I once consulted on some aviation-related software (not the safety work prominent on my resume), and a company announcement came through, that you must never use a few specific words commonly heard in software development. The two no-no words I recall were "crash" and "bomb". Don't write them in code or documents, don't say them on the phone or videoconf, etc.
Those terms have senses that people in aviation take extremely seriously, for extremely good reasons. A miscommunication can trigger a lot of life-critical emergency mode sudden effort and stress for people. Effort and stress that is occasionally extremely necessary.
It made sense, once I thought of it.
In this particular case, it sounds like it wasn't the teen's fault, nor even a teen being slightly edgy. Just an innocuous product that broadcast a very unfortunate name over Bluetooth. Not something most people would've predicted would be a problem.
Yet, under the circumstances, with the information available, it also sounds like personnel were correct to follow the processes that were designed to prevent terrible disasters.
This is trying to sanewash totally insane levels of risk aversion.
Do you think terrorists are really going to name their Bluetooth speaker "bomb"? Do you think this behaviour has any meaningful true positives?
This is the kind of brainworms thinking that has people throwing our their 150ml liquids out at TSA and taking their shoes off.
1. Are super-organized, highly-capable, fully-sane terrorists the only threat? Or does the threat model include mentally-ill / personality disorder people, who might make mistakes, or taunt those whose job it is to stop them? Or include people of either kind, who create diversions? Or include people who make a statement in an unexpected way?
2. Did the captain, flight control, and everyone else who needed to decide, have definitive information that the report was only an innocuous Bluetooth advertisement for an innocuous consumer device, and somehow knew that no other threat was going on? If not, then I'd commend whomever decided to follow protocol, and err on the side of inconveniencing a lot of people, rather than risk tragedies that the protocol was designed to prevent.
Landing the plane because of something that could be interpreted as a bomb threat without waiting to be sure it was intended that way seems like a precaution on the far end of reasonable, but still reasonable.
Demanding that people disable Bluetooth does not seem reasonable. If there's an actual bomber, tipping them off that you're reacting to their threat might lead them to set off the bomb early. Similarly, demanding that someone shut off the "Free Palestine, F Zionists" WiFi network or the flight crew will call the FBI is counterproductive; if that's cause to call the FBI, just call them. A warning lets the person cover their tracks.
For the record, "BOMB" is probably cause to call the FBI and "Free Palestine, F Zionists" by itself almost certainly isn't, but is something to mention when calling them about "BOMB".
The pictures on the ground posted by some Redditors were even more ridiculous. What looked like over 100 police cars surrounded the airplane after it landed. If there was an actual bomb onboard why would the bomber wait for the plane to land?
It's as if multiple airline employees' and other officials' brains were simultaneously unable to process any sentence that starts with "If it was an actual bomb, then why..."
Instead, everyone applied the same rudimentary "IF [bomb mentioned in any context] THEN [take the most extreme actions written in the playbook]."
What if it is not the terrorists naming them? What if it is a good samaritan trying to warn the pilot but this is the only way they can get a message out?
> What if it is a good samaritan trying to warn the pilot but this is the only way they can get a message out?
Then you quietly divert to the nearest airport. Asking for the speaker to be turned off on PA and then chugging all the way back to Newark makes it plain nobody was acting seriously.
I read this at first scan as "good sam altman" and almost had matcha latte coming out my nose.
If the terrorists goal is to create maximum fear and confusion, why not?
The staff's primary concern probably was not an actual bomb, but a prankster intentionally trying to create panic with elderly and technically illiterate.
I'm sure whichever fictional panic you've imagined would've been far more serious than the one caused by this absolute overreaction.
Maximum fear and confusion by stirring up the elderly on the plane? I'm sure more of that was accomplished by announcing it and then needing to turn the plane around.
on the other hand someone could just be that stupid and if so at least you caught it, err on the side of caution basically
The approach to flight security is a great example of why regularly erring on the side of caution is a terrible approach.
Didn't we just go through an exercise a minute ago where people were being forced to unnecessarily mass find-and-replace their code to eliminate "non inclusive language"? People were losing their minds calling you a racist and threatening to get you fired if you dared to leave variable names such as "blacklist" in your code because in their minds #define's == literal slave owner.
Multi-page corporate guidebooks were released with lists of naughty words.
Avoiding two words seems tame by comparison.
I've never heard of that before, is it common behavior?
There were some pretty public tantrums on open source mailing lists. It's pointless to revisit them.
Though I still see the occasional hissy fit over git master branches that were never renamed.
Totally different situation. People are removing those words as a sign of respect and a very small number of people are chasing down those that don't because it implies an open lack of respect.
My personal experience is also that some of the more extreme noninclusive language policing in some circles has faded away to a significant degree.
No, it means none of that.
It's code.
No one that matters looks at it or cares.
Making unnecessary changes to code does zero in solving any societal ills.
Soooo it's fine to name all your variables slurs then? Like, yes, hyperbolic, but the contention was that the SWE community is overwhelming cis while het dudes from the US and we were making it unwelcoming to anyone else.
> it's fine to name all your variables slurs then?
Hyperbole. Renaming “master” directories was a total circlejerk endeavor by the same crowd that came up with Latinx.
> Soooo it's fine to name all your variables slurs then?
Except that never happened. It's fantasy.
What did happen was words like "black hat" and "white hat" got re-classified as hateful language.
I'm actually surprised the conference was spared by the mob.
If the "terrorists" had changed the name of their bluetooth speaker, as asked, would they have been correct to proceed?
I read somewhere years ago of panic ensuing when a pilot greeted a colleague on the radio with "Hi, Jack". Whether it happened for real or not, the idea of a simple word causing fighter jets to scramble is just crazy although fully understandable in the world post 9/11.
This is a hilariously stupid reaction to a stupidly hilarious decision made by a speaker manufacturer.
And also a new vector for a ransom-attack on the Bluetooth namespace in certain environments via malicious BLE advertising. The worst thing that could have happened here was for someone to take this seriously.
I’ve seen multiple comments referencing this was the default device name… did I miss something in the article or is that sourced from elsewhere?
Which bomb would advertise itself as such.. this is something I’d expect in the movie Airplane!, not something to happen in real life.
I completely agree from a logical perspective. However if the plane blew up and it came out that some passengers had posted online that there was a “bomb” blue tooth device and they didn’t turn around… the court of public opinion would be pretty harsh. This was more or less their only choice from a liability perspective.
The court of public opinion would probably be upset an actual bomb made it through the security theatre while their water bottle did not. If there was actually someone intending to actually bomb the plane, giving them the entire flight back to the origin airport decide to go through with it or head back to the waiting authorities would not go over well in the court of popular opinion either.
Would it though? I'm unconvinced.
> if the plane blew up and it came out that some passengers had posted online that there was a “bomb” blue tooth device and they didn’t turn around
This story is just stupid. If you actually think you have a bomb onboard, you divert to the nearest airport. (And if you think you discovered a bomb accidentally left discoverable, you don’t ask for it to be please turned off.)
The pilots and crew knew they were being idiots. Whether due to power tripping or CYA, who knows, but I’m not surprised this happened on United.
And if you think you discovered a bomb accidentally left discoverable, you don’t ask for it to be please turned off
That was the most hilarious part for me.
Isn't that what they did?
> Nope. Look at the flight track. They went all the way back.
Good point, I was thinking they were over the ocean and that was naturally the closest airport, but it looks like they could have landed in e.g. Nova Scotia in a shorter time period.
Nope. Look at the flight track. They went all the way back.
Bomb threats are a thing.
What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane.
I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of Transportation, will fix this.
Nothing. TSA is a joke. At first, the security theater arguably had a legitimate psychological purpose. The airline industry nearly collapsed after 9/11 because people were so scared of filing. But that was a generation ago—the psychological trauma in the aftermath of 9/11 dissipated ago. But we’re still stuck with the TSA because in the meantime it turned into a massive jobs program.
We’d be better off spending TSA’s $8 billion budget on paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
Why would a terrorist want to plant a Bluetooth device on someone else's bag when all it would accomplish is a minor delay of one flight and would result in a prison sentence after security camera review??
Remember: Kim Jong-Un’s brother was not killed directly by North Korean goons. They hired two women they convinced they were working on a prank show to spray him with the poisons.
You’d do something like that.
Why stop at one bag for one flight?
> would result in a prison sentence
That doesn’t seem like a significant deterrent here.
