Beware all you DLink users!

It's Not a Bomb, It's my Hotspot Confused neighbors ruin one man's evening

Techdirt points to an odd instance in Australia where one man faced a police investigation because they thought his Wi-Fi access point was a bomb. The Wi-Fi enthusiast had set up a Dlink 2100AP outside of his home

- which worried neighbors assumed was an explosive device. Police dug up cables in his yard, quizzed him extensively, and nearly ordered a community evacuation before realizing what the device actually was.

(snipped from DSL Reports)

I hate to tell you this, but in such a situation, emergency responders are trained *NOT* to think. Once a crisis has been detected or created, responders are taught to fall back on their training and not try to logic through everything. While not particularly pleasant to consider, reacting to training, rather than thinking is far better and more efficient. Do you really want a member of the bomb squad, while under stress, to decide that this would be a great time to think up a new and creative method?

So what went wrong here? Well, one person, probably not qualified to make a decision, decided that it must be a bomb. Something like "we can't take the chance that it's NOT a bomb" and set the process in motion. From that point on, everyone involved was reacting on the basis of their training. The owner was treated like a potential terrorist, the yard was dug up in an attempt to disconnect the bomb, the device was not touched until its nature could be determined, etc. Standard procedures right out of the bombs squad handbook. Personally, I think that everyone at the scene did their job correctly had it been a real bomb.

So, who's guilty of creative thought? Dunno. Could be a dispatcher, supervisor, defective decision making process, or simply lack of practice. I mean how often does the national security response team have a chance to practice with a real live everyday situation? Perhaps in the middle east, but not in Sidney. Once the wrong decision was made (or bypassed), everything that followed went like dominoes and according to the book.

What to do about it? Well, the ICS (incident command system) has many mechanisms built in to prevent situations from getting out of hand. The IC (incident commander) is charged with paying attention to what's happening, which includes pulling the plug if it appears that a mistake has been made. This was apparently not done.

Near as I can read between the lines, there was nobody at the scene to declare that a mistake had been made, so everything just rolled forward as if it were a real bomb. I'm fairly sure that just about everyone involved suspected that something was not quite right, but either didn't want to risk a mistake had it been a real bomb, or were not authorized to call off the investigation. That's not a problem with creative thinking. It's a proceedural and organizational mistake that will certainly be investigated.

Perhaps Hollywoods use of black boxes with red LED countdown timers isn't such a bad idea. If Hollywood portrayed a bomb as something more modern, we would probably have far more bomb scares. Meanwhile, don't repackage your access points in black boxes. Use beige, grey, white, or perhaps clear.

It is good that there are so many creative alternatives to actual thinking.

My wife worked on the Seattle ferry docks (near the docks where they caught that real-life terrorist bringing in explosives for the big 2000 New Year celebration) and she was in charge of making the big decisions any time she was present. One suspicious package was left on a a ferry that triggered a chain of events similar to the poor guy with the access point. The deck hand reported it to the captain, the captain called it in to the terminal and the agent in charge (my wife) had to call the police who called in the bomb squad. Hundreds of people were evacuated, the dock area was evacuated, bomb squads brought in robots that picked up the overnight bag and carried down the gangway and onto the concrete dock. Then the remote control robot shot an explosive device into the side of the bag to detonate it or disable it. About a dozen vibrators got blown to smithereens and landed all over the dock, along with some lubricants and other essential supplies.

Everybody did their job just exactly as trained and a very dangerous situation had been defused without injury to anyone. But all those dildos made the whole thing look pretty silly.

(...)

Yech, but nicely done. That makes American "sound bite" driven campaigning seem relatively tame. The best we can offer to creative election practices are poorly forged documents and electronic voting gone awry.

Thanks. That explains quite a bit about why someone called the national security hotline instead of the local police.

An aquaintance manufactures wearable computahs and wearable pointing devices (for gamers). He's a believer in the concept and often wears his company's products during conventions and meetings. Fully deployed, and covered with black boxes and wires, there is no way to NOT look like the Hollywood illusion of a suicide bomber. Although considerable effort has been made to camouflage the the devices, just one exposed wire or cable is sufficient to have someone call security or the police. Before giving demonstrations of his products in a strange city, it's now standard practice to inform the local PSAP (public safety answering point) of his presense to avoid the inevitable false alarm.

Some stuff snipped for brevity..

Most telling is the shifting socio-political climate of Australia. Australia has just re-elected a conservative government who ran on a fear and loathing based election platform. For weeks before the election, the government ran TV advertisements with a voiceover telling people to "Be alert but not alarmed" while showing fast paced video images of electronic equipment, security fences, airports, maritime boarding parties, sniffer dogs, people putting packages in trash cans etc. Quite a master stroke of political advertising in the guise of a national security campaign.

What would the good citizens of any emergent fascist state do when confronted by this propaganda? Ignore it? They ring up the hotline of course.

Phuouc

Jeff:

Please share how your friend convinces a 911 operator that he is not crazy. In today's world a "No I'm Not" could be a "Yes I Am". Thanks,

JHG