I assume this is partially about his detention without parental notification, but maybe that would be the city, not the school. It seems a pretty big error on the part of the administration and police.
Or effective bait for activists to troll public institutions for publicity and cash settlements. Settlements paid by tax payers that take funds from education, public safety, infrastructure, and other public insitutions.
No, it signals that the only way to get ahead is to rent seek and ask oppressed instead of working hard to make the world a better place. I don't know how you think it's racist? The police could just have just as well thought it was a bomb, this just in timed bombs actually do look like bombs and the police were probably just being overly cautious. It's not like there haven't been students that want to blow up their teachers.
I couldn't disagree more. Schools & cities both ought to live in fear of lawsuits to stop this kind of nonsense from occuring as a kneejerk reaction and give common sense an opportunity to prevail.
Well, it allows certain opportunistic individuals to claim he's just in it for the money (and it does look rather bad, although I'm certainly not that reactionary). It comes as a charge to taxpayers, as well.
Also, I find the phrase "live in fear" to be a little... strong. Is that really what you meant?
Living in fear of lawsuits is why we don't have climbing equipment in parks and diving boards in pools anymore. Lawsuits need to be scaled back and commonsense returned.
that's idealistic at best. the society we live in is not one of common sense for the most part. we want the same thing, common sense to prevail, but the difference is I've accepted the litigious nature of today's world and you have a fantasy of it suddenly going away.
A little shocked I was downvoted here for sharing my opinion, are we really that intent on becoming a circlejerk? guess that's just the way things go eventually.
More like clock boy wants to line his pockets with tax payer money after getting massive amounts of sympathy, products and scholarships from liberals trying to signal to other liberals.
You have to admit; simply taking the casing off a store bought 80's clock, putting it in a suitcase and bringing it to school could easily be grounds for a bomb hoax.
Living in fear might be too strong. There needs to be a monetary deterrent discourage abuse. For example, the Internet often claims police brutality will drop if the settlements were paid from their pension.
Sorry, that seems opportunistic. I felt bad for him, but no way he was scarred to the tune of $15 million. Even the bad experience had a major upside - he was offered an internship to Twitter and an invitation to the White House. Schools are budget-deprived enough without adding frivolous lawsuits to the mix.
In this case everyone involved in suspending him should have been seriously reprimanded and an apology given (and I'm surprised one wasn't). But a $15 million lawsuit isn't the answer.
> Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some portion of the punitive damage award.
Should schools really not take security seriously though? Do we really want people second guessing themselves when it comes to safety? That precedent is asking for trouble.
How does safety enter into it? Everyone knew it wasn't a bomb. Some people thought it was pretending to be a bomb, other people contend that it wasn't pretending to be a bomb. How are you worried about people second guessing themselves, in that context?
Schools have procedures for when there's a suspected bomb. They don't look like what was done, here. There was never a suspected bomb - only a suspected hoax.
Everyone knew it wasn't a bomb? Really? AFAIK he was asked what it was and he was uncooperative although we won't ever know since his family refused the public release of the police records.
Anyways, if we're going with hearsay then we should mention the boy's sister was suspended for making a bomb threat so I'd doubt the average teacher would just brush this off as "definitely not a bomb".
Now, seems like in your mind it would've been better for the school to send a SWAT team after him. I'm sure that wouldn't be seen as a negative thing by anyone.
Better? No. More consistent with "we thought it was a bomb"? Yes. At which point, the discussion of what should be done when you think there's a bomb becomes germane. So far as I understand it, no one involved is claiming that they thought it was a bomb.
Far more conspicuous than relative lack of force (which, depending on particulars, might possibly have been a fine reaction to an actual bomb) is the apparent lack of any move to evacuate other students.
Is there anything seriously wrong in how school reacted? Quoting New York Times,
> He said he took it to school on Monday to show an engineering teacher, who said it was nice but then told him he should not show the invention to other teachers. Later, Ahmed’s clock beeped during an English class, and after he revealed the device to the teacher, school officials notified the police, and Ahmed was interrogated by officers.
> Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. [1]
I think this is how you create poor educational outcomes for the students in an entire district.
