Go into any Electrical Engineering department at any university and you'll find plenty of students with boxes filled with circuit boards and electronics.
Everybody who's played with electronics knows that stuff is brittle and needs to be protected carefully. One wire coming loose renders your entire work obsolete and unlike software, there's no debugger to tell you where you potentially screwed up...
That's not even the issue to me. It's like fine you "suspected" it. How difficult was it to not suspect it anymore? Like did the arrest and the accusations need to happen. It's almost like attempting to traumatize the kid and his peers for no good reason and for what? Security theater? Because he was brown or a Muslim and did not know that brown or Muslim people should not bring electronics that might be suspected with them to school because they should fear being suspected? Perhaps we can excuse his ignorance for not being old enough.
Who's the we? These administrators are put their by their buddies in city and state positions. They almost never are educators themselves. In order to get competent caring administrators, who know what education is about, we need reform that actually puts educators in the hotseats.
Right thinking people? Of course it only works to the degree we have critical mass. But it seems worth encouraging, that we might more quickly get there in more cases.
Well I guess they could logically suspect that he might be doing something more sinister than just bringing around a clock project. So fine get a court order to search his house while keeping him detained at school. Find nothing. Apologize and let him go.
I have a feeling a lot of this behavior from teachers and school middle management is driven by fear of having exactly the same sort of irrational punishment come down on them.
Didn't treat the clock like a bomb? Might get fired. Did treat it like a bomb, turned out to be wrong, apologized? Might get fired. Did treat it like a bomb, turned out to be wrong, uhhh... maybe if I get the police involved I can make this not my fault?
Reasonable errors on all levels are often greeted with harsh punishment and sometimes demonization by news media. It's not just kids who are subject to it. People are rightly terrified of being blamed for errors that anyone could make, and their behavior makes a lot of sense in that context.
It all stems from not having a backbone. Less weasels, more passionate people with some step in their walk. But all the political bullshit that educators have to waft through kills most passion and flare to go against the grain, to do what they feel is right. Unfortunately the nazi-effect is in full swing for most salaried office workers. No one wants to get fired, so everyone just obeys arcane rules and doesn't do anything the least bit outside the box. It's basically raining with grey skies every day.
It doesn't help that the consequences of losing a job are substantially higher in the US than in most other advanced economies. And we're easier to fire, on top of it[0]. It's harder to take a stand over small(ish) things when it can bring financial ruin for one's family.
[0] yes, even many teachers. The power of unions in preserving teachers' jobs is highly regional, and often exaggerated.
Exactly! Apparently it's really difficult for some people to admit they were wrong. How difficult would it be to just say: "I'm sorry, we screwed up."? Instead they still insist on calling his clock a "hoax bomb".
To be fair it's a middle school, and most people don't really know what a circuit board is for. I don't think it's outrageous that they asked.
It should have never, however, escalated as far as it did. You're going to handcuff a kid who is cooperating and trying to explain what this thing he built is? Give me a break.
But worse still they're still not backing down. It's suspension of all logic and reasoning. They should have shown the clock to his engineering teacher and resolved the issue in minutes.
Nah, it's a high school. And the reaction really wasn't warranted. He did show it to his engineering teacher before he got nabbed, too. According to the Times,
"When Ahmed Mohamed, 14, brought the clock to MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., on Monday, an engineering teacher suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers. But it beeped during an English class, prompting Ahmed to show his English teacher what it was, according to an account in The Dallas Morning News."
That's how it should go, in an ideal world. I think the engineering teacher did the right thing in suggesting he not show it off, given society today. He's aware of racial profiling in a post 9/11 world and how stupid some people are.
It's pretty early in the school year, and judging by his stated age he's likely a freshman. Not much of a chance for a teacher to ascertain things like "character".
> an engineering teacher suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers. But it beeped during an English class, prompting Ahmed to show his English teacher what it was
Ok, I can't help but be reminded of my recent comments about English classes in high school.
We're trying to promote stem in the U.S., not say, "middle school is too early"
Anecdotally; I was wiring together simple switches, electric motors, and solar panels in and out of the classroom in elementary school in the mid 90s. I was programming timers and games in middle school by the late 90s.
Man, I must have interacted with weird middle schoolers at my local hackerspace... Seemed like every last one of them had either some simple arduino project or something with a RasPi they were working on. I'd hate to live in a place where most people have no idea what a circuit board looks like.
Also, asking doesn't need to get the police involved: "Hey, what is this?" "Oh it's a clock I built" 'Why'd you bring it to school?" "Cuz I'm proud of it and wanted to show you"
If there was still doubt, ok, find someone who knows something about it (there's gotta be a tinkerer SOMEWHERE in the school district) and ask them to take a look. Maybe couch it as "Why don't we show it to X, I think they'd get a kick out of it?"
But arresting a 14 yr old tinkerer for a clock? Whatever happened to having sane reasonable conversations?
There were debuggers in the electronics shops that I remember. They were called multimeters. You debugged by deducing where voltage, current, and resistance levels were in your circuit.
I've also made my share of brittle programming projects where one errant line could act like a "loose wire" and take down everything.
Because he's profiling, it's a survival instinct. He sees on the news daily about Muslims using bombs and blowing things up and he's associating it with this kid. He believes statistically that Ahmed is more likely to be carrying a bomb than Alice.
Is this true? I don't know, maybe it is? It's the same reason I am cautious when I walk alone downtown at night and a stranger approaches me. I act differently because I know statistically that they're more likely to be dangerous compared to at 2:00 PM... well, again... I assume so.
The hard part is trying to ignore statistics and the media on things like skin color and religion. It doesn't matter if x color or y religion is more dangerous, you need to ignore it. Thinking differently or acting differently because of these statistics is frowned upon.
In this case, it's silly. Of course it's not a bomb, of course the kid isn't dangerous.
> The hard part is trying to ignore statistics and the media on things like skin color and religion.
If people paid attention to statistics, this wouldn't be an issue: Terror is so exceedingly unlikely to kill you that it's a rounding errro. In the US you're more likely to get killed by lightning.
Part of the problem is that the risk has been blown out of all proportion.
> He sees on the news daily about Muslims using bombs and blowing things up
Did this happen with the Irish in the US during the Troubles?
Same reasons Italians and Germans weren't interned to the same extent the Japanese were during the 2nd World War: They can't be told apart from "proper" folk as easily. You can pick out most Arabs, but it's much harder to pick out most Irish.
Still a travesty. We need to move beyond hatred, especially of people we've never met.
So in your ideal world brown/Muslim children should not be encouraged to tinker with electronics. Or maybe they should just stay away from any form of engineering whatsoever. Does that sound about right cowboy?
Every student, teacher, and staff is bringing or already has one of those in the school every day in computers, laptops/macbooks, smartphones, security cameras/alarms, etc.
Is there any study to ascertain how these kind of incidents affect children psychologically, the effects of which manifest only years later? (Let's assume that this boy is a gifted engineer, and this incident leaves deep psychological scars not expressed in the next few years, but eventually leads him to take up activities later in life which are harmful for American citizens)
Honestly, I had a very similar thing happen to me at an even younger age. Almost got expelled for hacking when I was just making stupid shit with batch programming. Similarly, I made a crappy little audio amp a couple years later at the same school, and again, almost got expelled for "making a weapon and bringing it to school" (they thought it was a stungun)
All it did was make me anti-establishment at a slightly younger age. The kid in this story knows that what he's going through is bullshit, and he's likely to have something pretty good come out of this due to all the media attention. If anything, I'd suspect it would drive him to create more, because if there's something kids like to do it's sticking it to the man.
Nothing quite so extreme for me but I remember being kicked out of class and sent to see our sadistic assistant principal for "trying to cause a panic" in my computer class.
This was around 1993 or 1994 and I was in 11th grade. I was in some fairly "bonehead" computer class and we often worked on simple projects and saved them to floppy disks to take home or work on later.
At the time, the family computer was still an aging Commodore 128 but I was working mostly in DOS at school so I'd bring home my disks and work on projects on my dad's work laptop. Dad's work laptop included a primitive virus scanner so of course I scanned the disk I'd been using on the school network. The scanner finds some minor virus and cleans it up (in retrospect, I guess it could've easily just been a false positive but who knows).
After taking the disk back to school and working on projects again, I scanned it at home the following evening. Virus once again detected. So the next day in class I mention to the teacher that there's probably some innocuous virus on the classroom network and offered to help get rid of it. I was interested in that stuff even if I was still mostly a novice.
But instead of giving me a new project, the teacher flipped out. She accused me of trying to start a panic and disrupting class and sent me to see the ass. principal. Now, this dude hated kids (especially the ones who clearly had no respect for authoritah). I had to sit in his office without speaking while he held a (no joke) half hour conversation on the phone with his friend about some fishing trip they had planned for the weekend. Afterward he reamed me out and basically told me I was full of shit because the teacher wouldn't lie about such things.
In the end, it was my first lesson in "people who don't get computers or trust them will often avoid dealing with issues that make them uncomfortable and possibly view you with hostility for suggesting otherwise."
Yup, similar experience here. I'm now a die hard believer that social structures, governments, and religions are there to make our life's as miserable as possible. To me that experience was comparable to that kid in Whiplash.
Far more likely that the experience will be a distraction to his learning and creativity, and will beg uncomfortable questions, the answers to which will affect his self-esteem.
Because in some schools unfortunately there are students who are violent. Can't expect teachers to deal with students who are bigger and stronger than themselves.
The workers in many careers tend to adhere to established policies and guidelines rather than exercising their own independent judgment. The policy in this workplace says that people who are under arrest must be handcuffed, and so the child is handcuffed.
That picture is infuriating. GAH! How in the holy hell are we supposed to grow as a nation or people if we keep destroying the passion of the very people that will move us forward!? Sorry I know this sounds ranty but I just can't understand the depth of ignorance this requires. I keep picturing me as a teen or my son who is showing so much passion and love for learning and science and what this could do to him. The fact that because we are white and the actions would be so much less severe makes it even more disgusting to me.
It is definitely profiling and I bet his race had a lot to do with it.
But I think the same thing would've happened if I had brought such a device to school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would've been it's a bomb.
Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days, suspending him was unnecessary but with it only being three days I don't see it being a terrible thing. The record will get set straight.
So then this just falls back to being unfortunate racial profiling.
in a Texas Highschool I was sentenced to In School Suspension INDEFINITELY with my laptop confiscated for having shortcuts to directories on the network that I "shouldn't have had access to." After about a week of that I'd had enough, asked for OSS - got it, which I thought was enough but apparently wasn't. They ended up wanting to reassign me to an "alternative school" (the type with a dress code, specific hours, locked down no talking etc). I managed to get "homeschooled" for 3 months (re: no school work completed) and somehow still managed to actually graduate High School. It was the most ludicrous situation I'd ever been in for navigating a folder hierarchy in Windows.
And getting only a few toes amputated due to gangrene would be lovely to someone who lost a leg for the same reason. That doesn't mean losing a few toes isn't terrible.
I don't think it would be hard to find people who would have rather have faced what you suffered than what they went through. (Kalief Browder might have been one.) That doesn't mean they would be right to say that what happened to you was "lovely."
> Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days
Maybe in the US, but where I live, and I guess that's going to be the case in most countries, no one would ever think that this "suitcase" could be a bomb, regardless of the person's appearance. It's saddens me to see a country becoming more and more paranoid and living in fear.
As an example, we used to chase each other in school with BB-guns (here they don't have the orange marker distinguishing them from real guns). When a teacher saw us I'm sure the thought that these could be real never ever crossed their mind.
The suspension is pretty minor. Dumb, but whatever. At that age I'd have been happy to stay home for three days.
But there's so much more here. He got arrested and put in juvenile detention. He was interrogated by the police without his parents being informed.
There's no excuse for this. The police involved should lose their jobs and spend some time in jail themselves. Not a lot, but perhaps a couple of days will get some of their colleagues to look up "probable cause" and "civil rights." The principal should lose his job as well, since he is clearly not mentally competent to supervise children.
> He got arrested and put in juvenile detention. He was interrogated by the police without his parents being informed.
This behavior happens ALL THE TIME. The police routinely will get away with what ever they can to get a conviction. The law is complicated and most people don't have a lawyer on retainer.
The police aren't your friend, and you gain NOTHING by talking to them.
And then he cant get any jobs. Gets so frustrated he actually builds a bomb..and well..you get the point.
The amount of stupidity perpetuated by these administrators and the police is astounding. Never underestimate the poor taste of public authority. Most of their reasons tend to be 'We needed to lay down the law first to assert dominance. That's how we could then subvert the broader scope of his actions. Then we teach him about sacrifice, plea-bargaining. And like a good boy, he says sorry, gets his slap on the wrist, and everybody wins because he learns to respect authority, and be a good little automaton Johnnyboy!"
That puts the whole thing in a different shade of light. Seriously. I wrote the kid on Anil's support page, but this makes me feel like there was more going on here than is being reported. I know, surprise, surprise, right?
Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligence, so that the population turns into mindless sheep. "If you don't know how to make a clock, you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning.
It is seriously disturbing.
I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this is a far more extreme case.
Once authority figures make a decision, they fear backing down from it, because they (unfortunately often correctly) believe that doubling down will force the far less well-funded citizen to fold, usually in exchange for a less severe "punishment."
This isn't limited to authority figures. Most people, when faced with evidence that they were publicly wrong, try to save face by doubling down on their original convictions.
"I recommend using this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited."
As a parent, can I see the list of "items... that are prohibited"? I'd be pretty shocked if "clock" is actually on there.
Remember the Boston Lite-Brite thing? (A more legit incident, since apparently quite a few people were spooked by the devices, but still a case where the authorities over-reacted and refused to back down).
Sticking to the line that something was a 'bomb hoax' keeps the responsibility with the accused: they shouldn't have perpetrated a bomb hoax; not we shouldn't have over-reacted to an innocuous object.
Ignorance easily explains this unfortunate, embarrassing incident.
The boy's father is from Sudan and is well known for being outspoken against anti-Islamic policies. To an unworldly south/midwesterner that spells "potential terrorist". It's not too much of a stretch to see that diagnosis extended to the son.
Ignorance that was likely being exploited for political purposes. As in, his father probably encouraged his son to do this. The father knew that it would likely cause someone to freak out, student or teacher; that it beeped helped and even better that it was in a metal case. There was no reason to bring the item in, let alone a the week of 9/11.
The school admins reacted as stereo typically badly as they could have hoped. It should have been assessed quickly and immediately removed from the school. Instead it just got stupid quick.
So this father will now get images of himself with his son with our President. We get some immediate attention to the horrible plight of Muslims in America (there isn't any horrible plight other than some people don't trust them)....
I'd like to jump on the back of this and make the point that, referring to the clock project in question, it seems a lie to label the item as a "hoax bomb" as if it were actually intended to even be a bomb, let alone an article of the hoax variety. Not to mention the obvious claim of guilt by association that the prosecuting argument seems to imply, I would add that it also useful to distinguish the reality of the situation so as to ensure that "hoax bomb" doesn't catch on. "Clock thought to be a bomb" would be a more accurate representation of the situation.
