
Digital-age detective work can’t crack Brooklyn Bridge caper - haomiao
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/digital-age-detective-work-cant-crack-brooklyn-bridge-caper/
======
Someone1234
> while sparking terror fears in the process

That's just pathetic. You have to have a pretty addled mind in order to find
an obvious prank such as this "terrifying."

But that's what our society is now, everything is measured by the lowest-
common-denominator, and fear is a commodity sold to you every evening on the
news.

~~~
oh_sigh
I think the implication was that people were afraid of a terrorist attack
during the act, not in retrospect when they saw it was just a white flag

~~~
pyre
That was my read as well. That 'people' were afraid it was a terrorist attack
because the lights on a landmark went dark. On the other hand, why didn't
people just assume it was a black-out, or technical issues?

~~~
Crito
Yeah, my first thought would have been _" Dumbasses should change the lights
during the day, not the night"_. _" Terrorists must be terrorizing us by
breaking our lightbulbs"_ would have never occurred to me; it is _far_ more
plausible that somebody was working on them.

~~~
oh_sigh
Well, the biggest terrorist attack on American soil did happen about a mile
away from there. Maybe that has something to do with it.

~~~
Crito
I considered that, and I think it might excuse "Boston mooninite" sorts of
paranoia, but seeing lights turn off on a landmark and jumping to the
"terrorists" conclusion? Nearly 13 years later? This wasn't a low-flying plane
or an odd device with blinking lights, this was just some lightbulbs going
out.

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wyager
Really? Analyzing cell tower data over a harmless prank? They're probably mad
that some pranksters conclusively demonstrated that, for all the security
theater in NYC, the police can't even stop people from planting stuff on a
major bridge.

~~~
s_q_b
It's highly symbolic from a police perspective. We may see it as some kids who
watched too many documentaries playing a harmless prank. But let me rephrase
that to put that in the frame of mind of the investigators. "Unknown
individuals infiltrated a heavily guarded and highly visible piece of crucial
infrastructure undetected. Once present, they defaced the public property by
removing two American flags, and replacing them with white flags, a typical
signal of surrender. The suspects remain at large."

It's about the symbolism, not the act. If NYC, for all its counterterrorism
efforts, can't catch these pranksters, it makes the public safety officials
look impotent in the face of real threats.

~~~
smutticus
> it makes the public safety officials look impotent in the face of real
> threats.

They largely are. It's incredibly difficult to stop crimes before they're
committed, and prior to any terrorist mania it was generally considered to be
outside the scope of police work. Mainly because it requires a security
apparatus, and authority, that is in direct conflict with an open democratic
society.

~~~
s_q_b
Exactly. I'm saying pointing out government impotence was the purpose of the
protest, the payload message it was meant to transmit. That should be clear
from the symbolic choices of removing the flags, etc. So naturally the powers
that be are responding with anger due to that message, mostly because the
protestors didn't show just tell, they showed that message, through the
government's inability to prevent or apprehend them.

This is the nerf-ball version of challenge to government authority, so instead
of Tahrir you get a few kids changing a flag, and instead of a repressive
government crackdown, you get increased police investigation. But the
mechanisms are the same.

States, whether they be national or local governments, don't react well to
open challenges to their authority, and they use every tool at their disposal
to prosecute anyone that commits a crime that openly challenges the authority
of the government.

------
DigitalSea
Given just how bad the economy still is, it pains me to see the NYPD wasting
potentially tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, trying to find a bunch
of kids who replaced a couple of flags. They should be rewarding these kids
for finding a glaring security hole (if they find them) in supposedly one of
the states heavily guarded monuments before someone with ill-intentions found
it and caused havoc...

If they're calling this an act of terrorism, are they going to throw these
kids into a jail cell for 20 years for a harmless prank? Whatever happened to
being able to have a good old prank. Kind of reminds me of the MIT pranks:
completely harmless.

How about they spend the money securing the bridge instead of combing through
cell-phone towers and involving innocent civilians in a draconian dragnet
operation? This kind of behaviour from the NYPD is just going to encourage
more pranks like this.

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discardorama
Reminds me of the MIT pranks [http://hacks.mit.edu/](http://hacks.mit.edu/)

------
Terr_
Wouldn't it be funny if they _are_ the same flags, and instead the
perpetrators bleached them "remotely"?

Like with a quad-copter hauling loads of liquid bleach, or a laser with the
right wavelength to destroy the dyes.

Edit: Ah, never mind, the spotlights are also up on top, not down below as I
had thought. It'd take quite a lot of robo-dexterity to cover them up so
quickly, so if a person is already up there they might as well just swap the
flag too.

~~~
rotten
Or some nearby industrial plant belched a cloud of toxic bleaching gas that
drifted by and as a side effect reacted with the cheap chinese dyes in the
flags.

Corporate terrorism? It would never happen...

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spindritf
I'm gonna be honest, that's an impressive prank. And the faded flag is not
just run-of-the-mill vandalism.

------
dzhiurgis
Aaaaand it's gone from the frontpage. The very symbol of hacking is gone from
the Hacker News in less than 5 hours.

In regards the topic the flag turned into a symbol of surrendering of ones
freedoms to the state.

Now let's spend hundreds of thousands to catch them, put them to the jail and
budget for consultants who will help closing such threats in future.