Losing 15 million dollars is not a loss most school districts will be able to withstand - that would likely mean the closing of schools, consolidation, larger class sizes, teacher pay decreases, etc.
But yeah, costing a community of people 15 million dollars sure will teach the four or five people actually involved a valuable lesson.
If by 'called into the office' you mean handcuffed, told that you are being expelled, and catching the news cycle. Not to mention being the topic of a national debate with some pointing out your race and guessing as to whether or not you are a terrorist.
He's not the only kid to get in trouble with the police at school. I dunno man, I'm from Canada, and this is like $100K tops, obviously we don't have the same legal climate as the US but $15m seems a little steep, I do realize it's the opening offer.
I am really confused by the negative reactions because it seems like Ahmed's family is following the American Way by suing for $15 million.
But seriously, isn't this how it always has been with incidents like this? If they want to sue they don't want to sue for $2 million because the school will probably tryo to settle for ~$500K. If you set it at $15 million, it anchors the price point higher and they may get $3 million to make it go away.
I think Ahmed and his family forfeit their right to the "American way" when they decided to move to Qatar after receiving an outpouring of support from the American public (including meeting Obama).
Just because it's a stereotypical "American Way", doesn't mean it's right. The negative reactions may come from the fact that rent-seeking is harmful to society. Moreover, this particular case is an abuse of public goodwill, and many of the commenters expressing negative sentiments probably fell for the hoax and were supporting this kid publicly.
But it wasn't a hoax dude. It actually happened. He got arrested for pretty much _no_ reason whatsoever.
There are two separate events
1. Ahmed was arrested for a pretty dumb thing and most likely because he was a brown kid it made it easier for them to assume it was a bomb or hoax bomb. Whatever they want to call it. I'd have to see how often "hoax bombs" were actually used to arrest someone before I say they racially profiled him for sure, but my gut feeling is that there isn't a high incidence of hoax bomb arrests.
2. Ahmed's family is suing for $15 million. Not Ahmed, who probably has little choice in the matter.
I am sure suing for so much money has brought bad publicity for them, but at the same time that issue is separate from the incident of him being arrested, which happened.
Using the term rent-seeking is a bit over the top unless you really believe this entire thing was staged.
"But it wasn't a hoax dude. It actually happened. He got arrested for pretty much _no_ reason whatsoever."
The whole "homemade clock" claim is what was a hoax, regardless of any subsequent panic about its application. (If you aren't clear on the backstory, look it up. It's just a mass-production A/C-powered clock taken out of its case. For example, see: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MICRONTA-Large-Red-Display-Digital-A...)
Regarding the reaction: hindsight is a handy thing, but we live in an era where schools routinely go into complete lockdown if some kid or staffer thinks he might have spotted a weapon.
When you read the article carefully, some things pop out:
1) BBC makes no mention here of the whole "homebuilt" concept itself being a hoax, e.g. a "homemade" clock (why the suitcase?) that was really just a disassembled, mass-production A/C-powered clock).
2) Lawyer letter stating, "Irving Police officials immediately determined that the clock was harmless" is false. Beat cops aren't qualified to make any such analysis; even things as innocuous as an unattended backpack get further analysis by specifically trained personnel.
3) "Ahmed's father ... once stood as a presidential candidate against (Sudanese President) Bashir." That's a pretty strong theoretical motive for a publicity stunt.
In any case, they leveraged the fauxtrage into a full scholarship to The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community... so, mission accomplished.
Another article, however, claims the following:
"(Teacher) did escort Ahmed to the office, where the letter alleges that five police officers, the principal and the assistant principal performed an "interrogation." During that time, he was allegedly not permitted to contact his parents and was forced to sign a letter of confession under the threat of expulsion." Now, if that is true, that warrants investigation and corrective action on its own, completely unrelated to religion, national origin, or who "made" the item, or why.
Meanwhile, this article says that his older sister claims to have been suspended 5-6 years earlier over alleged threats to blow up her school:
'The sister claimed after the arrest that she had been suspended from a school for several days. “I got suspended from school for three days from this stupid same district, from this girl saying I wanted to blow up the school, something I had nothing to do with,” she said, without providing evidence or proof.
The episode occurred around 2009, she said. The scare happened in “my first year of attempting middle school in America. I knew English, but the culture was different, the people were different,” Eyman said.
