War on the Unexpected Continues

By Brian Hurt | Published: December 12, 2007

Just had to point people at this article.

If you see someone leave a bag or purse or such, on the subway or in a department store, call it in as a bomb. For God’s sake, don’t pick it up and take it to lost and found- doing so could get you charged with grand larceny.

Sanity is verboten.

Related posts:

  1. Schneier: “The War on the Unexpected”
  2. The Iraq Civil War
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  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertfischer Robert Fischer

    This is where civil disobedience — or, even, civil hyperobedience — should come in. Imagine even one day where every unattended purse, bag, backpack, or briefcase resulted in floods of calls to 911 to get it taken care of.

    If it weren’t for the potential negative side effect of drowning out the legitimate 911 calls, it’d be a pretty cool statement.

  • bhurt

    In the subways these days are ads claiming that last year, 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something- in other words, someone left a bag, or was guilty of breathing while brown, or whatever, and it got called in. Now, to my knowledge, there wasn’t one legitimate warning in the lot. No bombs or terrorists were discovered. I’m pretty sure I’d have heard if there was. Which means that 1,944 New Yorkers cried wolf last year. Given that there were only 365 days last year, that means that on average, there were 5.3 such false alarms a day. We’re pretty close to your vision of civil hyperobedience already.

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/robertfischer Robert Fischer

    …except without the realization that it’s stupid which I assumed would be coming.

    Of course, the person who points out that we should probably NOT be freaking out our populace would be the first one to be blamed if something did go down. And the antics ensue.

    BTW, do you know where “The War on the Unexpected” came from? I first saw it on Bruce Scheneier’s blog (cite) — is it somewhere else, too?

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