White flags fly from Brooklyn Bridge in stunning security breach

originally posted by: majestic3
Gotham has a new mastermind

I'll bet his/her name is Superhipster.
Doing stuff before it's cool

a reply to: Bishop2199
I suppose difficulty is a matter of opinion and motivation. I wouldn't want to do that climb!

The latest update from the New York Post adds some details:

Getting to the top of the towers is no easy task. Specially trained Department of Transportation workers must walk the quarter-mile stretch on a foot-wide cable, attached to a tether, until they reach a ladder.

And this had to be done on two different towers of the bridge. It took the city several hours to replace the flags. And it probably took whoever painted the original flags white a bit of time too.

The cops also packed up large aluminum cooking pans, which the vandals used to cover the bridge’s lights in order to pull off the stunt, a law enforcement source said.

Lights on the Brooklyn tower went out at 3:29 a.m. and they went out on the Manhattan tower at 3:42 a.m., the source said. They stayed out until the sun rose around 6 a.m., and by then the flags were flying, sources said.

I'm not sure where the lights were, but unless they were near the road or pedestrian walkway there must have been people relatively simultaneously on both towers where the flags were painted.

Police are trying to figure out how someone was able to gain access to the bridge, which has around-the-clock patrol cars stationed on both sides of the bridge and security cameras.

The cars face the center of the span — but it’s sometimes hard to see all the way to the towers in the middle, police sources said.

SOURCE: New York Post article

Despite the security, no one noticed the lights were out for more than 2 hours. Wow...

ABC News has video of a press conference about this here:

ABC News Story

Security cameras show a group of 4 or 5 people "and some others" walking on to the bridge around 3 AM, a little while before the lights went out. Police still don't know who did it or why, but consider these to be people of interest because of timing.

Maybe its a Flag of Truce and it make a the bridge neutral site for 2 groups getting together . Its any ones guess who the groups are.

It could be a signal for some event.

Perhaps the activation of a cell on US soil

White flag is usually considered to mean surrender.
But the color white could also mean peace.
Or white supremacy.
Surrender America!, or
America has surrendered.

Too much speculation over a single thing, i don't even wanna pay attention to it since it's so vague.

Maybe 'white' to signify the want for 'peace' in Palestine/Israel.....

Possibly, but I would think there would be other less strenuous ways to inform or activate a cell.

I watched a documentary the other night on street artists and this could certainly be a form of political protest. The mystery around it makes it interesting.

Yes calkno coming from a graffiti background them NY cats some of them are crazy when it comes to climbing out on ledges water towers and buildings ect.

All this money spent and shakedown of people created by the war on terror is not working well. The police on duty, it would seem, are not really on duty since lights going out isn't even noticed or raises suspicion.

originally posted by: calKno
Possibly, but I would think there would be other less strenuous ways to inform or activate a cell.

True.
But this would be a signal broadcast by all the MSM for the members of the cell to see across the country, without the possibility of communications to the members being intercepted by the NSA.
Not saying that is what it was, just saying that it is a possibility.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe
"Earlier today we hoisted two white flags to signal our complete surrender of the Brooklyn Bridge bicycle path to pedestrians."

bull f**kn plop!
Someone somewhere thinks the USA has given up... maybe its because they've lost control and are meaningless in current events now??..

I'd have to agree with them!

It's still a guess what the point was, but this seems to be the latest news:

SOURCE: New York Daily News

Cops searched Wednesday for a skateboard-toting youth and four pals spotted crossing the Brooklyn Bridge just 20 minutes before its flags were stolen... described as in white and in their late teens or early 20s... video is not clear enough to use facial recognition technology...

...cops who missed the trespassers jumping a locked gate, scaling the two bridge towers and hanging two new white flags will not be disciplined... the “principal job” of the officers was not monitoring the towers.

“They’re there to watch for suspicious vehicles,” ...

Despite early reports that the original flags were painted and that painting supplies were found, apparently the story has now changed to:

The American flags were removed and replaced with store-bought Stars and Stripes that were bleached white before they were hung atop the towers' flagpoles.

a reply to: ikonoklast

The cops also packed up large aluminum cooking pans, which the vandals used to cover the bridge’s lights in order to pull off the stunt, a law enforcement source said.

This is obviously the key to finding the person or persons responsible. How could anyone know exactly how the flags were illuminated and what would fit over the light source unless they've been up there before. So it's either someone with insider knowledge that provided that, did this themselves or the perpetrator was up there prior, casing the situation to see what materials, etc. were required to do the job. So now they need to go back farther in their tape search.

Looks to me like they don't rely care all that much so why even look for them. They were not driving. Ego?

Hmm curioser and curioser…
I wonder too if it means that on a subconscious level America has surrendered to the enemy and this is a kind of twilight language or code to her enemies within that the time is at hand. Any day now…? Will NYC be the stage for another global event? On a side note I've been wondering if a global event (natural or man-made) might happen on 29/7/14 or 11/2/14 or 2/11/15 particularly with significance to America or Israel?...

The real takeaway from this isn't the surrender message. It's that after a massive loss of rights and descending into a police state where everything is monitored 24/7, our infrastructure still isn't anywhere near as secure as we like to believe it is.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

No.

They said they found 'painting supplies' up on the bridge which pretty much excludes freak bleaching of the flags.

They were painted.

What interests me more about this, is how they could have gotten up there and did this flag business without being seen.

As for a reason for doing it;

The US flag is or was, a symbol for freedom...surrendering freedoms is something that has been going on more and more over the last 10 - 15 years...the white flags of surrender is probably representative of America no longer being a free country.

a reply to: calKno

It reminds me of guys climbing large buildings or billboards to tag it with graffiti, it's an adrenaline rush.
But this bridge has some serious security on it, apparently. If they fooled security then it's time to reinforce that bridge.
If they did that to the flags, they also have time for other things of a much darker nature.