Would-Be Suicide Bomber Killed by Unexpected SMS From Mobile Carrier

Originally posted by Xiizhan
Source: Wired

The would-be suicide bomber was planning to detonate a suicide belt bomb near Red Square, a plan that was foiled when her wireless carrier sent her an SMS while she was still at a safe house, setting off the bomb and killing her. The message reportedly wished her a Happy New Years, according to the report, which sourced the info from security forces in Russia. Cell phones are often used as makeshift detonators by terrorist and insurgent groups.

I found this article this morning. I thought that you folks might find it interesting that a terrorist was taken down prematurely by a random wireless carrier text message. Spam: 1, Terrorist: 0.

You fail to understand. That was not spam. Unless you want to say that the anti-terrorist folks routinely send out "innocent" messages to suspected terrorists phones to "see" if any are wired to bombs. Big Brother Ivan lives. And you gotta ask, since the phone/bomb went off, who knew what was the message and released that info?

Source: Daily Telegraph article on Leaderpost.com

The Wired article that I originally posted links to another article. I'm guessing that some of you didn't read that one, so here's the link directly to it.

Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suidice belt, killing her at a safe house.

I'm sure that it's standard procedure to investigate an explosion. In part of that investigation, I imagine they recovered and analyzed forensic evidence indicating a cell phone detonator. It says that they "believe" that this is what happened, indicating that it is their working theory. They may not absolutely know for sure, but it sounds like they have a pretty good idea. I'm sure the wireless carrier didn't just send out the message only to the terrorist in question. They probably spammed every customer that they have. I'm sure some bright detective noticed that the explosion happened at approximately the same time that the mobile carrier sent out their message, and probably put 2 and 2 together to come up with this working theory. Sure makes more sense than some notion of the wireless carrier magically knowing that the cell phone was smashed upon receipt of the SMS...

Originally posted by Aliensun
You fail to understand. That was not spam. Unless you want to say that the anti-terrorist folks routinely send out "innocent" messages to suspected terrorists phones to "see" if any are wired to bombs. Big Brother Ivan lives. And you gotta ask, since the phone/bomb went off, who knew what was the message and released that info?

I suspect that the reason they believe that they know the content of the SMS message is precisely because it WAS spam. In all likelihood, a number of the police detectives probably received the exact same SMS because the wireless carrier sent it to ALL of their customers. That sure makes a lot more sense that Big Brother Ivan sending out targeted SMS messages to specific suspects. I imagine that the terrorists over there use off-the-shelf, prepaid cell phones, which BBI would be hard pressed to track and link with a terrorist suspect with any kind of reliability, especially not enough to send random texts just to see if they can pre-detonate a suicide bomber...

So my mobile phone network provider can foil a terrorist attack but my government cant.

Oh dear...... just think how many would have died if that text was never sent.

I don't think this suicide bomber knew they were going to die. I think they were just supposed to plant the bomb somewhere, and the people truly behind his actions (KGB? CIA?) wanted to prolong this "terror war", so they blew the "suicide bomber" up along with the bomb.

End result? Suicide bombers are alive and well. Be very afraid. Hand over your freedom and we'll keep you safe.

LMAO, this is why you never give command of your systems to other institutions or individuals. I can imagine her phone start to vibrate and then her thinking "oh crap, oh crap, no no no" LMAO this is too funny.

Dear valued customer, Happy New Year! Hope you have a blast!

From a poster on the original article, hilarious

Amusing story, I love stuff like this.

Guy tries to rob a blind judo master.

Criminals getting put in their place, etc. Basically life dishing out it's own little bit of justice every now and then, shame it doesn't happen to the people who commit big crimes.