Geocaching OR Terrorism?!??

“Idaho Treasure Hunt Goes High-Tech By CHRISTOPHER SMITH, Associated
Press Writer
Tue Jan 17, 3:16 AM ET

BOISE, Idaho - In a game of global positioning called geocaching, the
lowly treasure hunt has gone high-tech — but it can also be a game of
risk when terrorism-sensitive authorities find the goods first.

Scot Tintsman found that out when he stashed a green bucket under an
Idaho highway bridge last September, intending to fill it with
goodies for other players to find using Global Positioning System
units. But before he could finish adding the requisite trinkets and
log books and posting its GPS coordinates on the Internet, a bridge
inspection crew found it.

Rounding a corner on his motorcycle to finish rigging his cache, he
was greeted by a barricade of police cars and a bomb squad. He
struggled to explain the misunderstanding.

"I got off my bike and three officers approached me very cautiously,
hands on their holsters," he said. "I was trying to turn off my MP3
player and I think they were worried I was going for a detonator."

Tintsman and other geocachers play the game this way: Participants
stash a vessel of some sort containing goods as a reward for the
person who finds the "cache," as it's known. The person or group
hiding the cache posts the hiding place's GPS coordinates on the
Internet. People who find the cache are expected to take something
from it and replace it with something else.

In November, a geocache outside a police station in Provo, Utah, met
a bomb squad robot as its fate. It contained a toy gun, holster and
nightstick.

In June, a bomb squad in De Pere, Wis., used a robot-mounted shotgun
to blast the lid off a suspicious-looking military ammunition box
found in a park. It also turned out to be a geocache.

And on the night before the 2004 presidential election, police and
the FBI spent hours questioning a man seen prowling along a fence
at Los Angeles International Airport with a GPS unit. He was a
geocacher from Vermont trying to stash a toy snake into a cache,
placed five weeks earlier, that had already been visited by 463
people.

Guidelines on Geocaching.com — the most popular Web clearinghouse for
registering geocache hides and finds — advise players not to place
caches near critical infrastructure or public buildings that might be
terrorist targets. And with more than 1 million people worldwide
estimated to participate, Geocaching.com co-founder Bryan Roth of
Seattle says the number of homeland security false alarms is
comparatively low.

"I dare say I have heard of no more than five or 10 incidents," said
Roth, whose Web site lists more than 225,000 caches in 219
countries. "Police can always contact us and we'll tell them whether
something is a registered geocache. And if they're still not
comfortable with that, we tell them to blow it up. We don't want to
be legally or, more importantly, morally liable if it indeed was a
problem."

Many geocachers fear the pastime could be banned in some areas
because of the scares caused by ill-advised cache placements.
A "Geocacher's Creed" posted on the Internet asks participants
to "avoid causing disruptions or public alarm."

Even when geocachers cause public alarm, severe criminal
repercussions appear to be rare.

Tintsman, whose geocache sat high above the whitewater of Idaho's
Payette River, was charged with placing debris on public property, a
misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail and a $300 fine.

County prosecutor Matthew Williams said that he is not seeking jail
time but that he would like restitution for the expense of the law
enforcement response.

Tintsman said he is still avidly geocaching — but with a better
awareness of how it might look in a post-Sept. 11 landscape.

"I wasn't thinking about terrorism when I placed it under the bridge.
I was thinking about making the most extreme cache possible," he
said. "I just got carried away."”

“Kinda reminds me of a photo a uh friend of mine saw in High Times magazine. It was the front of a police station with a little marajuana bush growing out of a planter.

The whole geocaching thing sounds lame to me. What is the damned challenge if you know the actual coordinates? I think back in the old days before GPS they did something similar (in the UK), except it involved obscure maps and directions and word of mouth and tall tales. That sounds a little more interesting to me, but using a GPS sounds pretty lame.

I can't wait until it comes out on Playstation -- "Extreme Geocaching: Revenge of the Geocacher"”

“I think camelfluffer just called you lame, lizs!”

“I loved LAND-NAV (Land Navigation) in the military especially at night. The course was set up to test you on pace counts and following an azimuth to find a post with a number on it. You get to your suspected post and alas there are 3 or 4 more post nearby as well as post you pass along the way. The pace count was just as important as the azimuth. You were sometimes given grid coordinate that required traversing from one hill to another or across streams and draws. Then you had to estimate the pace count because the map only gives you straight line distance not distance on the ground. Dog legs were also incorporated into the route. I was taught all this and I have never brought a protractor on a hiking trip. I cheat and carry my GPS. I have geocashed one time but it was on foot in the woods on a weekend trip. I think I could really get into geocashing if I were doing it with a cool group of people. I'd have to be careful though and stick to the woods because my internet Bush bashing has definitely put me on the watch list. Big Brother is watching me.
last edited: 1/19/06 6:54:56 PM”