Page 38 - Security Today, January 2018

BOMB THREATS
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING
Hoax bomb threats have become a cottage industry By Scott Stewart
On the morning of Oct. 5, someone placed anonymous tele- phone calls to four high schools in Springfield, Ill., claim- ing in each call that that there was a bomb in the school and that everyone needed to get out of the building. In response to the unfounded calls, the students from all four schools were evacuated to designated off-site locations while the authorities searched the schools for bombs.
These calls were merely the latest in a long string of anonymous hoax bomb threats directed at schools across the United States – and indeed the world. Hoax bomb threats have become a cottage industry, with individuals and groups online offering to call in an anonymous bomb threat to a school for as little as the equivalent of $20 in Bitcoin. The scale of the issue was illustrated by the arrest of an Israeli teenager in April of 2017 who was charged with making thousands of bomb threats across the globe. The 18-year-old reportedly had $500,000 in his Bitcoin account at the time of his arrest.
When authorities respond to a vague, anonymous bomb threat by evacuating a school, they cause significant disruptions and give those
seeking to propagate terror (or delay a chemistry exam) a cheap, easy victory. Even worse than the fear and disruption they generate, such reactions to bomb threats can also provide terrorists or mass shooters with a soft target. Evacuating people from a place of relative security out into the open makes them more vulnerable to attacks with a variety of weapons, including bombs, guns, knives and vehicles.
BOMB WARNINGS AND BOMB THREATS
There is a crucial difference between a bomb warning and a bomb threat – a difference that dictates a different response to each. Histori- cally, terrorist groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the Basque separatist group ETA established coded phras- es with the authorities that were used to provide warning of a bombing in order to prevent civilian casualties. Such warnings were generally telephoned into a police station or media outlet with the intention of providing enough time for civilians to evacuate an area but not enough time for the bomb squad to deactivate the device before its detonation.
Groups that employed such warnings obviously sought to limit
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