“I got suspended and I didn’t do anything about it,” she said.'
If the things you stated are true: that Ahmed did not make the clock, that Ahmed's father is a politician (I guess your implication is that politicians will throw their children under the bus for publicity?), and that the sister was also suspended 6 years prior, I still don't see an implication that the dad set it up.
If you combine those facts to believe Ahmed's father completely set this up, then you can also just combine these facts to determine that people in that school district of Texas are probably just racists (the sister didn't do anything and got suspended, the brother did something that may have been grounds for suspension, but got arrested). People are willing to crucify Ahmed (who again I doubt had much choice if he was set up to do this) for the former, but no one cares about the possibility of the latter. I'm guessing the truth lies between these two extremes.
But again, if Ahmed's father set him up for this, then there should have been an investigation. And if he had been found guilty of forcing his son to stage some fake clock/bomb thing, well I'll go and sharpen my pitchfork for it. But as far as I can tell, kid was _arrested_ for what amounts to a clock he didn't make.
> 2) Lawyer letter stating, "Irving Police officials immediately determined that the clock was harmless" is false. Beat cops aren't qualified to make any such analysis; even things as innocuous as an unattended backpack get further analysis by specifically trained personnel.
If they did think it was a bomb, or didn't think it was but had no authority/knowledge to assess that it was a bomb, then it is even worse because it means there was a possible bomb on campus and they failed to evacuate the school. I think that was part of the anger that people felt about this case. Were they really thinking about the welfare of the rest of the children on campus or did they know it wasn't a bomb so were just kinda harassing Ahmed because they wanted to?
> Using the term rent-seeking is a bit over the top unless you really believe this entire thing was staged.
I'm currently inclining to believe that, but that's beside the point. The whole nation stood in their defense, they got so high up the chain that even POTUS got interested personally, and now they're suing for $15 million?! Rent-seeking is a little light word for that IMO.
It is rent-seeking I guess if you think they will actually get $15 million, and don't think they deserve a dime.
I think there should be some kinda of punitive damage for the school because of their actions. I don't think it's $15 million. I also don't think a jury will award $15 million. And more likely the case may be thrown out or the school district will just settle to make it go away.
People in this thread are acting as though they were already awarded $15 million. I always assumed a jury ends up deciding the damages, if any, in civil cases like this. It's not an automatic $15 million if they prove their case just because that's what they asked for in compensation.
> People in this thread are acting as though they were already awarded $15 million.
I don't think so. Personally, if they got awarded $15 million, I would be pissed off at the jury. I'm angry at the kid's family for having the chutzpah to ask for that much money.
Public agencies face a different process. One can't just sue such an agency for damages directly; one makes a financial claim against the agency instead. Then, if the claim is denied and not settled, then one can sue.
I encourage everyone to dig into this story a bit more. This family acted in a provocative way, and now they to attempt to punish the school and taxpayers.
Just to remind you: the great Civil Rights era cases were all plants, and care was taken by the organizers to find a presentable defendant with a clean record. Lady Chatterley was a plant, too.
I think people are more disgusted by how self serving the "plant" is. Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus to support a movement. Ahmed Mohammed brought a dismantled clock in a suitcase to school to further the political ends of his father's career.
exactly. if the school conducted itself in a humane and respectful manner in the first place there would never have been an incident at all, which is exactly the point. there should have never been an incident at all.
regardless of whether or not mohammed and his family were well-prepared to exploit the media for a favorable narrative, they were still wronged.
even if they deliberately provoked the incident, they were still wronged.
This had nothing to do with race. Children have gotten into serious trouble just for drawing guns (see links below). This is a result of "zero tolerance" policies which have been in place for a while now.
This child repeatedly brought out a clearly provocative object which he didn't even make and which looked like a count down timer in a small container. He also ignored e very single teacher who politely asked him to put it away. Until finally one teacher got freaked out enough to take action.
I don't agree with his arrest just like I don't agree with those kids getting into trouble for drawing guns. But to try to paint this as a race issue is plainly ignorant at best.
