MIT student arrested at Boston airport for wearing fake bomb

Parents Forum
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<p>What could she possibly have been thinking of?</p>

<p>"BOSTON - A woman who walked into Logan International Airport allegedly wearing a fake bomb strapped to her chest was arrested at gunpoint Friday, officials said.</p>

<p>Star Simpson, 19,[MIT soph from Hawaii] had a computer circuit board, wiring and a putty that later turned out to be Play-Doh in plain view over a black hooded sweatshirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport...." <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15012105/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15012105/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>The below is from what appears to be her web page (I can't post the link because College Confidential doesn't allow links to blogs). There's also a picture of her. She's cute.</p>

<p>"In a word: Star. </p>

<p>In a sentence, I'm an inventor, artist, engineer, and student, I love to build things and I love crazy ideas. </p>

<p>In a paragraph; I'm currently studying computers and how they work at MIT. I play at a student-run machine shop called MITERS. Before that, I lived for a long time in Hawaii, while traveling the world and saving the planet from evil villains with my delivered-just-in-time gadgets. </p>

<p>You too can fill my email lint-trap - stars at mit dot edu </p>

<p>I got to feel the power and speed of the Wrightspeed X1 - fastest street legal car on the planet, after Bugatti's Veyron, and entirely electric."</p>

<p>From another news story about the airport incident. Apparently, she also told police she had gone to the airport to meet her boyfriend.</p>

<p>""She said it was a piece of art and wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said at a press conference. "She was holding what was later found to be playdough."</p>

<p>Affixed to the front of her black sweatshirt was a pale beige circuit board with green LED lights and wires running to a 9 volt battery. Written on the back of the sweat shirt in what appeared to be gold magic marker was the phrase "socket to me" and below that was written "Course VI."
<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/09/mit_student_arr.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p><a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003895330_webbomb21.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003895330_webbomb21.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I can not believe this is for real. What was she thinking?!</p>

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<p>Involuntary commitment to a hospital for the criminally insane or 10 to 20 at Leavenworth. It's hard to choose.</p>

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<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=395515%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=395515&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Can anyone spell short circuit? :eek:</p>

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<p>Great comment. Totally......break w/ reality.</p>

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<p>Talk about book smart and common sense stupid...</p>

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<p>I know her. She's an absent-minded-professor type.</p>

<p>Several people I know who were at the Career Fair confirmed that she was using the thing as a name badge - it was green LEDs arranged in a star, a pun on her name.</p>

<p>Wearing homemade electronics to an airport at all is totally a lack of common sense, but assuming that level of lack of common sense, I can see not realizing that LEDs on a 4" x 2" PCB would frighten people.</p>

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<p>...and the Boston Herald now has a pic of the "device" up.</p>

<p><a href="http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/cfa4827569_20070921device3.jpg%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/cfa4827569_20070921device3.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Don't tase me bro???????</p>

<p>Another in the long never ending line of bright people doing really stupid things....</p>

<p>I often have to remind my very bright S, not everybody gets the joke...</p>

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<p>it's too bad that nobody at the Career Fair mentioned to her that her "art" looked a lot like a bomb - or perhaps in that particular college setting it truly did not?</p>

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<p>"Wearing homemade electronics to an airport at all is totally a lack of common sense, but assuming that level of lack of common sense, I can see not realizing that LEDs on a 4" x 2" PCB would frighten people."</p>

<p>They take LEDs seriosly in Boston :)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Was she trying to see if security was working?</p>

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<p>I wonder if she knows the two pot-selling geniuses from Northeastern?
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=390568&highlight=northeastern+marijuana%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=390568&highlight=northeastern+marijuana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>if they think that looks like a bomb, please</p>

<p>they took ,my mom tweezers, what she was going to pluck them together</p>

<p>so while they arrest this girl, who knows what is coming through our ports</p>

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<p>jessiehl, I'll defer to the fact that you know the culprit personally, but from a distance the words "brash" and "arrogant" come to mind quicker than "absent minded".</p>

<p>That said, I think that if I had seen this young lady walking around an airport with the device (as shown in one of the links above) I would have laughed. Even at Logan. Maybe I'm just naive, but I hardly think the real threats are quite so obvious.</p>

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<p>OMG it was a C battery!!! run run run!!! what if it had been a D battery the horror</p>

<p>if she had a camera battery attached, guess it might have gone through</p>

<p>I could do more damage with my stilletos</p>

<p>SO a battery on a sweatshirt is a bomb, okey dokey</p>

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<p>I think it was reasonable enough to detain her. I mean, I and my friends can tell trivially that that's not a bomb. It's not even a PCB, as was originally reported (and as I originally said). It's a breadboard, the kind they give you in an intro EE class to do your labs on. And LEDs, which won't hurt anyone. But I don't expect information desk workers or the police to know that. And even if we assume that police trained to deal with possible bombs should know what a bomb looks like, she could have had something under her shirt.</p>

<p>I'm still figuring out whether I think their methods of detaining her were reasonable. It's being debating quite heatedly among my friends right now online.</p>

<p>However, I think that once they'd determined that she posed no threat, she should have been released, and not charged.</p>

<p>midmo: Why do you think she sounds arrogant? I'm not trying to be defensive here, I'm honestly not sure where you're coming from.</p>

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<p>The submachine guns may have been overboard, but I think the airport cops were right to stop and arrest her. </p>

<p>How were they to know otherwise that she was not some nut case with something harmless looking on the outside of her clothing and something much worse underneath? Anyone brazen, self-centered and unthinking enough to pull this kind of stunt in Logan Airport of all places deserves what she got and a big fine to boot. With the heightened tension about security there, she was probably lucky she wasn't shot.</p>

<p>CGM: it does look silly, like a toy or a joke, but is this behavior something we all should just chuckle over? All we need is for more college students or kooks to decide it would be fun and attention-getting to wear bizarre electronic "art" on their clothing in the airport. Suppose someone decides the challenge is to rig up something harmless, battery-operated, but a lot more realistic looking? Someone could get killed. Innocent bystanders might be hurt. Terminals closed or shut down for hours. People going about their business massively inconvenienced because some kid wants to play "look at me, I'm clever."</p>

<p>I don't blame the police for jumping all over her.</p>