Not sure if there's a formal definition, but this page distinguishes between a scare and a hoax:
"Though city prosecutors eventually concluded there was no ill intent involved in the placing of the ads, the city continues to refer to the event as a "bomb hoax" rather than a "scare." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare
Stupidity adequately explains the initial reaction. Bringing charges is merely after-the-fact butt-covering. The whole world knows you're stupid, but if you can get the entire legal system to be just as stupid, it's no longer your fault!
Remember the Aqua Teen Hunger Force "bomb" scare in Boston? The city rigorously pursued legal action to spare their police department the embarrassment of having wasted millions of dollars carefully dismantling DIY Lite-Brites.
Hanlon's razor is a pretty stupid quote here, there definitely is no need to distinguish stupidity from malice here. The people responsible for this mess should probably lose their jobs. (Based on the story as it was presented here)
They need to show intent. They cannot just show that others were in fear.
So it seems like they don't have a legitimate case, although "the ride" is often used to get guilty pleas out of otherwise innocent people (i.e. they would lock the kid up pending trial, delay trial, the parents may not be able to afford lawyer fees, so he might plead down to a lesser charge to get out even if the original charge is complete nonsense).
That is pretty standard fare for the US legal system these days. 95% plea rates, 7 minutes of public defender time on average per client, and so on and so forth.
Yes, it is unfortunately. The kid couldn't explain why he just made a clock to show his teachers. So their assumption is that anyone making an electronic device must be up to no good.
"Irving police might still charge Ahmed with making a "hoax bomb." Police spokesperson James McLellan said Ahmed "kept maintaining it was a clock" when he was brought in for interrogation, but that he offered "no broader explanation.""
Somewhat related, for a little sense of perspective. I studied E/E in Northern Ireland in the early 90's. I was regularly stopped by armed British Soldiers and searched. Invariably I have some half finished project in my bag. Could easily be passed off as bomb material. All it took was a simple explanation and I was on my way in 5 minutes.
This was a place where actual bombs were being set off on a weekly basis. But, the 'keep calm and carry on' mentality is what persevered. The US seems like it's becoming more of a Police State than N.I. ever was.
About 10 years ago I was heading to a client meeting and was about to enter the 'Ring of Steel'[0] area in the City of London.
I checked twice before crossing the road and a nearby cop car spun around and stopped me saying I had done a double-take when I saw them and they needed to search me.
Turns out the client I was off to see was a porn magazine and I have a bunch of their product in my bag. The nice police officer didn't even blink when she saw that. Perhaps everyone i the City is carrying around lots of porn with them in the middle of the day?
These topics bring the tin foil wearers out in droves. No, the government isn't cracking down on the intelligence of youth, it requires it to progress and grow. I don't recall any black SUVs outside my door when I built an alarm clock that had selective electronic outputs for my school project. Hell, my teachers docked marks because I didn't take it far enough and they felt I could add more features and better design.
This is why it's often said that not just censorship but also mass surveillance are the killers of creativity and progress in a society. When you always have to look over your shoulder because the "state" might believe you're doing something wrong and punish you, that tends to make you not even want to try something anymore.
I think you overestimate the intelligence of the authority in this particular case. I think this is more a case of collective stupidity than authority turning people to mindless sheep.
What worried me is where is the engineering teacher he first showed the clock to? He or she could've clarified everything in 5 seconds.
that's exactly what I came here to post. I find it even more troubling that the teacher was clearly aware of this possible outcome - going so far as to tell the kid to hide it from other teachers. but for all we know maybe he did speak up and was shushed by administration? who knows...pretty frustrating either way.
My bet is that the engineering teacher is the sole adult geek in this environment and is used to those around him acting this way. I feel for him. There's a personality that's overwhelmingly common in schools, that seeks conformity and uses their own ability to be frightened as a weapon against the weirdos. Perhaps someone can describe it better than me.
I'd say this is a case of collective stupidity punishing original thought. So I would phrase this exactly as "collective stupidity in authority turning people to mindless sheep".
And why would you have to be an engineering teacher to presume innocence here? This is a school; anyone involved should have been able to clarify everything in 5 seconds, even without the child explaining himself.
Welcome to 'murrica, kid. You better learn to censor yourself.
"never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence" isn't the case here I think. I think this is more about racial profiling more than anything.
Probably not the whole story in this case. It seems improbable that little Johnny McFreckles III would have encountered as much trouble over his clock project.
I realize it may seem like fun to try to bring "discrimination" into this, but plenty of white kids have gotten in plenty of trouble for stupid reasons too. Yes, including handcuffs and arrests, and at times, even court convinctions and orders for things like staying off computers entirely for some period of time. I see no reason to believe it would have gone any differently for any ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, or anything else. This stupid is well-distributed.
These administrators are so politically correct and political with how they get their jobs (usually favorites get promoted, etc.) My father was a teacher for 40 years and never stopped telling me stories about the people at the top. The school system is ran by circus animals.
> but plenty of white kids have gotten in plenty of trouble for stupid reasons too.
Of course they have. However, the authorities everywhere don't consistently flip their wigs—certainly not as badly as this—every time a student does something like bringing in this project. So the fact that they wigged out badly in this particular case probably—not certainly, but really pretty likely—does have some relation to the fact that the student just happened to be Ahmed Mohamed.
(OTOH there pretty certainly is a selection bias in the fact that this particular case is getting so much publicity. It's the social-media catnip of the perceived (and again, let's be serious here, probably partly real) discrimination that has pushed this one up the charts while others go mostly unremarked.)
You can not assert a consistent behavior off of one example. You're finding something you seem to be looking for. I was not kidding about being arrested and getting ordered to not touch computers for some period of time. Wigs have been flipped.
I do not know that school administrators have "consistently" flipped out at white kids, either. I don't know what the baseline occurrence of these events are. My suspicion would be that every case we've ever heard of, including this one, is still an outlier, and thus not suitable for drawing sweeping conclusions from, and in fact kids probably do stupid stuff like this every day without making the national news.
I see a couple of paths to combating the way authority oversteps its bounds, sometimes fatally as we see in much recent news.
One avenue is to focus on those victims that happen to be a racial minority, and force the authorities to treat members of that minority group with kid gloves. This literally forces all of us to keep race and other divisive demographics at the forefront of our consciousness whenever we deal with other people. That's not a good strategy to reach of goal of everyone being blind to race.
Another avenue is to focus on the powers that are being wielded unjustly. By taking away to power to cause such damage, or at least imposing accountability when it's misused, we can force those with power to rein in their abusive behavior to all. This latter seems the winning strategy to me.
Funny you should use "McFreckles" as a stereotypical white name. Irish immigrants have historically faced a lot of discrimination in the U.S. on the grounds of both ethnicity (compared to English immigrants and their descendants) and religion (Catholics instead of the majority Protestants).
I find it striking that you almost never hear about such behavior occurring in Europe (correct me if I'm wrong). Any ideas why things seem to be very different there?
After living in the US as a European for 1.5 years, I've come to the conclusion that americans tend to be more afraid in general. For example I've never heard in Europe of recommendations like 'when selling stuff through craigslist always meet at a starbucks but never at home' either. Also being smart and/or nerdy actually is valued in Europe.