~~~
dang
Five hours is plenty of time on the front page, and the second page has good
stuff too.

Neither the article nor the thread sheds much light on the story, so it
doesn't seem surprising that this post didn't reach the top tier.

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lotsofmangos
This is hilarious and the official reaction only makes it more so.

If the NYPD want to discourage more pranks from occurring, this kind of overly
dramatic sulking is not really the way to go about it.

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CapitalistCartr
I'm guessing ride bikes to the bridge and leave cell phones at home? That's
the only thing I can figure. They had to carry quite a bit of gear.

~~~
jakevoytko
The Brooklyn Bridge has a few features that make it comparatively easy to pull
off.

Here's a street view link that should give you an idea:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.705226,-73.995817,3a,90y,130...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.705226,-73.995817,3a,90y,130.57h,83.25t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sfM0UuW-
XaebvDIV2vx8Kkw!2e0)

\- The bike+pedestrian path is suspended over the roadway.

\- There are some suspension cables leading from the suspended pedestrian
path, and trusses leading to the other cables.

\- The cables are pretty thick and have railing-like cables, likely for
maintenance.

\- There is only a small metal door preventing people from running all the way
up the cables. The railing-like cables look useful for climbing over the door.

It's possible that with the right skills, nothing is necessary but the new
flag and tins, a plan, and a little luck.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Behind the scenes video of a movie shooting a walk up the cables.

Even with permits and DOT assistance, the SWAT team came out after them and
halted traffic on the bridge.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b4gVfJpUKU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b4gVfJpUKU)

------
oh_sigh
They should spend the money on fixing the security holes, not finding the
perps. If it really was a terror act, the terrorists wouldn't care if you
found out who they were after the fact, so this isn't any kind of deterrence.

~~~
lotsofmangos
_' Perps'_ in this context reminds me of the Dredd story _" Un-American
Graffiti"_.

If this all ends with someone trying to paint a smiley face on the Statue of
Liberty, then I would not be in the least bit surprised.

------
suprgeek
Rig up a couple of motion triggered IR camera's at critical points not
commonly accessed, disguised and tamper proof. Check it once every so often
just to make sure it works.

Next time some jokester tries a stunt like this go check, find their pic,
locate & throw his/her dumbass in jail (if so desired).

And please stop with this "terrorist" scare mongering! We as a society (or the
media portrayal) are becoming a bunch of paranoid jerks parroting this
nonsense and wasting taxpayer funds when the NY cops have many more important
issues to deal with.

~~~
deciplex
>And please stop with this "terrorist" scare mongering! We as a society (or
the media portrayal) are becoming a bunch of paranoid jerks parroting this
nonsense and wasting taxpayer funds when the NY cops have many more important
issues to deal with.

Yeah, I heard we're nearly at the point now where we're going to go around
putting hidden motion-triggered cameras literally everywhere.

------
atbtoacb
So I agree that it would be outrageous for to throw these folks in jail for
this.

But it does seem worth following up on. Not because they did bad, but because
it's important to learn how they did what they did. And demonstrating to
potential terrorists that you're capable of finding people who breach security
at landmarks seems like a good thing to do.

The Brooklyn Bridge would be a reasonable terrorist target. We collectively
spend a lot of money to try to make it secure, just like we do with basically
all large buildings. And that feels reasonable to me, and I imagine to a lot
of other people. (e.g., I'm not sad some of my tax dollars go to protecting
the Golden Gate Bridge[1])

And, so, I dunno, NYPD hasn't thrown 'em in jail yet, and they've only said
"It is a matter of concern... I am not particularly happy about the event." So
I guess I think it's a bit unfair or unhelpful to judge everyone's handling of
it quite yet, everything seems sorta fine to me as of now.

Also what an awesome prank, I love it.

[1] [http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Protecting-Our-
National...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Protecting-Our-National-
Treasure-129481703.html)

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sys32768
I wish there were more discussion about why they did this rather than how.

~~~
igravious
This is that discussion. Let's hear your thoughts.

Mine is that the pranksters want to expose the fear-mindset in general for
what it is, and relatedly show that the freedoms we've given up in the name of
security was a bad idea, and finally that security is an illusion because you
can't secure all places at all times unless you want to live in something that
resembles a prison.

~~~
kazinator
Bingo. The white flags denote surrender: surrendering your rights to the
state. I got that too!

In short, they say: "America: you're pwned, like this bridge, and, like the
cops here, you don't even know how it happened".

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sylvinus
That sounds straight up from the TV show "The Leftovers" in which there's a
nihilist cult that paints things in white!

