s not any ‘brilliant’ tactic.
Remember “Call of Duty”? The TV series about the Vietnam war?
Had one where a sniper shot at an ‘official’ style gathering in the middle of the jungle. Except the sniper shot the Chaplin, not getting the “Rank” right, or it would have been the General. The General knows this and is so enraged he has the whole hillside covered with shells that just shake the jungle up.
Two black soldiers were commenting. “Look at it this way… Sniper spent, what, 8 cents on that bullet? Those shells cost Uncle Sam $20,000 each and this sh-t has been going on 8 hours now. They spend pennies and kill one of us, we spend $8 million trying to kill him…”
Also see the short story “Weapons of Mass Distraction” by Richard A. Lovett.
This has been ongoing since 9/11. We’ve consistently been damaging ourselves more than the terrorists have damaged us.
This is exactly what terrorism is. Where’s the story here?
you don’t need bombs when people freak out over a bag
I’m curious. Have you, Cory Doctorow, ever received any backlash from any of these things you out ala W1n5t0n? Long thorough investigations at customs? Etc.
I would imagine with your history with greenpeace, the EFF and your public stature no. After all, thousands would rally around you and not allow the car to move, so-to-speak.
Just curious, and once again thank you for letting us see the real cost of all this from another perspective.
Who said homoeopathy doesn’t work?
Clever. :D
The really scary thing is this part: “The potential terrorists would be watching the response.” So by dropping bags of bottled water, would-be terrorists can practice their attacks and get useful feedback from actual law enforcement responses. All they have to do is plant these things for a while until people start getting lazy, then use all that intel to drop a real bomb every once in a while. That of course will scare people even more. Repeat cycle until we spend all our time and resources chasing down bags. Very effective. Time to move out into the country.
Unfortunately, this is true. They are probably not only observing responses, but also training us as a whole to think that all of these suspicious packages are harmless, setting us up for the real thing.
Between airline passengers giving shoe and panty bombers the beat-down and redonkulous overreaction to movie-plot perceptions of threat, I can honestly say that I’ve never been so unafraid of a terrorist attack. Law enforcement, on the other hand, is getting more frightening by the day.
Big deal. This plan isn’t terror, it’s just trolling.
I actually doubt many would-be jihadists would actually bother with leaving suspicious packages around, because the risk-to-reward ratio is out of balance. There is still some risk of getting caught, what with the ubiquity of surveillance in the city, a paranoid populace, and an enthusiastic police force. And yet, very little reward – you inconvenience some people and cost everybody a penney’s worth of tax money – so what.
If you get caught you maybe get a littering ticket.
That’s a pretty sweet deal compared to getting caught trying to plant a bomb.
If you wanted to cause harm to a populace, how’d you like to be able to panic a city for a day and have them be unable to file any criminal charges against you?
Even better yet is if someone starts trying to press criminal charges for leaving bags laying around, and you actually manage to get your enemies throwing each other in jail for completely inane reasons.
more likely to be CIA tactics to maintain the general climate of fear than genuine terrorism.
@24 Are you serious? The risk/reward ratio is infinite. there’s absolutely no risk: “Oh sorry, thanks. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d gotten home tonight forgetting my wife’s dry cleaning.” Where’s the risk in that? Against that, any loss is relatively huge. And what will the state do? Make it a felony to forget your briefcase on a train?
But everybody knows now that if you are Arab and give the slightest whiff of suspicion NYC police will keep tabs on you. Heck, they keep data on stop-and-frisks that yield no evidence of criminal activity. They are not shy about these things.
That suspicion would include, presumably, leaving an arbitrary package in a public place, especially now that the PD has been tipped to the possibility that this is an intentional tactic. Whereas in the past they might simply put the benign package in the lost-and-found or whatever, I’m pretty sure that they’ll now be looking at surveillance to see if the “culprit” is brown. After all, this is the latest trend in terrorism, and every cop wants to catch a real live terrorist.
So, if I were a radical intent on causing real harm to the US, I wouldn’t bother – I’d keep a low profile until I could get a more substantive op together.