At least for your craigslist example, the fear is not unfounded. [0] That one example happened just last month in my town. The weapon in that case need not be a gun, a knife or baseball bat wielding friend hiding in the bushes would work well too. Perhaps better than Starbucks would be the police department parking lot. That is actually a preferred place for private gun sales - if the buyer is uneasy about conducting the sale at a police station, they are probably a person prohibited from owning a firearm. Our town has added a designated "craigslist zone" at a local fire department precisely to help deter robberies. [1]
So, in the craigslist example, many American people are afraid because there is overwhelming evidence that craigslist robberies A) really do happen with some significant frequency and B) meeting at a public place is a simple, low-effort way of mitigating that risk. I can understand people living in lower crime areas not worrying about craigslist robberies (though I would take the precautions anywhere because it is so simple).
However, in general, I would agree with you that Americans eat up FUD. You can see it in our DHS/TSA, the Patriot Act, collective disinterest in the Snowden leaks, and general anti-Muslim sentiments.
The funny thing is that people buy guns because they are afraid, yet that makes the whole situation more dangerous.
The reason why you don't have to be afraid when dealing with Craigslist in europe is that guns are rare, as is gun violence.
But I'm sure some will just buy another gun to feel safer. Isn't that the standard argument after a serial shooting? The first victim should have had a gun, then this wouldn't have happened... that's as perverse as it gets!
The fear is not unfounded of course, but I think there are two mechanisms at work here:
1. in the US the media blows these things up much more than in Europe. In fact there is a lot more attention for crime in general, while traffic accidents get much less attention.
2. Similar robberies do take place in Europe, but I think Europeans tend to shrug them off more, assuming there's only a very small chance it will happen to them.
Also, for some reason, whenever something bad happens, the US seems to respond with bigger countermeasures, more stringent laws and heftier punishments. Europeans are amazed when they read that children are sometimes threatened with tens of years of jailtime for relatively small incidents.
I suspect there are similar incidents with much less overblown outcomes.
There's no relative scarcity of ignorant and authoritarian schoolteachers, but consequences are likely to be confined to school, not involve law enforcement, and parents and pupils are more likely to knuckle down rather than fight or go to the press.
So, taking "such behaviour" much more broadly than this specific incident (and of course granting that Europe is a big and diverse place) - if a kid is found hacking school networks, or distributing a satirical magazine, or bringing possibly inappropriate or dangerous items to school, the schools are just as likely to crack down (even if it infringes the pupil's legal rights) but the matter is likely to end there without ruining the pupil's education. Or making the school administration change its behaviour.
Personally I think the situation as I have described it is favourable. Ideally schools wouldn't be administered by petty tyrants, but as long as everyone finishes their education with a blank slate it's fine. Keeping the police away from schools as much as possible would be a good start.
The sun of a (Dutch) friend actually 'hacked' his school network (he gleaned the password from his teacher). Grades were altered, he involved others, and they were caught. The police was not involved, and he was expelled. He is now attending another school.
He was punished, but it did not ruin his future.
The trend towards a "security theatre" and all that does indeed seem to be much stronger. Even where security measures in Europe were increased (i. e. ban on liquids), it was more on the behest of the Americans than intrinsically motivated.
I see a few possible causes:
– 9/11 was a much bigger attack than anything that happened on European soil
– there is a more influential lobby for militarisation/criminalisation in the US
– Americans are more fearful
– America is more democratic. As such, the unfounded fears of parts of the population (on both sides of the Atlantic) are less likely to be buffered by the more rational thinking of experts
and, my favourite:
– Americans love excitement and violence & it is amplified by the media. Nothing better than a bomb scare on FOX.
Oh my, I don't even want to think of the horrors I unleashed upon the various Apple ][, DOS, and Mac Classic systems in my public school. Nothing like malware--just really lucky I never bricked anything. On the other hand, I did learn some valuable lessons such as that LinuxPPC in the mid/late 90s was not appreciated as Mac OS 8 by my peers.
> I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this is a far more extreme case.
I remember a teacher seeing me type "BitchX" into a terminal and freaking out, he apparently thought I was doing something obscene in my terminal window..
I just been reading about this morning and all I can say is what the hell is going on in Dallas? I mean when I was a kid I brought to school a model rocket with some solid rocket engines and all that happened to me was the rocket and engines were held by the principal until my parents could pick them up. But a kid making a clock gets arrested? Seriously, wtf is going over there in Dallas?
Tell me about it. The county sheriff came and taught skeet shooting to my 10th grade Health and Wellness class. The pigeon thrower was mounted on the back of the police cruiser and we shot 20-gauge shotguns on the practice football field. This was rural NC in the 90s.
I regularly brought my pocket knife to elementary school. Nobody blinked an eye. It was dull because I used it for digging and prying more than for cutting, but nobody would have cared even if it was sharp.
See Columbine and the influx of 'zero tolerance'. I was actually in school to see the before and after, unfortunately, the after has become less tolerant and more reactionary and so we have what you see here (and really just about every day in the school year in the US you'll find a similar story).
After the OK City bombing my school banned wearing camouflage. They were afraid of school shootings at some point so they banned coats that were "tool long" or "too bulky". A friend of mine got in trouble for wearing a leather jacket.
Maybe this kid WAS singled out because he had brown skin, but school administrators were overreacting to stupid shit decades ago, in ways that obviously weren't connected to "racism."
And so we come to the realisation that the 'war on terror' is now in fact a civil war we wage against ourselves and our fears.
Every incident like this is another damning victory for those who sought to change our way of life. They may not have taken us back to the stone-age but they sure as hell took away a lot of the freedoms we had.
It really saddens me that this kid (or other kids in similar circumstances) could find the experience so traumatising that they lose the motivation/interest to pursue these creative activities.
If the school and the police had acted in the correct way this would be no big deal. Hey, we have a device here that could be a bomb. Police show up, call bomb specialist. Bomb specialist laughs in a few peoples faces, the school apologizes, the kid keeps tinkering.
But no they had to go and dig in. Which makes this really wrong on their part. I hate it when organizations take a stance around stupidity.
Or even better- start by quietly calling him to the principal's office. Ask him about his clock. Tell him people were thinking he might be wanting to pull some bomb pranks, and that would be a very bad idea. Ask him to tell his teachers the day before the next time he wants to show off his gadgetry. Send him back to class.
Or don't do that, either, because it is not right to assume people are going to pull off bomb hoaxes. (Doubly so when the only real reason for the suspicion is skin color.)
Yeah but you also don't want to be the admin at a school with a bomb where there were "signs a student was creating bombs before he went ape shit". I agree with the color statement, but not addressing the issue at all can be just as bad as an overreaction.
Obviously someone thought there was a sign, even the teacher told him not to show it to anyone else outside that class. I think saying that a homemade clock isn't a sign is greatly underestimating how the news is capable of skewing things to screw people over.
I looked at the pictures. Any adult with even the slightest understanding of how a bomb must physically work--like, "have something that can actually explode"--should be so utterly certain of its purpose that your concern trolling should horrify them.
I think we're making too big of an issue of this. The trial has already taken place and the boy was found to not float... so it turns out he must be guilty.
God forbid that an officer drops his walkie talkie and discovers that IT TOO IS A POTENTIAL BOMB! I mean, it has wires and circuits...
The ignorance here is astounding. I suppose he's lucky they didn't also try him as a warlock for summoning electricity from a magical box.
Personally, i wasn't surprised at the display of racially-biased fear at the sight of device that appears to a bystander to look like a bomb. People are people.
But why did it need to lead to arrest, hand cuffs, finger printing after an interview and a casual examination of the device clearly demonstrated it was a clock (there was an engineering teacher who could easily collaborate)? It was an outright excessive reaction to further compound what was a regrettable mistake.
