High-tech treasure hunts keep authorities on edge

`Geocaches' have been mistaken for terrorism devices.

By Christopher Smith, Associated Press, appearing in The Herald,
Bradenton, FL
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Reproduced by Oldhounder

Boise, Idaho In a game of global positioning called geocaching, the
lowly treasure hunt has gone high-techbut 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 is 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 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.

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.

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."