Superbowl XLI Prank

I love a good prank. Cockeyed.com is one of my favorite sites because of their small pranks and interesting anecdotes. The following prank both thrills and terrifies me.

The most ambitious prank in history.

We're always told to be afraid of terrorists broadcasting secret messages on national TV. I've always wondered: don't the terrorists have Yahoo Groups? Can't they just send out an Evite when it's time to stage an attack?

To promote the new ZUG book, PRANK THE MONKEY, we wanted to show how easy it would be to broadcast a secret terrorist message not just on national TV, but on TV's biggest event.

We hacked the Super Bowl.

During the second quarter of Super Bowl XLI, a team of elite, highly-trained pranksters quietly distributed 2,350 packets to the lower east section of Dolphin Stadium. These "Party Packs" contained a six-inch light-up necklace, along with official-looking instructions. By wearing the necklace lights during the halftime show, Super Bowl fans believed they would be spelling out the word "PRINCE."

The multi-page article goes on to explain that:

Super Bowl XLI was a Level One national security event, usually reserved for Presidential inaugurations. We had to get two full vanloads of materials through federal marshals, Homeland Security agents, police, police dogs, bomb squads, ATF personnel, robots, and a five-ton state-of-the-art X-ray crane. It took four months and a dozen people to pull off the prank that ended up fooling the world.

You really must read the whole article to understand that everyone did everything that they were supposed to...including the pranksters.

via Kottke.org