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You can't win with that outlook.

There's no end to hidden bombs everywhere.

Bombs can be put in trash cans, newspaper dispensers, cars, light polls, planters, briefcases, backpacks, you name it. Most of those you have no chance at detecting before it is too late.

You can't live that way.

For you the terrorist have already won.

One has to use common sense and accept that living in a free nation has risks.

Being worried that "some how" free people put up electronic signs around an open city without being stopped isn't that frightening.

No, the way you win is NOT by putting your head in the sand and ignoring what's going on around you. Lots of us missed what was going on with all the trial runs the 9/11 terrorists did prior to 9/11. To some, it might have been obvious, but if they'd have pointed it out, people like you would have laughed them out of the room.

Now, at least, the terrorists know that as long as they put a cartoon character (even ones as dubious as these) on their devices, no one will take them seriously. Until they explode.

Being worried that "some how" free people put up electronic signs around an open city without being stopped isn't that frightening.

I'd agree with that. Certainly not something that could be or should be stopped, or worth worrying about.

But there's a fine line between vigilance and paranoia. Sometimes a vigilant public is going to report false alarms. They just will. But we have to be careful before we start discouraging people from reporting things that they see that "just don't look right". Of course it's a completely subjective standard, and different people will look at the same thing and have different instincts about it.

But its not paranoid, nor is it somehow giving victory to terror, for people to be able to decide that something looks out of place or suspicious... and to report it to those who can take a closer look. The overwhelming number of reports *will* be false alarms. That's just the game of numbers. Eventually, though, it will be the real deal. Then the person that was observant enough to react correctly will be called a hero. That's just the way of things.

Bombs can be put in trash cans, newspaper dispensers, cars, light polls, planters, briefcases, backpacks, you name it. Most of those you have no chance at detecting before it is too late.
You can't live that way.

There is a big difference between looking everywhere all the time for bombs, and responding seriously to calls about suspicious devices planted at multiple locations. Yeah, a trash can could be a bomb, and if someone drops a big ticking package in a trash can and then starts running I want it to be reported and taken seriously. Yeah you could pack a light pole with C4. If someone calls the cops to report some strange characters doing something really odd to a light pole in the middle of the night I would want those cops to look into it with all seriousness.