Guy was admittedly losing it. People do such loopy things when, well, getting loopy. Maybe he was just planning to go sightseeing for relief after dropping the packet. Maybe he was going to visit a friend in area afterward. Perhaps thinking of future trips doing same. That’s plausible enough. You couldn’t get me to tell you how much I packed for a particularly nervous-disorder-ridden trip I had to take once that was supposed to last about a week in the middle of college, and I wasn’t even on drugs.
As to the passport giving a signal, I’d think it’d take a pretty sophisticated (large w/ battery) portable device or would have to be fairly well aimed (if not such a large powerful device) to pick up the very benign thing.
Add too there’d be a lot of passports to cull through in such a place. Just offering an explanation.
Hell for all anybody knows that rumor just before this incident of a North? Carolina US? Rep (have to go back) offering protection of FBI was on and these characters were out to protect LD. That’s not such a big stretch.
Truce [Leo Donofrio walks away from Obama eligibility issue]
“As to the passport giving a signal, I’d think it’d take a pretty sophisticated (large w/ battery) portable device or would have to be fairly well aimed (if not such a large powerful device) to pick up the very benign thing.”
Actually, as crazy as this part sounds, it could actually be true. There really are RFID trackers and they are becoming more widely used for a variety of purposes. They started putting them in US passports a few years ago.
From what I understand, they are the same type of things that they use in stores the prevent theft. They are those annoying stickers with the metal inside that set of the alarms when you try to leave the store. Radio waves are used to track and identify these tags.
They are not some sci-fi fringe technology, they are actually pretty mainstream now. You can read a little about them here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID