[Boatanchors] COPS BLOW UP HAM ANTENNA MISTAKEN 4 BOMB

[J Forster]

Agreed. Two incidents in Boston highlight this:

First, there was a guerilla marketing campaign using "Lite Brites" for a cartoon that
caused a giant overreaction. In a score or more of other cities it was essentially laughed
at or ignored, as the authorities were far more sensible.  The overreaction continued long
after the things were determined to be totally harmless, and continued with a huge PYA
effort by the authorities that had overreacted, designed to convince the naive TV viewers
the things represented an actual threat.

Sometime later, an MIT student was busted at the airport because a clue less airline clerk
did not understand the flashing LEDs on her sweat shirt were "art" not some nutty threat.
She was arrested at automatic weapons point.

Remember the story about crying wolf too often?

IMO, these people had their asses busted more for "contempt of cop" than any real threat
they presented.

Ever since the Patriot Act, bureaucrats and other have used it's provisions to abuse and
harass those whomever they feel like. Our Constitutional guarantees have largely vanished.

FWIW,
-John

========

Todd, KA1KAQ wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:53 AM, k3xr at juno.com <k3xr at juno.com> wrote:
> > Am I missing something here....what do police haters have to do with boatanchors????
>
> I'd hardly call Larry a 'police hater'. He was merely pointing out
> some of the not-so-sensible things seen recently. It's true that we
> live in a different world today, but that doesn't mean we need to give
> up access to common sense or following the laws - regardless of
> whether we're enforcers or 'enforcees' so to speak.
>
> There have been cases in recent years of folks transporting boatanchor
> radio gear being stopped and questioned by law enforcement, some
> resulting in problems through lack of knowledge and refusal to apply
> common sense. [snip]