In the article it mentions that his engineering teacher advised him to hide it from the other staff. Which is confusing to me. The teacher obviously knew it wasn't a bomb and obviously knew the other staff would misinterpret this. So why didn't the teacher preempt this whole thing by advising the school that "Yes, this kid brought in a clock to show me. No, it's not a bomb no matter how scary it looks."
This article is the only one to show that the kid did anything wrong. That was plug it in during English class, The appropriate response is to have it taken away for the rest of the day, and possibly a detention if it was really loud enough to disrupt class.
I'm sure this isn't really an isolated incident in this school, it just happens to be one that got bad enough to make national news. The place is probably crazy even on a good day. The teacher probably didn't want to stick his neck out.
Not asserting fact here but merely providing my interpretation:
The engineering teacher may have advised the student to bring the device to school but to not pull it out in any other class. This could have been done to avoid distracting other students or attracting unwanted attention from other teachers. This seems like a straight forward request that may have been taken out of context. I have not seen a quote that uses the word "hide", which really changes the connotation of the statement. I highly doubt the engineering teacher thought specifically that the device could be seen as a bomb.
the teacher recommended he hide it from the rest of the staff.
However it's not a direct quote so I don't know the wording the teacher used. Regardless, this teacher seems to have known enough to step in at any time before this child was escorted from the school in handcuffs.
Perhaps he did and was shot down. I don't know but the details as shared stuck out to me.
Hell, the kid has a NASA shirt, is a thin nerdy type and brought a science project to school to show it off (instead of whatever illegal things kids bring to schools these days).
I really, really hope someone will pick this up and offer that kid some kind of internship somewhere, if only to keep his moral and spirit up.
What if the kid had gotten his hands on a detonator button transmitter thing? It could have been a disaster. I'm being sarcastic, but I fear that one of these tools might use a similar excuse if you questioned them.
What the hell is a fake bomb? How does a schoolteacher know what a "bomb" looks like? Are we talking about an IED here? That could be literally any fucking thing.
I really doubt that this clock looked even remotely like any of the industrially made ready-to-use explosives.
Sometimes I can't help feeling like some people should be forcibly removed from the gene pool.
If you really want to tie them in knots, get a bunch of small "Amazon"-type (empty) cardboard boxes, and write "BOMB" in bold letters with a magic marker on the sides. Distribute the boxes in slightly-hidden spots, like Easter eggs. Fun times!
What do the cops ever do with their time that isn't a waste? They only rarely and incidentally protect anyone from any actual threat. Mostly they hassle, ticket, menace, and otherwise inconvenience the public. If they all went on strike next week, violence and mayhem would decrease.
The "industrial-complex" you invoke includes all institutions that create, support, and perpetuate it. Maybe the cops don't write the laws, maybe they don't bargain the pleas, at any rate they don't join LEAP until retirement. The vast surplus of "criminals" in USA, that has existed nowhere else and at no other time in all of human experience, has been manufactured by the industrial-complex, for its own purposes.
Like other rational people who live or have lived in USA, I have minimized my interaction with both "sides" to the extent that I've been able. (Although frankly I elicited more sympathy for a stolen bike from an admitted bike thief than I did from any cop.) If you drop another "you just don't know how it is to be a cop" whinge on us, I'll be forced to assume that you are a cop or in the immediate family of one.
Depends, my country had a long history of phone bomb threats, by students to delay or postpone exams. They were taken seriously - the classes were dismissed and the bomb squads checked everything.
Instead, label them BOX 1, BOX 2 and BOX 4 and put "geo-location circuity" (it doesn't have to work, just make it look like it could) in it and place those at various points in the school, preferably with visible wires.
Then you can claim that you were trying to build your own local mini-gps to monitor your movements throughout the day.
Incidentally, I was in Shenzhen (China) a short while ago, and signs like those were everywhere, and the sight of bare electronics not uncommon; but given that it's a huge centre of electronics manufacturing, I'd guess that almost everyone is accustomed to seeing such things.
The ignorant portion of our society thinks bombs have flashing lights and tick thanks to Hollywood. In reality anyone wanting to do harm is not going to make their bomb noticeable.
Even then, for an IED to actually be of any use it needs to have an explosive compound, likely in a container of some kind.
Anyone with half a brain would understand that you can't just magically make circuitry explode. That's a whole new level of ignorance, they teach this stuff in elementary school for gods sake.
This isn't a "whole new level" of ignorance. If you think so, then you probably don't understand how stupid a significant portion of the population is. There are people out there who think that Google, Facebook, so on, are actually on their computer. It makes complete sense that some people think a bomb looks like some caricature envisioned for the audience's benefit in a movie or TV show. Many people's entire lives revolve around motion picture entertainment of some sort.
That's the problem right there. These people have let their common sense be overtaken by their sense of fear, they're so afraid they aren't thinking.
That's why going after a 9 year old or MIT student with a t-shirt[0] makes sense, because they literally aren't thinking straight because they're so convinced there is a threat around every corner (thanks mass media!).
Of course, the best part about that Aqua Teen "bomb scare" was how the guys that were charged for putting up blinking LEDs (and their lawyer) handled the press: "That's not a hair question".
Not just cartoons but media in general. Pick a movie with a bomb involved, it's probably a mess of wires and electronic components along with a digital clock of some sort.
we don't know wether the teacher made the bad call. (s)he could have updated the principal to ask if it's ok to demo electronics projects in a K-5, only to have the principal think it's a bomb.
let's trust everyone until they give a reason not to.
You can't legislate intelligence. Yesterday I went to my daughter's school's open house. When I entered, I was cornered by an administrator and told I had to sign some paperwork before I left. It was the computer policy. After I signed it, the admin said my daughter had to sign it too. She's 4.
Similar thing happened when my son started kindergarten. His "signature" was in red marker that smelled like cherry, took up half the page and kind of looked like an alligator to me.
The intent is not to legally bind her, which it obviously wouldn't. Usually the idea of having a child sign too is the idea having a child explicitly agree makes them more likely to be invested in complying. Whether or not there's any evidence that works, I don't know, but it's not quite as stupid as it might seem at first glance.
This isn't a comment on whether the original scenario was ridiculous or not, but you'd be surprised by how incredibly aware very young people are.
Even a three year old can easily understand the significance of signing something. Especially if you, as an adult, place importance on the ritual.
Asking toddlers to promise things, to explicitly agree to future events, is a big part of preventing tantrums. Three year olds are very capable negotiators.
> Especially if you, as an adult, place importance on the ritual.
Yes, we adults really place a lot of importance in the ritual of "scroll to the bottom and click 'Agree'".
(In case my point is missed in the snark, it's that adults will often sign whatever they're told to sign, especially if worded like "sign this or else you can't [X]", and kids will sign whatever they're told to sign by their parents. If parents were actually placing importance on only signing things that were necessary, there's no way they should let their 4-year-old sign anything that could remotely be considered important.)
I agree that asking a four year old to sign something outside the context of a fun game is stupid.
But I just wanted to make the point that four year old — or even a three year old — can totally understand the concept of signing something and a parent could even use it to enforce a future event (e.g., sign this bath time contract which means you must have a bath after dinner).
While the scenario described does sound ridiculous, I disagree that it's "not even understandable." (My understanding is that you meant the four year old wouldn't understand?)
Many toddlers younger than three could grasp the idea of signing something as a promise to do that thing in the future. A three or four year old could easily understand it.
sorry I meant not understandable as a blanket policy especially since this is at a school.
I would expect the school (being a place with lots of teachers) to understand that you get the parent to sign the document - with legally enforceable terms that the parent is responsible for whatever the kid does.
That's what a kindergarden - grade 8 elementary school field trip permission form looks like!
