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2007 Boston Mooninite Panic

by black6 on 11/24/24, 2:54 AM with 128 comments

• by ChrisArchitect on 11/24/24, 5:12 AM

  A previous submission from a year ago has an interesting comment from someone involved:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105056

• by nlh on 11/24/24, 5:36 AM

  Heh. My roommate (in NYC) at the time was involved-enough in this that one of the actual "devices" appeared in our apartment a few weeks later and surreptitiously remained for many years, fully working in its Lite-brite/LED glory.

  It made for an excellent conversation piece for those that knew, and a weird piece of LED art for those that didn't.

  Edit: I found pictures! Sorry they were shot on a potatocam (2008 era) but here she is:

  https://imgur.com/2DcutSE

  https://imgur.com/H76RQq6

• by alsetmusic on 11/24/24, 4:02 AM

  I remember this fiasco. We were peak see-something-say-something (or maybe just beyond that) in post-9/11 USA. Absolute paranoia. People who lived in the middle of nowhere were afraid of terrorist attacks, as though high population urban centers wouldn’t be the real targets.

  See also: Freedumb Fries[0]

  0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

• by lambda on 11/25/24, 1:49 AM

  The even more frustrating part is that the Boston Police learned nothing from this and a few months later arrested Star Simpson for wearing a breadboard with a few LEDs on it to the airport: https://en.m.wikinews.org/wiki/Student_arrested_over_%22art%...

• by lazystar on 11/24/24, 4:55 AM

  hah. the best press conference of all time was held by the marketing guys after they were "caught". they refused to answer questions about anything other than their hair, and i remember some witty reporter asking them what theyd do about their hair if they went to jail. caught them off guard, hah.

  edit - here it is, beautiful

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X2fGzmphx4U

• by iseanstevens on 11/25/24, 9:08 AM

  Post the 9/11 PATRIOT act (etc) led to dilution of America’s ideals in various ways, IMHO. I felt like we were in the middle of it. I wanted to call attention to how ridiculous it was - since the attention ended up on me and my friend. Zebbler was in the USA on political asylum at the time and it was made clear he’d be kicked out if we made any more noise after this.

• by ryukoposting on 11/24/24, 11:12 PM

  > the ad devices shared some similarities with improvised explosive devices, with them also discovering an identifiable power source, a circuit board with exposed wiring, and electrical tape.

  Goodness, I'd better clean up my desk. Someone might think it's a bomb!

• by Lammy on 11/24/24, 6:45 AM

  At least two versions of the lost ATHF episode “Boston” are floating around out there. One of them was here: https://old.reddit.com/r/adultswim/comments/13nibvz/the_lost...

• by jmclnx on 11/24/24, 1:51 PM

  I happened to be there for a work activity. That night a bunch of us were out and I saw one of those things. I asked if anyone with me know what it was and no one new. We all though it was interesting but strange and moved on :)

  Never once did the thought of 'danger' entered any of our minds.

• by Animats on 11/24/24, 6:49 AM

  A few decades ago, I was involved in the Neidorf hacking case [1] as an expert witness. One minor item in evidence was something marked "Tomobiki High School Torture Research Club". That's an anime reference.[3] It's an allusion to the Japanese tendency to have organized school clubs for everything, and in that anime, this is the bullies' group. The prosecution logged the item as an exhibit, as an indication of something bad, but never actually brought it up in court, so it didn't matter.

  [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/102868.102869

  [2] https://uruseiyatsura.fandom.com/wiki/Tomobiki_High_School

• by voidfunc on 11/24/24, 5:21 AM

  Never forget haha.

  I remember my parents being mildly outraged about this. 18 year old me thought it was fucking hilarious.

• by sanj on 11/24/24, 6:50 AM

  At the time I lived next door to the “litebrite” bombers.

  It was disconcerting to arrive home to that many news vans in front of my house.

• by DonHopkins on 11/24/24, 5:58 AM

  In September 2007, several months after the Mooninite Panic, MIT student Star Simpson was arrested at Boston Logan Airport for wearing an electronic LED device and holding Play-Doh.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Simpson

  >Shortly after arriving on the MIT campus, she met a student group called MITERS (the MIT Electronic Research Society).[3]

  >In September 2007 while a student at MIT, several months after the Boston Mooninite Panic, Simpson created an electronic fashion sweatshirt featuring a colored, glowing name tag.[4][5] While wearing this sweatshirt during a visit to Boston Logan Airport, Simpson was arrested at gunpoint and charged with the possession of a hoax device, a charge that was dropped by prosecutors a year later.[6][7][8] In an echo of MIT's official later treatment of Aaron Swartz, the MIT media office released a statement condemning and disavowing Simpson's actions before she was even released from questioning.[9][10]

  >Simpson studied at MIT between 2006 and 2010. She returned to MIT in 2015 to speak about her experience at an MIT conference on the Freedom to Innovate.[11]

  >In 2017, MIT established a "disobedience" award to reward forms of disobedience that benefit society, as demonstrated by Simpson while a student at MIT.[12]

  MIT Sophomore Arrested at Logan For Wearing LED Device

  https://thetech.com/2007/11/13/simpson-v127-n40

  >Star A. Simpson ’10, wearing a circuit board that lit up and was connected to a battery, was arrested at gunpoint at Logan International Airport this morning and was charged with disorderly conduct and possession of a hoax device. Simpson was released on $750 bail earlier today; her pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Oct. 29, 2007 at 9 a.m. in East Boston District Court.

