MIT student describes Logan art arrest

On September 21, 2007, MIT student Star Simpson was arrested at Logan airport for wearing a sweatshirt with blinking LEDs, a battery and a circuit board on the front. The case took almost a year to be resolved, and on the advice of lawyers, Simpson kept mum on her experience. She has now decided to speak out and wrote her version of events for Make magazine, a quarterly publication catering to the do-it-yourself techies. The magazine is subscription-only, but a Simpson video interview with Boing-Boing TV last month contained the basics of her account.

Simpson, who was oblivious to the likely reaction to her apparel in an airport, now concedes that others might have had reason to be alarmed. But she stands by her assertion that the authorities, once they realized she was no threat, should not have dragged a baseless case through the courts and upended her life for nearly 12 months. She writes in Make: "I'm disturbed by the idea that, with one hysterical phone call, the state can be set in motion to relentlessly persecute anyone. Especially in a town full of tech hobbyists. Also the State of Massachusetts seemed unable to stop persecuting me, no matter what the facts were, once the wheels were set in motion. I don't like what this means about the future."

Boston.com's Josh Glenn was on the story early in his Brainiac blog and saw the incident as a clash between the "wearable art" practictioners of the "maker" culture and the security forces primed to detect any suspicious activity at an airport targeted on 9/11.