I'm sure they've made and processed hundreds of thousands of these forms before. It's just not understandable why they wouldn't do something similar with this open house.
Not but you can severely punish idiocy, so that it doesn't dare act that way again (and I mean the idiocy of the police in the story, or the people having your daughter sign BS)..
I had a similar experience when registering my sons for middle school: asked to sign a computer and network use policy. Being "in the trade", I stopped to read the five-page document. Wife got a little frustrated with me holding up the registration process. When I was done reading I signed, then instructed my kids to never use the school's network except where such use was unavoidable. Turn off WiFi on their phones when on school campus. They didn't need the kids to sign it, fwiw, because the goal was to make me financially liable for any action taken by MPAA/RIAA et al.
993 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 323 ms ] threadEverybody who's played with electronics knows that stuff is brittle and needs to be protected carefully. One wire coming loose renders your entire work obsolete and unlike software, there's no debugger to tell you where you potentially screwed up...
Racial profiling and ignorance at it's finest.
That's pretty simple -- their "authority" depends on never, ever, admitting that they were wrong.
Excellent observation. It's really about people conditioned to follow scripts.
These people were missing the "de-escalation script" in which a teacher laughs, puts their hand on their forehead and says,
Didn't treat the clock like a bomb? Might get fired. Did treat it like a bomb, turned out to be wrong, apologized? Might get fired. Did treat it like a bomb, turned out to be wrong, uhhh... maybe if I get the police involved I can make this not my fault?
Reasonable errors on all levels are often greeted with harsh punishment and sometimes demonization by news media. It's not just kids who are subject to it. People are rightly terrified of being blamed for errors that anyone could make, and their behavior makes a lot of sense in that context.
[0] yes, even many teachers. The power of unions in preserving teachers' jobs is highly regional, and often exaggerated.
It should have never, however, escalated as far as it did. You're going to handcuff a kid who is cooperating and trying to explain what this thing he built is? Give me a break.
But worse still they're still not backing down. It's suspension of all logic and reasoning. They should have shown the clock to his engineering teacher and resolved the issue in minutes.
"When Ahmed Mohamed, 14, brought the clock to MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., on Monday, an engineering teacher suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers. But it beeped during an English class, prompting Ahmed to show his English teacher what it was, according to an account in The Dallas Morning News."
Then it should go, "Oh it's a clock." "Is that true, engineering teacher?" "Yes." "OK cool."
Ok, I can't help but be reminded of my recent comments about English classes in high school.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10205670
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10204756
Anecdotally; I was wiring together simple switches, electric motors, and solar panels in and out of the classroom in elementary school in the mid 90s. I was programming timers and games in middle school by the late 90s.
Also, asking doesn't need to get the police involved: "Hey, what is this?" "Oh it's a clock I built" 'Why'd you bring it to school?" "Cuz I'm proud of it and wanted to show you"
If there was still doubt, ok, find someone who knows something about it (there's gotta be a tinkerer SOMEWHERE in the school district) and ask them to take a look. Maybe couch it as "Why don't we show it to X, I think they'd get a kick out of it?"
But arresting a 14 yr old tinkerer for a clock? Whatever happened to having sane reasonable conversations?
I've also made my share of brittle programming projects where one errant line could act like a "loose wire" and take down everything.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dall...
edit: The now-flagged parent comment stated that concern was warranted due to the child's name.
Is this true? I don't know, maybe it is? It's the same reason I am cautious when I walk alone downtown at night and a stranger approaches me. I act differently because I know statistically that they're more likely to be dangerous compared to at 2:00 PM... well, again... I assume so.
The hard part is trying to ignore statistics and the media on things like skin color and religion. It doesn't matter if x color or y religion is more dangerous, you need to ignore it. Thinking differently or acting differently because of these statistics is frowned upon.
In this case, it's silly. Of course it's not a bomb, of course the kid isn't dangerous.
If people paid attention to statistics, this wouldn't be an issue: Terror is so exceedingly unlikely to kill you that it's a rounding errro. In the US you're more likely to get killed by lightning.
Part of the problem is that the risk has been blown out of all proportion.
Did this happen with the Irish in the US during the Troubles?
Same reasons Italians and Germans weren't interned to the same extent the Japanese were during the 2nd World War: They can't be told apart from "proper" folk as easily. You can pick out most Arabs, but it's much harder to pick out most Irish.
Still a travesty. We need to move beyond hatred, especially of people we've never met.
I mean, you even fucking admitted it.
Is there any study to ascertain how these kind of incidents affect children psychologically, the effects of which manifest only years later? (Let's assume that this boy is a gifted engineer, and this incident leaves deep psychological scars not expressed in the next few years, but eventually leads him to take up activities later in life which are harmful for American citizens)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225962
All it did was make me anti-establishment at a slightly younger age. The kid in this story knows that what he's going through is bullshit, and he's likely to have something pretty good come out of this due to all the media attention. If anything, I'd suspect it would drive him to create more, because if there's something kids like to do it's sticking it to the man.
This was around 1993 or 1994 and I was in 11th grade. I was in some fairly "bonehead" computer class and we often worked on simple projects and saved them to floppy disks to take home or work on later.
At the time, the family computer was still an aging Commodore 128 but I was working mostly in DOS at school so I'd bring home my disks and work on projects on my dad's work laptop. Dad's work laptop included a primitive virus scanner so of course I scanned the disk I'd been using on the school network. The scanner finds some minor virus and cleans it up (in retrospect, I guess it could've easily just been a false positive but who knows).
After taking the disk back to school and working on projects again, I scanned it at home the following evening. Virus once again detected. So the next day in class I mention to the teacher that there's probably some innocuous virus on the classroom network and offered to help get rid of it. I was interested in that stuff even if I was still mostly a novice.
But instead of giving me a new project, the teacher flipped out. She accused me of trying to start a panic and disrupting class and sent me to see the ass. principal. Now, this dude hated kids (especially the ones who clearly had no respect for authoritah). I had to sit in his office without speaking while he held a (no joke) half hour conversation on the phone with his friend about some fishing trip they had planned for the weekend. Afterward he reamed me out and basically told me I was full of shit because the teacher wouldn't lie about such things.
In the end, it was my first lesson in "people who don't get computers or trust them will often avoid dealing with issues that make them uncomfortable and possibly view you with hostility for suggesting otherwise."
What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing? (https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg)
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-American-police-always-handcuff...
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/handcuffed-black-...
The US has so much talent, but when such things will continue to manifest, the terrorists already have won!
I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't make it through high school today.
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/...
But I think the same thing would've happened if I had brought such a device to school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would've been it's a bomb.
Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days, suspending him was unnecessary but with it only being three days I don't see it being a terrible thing. The record will get set straight.
So then this just falls back to being unfortunate racial profiling.
The child learns to not trust anyone and that his best intentions are twisted into punishment. I'm pretty appalled by this.
in a Texas Highschool I was sentenced to In School Suspension INDEFINITELY with my laptop confiscated for having shortcuts to directories on the network that I "shouldn't have had access to." After about a week of that I'd had enough, asked for OSS - got it, which I thought was enough but apparently wasn't. They ended up wanting to reassign me to an "alternative school" (the type with a dress code, specific hours, locked down no talking etc). I managed to get "homeschooled" for 3 months (re: no school work completed) and somehow still managed to actually graduate High School. It was the most ludicrous situation I'd ever been in for navigating a folder hierarchy in Windows.
3 days is lovely.
I swear, if I was rich, I would have a PAC specifically for school board elections and go after these idiots and their supporters on the school board.
I don't think it would be hard to find people who would have rather have faced what you suffered than what they went through. (Kalief Browder might have been one.) That doesn't mean they would be right to say that what happened to you was "lovely."