This is the type of prank you’d see some idiot do to try and get followers on TikTok, not something a terrorist would bother with.
You sure about that?
>> "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/continuing-anxi...
They were bragging that they could provoke this type of response as a result of having flown two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, killing thousands, and causing fear, panic, and self-sabotaging outsized reactions like pouring trillions into wars that accomplish nothing.
Getting a dozen of their operatives arrested for an idiotic prank that just resulted in a handful of planes being turned around would make them a laughingstock overnight.
I am baffled that we are even having this argument.
There’s evidence that not all people involved in 9/11 knew they were going to die. Yet, they were still used effectively.
Significantly less dedicated supporters are generally used as a funding source, but actual terrorist organizations have also used them for publicity events on the anniversary of attacks.
People accidentally sneak weapons through TSA all the time.
There are many anecdotal examples out there. More scientifically, they had a horrific detection rate in some audits.
Seems like an effective DoS attack - ground all planes in the US by sneaking cheap bluetooth speakers into people's luggage with provacative device names
Doesn't even need to be a speaker. Just a battery and transmitter.
Even worse, what's to prevent the terrorists from temporarily renaming their Bluetooth bombs to something innocuous just before going through security and only renaming it back when they need to conveniently find them again while pairing?
If you’re a terrorist, I’m pretty sure you can think of dramatically more consequential things to do than cause a handful of planes to potentially divert. That’s a wildly pointless prank for something that will invariably wind up with you being arrested.
Why do that when you could simply attack people waiting in the security line? That would actually cause terror and shut down an entire airport for days.
A saboteur might want to cause disruption without violence against people, and such cases would still likely be labeled terrorism.
Only because we have labeled anything and everything terrorism these days.
Even then this is an extremely lame and ineffective form of sabotage, compared to the kind of prison sentence you’d be risking.
The same thing that is stopping them from suicide bombing the super crowded security checkpoint line before ID checks.
Nothing really.
Or going into the baggage claim area with a bag containing an explosive device, then acting like they grabbed the wrong bag and putting it back on the carousel, and then leaving.
As an aside, this is something I've only seen in the US. At least in my country the domestic baggage claim area is not accessible unless from an arriving aircraft.
I'm guessing that has more to do with theft though than security.
No, that's because in the US they're handling the international flights separately. It's also the reason why even when you have a layover, you need to clear customs.
Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
Most of the world handles international flights separately without needing to do that unless it is an international-domestic connection.
However I agree that in purely domestic airports I don't see how you'd prevent general public from accessing bags. Except India, wherein you need a booked flight to even enter the airport.
> I don't see how you'd prevent general public from accessing bags.
People are routinely prevented from being where they are not supposed to be. Whether you put the baggage pick-up point in a publicly accessible area or on a restricted area is a design choice.
> Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
That sounds like bullshit to me.
Most domestic flights are short duration trips, a week's worth of clothes fit in carry-on suitcase, and the other stuff (laptop etc) can go in a backpack.
In all my domestic flights in the past year they've had to ask people at the gate to volunteer their carry-on suitcase to be checked into the hold because they didn't expect to have enough room in the overhead bins.
I usually volunteer because: it's free, I don't mind waiting at the pickup, and it's slightly more comfortable when getting off the plane.
I don't know if we are the level of "most people" but I'd say we are defintely at a "signficant percentage of ppl". Due to cost of checked luggage the popularity of one bag carry on flying has exploded.
> That sounds like bullshit to me.
Have you taken a US domestic flight? Everyone wants to bring their massive roll-ons into the cabin, nobody wants to check if they can avoid it.
Indeed, although today I got on a plane at LaGuardia and they made me check my carry on at the gate even though there was plenty of space in the overhead bins ( 60% capacity flight, about half of us had to do this) so YMMV.
No idea why they made us do that, but I had to grab my bag at the luggage claim.
Do people collect their bags from the baggage claim area and then immediately reboard an aircraft to exit the terminal?
How do the arrivals exist the terminal
Are you not allowed to have a friend who is picking you up assist with baggage claim?
often baggage pickup is on the terminal side of the ‘one way exit’.
We need to put a checkpoint before the checkpoint so that never happens!
In Uganda they make you get out of your car and go through a metal detector before getting to the pre-security security screening at the actual airport... 3-4 layers...
> What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
I make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray. It gets fun when they mandate a pat down in lieu of the millimeter wave scanner but refuse to have someone available for it.
It’s the only way to honestly say you have kept your bags under watch. If anybody tries to send in my bags without me , I immediately speak up in a loud stern voice, “That is not your bag!”
I’m not saying this as an ad hominem and simply to throw insults, but with the hopes that it will encourage you to change your behavior.
The only thing this accomplishes is making you the kind of asshole who interferes with other people that are just trying to make their flight on time. You are not highlighting flaws in the security system. You are not taking a principled ethical stance against tyranny. You are just acting like an asshole for the sake of being an asshole and making life just a little bit worse for everyone else around you.
This is not something to brag about. This is something to be ashamed of.
Some people deserve to be insulted. It’s fine.
> make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray
How? I’ve seen idiots do this. I just go around and ahead of them.
A 16 year boy apparently named his Bluetooth speaker “bomb” and couldn’t turn it off, as it was probably in checked luggage. Woof.
You can't rename most Bluetooth speakers. "Bomb" was the name the selling brand gave the speaker.
By making everyone turn off their Bluetooth, the kid whose speaker had turned on probably couldn't even see the device broadcasting the name. People linked to one by a company made Hellotec but Hama has a similarly named device, and plenty of other speaker manufacturers try to make a pun out of "boombox" by naming their devices "bomb" (iJoy, ZEB-MUSIC, and presumably other such brands).
Maybe if someone asked the passengers if anyone knew about this "bomb" Bluetooth device the kid would've remembered, but in this case I can't blame them. On the other hand, asking passengers if they know something about a bomb is probably the quickest way to cause a panic.
The entire thing seems like a ridiculous overreaction. What kind of terrorist would call their bomb "bomb"? This is "Al Qaeda Free WiFi" all over again.
but Hama has a similarly named device
...I mentally appended an "s" to that, and was momentarily very confused.
When you rename a Bluetooth device from your phone, does that affect the name it broadcasts, or only the label applied in the list of Bluetooth devices in the phone?
I know for certain if you change the setting General > About > Name in an iPhone it changes what everyone sees when they look at their list of available Bluetooth devices.
I assume other Bluetooth devices are the same, no? Otherwise how do you distinguish which one of the three million Bluetooth devices within range is your friends Bluetooth speaker you’re trying to connect to?
> I know for certain if you change the setting General > About > Name in an iPhone it changes what everyone sees when they look at their list of available Bluetooth devices.
> I assume other Bluetooth devices are the same, no?
No. The iPhone is allowing you to configure what name it broadcasts. But you cannot just tell another device what to broadcast. That device must have its own mechanism for changing its name.
For example, many Apple wireless peripherals can rename themselves after your user account once you connect them at least once. That has to be a function of the peripheral though, it's not performed by the device you connect it to (past telling the peripheral the new name, of course). Third-party peripherals usually do not have this functionality.
Even better. The news made it sound like it was an intentional act (at best a prank) by the kid.
If it’s a commercial product doing it, I can’t even quantify the levels of facepalm involved.
Calling their speaker Bomb was asking for trouble and I’m surprised this hasn’t occurred before now.
It reminds me of when RED released a camera called Weapon, and I heard of people putting tape over the name when going through the airport.
They did not calculate with the stupidity of some people. I don't blame them. There are just too many mind blowing ways of stupidity to be able to account for all of them. Also it's not their fault other people decide to ground a plane for no reason.
What kind of company doesn’t want to pay $5 per month for a paid workers plan for their website?
The kind of company that normally is well within the free tier for years until their product is unexpectedly part of a news cycle.
In all likelihood the site being down right now is actually a PR win.
Companies that focus on product and not “investor value” through nice looking working websites
A lot of non-software businesses probably outsource their websites to some bottom barrel consultant in LCOL countries.
That, or they're such a small business that they never expected one of their random products to be HN hugged to death.
It probably worked fine until today, and will be back to working fine in a few days.
Oh man, talk about unfortunate set of circumstances. It looks like a cartoon-like bomb too.
I'm assuming that's where the name comes from
Yep, I found the product listing via Google. It says Bomb
Website already HN'd into oblivion it seems
The two are indistinguishable for all intents and purposes.
I prefer the term "hugged to death" which I only ever have seen used on HN.
When did Airlines start scanning Bluetooth devices?
Also possible spotted by for example a passenger that notified the crew.
Airlines have kept tabs on Bluetooth and WiFi hotspots as early as the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 incidents (2016)
You'd think they would do this before taking off..
Perhaps it was turned on by being jostled during take off.
Those new obfuscated links prevent old.reddit to work.
Is there a way for you to post proper direct links?
You can modify your regex to only match when it's not a shortened url - then the short one will redirect to the real www.reddit.com address, before the redirect matches.
(Don't have the correct regex on hand right now, as I changed browsers and decided to use Old reddit redirect extension instead of scripting, but it worked in my previous browser)
My current regex looks like this:
^(\w*)://www.reddit.com/(?!r/[^/]*/s/|media|gallery|notifications|appeals)(.\*)
Mapping to
$1://old.reddit.com/$2
You can click on any of the links and replace "www" in the url with "old", then you'll have things more or less like how it used to be.
to do that you have to open the link in new reddit first to expand it, then change it to old reddit. if you use a tool that automatically replaces www.reddit.com with old.reddit.com the shortened links break.
> Those new obfuscated links prevent old.reddit to work.
Can't you just set the old theme in your profile? That's what I do.
only if you actually log in. not everyone does.
I got permanently banned for the "Christianity is just worshipping a Jewish zombie who is his own father who will save you if you invite him into your head, symbolically drink his blood, and eat his flesh" copypasta, so not everyone can log in :)
I'm one ban away from a permaban thanks to the Navy Seal copypasta
Very interesting, but a hell of a way to dox yourself for being on the flight manifest.
The entities that have access to flight manifests have far easier ways to identify who's behind your account. It's not a threat model worth seriously considering.
Are flight manifests public?
Internal flights in New Zealand don’t need ID. So if you knew you were going to posting your terrible flight experience, you could fly under a fake name.
I pine for the day when news is this:
- Flight 767 returned to airport after seeing a bluetooth device named "BOMB"
- After asking all passengers multiple times to turn off all devices and not getting the "BOMB" to go away, they flight had to return to the airport where officials were waiting to search the plane.
- This was not intentional, but a product that calls it self "BOMB" https://hellottec.com/product/bomb-portable-bluetooth-speake...
- Passengers on the plane commented of the event as it was going on in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/57lugEMhxl
I guess I shouldn't pine, I can just have AI summarize all sources for me, and stop dealing with poor reporting that tries to drag 3 bullet points into multiple pages for the sake of selling ad space.
I don't have a reddit login and was able to view the link just fine.
Hmm I see. I only use "old" reddit and it does require login there to resolve to a real address. In any case, it is a special link that enables tracking (unnecessary, to say the least).
Oh, I thought how stupid it was to return the flight based on Bluetooth device name, which is just a random string identifying a thing. But I think it's also strongly discouraged to bring devices called bombs on a plane?
I'd love that as well - can we not get LLMs to summerize and give us non-click bait versions of these events.
We can, we just have to pay the $0.05 per articles to do it, and some articles aren't even worth the $0.05.
I wouldn't mind paying $20/month to https://wikinews.org to help them build an system that indexed news from different sources, threw the links at an LLM summarizer and used as a draft submission to wikinews.
It would be interesting to see some kind of future where reporters get paid per fact they feed into the system, and then the system just outputs a coherent list of what happened without any fluff, or opinion.
The hard part would be figuring out the worth of each submission. LLMs might be able to assign a price based on the importance of the fact submitted? and then subscription fee people pay is paid to the contributors. I guess you could also have people rate the inputs and base it on that. (what the readers found important.)
The product website has been hugged to death.
Pranks aside, this becomes remarkably scary when you think about all the ways that a malicious/compromised device could cause chaos.
I really don't appreciate you posting my unhashed password to the public like that
> a flight attendant told passengers over the PA system that they "must turn off Bluetooth immediately," or else the aircraft would have to turn around.
So if the person just takes back their bomb threat everything is ok? Or did they think the terrorist labeled their Bluetooth bomb “bomb” and this would disable it?
I guess they assumed there were two scenarios:
1. It was unintentional; someone had a bluetooth device called BOMB for some reason that made sense before boarding the plane. They would turn it off.
2. It was intentional; someone wanted to send a warning and chose this channel - they would leave the device on.
3. The level of tech illiteracy combined with airplane security theater is an affront to all thinking people.
4. A normal level of risk aversion in one of the most risk averse industries
If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.
No they wouldn't. A fundamental part of a threat is to make it very clear that there's a threat. The reason you threaten is to get some concession, otherwise you wouldn't bother threatening.
How many threats did actually turn out to be real to date? I couldn't find this being published. But how many threats did happen without any indication (only after the perpetrators tell). I can easily recalled maybe 3-4 incidents. So the issue here is do knowing threats really help?
There was literally no threat.
They did not know if it was a threat or not. Hindsight is everything.
In the simplest possible terms: this is total bullshit security theatre. At no point has there ever been a bomb or even a bomb threat carried out via usb device names. There is absolutely no reason to even look at the names of Bluetooth devices on a flight.
You don't have your head quite on, they had already taken off!
A normal level of risk aversion? Are you being serious? They inconvenienced a few thousand passengers to save zero.
> This website has been temporarily rate limited
The url conveys the relevant information.
Apparently it wasn’t a threat - a kid had a commercial Bluetooth speaker that names itself as ‘bomb’. No one on the plane did anything intentionally.
I hope somebody follows up to ensure that the kid isn't being punished for a completely unpredictable event involving a commercial device.
GOATed plane, love the engine power.
Andddd now everyone knows that an arbitrary text string in a device hostname is enough to ground a flight.
The other incident mentioned is worse I think. It wasn’t a potential threat, it was stating an opinion.
“a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.”
Given that the Palestinian Liberation Organization has an actual history of multiple hijackings, this makes a slight amount of sense.
Of course, someone planning to hijack a flight would probably never try to do so with WiFi ssid’s, not to mention that hardened cockpit doors and passenger attitudes mean that PLO style hijackings are now impossible.
Of course, telling people to turn off the network name (bomb, Palestine or otherwise) and everything will be fine, is a tacit admission that the whole thing is theater.
To be honest calling the police and saying you have a bomb planted on flight XYZ and want 100000$ or you'll detonate it, is probably also enough.
But bombs apparently use bluetooth now, so he can't detonate it from more than a few metres away...
> he can't detonate it from more than a few metres away...
Reliably bomb detonation is on the roadmap for Bluetooth 8.
Why would it land in New York instead of St John?
Presumably the logistics of being back at a major hub
If you genuinely fear for the lives of everyone on board, who gives a shit about logistics?
Oh gosh, sure, terrorists always name their devices "bomb" in the open.
> "Free Palestine, F Zionists"
Does the FBI usually get involved when someone says these words in public in the US?
Not directly, no, but they’ll build a file for what they consider extremist views. Just look back to the Civil Rights Movement era for the list of things people said that would get them an FBI file - we have a long and storied history of surveilling anyone and everyone who says things that go against what political power desires.
That being said, I do think any cabin crew pitching a fit over such a hotspot name is absolutely in the wrong. That’s not a threat, that’s personal opinion, and it’s not the hotspot owner’s fault the crew conflates Zionist ideology specifically with Jewish Faith in general like an ignorant fool.
“Free Palestine” isn’t exactly fringe. In fact, outside America and Israel, I’d bet it’s the default stance
Something can be a “virtuous” statement while still being an expression of hatred.
Someone shouting “free Palestine” at random Jews in Europe, for example, is just being an antisemite.
Why? This makes no logical sense.
re the second response: Original commenter did not specify exlusivity to jews. So that's my assumption.
Try and think of other groups of people and the “legitimate” statements that can be said to them in a hateful way.
You may genuinely believe that it’s wrong to blow up planes, but going up to a random Muslim in the airport and telling them “please don’t blow yourself up” is Islamophobic.
Do you agree with that?
Either the person you're telling your opinion about Palestine agrees with you or not. Expressing an opinion about some situation publicly is not hate. And who you're telling your opinion to is irrelevant.
You're not telling them to not attack Palestine by shouting "Free Palestine", or anything similar, only that you believe that Palestine should be free, so your comparison is not valid, because it does not contain any hidden assumptions.
They might as well agree with you. They can correctly respond by shouting Free Palestine back at you.
I don’t think that you are engaging sincerely at this point, so I will no longer engage with you after this.
You can change the example to one that “expresses opinion” and it would still be just as offensive. Besides, “Free Palestine” is imperative.
I’ll just leave with some facts:
The lived experience of Jews outside of Israel is that this is being shouted at them specifically in response to them being recognized as Jewish, often with hate in the eyes of the shouters, often by people who don’t give a shit about Palestinians but just love to hate Jews.
It’s being shouted at little girls on the way to school, and spray painted on synagogues and Jewish shops.
It does nothing to help Palestinians. It just makes Jews feel less safe outside of Israel.
Correct. Expressing your opinion about Palestine to the general public is not hate.
Directing the expression of that opinion at random Jewish people, in a targeted manner is hate.
I’m Jewish and living in North America. I have no ability to affect Israeli policy, nor is my heritage an endorsement of it. If someone was yelling at me about Palestine because I am Jewish, I would be pretty offended, even though I probably agree with them.
It’s the same as running up to a Muslim and screaming “stop terrorism”. Or running up to a black person and yelling “stop gang violence”.
The action of yelling at a random person because they belong to an ethnic group that is the dominant party that is doing a bad thing in a different part of the world means you are inherently judging them for their race/ethnicity. It is a pretty good definition of racism.
If you are yelling free Palestine at everyone, fine. If you are targeting your message at people because of their race, that’s just racism. The targeting is the issue, not the message.
> “Free Palestine” isn’t exactly fringe. In fact, outside America and Israel, I’d bet it’s the default stance
That's certainly not true in many European countries
> That's certainly not true in many European countries
This suprised me. I’ve hunted for polling and can find plenty showing a plummeting opinion on Israel, but little on internal polling about a Palestinian state.
> when someone says these words in public in the US?
Depending on where the plane was, it might not even have happened in the US.
No. It’s not illegal to express that opinion (or any opinion) in public in the US in any normal scenario. I’m not sure to what extent the law is different on planes, but you can go outside on the street and yell “free Palestine, F Zionists” to your heart’s content and you will not have broken any laws.
In the UK you can get arrested for saying less.
Can you?
‘I support Palestinian Action’ is all I can think of and it’s the same length.
Not sure why this is downvoted. This was an example from the same article.
And the answer is that the FBI wasn't involved. That was a threat the pilot made, which comes psychologically from the same place as terrorist bomb threats (and also "eat your vegetables or you'll die early" parenting). You want to control someone's behavior so you threaten maximalist retaliation.
An aircraft is not really public. The Captain and FO have a tremendous amount of power they can wield to make sure a flight passes without incident. A plane is not the place to make statements.
Granted though, the FBI didn’t actually get involved. But why let facts get in the way of rage?
> A plane is not the place to make statements
Sounds like they should only be made in freedom designated zones a-la Bush-Cheney
The government of Israel has more freedom of speech and control over the US than voting citizens do.
Give citizens time, one of them might persuade Trump to attack another country, levelling the score.
Greenland isn’t out the danger zone yet.
Imagine getting your jimmies this rustled over expressing antipathy for a genocidal regime, and sympathy for an oppressed people.
Cognitive dissonance can explain a lot. If you don’t think the current regime is genocidal (whatever that even means) then you might get very concerned that anybody who says it is genocidal is a dangerous lunatic or terrorist sympathizer. Even saying something obviously truthful like “there are good people on both sides” becomes a threatening provocation. Hate is a system.
It means this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/31/satellite-imagery-s...
Israelis, particularly Israeli jews for some reason, are very hateful. (half of them advocate killing every inhabitant of a conquered city https://archive.ph/nNzq4 - and they absolutely destroyed entire 100k+ strong cities in the last few years and killed everyone who refused to flee, so it's not an idle threat) They bombed many cafes and restaurants in the last few years, full of people.
On average they seem like complete violent nutjobs. Like every second Israeli you'll meet is likely to be one of those that if they decide they want your city, they'd just advocate killing you and your entire family if you resist. Yet they can still fly freely in the world?! People are too tolerant if anything. :)
Yeah, I've seen way too much violence against animals from both Israeli state, and public. But that's to be expected I guess, from a state that does not even adequately punish their soldiers when they execute children or parents in front of children, and whose commanders think squid games is an inspiration, or whatever.