In Jerusalem, there are little well-like holes throughout the city, specifically for suspicious unattended bags. You see one, you throw it down the well, no fuss, no interruption of daily life.
Just make sure not to leave your bags sitting unattended, though, or they will soon be gone.
the terrorists have succeeded in creating a terrorized state.
Don’t let them win. Ignore bags and mooninites.
Wasp is a 1957 science fiction novel by English author Eric Frank Russell.
At the time, it was a light-hearted romp through terrorism where “we” were the good guys and our “wasp” was a somewhat reluctant agent sent out to destroy the bad guys through their own stupidity.
The metaphor was a wasp who weighs about a sixteenth of an ounce crashing a 4000 pound car by distracting the driver.
Our current enemies probably don’t read science fiction, but they didn’t need to – we are perfectly capable of doing it to ourselves.
gmpierce: Our current enemies probably don’t read science fiction
Don’t be so sure. A lot of terrorists are engineers, which is a demographic that traditionally leans towards science fiction reading. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult was inspired by Asimov’s Foundation books, and the Arabic translation of Foundation was titled “Al-Qaeda”.
So basically, the terrorists have given us lupus?
What would Dr House say?
I was born and raised in NYC and I never thought I’d see the day when someone’s discarded lunch bag would shut the city down.
Of course there is potential for a real threat here. So what we you gonna’ do? Ignore it?
What a terrible situation.
the video’s close up of the “suspicious bag filled with socks” tells us everything we need to know.
The bag seems to contain
1: 2 pairs of socks
2: a sweatshirt
3: a cardboard box, of pills
4: a steel thermos cup, with lid
5: a box of de-deodorant
6: assorted bathroom items (cream, sponge, etc)
Back in my day this was known as a “gym bag”
We used to take them to the gym. Occasionally we lost them.
My theory: the media will take any random posting by any internet commenter as some kind of statement of intent by the worlds terrorist overlords.
So, the “terrorists” don’t even need to drop bags, only to post a comment on a forum that they might do this.
Note to homeland security: I am going to kill Superman with Kryptonite, just try and stop me suckaz !
the olympics recently came to my town, that very expensive 5 ring circus that leaves a legacy of debt in its wake. it is very difficult not to connect the slashing of funds to the arts, social services, education, health and programs for woman and children directly to the enormous budget for the party no one who actually LIVES in this town had opportunity to attend. particularly rankling was the BILLION dollars spent on security. a BILLION!, while i’m working with a homeless population that has doubled since we ‘won’ the bid. i’m no organizer of protests,( though i have been arrested, tried , convicted and sentenced for participation in peaceful demonstration), but living in vancouver one can’t toss a rock in any direction without hitting a ‘professional protester’ in the head..there is ALWAYS a group of people angry about something in this town. so, this is what i put out, to several of my protester-type friends…lets buy up every cheap back-pack from here to the border, fill them with newspapers or old clothes or whatever, and just LEAVE them places. the whole city would be snarled, the ridiculousness of the security would be highlighted, and no one would get hurt.
instead they chose smashing window, throwing rocks and alienating the millions who were against the expenditure from voicing their displeasure for fear of being connected to those actions.
menh.
Make sure the protest is well organized. That way it’ll be easier to slip a real one in the bunch, thus justifying the erosion of our rights and confidence. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you ;)
captcha: pliancy doctors
gotta love that!
The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
Eventually we will stop freaking out which is then the prime time to actually bomb the crap out of us.
The best way to eliminate this method of causing fear is for everyone to pitch in and keep our cities clean and well groomed. If there is no trash or places to conceal something, and everybody is always helping to keep it that way, then someone would be stopped within 2 ft of “Forgetting” an item.
And everyone should also always take the time to talk to their neighbors, family, and complete strangers. Engage them, and be polite, yet subtle when interrogating them about their suspicious activities.
Hm, sounds more like what some FBI agents would have incentive to do when their unit risks getting downsized. An easy way to give yourself lifetime employment.