  >Simpson (a former Tech photographer) was wearing the device, which included green light-emitting diodes arranged in the shape of a star, during yesterday’s MIT Career Fair. Her defense attorney said she was at the airport to pick up her boyfriend who arrived at Logan this morning.

  >Simpson approached an information booth in Logan’s Terminal C wearing the light-up device, Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Wayne Margolis said during Simpson’s arraignment today. Margolis also said that Simpson had been wearing the art for at least a few days.

  >She “said it was a piece of art,” Margolis said, and “refused to answer any more questions.” Jake Wark, spokesperson for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, said that Simpson only described the LED lights after she was “repeatedly questioned by the MassPort employee.” Simpson then “roamed briefly around the terminal,” Wark said. Margolis said this caused several Logan employees to flee the building. As Simpson left the building, she disconnected the battery powering the device, according to a press release provided by Wark.

  >Simpson had five to six ounces of Play-Doh in her hands, State Police Maj. Scott Pare said in a press conference this morning. The Play-Doh could have been mistaken for plastic explosives. [...]

  Star Simpson Receives Pretrial Probation

  https://thetech.com/2008/06/06/simpson-v128-n27

  MIT student Star Simpson gets probation in Logan security scare

  https://www.bostonherald.com/2008/06/02/mit-student-star-sim...

  Boston Airport Bomb Scare Should Scare Scientists

  https://www.wired.com/2007/09/boston-airport/

  Star Simpson, one year after Boston airport terror-scare: unedited BBtv interview transcript

  https://boingboing.net/2008/09/22/star-simpson-one-yea.html

  She's also the genius behind Taco Copter:

  https://tacocopter.com/

• by jrochkind1 on 11/25/24, 11:06 PM

  My favorite part of the wikipedia article:

  > On February 27, 2007, a month after the incident, the Boston police bomb squad detonated another suspected bomb, which turned out to be a city-owned traffic counter [34]

• by gooseyard on 11/25/24, 1:32 AM

  The closing on the sale of my house in Quincy was that day. I was moving far away immediately after the closing, had my car packed with most of my worldly goods and all I had left to do was to drive up to Reading to sign the papers. Not long before I needed to leave, I happened to check boston.com and saw that 93 was closed, and figured I was doomed as it had been tough selling the house.

  As it happened both parties arrived way late, and the deal went down. I'm still a little salty about it after all this time.

• by pmarreck on 11/25/24, 1:27 PM

  I was living in Boston at the time and have zero recollection of this, but I'm also Gen X and most of us missed the Aqua Teen Hunger Force train

• by jeffwask on 11/25/24, 7:21 PM

  I was on an MBTA train on the way home way after my office closed in a panic. We were stopped halfway by the MBTA police and made to stand outside on the platform in the bitter cold while they spent 30-60 minutes running sniffer dogs through the train cars. The whole thing was surreal because I saw the device and knew immediately it was Aqua Teen Hunger Force and not a terrorist threat.

• by leoh on 11/28/24, 1:26 AM

  Shockingly, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force “Boston” episode which mocks the whole incident is available on archive.org.

  https://archive.org/details/Bostonaquateenhungerforce

• by nickdothutton on 11/25/24, 5:47 PM

  I learned a lot about the public mind in the USA when this incident broke. I mean this sincerely. Maybe we have not yet had our "Mooninite Panic" in the UK.

• by dmead on 11/24/24, 4:17 AM

  My steam icon is still errr from this incident. Never forget.

• by int0x29 on 11/24/24, 11:50 PM

  > On January 31, 2007, at 8:05 a.m., a civilian spotted one of the devices

  This phrasing makes it sound like the army that involved.

• by tumnus on 11/24/24, 4:10 AM

  This really was peak marketing idiocy. I knew people who worked at Cartoon Network at the time. Jim Samples' disconnect and subsequent resignation reverberated down the ranks and tanked a lot of careers and projects. Who would think that strapping battery operated devices to bridges with duct tape in any post-9/11 city would be a good idea?

• by nirmal on 11/24/24, 5:07 AM

  I was taking a class around this time that involved programming and Atari 2600. I made a game based around this event.

  http://nirmalpatel.com/hacks/atari.html

• by benjaminclauss on 11/24/24, 9:10 PM

  you and your third dimension...

  what about it?

  we have 5... thousand.

• by dang on 11/24/24, 8:38 PM

  I thought this was discussed on HN at the time but I can't find it. Anyone?

  Here's what I did find:

  The 2007 Boston Mooninite Panic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37105056 - Aug 2023 (3 comments)

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4003940 (May 2012)

  https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

• by neilv on 11/24/24, 9:51 PM

  Wasn't the context that people were concerned about terrorist attacks with bombs in high-impact locations, against concentrations of people and key civil infrastructure?

  And someone decided to be edgy, and intentionally use this context, by placing something that could be mistaken for a bomb made by a crazy person, exactly in those locations? (Or even do those as decoys, to support a separate attack.)

  Of course the early emergency responses were life-critical urgent, with no one having complete information.

  And once they did have information, you can see how a company abusing fresh terrorism concerns like that, with what was arguably a hoax attack, for commercial promotion purposes, would still have a lot of explaining to do.

  Random kids huffing "Chill out, it's just a prank" doesn't make it all OK.

  And all the dissing of emergency responders, who reasonably had to act as if this might be another terrorist attack, didn't seem very fair, nor thought-out.

  It might help to look at another Boston terrorism incident, the Boston Marathon bombing. Bombs went off, no one knew the extent of the attack, and, while the crowd was rightly trying to run away from the danger, emergency responders were running towards the explosions, to help protect people.

  Why mock that? We need that.