British Officals: iPod was to be used in foiled terror plot
According to British officials, the recently foiled terror plot involving 21 British citizens of Pakistani origin who planned to bomb a series of U.S.-bound planes relied, in part, on the use of Apple’s iPods to detonate the devices. According to a CNN source, the explosives were to be disguised in bottles of a British version of a Gatorade-like sports drink, and detonated using either iPods or cell phones. The U.S. has raised the threat level to “RED (Severe)� for all U.S.-bound UK flights. British police have banned electronic keychain-like devices and liquids from all flights.
The plot was “intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale,” London’s Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said. The terrorists planned “to get on board with liquid substances that when mixed could be turned into something that could be detonated.”
“Due to the nature of the threat revealed by this investigation, we are prohibiting any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions from being carried on the airplane,” a Department of Homeland Security statement said.
Laptop computers, mobile phones, iPods, and remote controls were also among the items banned from being carried on board.
“Eight hours without an iPod, that’s the most inconvenient thing,” she said, waiting at the Manchester airport.
You can’t BUY that kind of publicity!
This would be more newsworthy if they were using a 6G iPod…
Were they, by any chance? Because I’d really like to see a 6G iPod, even if it is used for evil.
HOW can you use an iPod for “detonation”???
HOW, I ask you? There is absolutely no way the iPod can receive a trigger signal “remotely”, so what are they going to do? Put a song on the iPod with 2 hours of silence, then a “beep”, that would be heard by something plugged into the headphone jack, and converted into a trigger pulse?
Why wouldn’t you (as the bombmaker) just use a simple battery pack, and a timing IC, like the venerable LM555? That’s about $5 in parts. The iPod is several dozen times that.
This is propoganda.
And they were going to do what? Spend another half hour modifying the ipods on the airplane? In the same bathroom they just spent a couple of hours making the TATP and drying it out (it is a solid not a liquid)? With all the ice they needed to cool the componets while they mixed them?
Doesn’t anyone think the air crew would get a bit suspicious?