Wouldn’t that make sense? Al-Qaeda just means “the base.”
Anyway, the news article seems to suggest that this was mentioned on a “jihadist web site” which as far as I can tell is basically just an extremist blog (maybe I’m wrong — maybe international terrorists really do organize all their clandestine activities by blogging about them openly on the internet).
It also seems to mention that so far there’s been no evidence of any such campaign.
So not only are we getting wound up over people leaving empty bags around, we’re getting wound up over people talking about how they *might* leave empty bags around.
This is such a non-story. It really is nothing more than some guy on a so-called jihadist website saying what amounts to, “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be cool if we all started to….”
On the other hand, it could lead to a new TV show: Law & Order: Suspicious Bag Squad.
This is conspiracy theory.
I don’t think left luggage causes “fear” or “Terror” just a little concern.
Hell, around here calling the bomb squad out just causes annoyance, not fear. Last week they shut down part of my neighborhood (downtown SF) for a bomb scare (ie: someone’s gym bag.) Talked to a lot of people about it and not a single person was concerned about a bomb being in the neighborhood, a few were enjoying the show, most were just annoyed that they were f-ing up traffic.
Then you’ve never met luggage made of sapient pearwood.
It would be interesting to see what happens around here when the unnoticed bag or the ignored package blows up. Then you guys would be whining about the police not doing their job or “why do they hate us?”
Besides — often these packages may be dry runs probing defenses, response times, etc. It’s a tried and true tactic in battles, crimes, etc.
“often these packages may be dry runs probing defenses,…” WTF?
“they might be” kind of precludes “often”
Often, they might be left by Santa Clause, or Space Aliens, or the Fairie … or by someone.
And please don’t tell us guys what we’ll be whining about. Just limit it to what we often might be whining about, OK?
Ok… “might be” not often then…. sorry for the shotgun as opposed to the laser language…
Now that you’ve attacked the grammar and not the idea — kudos to you for your withering logical take down. MLA will be so be proud of you.
So…
Do we leave these packages be or do we call them in?
I guess it depends on where you let the risk fall… on the general public who might not notice the bag, the non-expert individual who may remove the bag at their own peril or the relative expert paid to take the risk public safety person.
Playing whack-a-mole with unattended bags is surely a fool’s errand, but it doesn’t answer the main question of the bags that are left.
You’re right, my whole comment was kind of tongue-in-cheek, because that’s how I feel about the whole issue.
But the first part of my response was poking fun at the grammar instead of the opinion. My apologies for the offense given.
The second part was not. Is an unattended package on a street corner more likely to be left by a terrorist, or Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or someone who just forgot to pick it up and left it there? How many nines to the right of the decimal point do we need for that?
As to my response to the situation described…
Well, if it’s not noticed, there’s no question about calling it in, so it’s really two choices, and I think I would be the non-expert individual who would make a non-expert evaluation, and either check it out or call it in, depending on what I thought was appropriate.
If it was a backpack in an airport, I’d call it in.
If it were a cooler on a street corner on a hot day, I’d probably open it and look, but again, it would depend on what I thought of the situation.
Yes, I could quite possibly get people killed, but I’m a lot MORE likely to do that any time I get behind the wheel. Or cook dinner for friends.
(They know my cooking)
Here in the UK,
1) an unattended bag would not cause a problem as you wouldn’t see it under all the rubbish in the streets. Problem will disappear completely soon when we stop paying the bin men.
2) we have now found something to fill in all the pot holes in the road, closer to Jerusalem.
At this rate we will run out of things to moan about, except the weather.
Though I’m all for taking back our civil rights and moving beyond our reactionary anti-terrorism policies, it’s not accurate to say America’s policies haven’t stopped any terrorist plots. The recent failed Times Square bombing immediately comes to mind. Someone “saw something” and “said something” and the bomb was found. Granted, it had failed of its own accord, but one must concede the authorities were alerted for valid reasons.
Use the ridiculous, paranoid system against itself. Makes sense.