Schneier on Security

Boston made $1m profit, plus another $1m in paid overtime.

Pearblossom, are you paying attention? Oh, wait. There was no-one to pay for that...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/06/2m_settlement_over_scare/

`"The folks who second-guessed us because we did go out there and do our work, shame on them, because it's important that we did it," [Mayor of Boston] Menino said.'

Après moi le déluge.

Apparently NYC noticed.

http://1010wins.com/pages/226462.php?contentType=4&contentId=319167

This story was originally listed on Newsday but has now been pulled, and the NY Times put a very abbreviated version up that only mentions California, not the efforts in NYC.

...well, New York City bureaucrats were paying attention to PearBlossom -- but were easily spooked, not comforted. NYC increased police patrols of its water system over fears from the PearBlossom discovery (..reported in NY "Newsday" newspaper today).

NYC has a normal force of 175 policemen protecting its water system -- 175 cops for water-protection !! ... who knew ?

Pipe-bombs are very crude devices... and have zero chance of detonating under water.
They were just part of the vast amount of debris & contraband randomly tossed into the California Aqueduct (..a deep & fast-moving artificial river). They lodged 'near' the valves because the valves were an obvious obstruction in the fast current.

East-Coast government bureaucrats must be more skittish than West Coast counterparts ?

P.S.

[ ...this NYC water-cops news story has NOT been pulled off by Newsday -- it's still prominent on their web site front page]

Hm, interesting about the Newsday thing. It wasn't there a few minutes ago.

Also agree about the obvious lack of direct attack motive for the pipe bombs. My knowledge of them might be dated or limited but as I understand it pipe bombs are not often used with detonators, they are usually thrown at targets. So I agree, it makes no sense for them to have been where they were unless they were just hidden or disposed of in/near the river and washed into the system.

But of course the general public isn't going to know this because the general public doesn't know how pipe bombs do (or don't) work.

The pipe bombs in Pearblossom were found during a routine lowering of waterlevels to find "dumped" items - like the cars and weapons also found there. Very different from finding improvised devices strapped to the underpasses of all major bridges around your city.

@Andy - The "improvised devices" in Boston (you know, the sinister ones with wires - and batteries) were discovered during a routine commute through the city. How "improvised devices" are found is unrelated to their sinisterness.

I'll give you that major bridges are vital infrastructure. The California Aqueduct is fairly important, too.

Pearblossom could have mobilized Team America to deal with possible terrorist activity targeting California's water delivery system.

@Parsons
>Pipe-bombs are very crude devices... and have zero chance of detonating under water.

Sorry, but my personal experience refutes that.

Some years ago, when I was young and foolish, I made multiple devices, and they most certainly DID detonate underwater. In fact, that's what I made them to do, because I wanted to see what putting a lot of water in the air looked like. Fired them off in an old pond in the back woods. Every one detonated, even more than 10 ft down.

It doesn't take a lot of engineering skill to solve this, either. Stroll through the plumbing section of a hrdware store sometime. All those things that keep water IN the pipe, like teflon tape, work just as well for keeping water OUT of the pipe.

Igniters (not the same as detonators, BTW) are a different story. You won't find them in stores. That's were the engineering skill comes in. And a lot of youthful bravado.

I wonder how the officials knew they were pipe bombs, and not just pieces of pipe ith endcaps that LOOKED like pipe bombs. I'm assuming that taking them away for safe disposal involves blowing them up, so there's no evidence of what was in them. They could of been decoys.

The problem is obvious. The pipe bombs were made from PIPE. And they almost certainly looked like BOMBS.

If what they'd found looked like Lite Brites, I'm sure the National Guard would have been duly summoned.

@Anonymus who wants to keep it that way: If you used 'igniters' your pipe bombs exploded, not detonated. Still you're right in saying that the question whether a device can explode/detonate under water depends on the engineering skills of the maker.

Still, from this side of the ocean all this fuzz about nothing looks really silly. With all the incompetence shown and energy wasted on the wrong targets I really wonder whether any REAL terrorist plot in the US will be dealt with timely and effectively.

"If you used 'igniters' your pipe bombs exploded, not detonated."

What on earth is the difference between your device detonating or exploding?

Detonation implies intent, and exploding might 'just happen', but the effect is the same.

... also many (or even most) explosives work just fine under water. Yes, even if directly in touch with water.

Detonation is a certain physical/chemical process which takes place at several times the speed of sound. Every detonation is an explosion, but not every explosion is a detonation!

@Californian,

'How "improvised devices" are found is unrelated to their sinisterness.'

I have to strongly disagree with you here. The perceived sinisterness of something is often correlated to its unexpectedness. When dredging, you expect to find lots of odd stuff. The people looking are in a proper mindset to deal with oddities, so little is unexpected.

A commuter, on the other hand, spots an improvised electronic device. They panic. They dial 911, and declare that they spotted what looks like a bomb. From that point forward, everyone is already into sinister expectation mode. A responder spots the device. Expecting a bomb, they keep clear of it, until the disposal team blows it up.

Then three more get called in, because now alerted people are looking up.

False alarms happen all the time in the security space. The trick isn't not having them - an impossible task. The trick is learning how to back down from a response once you identify the real situation.

Well, the terms 'detonation' and 'explosion' are physically well defined and separate things, even if they are related. It is not a question of intent. ;-) A detonation can be as unintended as a explosion/deflagration, just have a look at plenty of accidents.
In case of a detonation, the shock waves propagate at supersonic speeds. At subsonic speeds you usually speak of a deflagration. Both terms/events are a subset of 'explosion'. Often you use 'explosion', if the explosion was not fast enough to be a detonation.
Obviously the detonation causes much more harm. Of course it is an important question whether a devices triggers causes a detonation or only a deflagration/unspecified explosion.

explosion = boom. detonation = boom.
Being in the near vicinity of "boom", regardless of whether it was an explosion or a detonation, can result in somewhat of a reduction of your continued existence.

@Andy

> The perceived sinisterness of
> something is often correlated to its
> unexpectedness.

So a passing commuter recently watched 24, saw LEDs on an underpass, and called the police. No problem.

> False alarms happen all the time
> in the security space.

So a professional bomb squad might reasonably expect that not every call is a real bomb? And that it takes more than LEDs and a couple AA batteries to take out a bridge?

Pipe bombs are pipes filled with something like black powder, even matchheads will work a bit. An "ignitor" is used because the powder/matchheads burn, being in a closed pipe causes a rapid pressure and temperature rise which accelerates the burning... and sooner or later the pressure causes the pipe to fail and "explode".
High explosives - TNT, dynamite, fertilizer and diesel fuel - don't work by burning and don't need a pressure vessel to cause an explosion. Most high explosives will burn, quietly, if you put a match to them. To explode they need a shock wave to initiate the chemical change that releases their explosive energy. A "detonator" is a small explosive device made to cause that shock wave.

@Californian:
Perhaps the bomb squad could have realized that. Or perhaps they were, like many EOD professionals, quite unwilling to hazard that the device wasn't an interesting bomb or release vehicle, and acted with caution.

If, for instance, they'd seen it, and looked at the LEDs flipping them off, and said, "Oh, this is just a joke", and then had a toxin released on them, I'm sure their estates would feel better because they didn't inconvenience those of us driving into Boston that morning.

"If, for instance, they'd seen it, and looked at the LEDs flipping them off, and said, "Oh, this is just a joke", and then had a toxin released on them, I'm sure their estates would feel better because they didn't inconvenience those of us driving into Boston that morning."

This is what we call a Movie Plot around here...

"If, for instance, they'd seen it, and looked at the LEDs flipping them off, and said, "Oh, this is just a joke", and then had a toxin released on them, I'm sure their estates would feel better because they didn't inconvenience those of us driving into Boston that morning."

I don't think anyone ever said that the first sign approached should not have been approached with at least some caution. But the "threat" that was found was a false positive, that then led to a panicked response by the media and the populace. I don't think anyone should celebrate a threat detection system that incurs that kind of cost when encountering a false threat.

They also found a body, a number of animal carcasses, some cars....

In lightly populated desert areas like that, it could take a couple of hours to get a bomb squad out there.

The point? Those areas don't depend on the cops. They have to take care of themselves. No dependency, no panic.

It's amazing how the discussion turned into pedantry of deflagration vs. detonation. And how most of it is wrong.

Raise your hand if you've worked for an explosives company, and understand the deflagration-to-detonation process... yeah, thought so.

TWENTY-FIVE vehicles were found in the aquaduct!? That's nuts. That's more annoying than the pipe bombs.

Ben: Wave!

VP/T = VP/T is fun, but supersonic blast waves are better!

~~
Further news reports from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) state that 2 of the 5 'pipe bombs' found had been exploded (and 3 were unexploded).

The 'devices' are described as 'small bombs', typically used by fishermen to create a concussion in the water which shocks fish and allows the fishermen to harvest them.

DWR stated it had no reason to believe the bombs were used for the purpose of sabotage.

Similar devices have been found previously when water levels in State Water Project facilities are drawn down for maintenance and other purposes.

DWR often finds material that people irresponsibly discard, said DWR Public Affairs Director.

_____________

...the journalism quality on this news story was very shabby. No attempt to find or clarify anything -- just publish a very brief re-hash of sketchy government press releases.

Any competent news reporter would at least pin down what these 'devices/pipe-bombs' actually were -- general size/weight, material, fuse type, location etc.
They might have been mere commercial fireworks (AshCan/M-80's) ??

____________

However, the original point here remains valid... Boston (and perhaps New York) officials would likely have reacted much differently if the same devices/circumstances were found in their water systems.