When you look at the details of this case (the father who is a Sudanese politician, the sister who tried something similar a few years ago, Mark Cuban saying that when he was talking to him he was being fed lines and told what to say, the fact that he didn't make the clock and has not even a cursory knowledge of electronics commensurate with his age or skill - claiming in an interview to 'solder' CPUs, etc.) then it becomes clear what this was really about.
I feel sorry for the child because it is clear that his father orchestrated all of this.
Neither of your examples were the kids ever arrested.
So they suspect he has a bomb, but don't evacuate the school? If someone calls into a school and says there is a bomb, they evacuate regardless of whether its a hoax or not.
Also you misquote what Mark Cuban said, just like a lot of news sites that want to focus the narrative that his sister "fed" him answers.
"I talked to the kid," Cuban said. "He's from Dallas, and I've talked to the people in the school district. The kid is a super smart kid. Science geek. We talked about science, but while I'm talking to him on the phone, as I ask him a question, 'Tell me what happened because I'm curious.' Right? His sister, over his shoulder, you could hear, listening to the question, giving him the answer. So, I don't know all the details of what happened, but what I do know, when I talked to him about science, when I talked to him about magnets, when I talked to him about creating things, he was very, very engaged."
How do you charge someone with a "bomb hoax" unless someone initially assumed there was an actual threat of a bomb? Can you just somehow jump straight to "bomb hoax"?
Why do you need to call the police for a bomb threat you know to not be real? If I said something stupid like, "I have a bomb" and the teacher _knows_ I'm lying. The teacher probably sends me to the principal's office or maybe gives me a stern lecture about "misusing words"
If he really did something that warranted cops being called why would the Principal need to threaten him with expulsion if he didn't sign a written statement coping to that fact? You either have him dead to rights on making bomb scares or you don't.
I honestly don't know if his dad was the cause of him bringing that clock to school. But man if that's true, the dad must have read the school well enough to know they would try to arrest his son on something dumb.
Regardless of what you think about all the actors at play here, this is one of those stories to look back on that says... something... about the internet. A few million tweets led to media attention, discourse about schools and race, meetings with presidents and scholarships to prestigious universities. All good things and all was once again well in the world and the internet won.
However, with time, more details come out that make the whole thing not quite as clear cut and it becomes pretty obvious that there might be more than to one side of the story that we all jumped into.
I don't pass any judgement, it just makes me wonder how to bring balance to the social media firestorms and convey a more nuanced perspective to stories like this.
Not sure how I missed it, but if anyone else did as well, it really looks like he just moved the guts of an old clock into a new casing. He didn't really design any circuitry at all.
It's unfortunate that the "hoax" label on this clock story is being considered by some a conspiracy theory.
All it takes is 15 minute to look into the political history of the kids father and the nature of the clock that he "built" to realize something is amiss.
You don't think his talk about soldering and "inventing" is a little suspicious considering what he actually did? Unscrew the back of a clock and put it in a box?
Bomb in a briefcase is a common movie trope, since most people's working knowledge of explosives and bombs comes from movies it's reasonable to assume that an older style clock in a metal briefcase like they do in movies would be interpreted by a few people as a bomb, especially those in positions of authority who view everything that isn't 'normal' as a problem.
Obviously Ahmed was aware enough of this to try to make the briefcase look less suspicious by wrapping it in wires which is generally how I try to make electronics in a brief case less suspicious.
A few years ago in the winter I had an issue with the electronics in my car so coming home from Reno, I pulled the climate control panel out of my car so I could manually connect the wires to make the heat go.
I ended up going across the border like this, and ended up explaining to the border guard the wiring of the car to assure her that nothing was amiss.
The border guards suspicions were naturally raised because most people don't even know how to pull the panel out let alone jerry rig their own climate control system.
That's how people learn things, by tinkering with existing stuff. Had the media not picked up this story, this kid would've been warned to stay away from doing such stuff, essentially killing any motivation he would've had.
Hackers hack things, most of the time on things that exist.
Yeah well, fuck it. I'm officially done with controversies on the Internet. I thought I was done already, but I fell for that one. Hell, I was even considering participating in "build a clock in support of that boy" Hackaday action (job stood in the way).
That's why I keep complaining about manipulative and lying media. It really fucks up our society.
