Originally published at: 1 day after deadly pagers, walkie-talkies simultaneously explode in Lebanon, killing 9 and injuring 300 (video) - Boing Boing
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Sickos are probably going to detonate the Tamagotchis next.
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If Trump loses, this kind of terrorism is going to get moved into the U.S. next, probably by the Russians.
If I ran a cell phone company, I think I’d be terrified about how bad this is likely to get.
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Considering that you really have no way of knowing who has these tampered exploding devices and where they will be, it adds a new definition to the term ‘stochastic terrorism’.
For the walkie-talkies though, I assume the IDF went ahead and blew them because they were bound to be discovered very soon after the killings yesterday.
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Again, this is not the definition of “state sponsored terrorism” how again?
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I suspect the walkie talkies were detonated the day after the pagers as part of the plan. After the pagers were shown to be dangerous, more walkie talkies would be turned on, in use, and carried.
I shouldn’t be surprised at the indiscriminate nature of these attacks. Not after everything done to Palestinians in Gaza. But some innocent part of me is surprised and horrified.
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Considering that I suspect every one of us carries a cellphone on our body most of the time, the idea that they can be weaponized is pretty fucking terrifying.
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These attacks appear to be pretty discriminate, with reporting that Israel intercepted Hezbollah pager and walkie talkie orders. This is definitely “cleaner” than the recent Hezbollah attacks on Israel, but of course civilians on both sides get the short end of the stick.
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No, this is just state sponsored terrorism. There’s nothing stochastic about this. It’s really not even state sponsored. It’s actual state terrorism, assuming Mossad was behind this. This is a war crime.
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Perhaps this is part of a “land clearing” operation before a ground attack.
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Time for this trend to come back
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Hey, I still have one of those! (Damn, I’m old!)
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I don’t necessarily think that is plausible, at least i hope not! Other than phone manufacturers mass producing faulty batteries, but that’s a story of corporate ineptitude. An attack on the hardware supply chain is just as wild and something i would have expected to read in Gibson’s cyberpunk oeuvre.
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I would not have believed the current scenario, and am still struggling to believe it now. What is beyond possibility? I’m not sure that even has meaning at this point.
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Round the assholes up and put them in jail.
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Well, it doesn’t fit the current definition of that term, so how about we call it something else, cos it ain’t stochastice terrorism.
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As best we know from the pagers the explosions were caused by high explosives being added to the pagers not using any part of the pager to cause a physical explosion. The pager may have been used to trigger the explosion, or to piggyback off the power source of the pager and the explosive package came with a second radio.
It isn’t a big leap to assume the walkie talkie would be the same.
One could do the same with a cellphone, and if you aren’t using the “host” device to trigger the explosion you could do it with a flashlight, a handheld video game, a blood sugar meter, or basically anything people supply with power, keep charged, and tend to carry.
There is basically no doubt what so ever that the same technical expertise that can do it to a pager can do it to basically anything. The real question is what supply chains can a bad actor (or if we don’t want to see Israel as a bad actor, a state level actor willing to commit violence remotely) insert some small packages into.
I doubt it would take a state level actor, an international shipping company could do it.
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Maybe I’ll hold off getting the next generation phone…
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Placing landmines without marking them is a war crime. I see no difference here. In fact, it’s a little more nefarious as these people are moving through public areas while land mines stay put.
Absolutely repugnant.
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