Watch where you're Pokémon Going! Teen brothers cross US-Canada border

Border patrol agents released the two Canadian teens to their mother.

|
Toru Hanai/Reuters
Pokemon Go in in Shibuya district in Tokyo, Japan, July 22, 2016. Two Canadian teenagers inadvertently crossed the border into the US Thursday while playing the augmented reality game.

It took just five days for Pokémon Go to incite an international incident. Fortunately for the two Alberta teenagers who started it, their mother was close by to pick them up.

The brothers inadvertently, yet still illegally, crossed from Alberta, the Canadian province, into Montana Thursday evening while they hunted for Pokémon. The mobile game just became available in Canada on July 17. Border patrol agents apprehended the teens, said that they realized they were unaware of their surroundings while they were playing the game, and released them to their mother at a nearby border station in Sweet Grass, Montana.

The brothers aren’t the first players to accidentally stir up trouble as they search for Charizard, Blastoise, and Pikachu. Across the world, authorities and organizations are trying to deal with a host of unintended consequences of the augmented-reality game, from players finding themselves in danger, to disturbing sensitive sites, to fueling security concerns.

To play Pokémon Go, players wander public spaces like restaurants and museums in search of virtual Pokémon characters that will appear on the screens of their smartphones.

“Pokémon can be found in every corner of the earth,” reads the app when the game is downloaded.

Yet, as players search for these imaginary monsters, they have found themselves staring at their phones, and not at their surroundings. That's how the teenage brothers say they wound up on the wrong side of the border.  

“Both juveniles were so captivated by their Pokémon GO games that they lost track of where they were,” said Michael Rappold, a spokesman for US Border Patrol. “They crossed the international border inadvertently, but agents were able to reunite them with their mother.”

Immediately after the game was first introduced in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, game-absorbed players began inadvertently putting themselves at risk. Players have been reported to have crashed their cars into trees, walked into traffic, and ventured into unsafe neighborhoods. Four teenagers were arrested in O’Fallon, Mo., for armed robbery when police say they used the game to lure unsuspecting players to them.

In Bosnia, players have been warned to stay away from fields littered with landmines leftover from the 1990s. A Bosnian demining charity, Posavina bez mina, published the warning on its Facebook page, after it received reports of players walking into risky areas.

Others have played the game in locations that have been deemed not quite culturally appropriate, prompting sites to warn players to stay away. Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, the Arlington National Cemetery, and the 9/11 memorial museum in New York, have all insisted Pokémon Go not be played there. 

The popularity of the game also has authorities decrying it as sacrilegious or a security threat. On Wednesday, Saudi Arabian media reports said the kingdom’s top clerical body, the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, revived a 2001 fatwa, or decree, against Pokémon. The next day, Saudi Arabian government denied reports it deemed the game un-Islamic.

Other countries, including Egypt, Russia, Kuwait, and Israel, have all said the game presents security risks.

“Pokémon Go is the latest tool used by spy agencies in the Intel war, a cunning despicable app that tries to infiltrate our communities in the most innocent way under the pretext of entertainment,” said Hamdi Bakheet, a member of Egypt’s defense and national security committee in Parliament, according to Al Jazeera.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Watch where you're Pokémon Going! Teen brothers cross US-Canada border
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0724/Watch-where-you-re-Pokemon-Going!-Teen-brothers-cross-US-Canada-border
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe