Would you take a suit case with a bread bored, exposed wires, and a 9V battery through security at an air port? How about higher security areas than that?
There is a very, very big difference between what was worn and something that one would associate with being a light up sweeter.
When I heard the story I assumed this ( http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0070/8002/products/g513a-ch... ) was what was being worn.
There is a big difference between exposed wires, batteries, with blinking LEDs stuck together on a breadboards and Legos. When going to an area with elevated tension, security, and crazed guards the gap between "weird" and "threatening" is quickly closed.
Yeah, that's kind of my point. Incidents like this aren't about safety, they are about conformity.
I could understand MIT distancing itself from what would have been a PR stshow because of how obviously threatening that device looks.
If anyone is wondering where I found this image, it can be located here ( http://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html ). It seems hard to find a photo of this with any article on the subject. It took a bit of digging to find that few year old BoingBoing story. This link also contains more details on the incident that were not covered in the story.