It's always been true of human nature: the desire to reach some sort of conclusion as quickly as possible.
Humans seem to have a lot of trouble with uncertainty, and when faced with uncertainty we tend to concoct narratives that are informed by our perceptions of reality. The danger of social media is that such narratives can spread quickly to others, and a mass delusion can be formed based on faulty or incomplete information.
This is a lesson that shouldn't be new to social media, because "proper" news outlets have made horrible mistakes in early reporting many times as well, but it's worth noting: never, ever blindly assume that you've heard the whole story, no matter what the source. This is doubly true if the story you're hearing seems to imply that one or multiple actors are a combination of incompetent and malicious that stretches credulity.
Humans make decisions for reasons, and although we all make mistakes, usually we're not malicious imbeciles.
You obviously haven't been around the internet too long, if another kid takes a apart a clock and puts it in a briefcase he could easily cause $15 million in damages from cultural appropriation alone.
This thread is one of the reasons why I come to HN. It turns out that yet another important story of this year was utter fabrication and lies. I wouldn't know about it if not for HN, and would keep believing falsehoods.
I don't read mainstream media. Too much bullshit. If something is important enough, it'll pop up on HN - usually with the people in the know pointing out all the blatant lies made by the news source.
I know, but you made it sound as if HN was giving you information that you couldn't have gotten from other sources, whereas in fact, in the particular case we're discussing, just reading the news would have been sufficient.
Fair enough. The information about this case, as opposed to the original story, didn't pop up in any other source I usually track, which provides an interesting example of another phenomenon - controversial stories get spread widely, but their retractions don't.
Can you elaborate on why? Do you not feel this lawsuit is excessive and a slap in the face to the enormous amounts of good-will Ahmed and his family generated in the first place?
The clock boy incident was a clever hoax. Ahmed and his family may not be great engineers, but showed themselves masters of our media and legal system.
Interesting to watch all the bitter fighting over control of the narrative. I feel like the comment threads all over the internet are a more interesting story than the story itself.
When I was in middle school a kid got suspended for bringing a paper mache firework to class (basically just a fist-sized cylinder with a wick). It turns out it was completely hollow and didn't contain any black powder, but he still got a suspension since it looked like a bomb. The kid was white.
Islamophobia is very much a real problem, but it seems reasonable that any kid in the same situation might get in trouble as well.
I haven't read the Steve Jobs book in awhile, but didn't Wozniak bring a metronome to his high school that they mistook for a bomb?
Again, I'm not saying racism and Islomophobia in our school system don't exist, but there's a long history of educators mistaking harmless devices for explosives, and I think its a tad presumptuous to say that this issue is only about race.
Just my 2c.
I'm seeing a lot of comments on how this was all orchestrated or how he didn't actually make the clock.
Even if any of that were true, I'm not sure why it should change anything at all. The issue from the very beginning was the school's reaction to the clock.
If any of them really did get fooled into thinking it was a bomb, then they definitely wouldn't have handled it the way it did (handling the bomb themselves instead of evacuating and calling in professionals). This was simply a display of power by the school officials and police, and an attempt to make an example out of a kid that was somewhat disobedient.
If they acted reasonably, this whole ordeal would have ended there and there would have been nothing to further orchestrate by the kid's parents. They didn't. And now they're paying the price and being made an example of themselves. The irony is delicious.
Except they're not the ones paying the price. Anyone who pays taxes is instead. There doesn't appear to be any accountability for this massive mishandling of events. I think the next group of people who should get rights (along with moral agency, and all the other hard parts of freedom) should be children.
True enough. Society is collectively paying the price, instead of the individuals actually responsible. That is unfortunate, but I am still cautiously optimistic that this could lead to people in positions of power to think twice before abusing it.
Schools are already hurting so badly from frivolous lawsuits and oversensitive, opportunistic people. Schools are one of the few institutions trying to actually do some good. Don't kick them when they're already down.
I see plenty of comments saying that the parents orchestrated this. If you truly believe this, I can only assume that you are not now or never have been a parent.
If you truly believe that a parent could send their child into a situation where there is a high probability of a fatal or long term negative outcome for the child, then you do not know what being a parent is.
