So how do you blow up a bridge with 1000 cell phones? You don’t. Police in Caro, MI arrested three Palestinian born men last week after they bought a whole bunch of Tracfone prepaid cell phones last week. When they were stopped they had about 1000 cell phones in the minivan they were riding in. Someone at the Wal-mart where they bought some of the phones called the police (Yet another reason never to shop at Wal-mart) after they bought several phones. The police and local prosecutor decided they were “soliciting and providing material support for terrorism” which is idiotic. These guys were buying the phones to make a quick buck. Prepaid cell phone providers are notorious for the way they gouge customers. They sell phones at dirt cheap prices with an initial allotment of minutes. The initial price is way below the price that a new phone costs buy itself. Tracfone sells phones for as little as $20. If you tried to buy the same $20 phone without a service contract it would cost you $100-$150. They also make the minutes expire after 30-60 days depending on how many you buy and Tracfone in particular sells air-time minutes at quite high prices.

The same situation applies for if you have a regular monthly contract rather than prepaid service. If you phone gets lost, stolen or broken before your contract is up you have to pay the full unsubsidized price for another one. That’s why when we upgrade phones in our family, I always keep one of our old phones around just in case. If one gets lost of broken out of warranty, I can just activate an old one. To try to prevent people from buying the cheap phones and then activating it on another service the providers lock the phone to their service in the phone software. In order to make it economically viable to provide phones to different providers and make them compatible with networks the manufacturers make the locks in the phone software not the hardware. One thing to remember is that any hardware that you can get physical access to can be hacked. So enterprising people have figured out how to unlock the phones so that they can be activated on any service provider. You can buy these $20 phones unlock them and sell them to people for $40-50. If you have 1000 phones thats $20,000 or very easy profit. The only evidence they apparently have against these guys is that they are of Middle Eastern descent, and they shopped at Wal-mart. These guys will probably be held without bail for months, and then convinced to plead guilty to some lesser charges even though they have probably done nothing illegal.

This is the security that the bush administration is providing. As I have said in previous posts I think that this is getting blown up for political purposes, and we will be seeing many more of these in the coming weeks and months leading up to the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and the mid-term elections in November. Karl Rove and his crew will be playing this up as much as they can. Don’t listen to them. As before this is all bullshit.