Maybe in the US, but where I live, and I guess that's going to be the case in most countries, no one would ever think that this "suitcase" could be a bomb, regardless of the person's appearance. It's saddens me to see a country becoming more and more paranoid and living in fear.
As an example, we used to chase each other in school with BB-guns (here they don't have the orange marker distinguishing them from real guns). When a teacher saw us I'm sure the thought that these could be real never ever crossed their mind.
But there's so much more here. He got arrested and put in juvenile detention. He was interrogated by the police without his parents being informed.
There's no excuse for this. The police involved should lose their jobs and spend some time in jail themselves. Not a lot, but perhaps a couple of days will get some of their colleagues to look up "probable cause" and "civil rights." The principal should lose his job as well, since he is clearly not mentally competent to supervise children.
This behavior happens ALL THE TIME. The police routinely will get away with what ever they can to get a conviction. The law is complicated and most people don't have a lawyer on retainer.
The police aren't your friend, and you gain NOTHING by talking to them.
Unless your skin is the wrong colour because then your hard work is seen as suspicious!
- three day suspension for bringing hoax bomb to school
- arrest record, juvenile detention, child protective services called
And that's it. There's no "and then the magical internet outrage fairy came in and fixed everything".
The amount of stupidity perpetuated by these administrators and the police is astounding. Never underestimate the poor taste of public authority. Most of their reasons tend to be 'We needed to lay down the law first to assert dominance. That's how we could then subvert the broader scope of his actions. Then we teach him about sacrifice, plea-bargaining. And like a good boy, he says sorry, gets his slap on the wrist, and everybody wins because he learns to respect authority, and be a good little automaton Johnnyboy!"
"His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, came from Sudan and is famous for arguing against anti-Islamic policies"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-s...
It is seriously disturbing.
I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this is a far more extreme case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
No but embarrassment may explain quite a lot of it.
Calling it a hoax bomb is ass covering by shifting the blame to the person who happens to be the only adult in that bumfuck town's government.
As a parent, can I see the list of "items... that are prohibited"? I'd be pretty shocked if "clock" is actually on there.
Sticking to the line that something was a 'bomb hoax' keeps the responsibility with the accused: they shouldn't have perpetrated a bomb hoax; not we shouldn't have over-reacted to an innocuous object.
Then again, this is Texas.
The boy's father is from Sudan and is well known for being outspoken against anti-Islamic policies. To an unworldly south/midwesterner that spells "potential terrorist". It's not too much of a stretch to see that diagnosis extended to the son.
The school admins reacted as stereo typically badly as they could have hoped. It should have been assessed quickly and immediately removed from the school. Instead it just got stupid quick.
So this father will now get images of himself with his son with our President. We get some immediate attention to the horrible plight of Muslims in America (there isn't any horrible plight other than some people don't trust them)....
"Though city prosecutors eventually concluded there was no ill intent involved in the placing of the ads, the city continues to refer to the event as a "bomb hoax" rather than a "scare." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare
Remember the Aqua Teen Hunger Force "bomb" scare in Boston? The city rigorously pursued legal action to spare their police department the embarrassment of having wasted millions of dollars carefully dismantling DIY Lite-Brites.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - 1973, Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
Do you have any sources to back up that claim?
It this really their line of thinking? Or did you just deduce this from their actions, i.e. that they seem to think that way?
They need to show intent. They cannot just show that others were in fear.
So it seems like they don't have a legitimate case, although "the ride" is often used to get guilty pleas out of otherwise innocent people (i.e. they would lock the kid up pending trial, delay trial, the parents may not be able to afford lawyer fees, so he might plead down to a lesser charge to get out even if the original charge is complete nonsense).
That is pretty standard fare for the US legal system these days. 95% plea rates, 7 minutes of public defender time on average per client, and so on and so forth.
"Irving police might still charge Ahmed with making a "hoax bomb." Police spokesperson James McLellan said Ahmed "kept maintaining it was a clock" when he was brought in for interrogation, but that he offered "no broader explanation.""
Somewhat related, for a little sense of perspective. I studied E/E in Northern Ireland in the early 90's. I was regularly stopped by armed British Soldiers and searched. Invariably I have some half finished project in my bag. Could easily be passed off as bomb material. All it took was a simple explanation and I was on my way in 5 minutes.
This was a place where actual bombs were being set off on a weekly basis. But, the 'keep calm and carry on' mentality is what persevered. The US seems like it's becoming more of a Police State than N.I. ever was.
I checked twice before crossing the road and a nearby cop car spun around and stopped me saying I had done a double-take when I saw them and they needed to search me.
Turns out the client I was off to see was a porn magazine and I have a bunch of their product in my bag. The nice police officer didn't even blink when she saw that. Perhaps everyone i the City is carrying around lots of porn with them in the middle of the day?
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_steel_(London)
But my 17-year-old brother doesn't live under a racist cloud of "probably a terrorist."
Who knows what kind of subversive ideas he might come up with if he's allowed to continue to think for himself.
What worried me is where is the engineering teacher he first showed the clock to? He or she could've clarified everything in 5 seconds.
And why would you have to be an engineering teacher to presume innocence here? This is a school; anyone involved should have been able to clarify everything in 5 seconds, even without the child explaining himself.
Welcome to 'murrica, kid. You better learn to censor yourself.
It's a Texas thing not a US, or that what I hope the case to be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/03/06/6-year-old-finge...
Of course they have. However, the authorities everywhere don't consistently flip their wigs—certainly not as badly as this—every time a student does something like bringing in this project. So the fact that they wigged out badly in this particular case probably—not certainly, but really pretty likely—does have some relation to the fact that the student just happened to be Ahmed Mohamed.
(OTOH there pretty certainly is a selection bias in the fact that this particular case is getting so much publicity. It's the social-media catnip of the perceived (and again, let's be serious here, probably partly real) discrimination that has pushed this one up the charts while others go mostly unremarked.)
I do not know that school administrators have "consistently" flipped out at white kids, either. I don't know what the baseline occurrence of these events are. My suspicion would be that every case we've ever heard of, including this one, is still an outlier, and thus not suitable for drawing sweeping conclusions from, and in fact kids probably do stupid stuff like this every day without making the national news.
One avenue is to focus on those victims that happen to be a racial minority, and force the authorities to treat members of that minority group with kid gloves. This literally forces all of us to keep race and other divisive demographics at the forefront of our consciousness whenever we deal with other people. That's not a good strategy to reach of goal of everyone being blind to race.
Another avenue is to focus on the powers that are being wielded unjustly. By taking away to power to cause such damage, or at least imposing accountability when it's misused, we can force those with power to rein in their abusive behavior to all. This latter seems the winning strategy to me.
It may also be a Southern thing though.
So, in the craigslist example, many American people are afraid because there is overwhelming evidence that craigslist robberies A) really do happen with some significant frequency and B) meeting at a public place is a simple, low-effort way of mitigating that risk. I can understand people living in lower crime areas not worrying about craigslist robberies (though I would take the precautions anywhere because it is so simple).
However, in general, I would agree with you that Americans eat up FUD. You can see it in our DHS/TSA, the Patriot Act, collective disinterest in the Snowden leaks, and general anti-Muslim sentiments.
[0]: http://wlfi.com/2015/08/18/man-robbed-at-gunpoint-while-meet...
[1]: http://wlfi.com/2015/08/18/lafayette-adds-monitored-exchange...
Is there evidence, or media reporting well beyond the actual rate of occurrence?
The reason why you don't have to be afraid when dealing with Craigslist in europe is that guns are rare, as is gun violence.
But I'm sure some will just buy another gun to feel safer. Isn't that the standard argument after a serial shooting? The first victim should have had a gun, then this wouldn't have happened... that's as perverse as it gets!
Also, for some reason, whenever something bad happens, the US seems to respond with bigger countermeasures, more stringent laws and heftier punishments. Europeans are amazed when they read that children are sometimes threatened with tens of years of jailtime for relatively small incidents.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-15190563
There's no relative scarcity of ignorant and authoritarian schoolteachers, but consequences are likely to be confined to school, not involve law enforcement, and parents and pupils are more likely to knuckle down rather than fight or go to the press.
So, taking "such behaviour" much more broadly than this specific incident (and of course granting that Europe is a big and diverse place) - if a kid is found hacking school networks, or distributing a satirical magazine, or bringing possibly inappropriate or dangerous items to school, the schools are just as likely to crack down (even if it infringes the pupil's legal rights) but the matter is likely to end there without ruining the pupil's education. Or making the school administration change its behaviour.
Personally I think the situation as I have described it is favourable. Ideally schools wouldn't be administered by petty tyrants, but as long as everyone finishes their education with a blank slate it's fine. Keeping the police away from schools as much as possible would be a good start.
I see a few possible causes:
– 9/11 was a much bigger attack than anything that happened on European soil
– there is a more influential lobby for militarisation/criminalisation in the US
– Americans are more fearful
– America is more democratic. As such, the unfounded fears of parts of the population (on both sides of the Atlantic) are less likely to be buffered by the more rational thinking of experts
and, my favourite:
– Americans love excitement and violence & it is amplified by the media. Nothing better than a bomb scare on FOX.
Happened to me when I was a kid. Opened a DOS prompt. Was labelled a dangerous mind.
I remember a teacher seeing me type "BitchX" into a terminal and freaking out, he apparently thought I was doing something obscene in my terminal window..
- Boys carrying pocket knives/hunting knives.
- Boys with firearms in their cars/trucks so they could go hunting after school.
- Access to a wide variety of chemicals in chemistry class.
- Access to a wide variety of electrical and electronic components in physics class.
- Access to a wide variety of power and machine tools in industrial arts/vocational classes.
Maybe this kid WAS singled out because he had brown skin, but school administrators were overreacting to stupid shit decades ago, in ways that obviously weren't connected to "racism."
Every incident like this is another damning victory for those who sought to change our way of life. They may not have taken us back to the stone-age but they sure as hell took away a lot of the freedoms we had.
> talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduact and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited
Since when can you not bring a clock to school?
But no they had to go and dig in. Which makes this really wrong on their part. I hate it when organizations take a stance around stupidity.
God forbid that an officer drops his walkie talkie and discovers that IT TOO IS A POTENTIAL BOMB! I mean, it has wires and circuits...
The ignorance here is astounding. I suppose he's lucky they didn't also try him as a warlock for summoning electricity from a magical box.
But why did it need to lead to arrest, hand cuffs, finger printing after an interview and a casual examination of the device clearly demonstrated it was a clock (there was an engineering teacher who could easily collaborate)? It was an outright excessive reaction to further compound what was a regrettable mistake.
EDIT: A picture of the actual device is here.
http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-county/2015/09/1... https://archive.is/Q0OLb
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/...
The engineering teacher may have advised the student to bring the device to school but to not pull it out in any other class. This could have been done to avoid distracting other students or attracting unwanted attention from other teachers. This seems like a straight forward request that may have been taken out of context. I have not seen a quote that uses the word "hide", which really changes the connotation of the statement. I highly doubt the engineering teacher thought specifically that the device could be seen as a bomb.
Perhaps he did and was shot down. I don't know but the details as shared stuck out to me.
Don't hold your breath.
Welcome to Earth, kid. These will be your fellow human beings. Enjoy your stay.
I really, really hope someone will pick this up and offer that kid some kind of internship somewhere, if only to keep his moral and spirit up.
I really doubt that this clock looked even remotely like any of the industrially made ready-to-use explosives.
Sometimes I can't help feeling like some people should be forcibly removed from the gene pool.
EDIT: Thanks Mike, that's a great improvement!
You shouldn't be caught sitting in your comfy chair eating popcorn though...
Like other rational people who live or have lived in USA, I have minimized my interaction with both "sides" to the extent that I've been able. (Although frankly I elicited more sympathy for a stolen bike from an admitted bike thief than I did from any cop.) If you drop another "you just don't know how it is to be a cop" whinge on us, I'll be forced to assume that you are a cop or in the immediate family of one.
Instead, label them BOX 1, BOX 2 and BOX 4 and put "geo-location circuity" (it doesn't have to work, just make it look like it could) in it and place those at various points in the school, preferably with visible wires.
Then you can claim that you were trying to build your own local mini-gps to monitor your movements throughout the day.
Same popcorn value, less time in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare
Incidentally, I was in Shenzhen (China) a short while ago, and signs like those were everywhere, and the sight of bare electronics not uncommon; but given that it's a huge centre of electronics manufacturing, I'd guess that almost everyone is accustomed to seeing such things.
It reminds me of the Aqua Teen bomb scare back in 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare
Anyone with half a brain would understand that you can't just magically make circuitry explode. That's a whole new level of ignorance, they teach this stuff in elementary school for gods sake.
That's the problem right there. These people have let their common sense be overtaken by their sense of fear, they're so afraid they aren't thinking.
That's why going after a 9 year old or MIT student with a t-shirt[0] makes sense, because they literally aren't thinking straight because they're so convinced there is a threat around every corner (thanks mass media!).
[0] https://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MadeOfExplodium
Haha. No, they don't. Not anymore at least.
http://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/06/03/mit_stu...
I'm pretty sure the apology was for a more lenient sentence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2fGzmphx4U#t=44
"Student arrested for bringing backpack to school"
Even a three year old can easily understand the significance of signing something. Especially if you, as an adult, place importance on the ritual.
Asking toddlers to promise things, to explicitly agree to future events, is a big part of preventing tantrums. Three year olds are very capable negotiators.
Yes, we adults really place a lot of importance in the ritual of "scroll to the bottom and click 'Agree'".
(In case my point is missed in the snark, it's that adults will often sign whatever they're told to sign, especially if worded like "sign this or else you can't [X]", and kids will sign whatever they're told to sign by their parents. If parents were actually placing importance on only signing things that were necessary, there's no way they should let their 4-year-old sign anything that could remotely be considered important.)
But I just wanted to make the point that four year old — or even a three year old — can totally understand the concept of signing something and a parent could even use it to enforce a future event (e.g., sign this bath time contract which means you must have a bath after dinner).
I don't think anyone is arguing that the child in question is 4.
No, it doesn't. If anything, the opposite (if the child is a teenager). If it's 4 it's just stupid.
But signing something? That's just really stupid. It's not enforceable and not even understandable.
Many toddlers younger than three could grasp the idea of signing something as a promise to do that thing in the future. A three or four year old could easily understand it.
I would expect the school (being a place with lots of teachers) to understand that you get the parent to sign the document - with legally enforceable terms that the parent is responsible for whatever the kid does.
That's what a kindergarden - grade 8 elementary school field trip permission form looks like!
I'm sure they've made and processed hundreds of thousands of these forms before. It's just not understandable why they wouldn't do something similar with this open house.
Me: "Scribble something on this line."
Kid: scribbles
Me: "Here's your stupid form."
How would that get my kid "invested in complying" ?
Not but you can severely punish idiocy, so that it doesn't dare act that way again (and I mean the idiocy of the police in the story, or the people having your daughter sign BS)..