Discussion around it quickly turns into a ‘yes but look what they did’.
It baffles me. A rich, powerful democracy should be held to a higher standard. But… yes, both sides have been terrible.
Which side is going to work towards a peaceful coexistence?
Biased much? You could have used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking
That says:
"Airplane hijackings have occurred since the early days of flight. ...Pre-1929, 1929–1957, 1958–1979, 1980–2000, and 2001–present."
"...Between 1958 and 1967, there were approximately 40 hijackings worldwide..According to the FAA, in the 1960s, there were 100 attempts of hijackings involving U.S. aircraft: 77 successful and 23 unsuccessful....
"..In a five-year period (1968–1972) the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days.."
And your conclusion is "Palestinian" movement (that you wrote between quotes)...invented airplane hijacking?
> In this context it is something to worry about.
Would you really be worried if someone said or wrote that near you in any context?
Short of them holding a weapon, this is baffling.
HN is generally absolutist when it comes to ‘freedom of speech’, and I don’t agree with having no limits, but in this instance it’s some overly sensitive overreaching BS.
Which is kind of ironic, considering modern terrorism was basically an invention of the Zionist movement in Palestine.
It's also completely false because they cited only Palestine-related hijackings, and not the parent article that goes back far further and proves they're lying.
IM THE BOMB AND ABOUT TO BLOW UPPPPPPPP
This feels like one of those rare stories where everyone involved probably overreacted a little, but you can also understand why nobody wanted to be the person who ignored it.
These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
> These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
What do you mean?
This is like the Adam Sandler movie where he says bomb on an airplane.
It's an overreaction, is it not?
A terrorist is not going to call their bomb's bluetooth trigger bomb. Even if they are, are you telling me we have no idea whether there is a bomb in luggage or not?
Ben Stiller right? That’s Meet the Parents.
What a usability nightmare this site is: 3-4 popups before I could even read the title. No thank you.
And this is with an adblocker turned on.
Don't these sites realize how many users they're losing?
Even if you discount the possibility of an intentional threat as silly, this could have been a warning from someone under duress. Turning around was the right move.
How does that scenario work? Someone's under duress because presumably there's a terrorist on board. He lets the crew know there's a bomb onboard. The plane turns around, and the terrorist... lets the plane land safely?
OK maybe the bomb blows up when it crosses some longitude, because this is like the movie Speed, and turning around means the plane never cross that longitude..
If you mean another type of duress, naming your device "plshelp-[seat number]" would be a hell lot more effective..
> How does that scenario work?
It’s funnier than that. If they had turned off the ‘bomb’ the plane would have just carried on.
The event is bizarre.
This sort of reporting only helps the terrorists. They'll now name their bluetooth trigged bombs "Non Explosive Device".
Someone needs to explain to me how the name of a Bluetooth device has any bearing on anything. Isn’t the real security not letting a bomb on the plane?
Also, now anyone who wants to disrupt a flight can switch their WiFi or Bluetooth name to Bomb or “Free Palestine” and the flight gets disrupted? Get out of here.
There is nothing new in that. It's pretty common that people get drunk at the airport or on the plane and make jokes about bombs or something. Then the place is evacuated and flights are disrupted. The culprits get arrested and probably have to pay a fine and maybe some compensation to the affected airlines, but they usually don't get any prison time.
There are simpler ways to disrupt a flight.
Are there? Setting a device name might be the lowest effort thing I can think of.
Requires you to be on the plane.
Just call the police and say you have a bomb planted on flight XYZ and want 100000$ or you'll detonate it.
Just wait until you hear what a bad joke while waiting in the TSA line can do to you day.
I brought some bathbombs on a trip as part of a thank you gift. My bag got pulled aside for additional screening, and I had to think for a second on what to call them when the TSA person asked me what they were.
> During this incident, a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.
Wtf?
I can understand a bomb, but this is just free speech.
... I can't believe what I am reading...
"Bluetooth speaker name had been set to a "four-letter word, [...] BOMB".
Luckily, it wasn't named "Nuclear Bomb from Cuba" because US Authorities would not have other choice than to nuke Cuba.
Seriously? What those people are doing when they see a fence with "ASS" painted on it? Do they believe that too?
