A horrible new trend is occuring, in which those who are seeking revenge on others are calling in false terror threats against these people. The cost
of this is mass panic and expensive investigations that uncover nothing but a vendetta. The Boston terrorist alert is now listed as the newest hoax
among the other false reports.
www.boston.com
The tips were frightening and very specific: Six people smuggled in from Mexico were seeking nuclear material for an attack on Boston; a Canadian Al
Qaeda cell planned to bomb a Los Angeles shopping mall; a terrorist sought to blow up a New Jersey bridge. Each one set off intensive and costly
investigations. Each one caused some measure of public alarm. But each one, according to authorities, turned out to being nothing more than a tipster
inventing a terrorist threat to get revenge on an adversary.
''It's new in the terrorism context that people are using more extreme types of hoaxes to get revenge," said Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the US
Department of Justice in Washington. ''They're exploiting the concerns of a terrorist attack." The people behind such false claims are a varied
bunch: the jilted lover, the motorist angered by a car accident, the vindictive mother, and the boyfriend cheated out of money. Falsely accusing
someone of a crime out of a vendetta is hardly new. But Sierra said it appears to be a new phenomenon since Sept. 11, 2001, that people are making up
large-scale terrorist plots ''simply for getting somebody back."
''Every time one of these threats turn out to be a hoax and information is out in the public domain, that is potentially a count against us in the
whole crying wolves category," said Ford. Concerns about the impact that such false reports have on law enforcement and the public prompted Congress
to increase the penalties for hoaxes in the National Intelligence Reform Act, which was signed into law last month.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
This is just a sick thing to do. Is revenge really worth the panic of thousands of innocent people, and wasteful spending of our tax dollars? Like
the article states, the hoaxes may be like the boy who cried wolf. When a real terrorist threat finally comes, and hopefully it never will, people may
just blow it off as another hoax and be put in real danger.
[edit on 31-1-2005 by zhangmaster]
I am afraid we are reaching the point of no return. 