There are plenty of bad parents, but believing this is orchestrated by the parents is the height of cynicism.
> If you truly believe that a parent could send their child into a situation where there is a high probability of a fatal or long term negative outcome for the child, then you do not know what being a parent is.
I pass such "parents" on the street every day. Begging is an organized operation in big cities in Poland, and there were reports that children are actually drugged or fed alcohol, so that they're asleep. Fatalities happen.
There's a lot of sad stuff going on in this world.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadAlso, I find the phrase "live in fear" to be a little... strong. Is that really what you meant?
A little shocked I was downvoted here for sharing my opinion, are we really that intent on becoming a circlejerk? guess that's just the way things go eventually.
In this case everyone involved in suspending him should have been seriously reprimanded and an apology given (and I'm surprised one wasn't). But a $15 million lawsuit isn't the answer.
> Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some portion of the punitive damage award.
Schools have procedures for when there's a suspected bomb. They don't look like what was done, here. There was never a suspected bomb - only a suspected hoax.
Anyways, if we're going with hearsay then we should mention the boy's sister was suspended for making a bomb threat so I'd doubt the average teacher would just brush this off as "definitely not a bomb".
Now, seems like in your mind it would've been better for the school to send a SWAT team after him. I'm sure that wouldn't be seen as a negative thing by anyone.
Far more conspicuous than relative lack of force (which, depending on particulars, might possibly have been a fine reaction to an actual bomb) is the apparent lack of any move to evacuate other students.
> He said he took it to school on Monday to show an engineering teacher, who said it was nice but then told him he should not show the invention to other teachers. Later, Ahmed’s clock beeped during an English class, and after he revealed the device to the teacher, school officials notified the police, and Ahmed was interrogated by officers.
> Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. [1]
[1]: http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engin...
Losing 15 million dollars is not a loss most school districts will be able to withstand - that would likely mean the closing of schools, consolidation, larger class sizes, teacher pay decreases, etc.
But yeah, costing a community of people 15 million dollars sure will teach the four or five people actually involved a valuable lesson.
I'm sorry, in what way is this frivolous?
A school district that serves thousands of children, primarily minorities.
I am shocked that there is anyone saying that those children deserve poorer educational outcomes because of this incident.
But seriously, isn't this how it always has been with incidents like this? If they want to sue they don't want to sue for $2 million because the school will probably tryo to settle for ~$500K. If you set it at $15 million, it anchors the price point higher and they may get $3 million to make it go away.
But it wasn't a hoax dude. It actually happened. He got arrested for pretty much _no_ reason whatsoever.
There are two separate events
1. Ahmed was arrested for a pretty dumb thing and most likely because he was a brown kid it made it easier for them to assume it was a bomb or hoax bomb. Whatever they want to call it. I'd have to see how often "hoax bombs" were actually used to arrest someone before I say they racially profiled him for sure, but my gut feeling is that there isn't a high incidence of hoax bomb arrests.
2. Ahmed's family is suing for $15 million. Not Ahmed, who probably has little choice in the matter.
I am sure suing for so much money has brought bad publicity for them, but at the same time that issue is separate from the incident of him being arrested, which happened.
Using the term rent-seeking is a bit over the top unless you really believe this entire thing was staged.
The whole "homemade clock" claim is what was a hoax, regardless of any subsequent panic about its application. (If you aren't clear on the backstory, look it up. It's just a mass-production A/C-powered clock taken out of its case. For example, see: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MICRONTA-Large-Red-Display-Digital-A...)
Regarding the reaction: hindsight is a handy thing, but we live in an era where schools routinely go into complete lockdown if some kid or staffer thinks he might have spotted a weapon.
When you read the article carefully, some things pop out:
1) BBC makes no mention here of the whole "homebuilt" concept itself being a hoax, e.g. a "homemade" clock (why the suitcase?) that was really just a disassembled, mass-production A/C-powered clock).
2) Lawyer letter stating, "Irving Police officials immediately determined that the clock was harmless" is false. Beat cops aren't qualified to make any such analysis; even things as innocuous as an unattended backpack get further analysis by specifically trained personnel.
3) "Ahmed's father ... once stood as a presidential candidate against (Sudanese President) Bashir." That's a pretty strong theoretical motive for a publicity stunt.
