Originally published at: Pagers explode all at once, killing 8 and injuring over 2,700 in Lebanon and Syria (video) - Boing Boing
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I really hate this timeline.
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Anyone care to explain how this isn’t straight-up terrorism?
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The consensus is that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, meaning they can kill anyone at any time and the west will still keep shipping them the means to do more. Just like how “blue lives matter” means cops are welcome to shoot black people for fun. 
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Because murdering the people who actually provide social services somewhere who you don’t like is okay if they are Muslim
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Yeah…
“I should have the right to preemptively murder lots of people before they can murder me” is a really shitty social policy.
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Interesting. Could it be used to explode a cell phone? I mean, we are carrying bombs in our pockets all the time. A state that could kill anyone remotely is such a scary thing.
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Seems possible.
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Israel and its spying/international gangster / privatised state security industry have a lot of experience in mobile phone compromise and also embedded systems hacking so: yes. Of course.
Russia feels like the Intel of that industry/government/crime nexus in how thoroughly they focused on PCs…
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Bibi REALLY wants his regional war, doesn’t he?!?
Also… pagers are still a thing?
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Update, 12:55pm: The Times adds a small detail: “The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
Several of the explosions were captured on video, and in them, the devices appear to “explode” more in the manner of a small grenade (a bang and a puff of smoke) than a lithium ion battery (which may explode but is often followed by continuing smoke and fire), despite some of the early speculation by Hezbollah officials. This is a breaking story, and the cause of the explosions still remains unclear.
Update, 1:05pm: The WSJ quotes regional security analyst Michael Horowitz as suggesting the attack was likely caused by either 1) malware triggering the batteries to overheat/explode or 2) an actual explosive charge inserted in the devices at some point in the supply chain and then detonated remotely.
“Either way, this is a very sophisticated attack,” Horowitz told the WSJ. “Particularly if this is a physical breach, as this would mean Israel has access to the producer of those devices. This may be part of the message being sent here.”
[8 dead, 2,700 injured after simultaneous pager explosions in Lebanon | Ars Technica]
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For the medical community, yes.
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The articles say they used it for security reasons, as the IDF and Israeli Intelligence could track their cell phones.
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Was not aware of that… I figured everyone switched over to cellphones. TIL… I hate that I had to learn it this way…
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Nope; insurance and medical still heavily use old tech, like pagers and faxes, here in the US. I imagine that’s even more so in countries that are not as rich as ours.
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[Lebanon Explosions: What Is A Pager And Why Are Hezbollah Members Still Using It? - News18]
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Based off the markings in the below and other images, I wonder if some of these Hezbollah pagers that exploded were Apollo Gold “AR-924” Rugged Pagers? https://gapollo.com.tw/product/ar-924/
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I thought pagers used the cell network as well. What makes these untraceable and phones not?
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Wow, and here we thought that 5G was bad!
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