Boston Officials Did Not Shut Down Cell Network After Marathon Bombing 211
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Motherboard about the immediate aftermath of yesterday's bomb attack in Boston, which attempts to explain the (unsurprisingly) poor accessibility of the cellular network after the blasts: "Gut instinct suggests that the network must've been overloaded with people trying to find loved ones. At first, the Associated Press said it was a concerted effort to prevent any remote detonators from being used, citing a law enforcement official. After some disputed that report, the AP reversed its report, citing officials from Verizon and Sprint who said they'd never had a request to shut down the network, and who blamed slowdowns on heavy load. (Motherboard's Derek Mead was able to send text messages to both his sister and her boyfriend, who were very near the finish line, shortly after the bombing, which suggests that networks were never totally shut down. Still, shutting down cell phone networks to prevent remote detonation wouldn't be without precedent: It is a common tactic in Pakistan, where bombings happen with regularity.)"
That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the network operators didn't get requests to shutdown the network, that doesn't mean it wasn't jammed. The military has jammers it uses where they suspect IEDs to prevent triggering via the cell network. There is no reason why the BPD, DHS or other agency would not have jammers for such an occasion. I would be surprised if they did not with all the money that was thrown around after 9/11
Re:That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right. We had similar problems in DC during the Rally for Sanity.
Use SMS in emergencies (Score:5, Informative)
In such emergencies, its better to use SMS than place a voice call.
SMS rides on control signal and as long as your cell phone has a signal, it will get queued and delivered.
Voice calls require acquiring of a dedicated voice channel, these are limited and overloaded in such emergencies.
Re:Use SMS in emergencies (Score:4, Funny)
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I don't know how many times people have left me voicemails that just said "call me". WTF???
Um... duh. I kind of got the hint from the fact that THEY called ME, that they want to talk. It annoys me to no end when they don't say a thing about why. Listen, folks: that's what voicemail is FOR. Stop wasting bandwidth and my time. If all I want to know is that you want to talk, I can simply look at my phone log and see that you tried to call.
"Use SMS in emergencies" is actually correct (Score:2)
But the opposite actually appears to be true, when the "emergency" is in an area where a lot of folks are trying to use their cell phones at the same time.
During some weather catastrophes a few years back, I could not get a single call to go through on the biggest carrier in my area, but texts did go through successfully. It's just
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Agreed. When the earthquake in Mineral, Virginia hit, I was standing with a group of about a hundred people outside. Very few were getting voice through, but text worked fine. It also didn't seem to matter who's network you were on.
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That's pretty much the definition of "jammed".
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...or they aren't engineered for the once-in-two-decade major catastrophe. Technology has limits, and you have to draw a line somewhere so that people can actually AFFORD to use the service.
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...or they aren't engineered for the once-in-two-decade major catastrophe
I've personally had it twice. 9/11 and the earthquake in Mineral, VA. Just saying :)
Re:That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:4)
"... and you have to draw a line somewhere so that people can actually AFFORD to use the service."
That's easy: give CEOs realistic paychecks.
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AT&T networks crumble when there is only 10,000 people in a small area like that. WE have a small motorcycle rally here in July and the 8000 to 10,000 people will utterly crush the nearest 3 cell sites for the entire weekend for AT&T. Verizon does better, but data is completely useless.
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Last July 4th, I was at the Esplanade, which is just a few blocks from where this bombing happened. Even several blocks away (at my hotel), AT&T's cell network performance was clogged to the point where cellular data service was completely nonfunctional, with DNS requests timing out every single time. It didn't start working until I got to a high-numbered floor and my phone found another tower to use.
So at least one of Boston's cell networks isn't even capable of handling the normal, planned events t
Re:That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:5, Informative)
I was able to text back and forth with my niece, who was at the race. No idea what network she is on, though the interwebs say it is an AT&T number. I don't think things were being actively jammed.
Re:That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:5, Insightful)
SMS is one of the lower level cell phone protocols, uses the least bit of bandwidth and is almost always on, even when higher level voice and data fail. Ideally, modern phones could be set up to pass SMS traffic from phone to phone, when a tower signal is unavailable. This would allow messages to get in and out of disaster areas like New Orleans during Katrina.
Re:That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably, any jamming worth a crap would need to block SMS, which is why I mentioned it.