In any case, they leveraged the fauxtrage into a full scholarship to The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community... so, mission accomplished.
Another article, however, claims the following: "(Teacher) did escort Ahmed to the office, where the letter alleges that five police officers, the principal and the assistant principal performed an "interrogation." During that time, he was allegedly not permitted to contact his parents and was forced to sign a letter of confession under the threat of expulsion." Now, if that is true, that warrants investigation and corrective action on its own, completely unrelated to religion, national origin, or who "made" the item, or why.
Meanwhile, this article says that his older sister claims to have been suspended 5-6 years earlier over alleged threats to blow up her school:
'The sister claimed after the arrest that she had been suspended from a school for several days. “I got suspended from school for three days from this stupid same district, from this girl saying I wanted to blow up the school, something I had nothing to do with,” she said, without providing evidence or proof.
The episode occurred around 2009, she said. The scare happened in “my first year of attempting middle school in America. I knew English, but the culture was different, the people were different,” Eyman said.
“I got suspended and I didn’t do anything about it,” she said.'
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/23/ahmeds-si...
If true, that's an interesting pattern.
If you combine those facts to believe Ahmed's father completely set this up, then you can also just combine these facts to determine that people in that school district of Texas are probably just racists (the sister didn't do anything and got suspended, the brother did something that may have been grounds for suspension, but got arrested). People are willing to crucify Ahmed (who again I doubt had much choice if he was set up to do this) for the former, but no one cares about the possibility of the latter. I'm guessing the truth lies between these two extremes.
But again, if Ahmed's father set him up for this, then there should have been an investigation. And if he had been found guilty of forcing his son to stage some fake clock/bomb thing, well I'll go and sharpen my pitchfork for it. But as far as I can tell, kid was _arrested_ for what amounts to a clock he didn't make.
> 2) Lawyer letter stating, "Irving Police officials immediately determined that the clock was harmless" is false. Beat cops aren't qualified to make any such analysis; even things as innocuous as an unattended backpack get further analysis by specifically trained personnel.
If they did think it was a bomb, or didn't think it was but had no authority/knowledge to assess that it was a bomb, then it is even worse because it means there was a possible bomb on campus and they failed to evacuate the school. I think that was part of the anger that people felt about this case. Were they really thinking about the welfare of the rest of the children on campus or did they know it wasn't a bomb so were just kinda harassing Ahmed because they wanted to?
I'm currently inclining to believe that, but that's beside the point. The whole nation stood in their defense, they got so high up the chain that even POTUS got interested personally, and now they're suing for $15 million?! Rent-seeking is a little light word for that IMO.
I think there should be some kinda of punitive damage for the school because of their actions. I don't think it's $15 million. I also don't think a jury will award $15 million. And more likely the case may be thrown out or the school district will just settle to make it go away.
People in this thread are acting as though they were already awarded $15 million. I always assumed a jury ends up deciding the damages, if any, in civil cases like this. It's not an automatic $15 million if they prove their case just because that's what they asked for in compensation.
I don't think so. Personally, if they got awarded $15 million, I would be pissed off at the jury. I'm angry at the kid's family for having the chutzpah to ask for that much money.
Lucky for them, then, that the school and police were as racist as his family expected, and they walked right into his trap.
regardless of whether or not mohammed and his family were well-prepared to exploit the media for a favorable narrative, they were still wronged.
even if they deliberately provoked the incident, they were still wronged.
This child repeatedly brought out a clearly provocative object which he didn't even make and which looked like a count down timer in a small container. He also ignored e very single teacher who politely asked him to put it away. Until finally one teacher got freaked out enough to take action.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2486036/Eight-year-o...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/13-year-old-suspended-for-doodli...
I don't agree with his arrest just like I don't agree with those kids getting into trouble for drawing guns. But to try to paint this as a race issue is plainly ignorant at best.
When you look at the details of this case (the father who is a Sudanese politician, the sister who tried something similar a few years ago, Mark Cuban saying that when he was talking to him he was being fed lines and told what to say, the fact that he didn't make the clock and has not even a cursory knowledge of electronics commensurate with his age or skill - claiming in an interview to 'solder' CPUs, etc.) then it becomes clear what this was really about.
