Mohammed, TracFone home

One of the things about the Arab/Muslim men who were arrested after a tip from a Wal Mart employee really raised my suspicions. They claim that they were buying large numbers of TracFone cellular phones to resell them at a profit. However they were removing the phones from the packaging and throwing the phones in one box the batteries in another and the chargers and packaging in still another.

Now I use a TracFone. I dropped US Cellular a couple of years ago and never looked back. My TracFone costs me around $20.00 per month and the coverage in the areas where I live and work is fine. So I am very familiar with the way that TracFone works. In fact I bought m In fact I bought my mother a TracFone earlier this year which was the same model as the one the Muslims were purchasing. I activated it for her and add airtime whenever she needs it.

So as a longtime TracFone user I can tell you that you can’t use the phone as a cell phone without materials contained in the packaging. First of all you need to read the instructions if you’ve never dealt with a TracFone before. You need to first install the SIM card which is in the packaging materials. Then you need to charge the battery, since they are shipped in a discharged state. Then you need to turn the phone on and call a number supplied in the instructions on a land line phone. You follow the instructions and punch certain codes into the phone, after supplying the serial number of the phone and the SIM card number (which are found in the packaging) and you have a functioning cell phone.

What commercial value cell phones would have that could not be activated in the normal manner I cannot guess. I also cannot guess why Arabs living in Texas would pay extra for a cell phone which they could buy in any local Wal Mart. There is not test of citizenship for people buying TracFones at Wal Mart. If you pay cash there is no record of your identity, so fears of deportation could not motivate anyone to pay extra.

So why would anyone pay a $5.00 premium for a cell phone even if it had the instructions, the SIM card and the charger, when he could walk into a Wal Mart and buy one?

Of course this doesn’t even address the fact that they had information about airport security in their possession or were apparently doing surveillance of the Mackinac Bridge which connects the upper peninsula of Michigan to the rest of the state and is a major transportation corridor from Canada into Michigan. I am also informed that dropping that bridge into the water would block Great Lakes shipping until it could be cleared.

It is true that the FBI had said that they have not been able to find any connection between the three Arab/Muslims and any terrorist organization, but we need to remember two things. One, is that the men may just not have been identified as terrorist connected – yet. Two, the government will lie in order to avoid panicking the civilian population and in order to avoid tipping off other terrorists that they may be on to them.

Given all this I would say that it is very plausible to assume that a terrorist plot was foiled by a vigilant Wal Mart employee.