Re: That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:2)
It could be set to turn on when it of range of cell tower signal.
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I could be accused of stating the obvious. It could be set to turn on all the time and we'd be done with carriers.
Re:That doesn't mean it wasnt jammed (Score:5, Insightful)
> There is no reason why the BPD, DHS or other agency would not have jammers for such an occasion.
Really? And why should they? The entire idea that they should have them is based on specific technical details of specific attacks, and requires both that they guess right that its the right time to use them and that the bomb maker didn't anticipate their use.
Additionally, with all the people involved, they generally want people to get the "Im safe" messages out, because it decreases overall mayhem and people trying to contact them for information.
> I would be surprised if they did not with all the money that was thrown around after 9/11
Well I wouldn't either, but, thats a different issue.
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when I worked in telecom, specing out a CO for site we would generally have enough T1's (24 full-duplex lines) to provide for 20% of the population as that would cover normal traffic at any one point in time. It was always known that during emergencies it would become overwhelmed and low priority calls (you and me) would fail while there are settings to allow high priority calls (emergency responders, police, government, etc) to drop a line in use by someone lower priority and go through.
My bet, is the majo
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Why the network operators didn't get requests to shutdown the network, that doesn't mean it wasn't jammed. The military has jammers it uses where they suspect IEDs to prevent triggering via the cell network. There is no reason why the BPD, DHS or other agency would not have jammers for such an occasion. I would be surprised if they did not with all the money that was thrown around after 9/11
So it's impossible to create a bomb that will detonate on loss of signal?
The jammers aren't for preventing explosions. It's for preventing civilian communication. In case of insurrection.
not all that effective (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:not all that effective (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally different threat profile.
A convoy is moving and is a very small target in a very large area. It is especially exposed, and an especially juicy target in a war zone. You can expect attacks fairly frequently, they have to find you/be ready for you.
This event is predefined, the attacker knows where and when the targets will be there. The attacker already has time to prepare and makes himself known on his time table.
This changes everything. In your convoy for example, there is no benefit to rigging bombs to blow when their signal is jammed or even to arm in response to signals from a jammer.... as the prowler is not the convoy and need not be all that close to them, arming or blowing in response to the jammer means wasted bombs or blowing up innocent bystanders, will almost never hit a convoy.
Here we have a totally different scenario. A secondary device triggered by a loss of signal could have huge impact. The devices are already at their pre-determined target. You don't jam, he can detonate, you do jam, they might detonate, point is....you have no way of ever knowing what he planned until its all over.
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I was thinking about this yesterday... I'd be terrified that someone would call the wrong number or something. Or that it would give me some vibrating notification. Or that it would reboot and vibrate on wake. Nope, the life of a bomber is not for me!
Re:not all that effective (Score:5, Funny)
Telemarketing to cellphone numbers is now an anti-terrorism tool.
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Yes, it's the phone. Not the person not paying attention~
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... baby monitors and walkie-talkies can pick up interference and other communication...
Even Aliens! [google.com]
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I would think that shutting down cell towers wouldn't be particularly effective, given that the same mechanism that would allow one to trigger a bomb with a cell phone is also present in other RF devices such as baby monitors and walkie-talkies.
They could also set the bomb to trigger if it loses reception.
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yes, generally the trigger is on a relay that's switched on and off by the phones speaker. The "lost signal" beep would like set it off without any extra effort at all. Then you have the fact that its just plain easier to use a cheap watch with an alarm on it.
The fact of the matter is, no matter what you think of, there is no way to stop this sort of thing. They could have had concrete trash cans that direct blasts up, but then they just don't put them in the bins. Ban black powder, but then they just use s
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Stop it, no, but they could have done a lot to mitigate it. The reasons people use trash cans for bombing are twofold:
There's a much better chance that the devices would have been discovered had the bomber(s) tried to leave something behind in a crowded public place. A
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This incident could have been substantially mitigated by removing or locking all trash cans on the street where spectators would be and placing the in-use trash cans fifty feet up the side streets, and a reasonable distance from where people would line up to get food from any food vendors. People might grumble about having to walk to throw things away, but had the trash cans been farther back, those bombs would have gone off almost harmlessly, with at most one or two people killed or injured, instead of killing three people and injuring almost two hundred.
People wouldn't grumble about it, they'll just throw it on the street. Now instead of a suspicious bag hiding in a garbage can you have a suspicious bag hiding under any of a number piles of paper plates and napkin wads. Maybe it gets kicked around, too.
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Most people don't litter, and the ones who do litter are likely to do so whether the can is twenty feet away or seventy.
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Dangerous for the bombmaker and/or transporter, though.
That's when dead zones are REAL dead zones!
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You're over-thinking things. All the trigger needs is an electrical pulse. Phones are frequently used because you can SET AN ALARM an it'll go off -- cell reception or not.
That is the most common usage that I've read about when attacking events that can be easily timed and located.
In the United States, the average finishing time for marathons in 2011 was 4:37 (10:34/mile pace), according to MarathonGuide.com. What time did the race start? Set the alarm for 4 1/2 hours later.
Cell reception at the bottom of a
Overloaded (Score:5, Informative)
After the Earthquake in Virginia in 2011, you couldn't make a cell call to save your life, since several million people picked up their phones within a few minutes of each other. Text messages went through fine within a half a minute or so. Something similar happens whenever an unexpected event of note happens anywhere.
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And I don't think there is an engineering solution for it. It's a race condition... there will always be a bigger event that needs more capacity and you end up with a huge, costly network no one can afford to use and, even if everyone could afford it, would be have massive capacity.
I think you wall off some capacity for emergency users (911, police, first responders) and do your best with the rest.
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And I don't think there is an engineering solution for it. It's a race condition... there will always be a bigger event that needs more capacity and you end up with a huge, costly network no one can afford to use and, even if everyone could afford it, would be have massive capacity.
I think you wall off some capacity for emergency users (911, police, first responders) and do your best with the rest.
One solution would be to allow text/sms only. The phone keeps trying till it has delivered the message, it's small in size. You could even send all users a broadcast sms to let them know that.
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Because that wouldn't overwhelm the control channels with even more traffic while not utilizing the voice/data channels at all. Great plan.
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You do realize that control channel overload is what causes the cell network to go down these days, right?
When the control channel is overloaded, a phone can't make a voice of data call (requires using the control channel to select the appropriate voice or data channel and timeslot).
Allowing text/sms only would work, b
Reserve capacity (Score:2)
I think you wall off some capacity for emergency users (911, police, first responders) and do your best with the rest.
I agree, though there's some interesting ideas with having the phones themselves act as a mesh network to get information in/out of the affected area, but I'll point out that the military has been trying to institute something like that for decades with limited success. The idea is that a soldier's short range device hooks up with a nearby truck's, which relays it to another truck or plane that can relay it to the most appropriate ground station or satellite link. All dynamically.
There has been some progr
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So now we know for a fact overloaded cell tower cause earthquakes~
Text Messages (Score:2)
Re:Text Messages (Score:5, Funny)
That technique seemed to work for my last relationship.
That is the best use of text messaging (Score:5, Informative)
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Another advantage of text messaging is that (most) phones will keep trying to send it every few minutes/seconds until it goes through, whereas voice requires you to keep trying manually. This, combined with the lower bandwidth requirements and less battery usage, are why they recommend sending texts if you're lost in the woods with little or no reception... it's much more likely to get through and much less likely to kill the battery. I use text messaging a lot at work just because signal is so poor inside
Re:That is the best use of text messaging (Score:5, Informative)
SMS actually take zero bandwidth on GSM networks, they use the ping packets that the phone must exchange with the tower every so often to send the message, it would otherwise be padded with zero's. That's why the message length on SMS is so short, it's limited by the difference between the header needed for a ping and the size of a timeslice. Some phones will opt to use the data network if available to ensure faster delivery but SMS was really a brilliant hack to take advantage of the nature of the network.
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Comment removed (Score:3)
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I wouldn't be surprised if hams set up, but traffic cleared up pretty quickly, all things considered.
Re:it should be common knowledge (Score:4, Informative)
They weren't activated, and the ones that were in use during the race (for coordination) were all evacuated and followed those orders (http://cqnewsroom.blogspot.com/2013/04/boston-marathon-update-all-hams.html)
You're more likely to find hams helping in inter-departmental capacity, where large-scale (this was so not large scale) events require coordination between multiple police and fire departments, hospitals, etc. This was a local situation where Boston Police (and to a point DHS) were involved, but no other agencies - they can usually handle talking on their own radios to themselves.
Dumb thing to focus on. (Score:2, Interesting)
Whether cell towers were working or not is a stupid thing to focus on, here. How about the coming absolute surrender of all remaining liberties? Since 9-11, I've repeatedly pointed out that all we need is one more big terrorist event to shake the population enough that we will give up everything. Complaits about the TSA, second amendment, privacy, government and corporate wiretapping without justification. All of it. It is over. We lose.by attacking us, we shell up. We take away our own freedomFOR them. It
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Whether cell towers were working or not is a stupid thing to focus on, here. How about the coming absolute surrender of all remaining liberties? Since 9-11, I've repeatedly pointed out that all we need is one more big terrorist event to shake the population enough that we will give up everything. Complaits about the TSA, second amendment, privacy, government and corporate wiretapping without justification. All of it. It is over. We lose.by attacking us, we shell up. We take away our own freedomFOR them. It is time to shutter yro.slashdot, because it no longer matters.
Has it actually been confirmed that this was actually a criminal event? There's too much speculation in the "news". I tuned out after one channel were saying "so they set off this bomb here, then people ran in this direction (drawing on screen like a football game), then the second bomb went off here, trapping them"
There was 5 seconds between the blasts, and a video showing exactly what happened.
As usual the news are bullshitting away to keep people tuned in.
Then upgrade the cell network (Score:5, Insightful)
So... considering that's we hear about this with EVERY major catastrophe, would this be the sort of national infrastructure concern that we would want to mandate that the cell companies install extra capacity? You know, in case of emergencies. Are we at the point that we can consider cellular connection, or generically wireless connection, to be a basic utility and not a cutting edge hip new ordeal that only the rich can afford?
And hey, since they've got ALL THAT BANDWIDTH, just lying about in case shit hits the fan, it'd be great to sell it on the cheap. You know, that idea that society and the fundamental utilities is here to foster growth rather than wringing out the last coin from the customer's pockets.
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"would this be the sort of national infrastructure concern that we would want to mandate that the cell companies install extra capacity? You know, in case of emergencies."
In Canada a telco exec told me that the government mandates Bell to provide priority service to emergency responders' home landlines. It'd be interesting if telcos could register emergency responder's cells in a similar way. May or may not be technicallly possible with current technology, given all the phones are trying to reach the t
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So... considering that's we hear about this with EVERY major catastrophe, would this be the sort of national infrastructure concern that we would want to mandate that the cell companies install extra capacity? You know, in case of emergencies. Are we at the point that we can consider cellular connection, or generically wireless connection, to be a basic utility and not a cutting edge hip new ordeal that only the rich can afford?
How technically feasible is that?
Scaling up landlines is (somewhat) straightforward - you install the copper wire, you add corresponding capability to upstream processing. Scaling up cell coverage/capability is not because cells are mobile. You might have an international event that causes a few streets to have 1000x the cell phone density as normal. How much are you paying for the extra cell phone capacity?
Whether you feel cell phone technologies are a utility is irrelevant - the scaling issues a
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Utilities, scarcity, and the rates they charge. Remember Enron? Remember how they were given control of power generation? The idea was that with the magic of the free market and competition that prices would come down. It turns out that if there's a fundamental need for a resource, like a utility, the people that control said resource strive to keep it scarce so they can justify exorbitant prices for it. Now, that might all be different if we have a large host of people competing to eat each other's lunch.
Short memories (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh.. doesn't this happen after just about every disaster?
If you design the networks to work at the utilization that you see after a disaster there would be cell phone towers at every corner, our bills would be $500 or more a month, and it would be using a very low percentage of its capacity 99.99% of the time.
It isn't what is important at the moment, anyway.
SMS uses a different protocol (Score:3)
I believe SMS piggy-backs on a transmission from the tower which is a different protocol than what is used for voice/data*. It seems possible that SMS may work when voice/data has been blocked.
"transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephone traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. "
[*] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Service [wikipedia.org]
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Which is why charges of ANYTHING for text/sms should be fraud! Cellular would not work without this data stream, they act as if they are providing you with a service.
Don't like it? Don't use it.
VZW appeared overloaded, not blocked (Score:2)
VZW appeared heavily overloaded and calls were not going through. Additionally, text messages also appeared to be throttled or heavily delayed. If this was a result of jamming or some other technology to throttle the network, calls were being placed, they were not however providing audio. I received about 20 calls from my girlfriend who lives in the area and her calls were ringing through and "completing", but no audio was making it over the line. Calls I was placing appeared to ring through (five or six ri
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They didn't? Why not? (Score:2)
Given the situation I think shutting down the cell networks would have been reasonable. They shut them down for G20 meetings and various protests but not in the middle of a bombing incident where there's a good chance cellular detonators are being used? Huh?
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Becasue it was over.
Plus, any response that is standard will be trivially worked around.
Dated information (Score:5, Informative)
Media (Score:3)
* Media spouts a load of crap to get ratings
* News at 11
Oh wait, not news at 11, it's news all the time. Doesn't matter that there's nothing new to report, that it's all over, that it will takes days to get any more answer, we have to have wallpaper news because all the other stations are having it. Everyone's hoping for another 9/11.
Oh how I wish for a return to a half hour news bulletin 3 times a day, when journalists had time to go out and find what's going on rather than sit in a studio doing two-ways, reading wires and copy that's come from the studio.
That's enough from me standing outside an empty office block, back to you in the studio. I'll be here again in 15 minutes though for an update.
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You wouldn't believe the things some of these news shows were saying just to have something at all to say. And then they find some Tom, Dick, or Harry, with marginal relevance to the affair, and have that person speak gibberish for half an hour.
These days, people want their information here, now, and in its entirety all at once. It is, quite frankly, an impossibility, especially for events that are so fresh, or incredibly complex. Yet, people want it, and so the news stations have to deliver to maintain the
Just an FYI (Score:2)
Most cell towers have PRI lines that are dedicated for phone calls; it has a separate data connection for Internet and SMS transfers.
SMS, data, and voice all need to deal with the problem of timing - many signals sent to the tower's receivers at once can interfere with one another. Time division can only account for data; SMS and voice both send at random times (meaning the timing of the call or message send).
Having said that, some forms of TDMA have individual phones set up for only certain spots in the s
The networks aren't perfect (Score:2)
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I had T-Mobile last time I was in Boston and it worked just fine, it even worked in the underground other than when we went under the river.
Re:Something's weird here (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who had a loved one in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and couldn't reach her on her mobile until the afternoon, I'm not surprised that a cell network became overloaded. It's happened in other times too.
Considering this wreaked of terrorism, especially to those on the scene, things really blew up. Marathoners calling loved ones and even just REGULAR citizens in Boston (perhaps far away from the site) getting / making calls in a panic, etc.
Cell towers aren't magic, they can only support so much. And since the phone companies aren't using their profits to expand their existing networks then a large metro getting hit with an event is going to overload it... or at least a general region. I mean, in that immediate area alone you had: people living / working in the buildings, LOTS of runners, LOTS of spectators, etc.
Perhaps the feds DID put up a jammer. Perhaps we don't know the whole story. I'm just saying, that an overloaded network sounds perfectly plausible.
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Something's really weird going on with this whole mess. Given redundancies and failover capacity, I'm having a hard time believing that simple load caused failures that blocked cellular transmissions, especially as the failure occurred pretty much right after the blast, and not enough awareness would have been out there to cause the level of traffic needed to bring down the cell system soon enough to have had any effects in blocking cellular-detonated explosives.
Given the fact that a simple new year can bring down a network (in the sense that most people cannot make calls for half an hour), this doesn't surprise me.
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Depends. There are reason to delay explosions.
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Depends. There are reason to delay explosions.
That is true, but if you are going to delay explosions, you don't delay them for only a couple seconds. If you want to get people running away from the explosion, you wait about 30 seconds to a minute. If you want first responders, you delay anywhere from a few minutes up to 15-20 minutes. A couple seconds delay will not give you any significant increase in body count or damage over simultaneous explosions.
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Depends. There are reason to delay explosions.
That is true, but if you are going to delay explosions, you don't delay them for only a couple seconds.
If you want the simultaneous, then it doesn't matter if they are a couple of seconds apart. For effectiveness it has no consequenses. And maybe this is easier to handle, e.g. if you have to use two remote detonators. If bomb A doesn't go off, you can decide not to use bomb B, for whatever reason.
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My first thought was that they were simple countdown timers, as there were a couple seconds between explosions. If they were triggered remotely, they would have gone off simultaneously of they were triggered by the same operation,or longer than a few seconds between explosions if they were triggered separately (I guess the bomber could have had 2 phones and dialed the bombs as the same time, but that seems overly complicated). The amount of time between explosions lends credence to the idea that they were simple timers: set one then set the other a couple hours before, drop them off, then get away.
Information which has been coming out sounds like these were pipe-bombs filled with shrapnel, such as nails and small metal shot. Not quite the sort used in the middle east, which favor a larger blast. I have the feeling this is a domestic bomber with a Timothy McVeigh bent on things. Probably nothing more sophisticated than a simple timer or a lit fuse.
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Speed dial the first one, then the second. It isn't particularly hard to call two phone numbers twenty seconds apart. I'm pretty sure most people could manually key in a phone number in that m
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/15
Re:Could be cell phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Officials also announced a twist in the probe: Suspicious packages that were detonated out of precaution were not explosive devices after all.
That's not a twist, it's just a thing. A twist is if it turns out to have been Richard Simmons.
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Officials also announced a twist in the probe: Suspicious packages that were detonated out of precaution were not explosive devices after all.
That's not a twist, it's just a thing. A twist is if it turns out to have been Richard Simmons.
That's not a twist. It would have been if it had a link to a Rick Roll.
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By 'so many' you mean 'none'? HINT: don't pay attention to the news to get any good information about the bombs for at least 24 hours. There reporting anything they hear, regardless of source.
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Laws cannot usefully restrict criminals. However, laws can usefully prevent law-abiding people from aiding them. For example, although background checks do not absolutely prevent criminals from getting guns, they can make it harder, riskier, and more expensive. Laws requiring people to report all legal sales of gunpowder, fertilizer, etc. could allow detection of unusual sudden purchases by individuals, triggering further scrutiny, which if done semi-covertly, would significantly reduce the risk of crim
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Because it's the same argument from the NRA regarding the 2nd Amendment. It doesn't stipulate "small" arms, just arms, which includes bombs. In fact, this bombing shows that it's more difficult to kill a lot of people with a bomb than with an AR-15. So, by the numbers, we should legalize bombs and outlaw the AR-15. Of course, the NRA doesn't care about numbers and I'm not sure what they care about. It's clearly not the 2nd Amendment as-written.
Really? Harder to kill lots of people with a bomb? Your a special kind of stupid aren't ya?. Oklahoma City Bombing [wikipedia.org]
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Because it's the same argument from the NRA regarding the 2nd Amendment. It doesn't stipulate "small" arms, just arms, which includes bombs. In fact, this bombing shows that it's more difficult to kill a lot of people with a bomb than with an AR-15. So, by the numbers, we should legalize bombs and outlaw the AR-15. Of course, the NRA doesn't care about numbers and I'm not sure what they care about. It's clearly not the 2nd Amendment as-written.
No, it isn't the same argument. It isn't even an argument at all. How about you save your criticism of the NRA's opinions on bombs until they actually have an opinion on some tangential concept completely removed from their mission statement. Also, please hold your breath while waiting.
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Boston slashdotter, here (as if that mattered). Anyway, wouldn't it be as effective to just disallow inbound calls/sms/etc? Allow people to make outgoing calls to call friends and family and all, but don't allow phones to receive calls.
Only allow sms, no calls. Notify everybody by a broadcast sms.
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Another Bostonian here (well Somervillan)
what are you trying to accomplish? If its just to ease congestion and allow more people to get messages out, it might help. I don't know enough about the phone network to say for sure that it would.
On the other hand, if you want to deny the bomb maker a tool, it wont be effective at all because it requires that you appropriately guess what he is planning in real time. If there are no more devices, then it matters not...if there are, they could almost as easily be mad
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Ah, the rush to misreport. This is why I wait a week to read about what happened. News outlets, and law enforcement officials, will just make stuff up because it's too early to know what really happened. Enjoy your speculation!
Facts: There were 2 explosions near the finish of the Boston Marathon yesterday. 3 people have died.
Opinion: Everything else on the news for the last 24 hours.