I feel sorry for the child because it is clear that his father orchestrated all of this.
So they suspect he has a bomb, but don't evacuate the school? If someone calls into a school and says there is a bomb, they evacuate regardless of whether its a hoax or not.
Also you misquote what Mark Cuban said, just like a lot of news sites that want to focus the narrative that his sister "fed" him answers.
"I talked to the kid," Cuban said. "He's from Dallas, and I've talked to the people in the school district. The kid is a super smart kid. Science geek. We talked about science, but while I'm talking to him on the phone, as I ask him a question, 'Tell me what happened because I'm curious.' Right? His sister, over his shoulder, you could hear, listening to the question, giving him the answer. So, I don't know all the details of what happened, but what I do know, when I talked to him about science, when I talked to him about magnets, when I talked to him about creating things, he was very, very engaged."
Why do you need to call the police for a bomb threat you know to not be real? If I said something stupid like, "I have a bomb" and the teacher _knows_ I'm lying. The teacher probably sends me to the principal's office or maybe gives me a stern lecture about "misusing words"
If he really did something that warranted cops being called why would the Principal need to threaten him with expulsion if he didn't sign a written statement coping to that fact? You either have him dead to rights on making bomb scares or you don't.
I honestly don't know if his dad was the cause of him bringing that clock to school. But man if that's true, the dad must have read the school well enough to know they would try to arrest his son on something dumb.
However, with time, more details come out that make the whole thing not quite as clear cut and it becomes pretty obvious that there might be more than to one side of the story that we all jumped into.
I don't pass any judgement, it just makes me wonder how to bring balance to the social media firestorms and convey a more nuanced perspective to stories like this.
http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engin...
Not sure how I missed it, but if anyone else did as well, it really looks like he just moved the guts of an old clock into a new casing. He didn't really design any circuitry at all.
He's 14 years old and learning electronics—I'm not sure what light this sheds on anything?
All it takes is 15 minute to look into the political history of the kids father and the nature of the clock that he "built" to realize something is amiss.
I do think even orchestrated the police took it a little far, however, probably not $15m far.
1. He got a bit overexcited about his electronic puttering.
2. something goes here
3. It must be a scam.
I'm not sure what goes in the blank for you, but man, it must be a doozy.
The internals of another clock were put into a box. That's not electronic puttering.
Then maybe you're a lot better at electronics than I am, but that would have qualified for me when I was 14.
Well, first off: you don't know what he actually did unless you see it up close. A couple of grainy photos won't show much.
And secondly: No, absolutely not. Unequivocally not.
Obviously Ahmed was aware enough of this to try to make the briefcase look less suspicious by wrapping it in wires which is generally how I try to make electronics in a brief case less suspicious.
A few years ago in the winter I had an issue with the electronics in my car so coming home from Reno, I pulled the climate control panel out of my car so I could manually connect the wires to make the heat go.
I ended up going across the border like this, and ended up explaining to the border guard the wiring of the car to assure her that nothing was amiss.
The border guards suspicions were naturally raised because most people don't even know how to pull the panel out let alone jerry rig their own climate control system.
Hackers hack things, most of the time on things that exist.
That's why I keep complaining about manipulative and lying media. It really fucks up our society.
Thanks for posting the link. It's really good.
But why are such important details left out of every media account?
For the clockmaker sympathizers: What educational value is gained by taking an exisitng clock out of its normal casing?
What details came out that made it less clear cut?
* He didn't really make a clock
* His dad is an Islamic activist likely staging this whole thing for money and attention
* His family intends to move to Qatar in order to be in a "more accepting" place
* The kid was interviewed saying something about "soldering CPUs" or some crap. This isn't a 5 year old. He has no idea what he's talking about.
TL;DR he's kind of a little shit, and his dad is using him for money and politics.
Perhaps, as one of the parent comments said, the situation turned out not to be clear cut.
It's always been true of human nature: the desire to reach some sort of conclusion as quickly as possible.
Humans seem to have a lot of trouble with uncertainty, and when faced with uncertainty we tend to concoct narratives that are informed by our perceptions of reality. The danger of social media is that such narratives can spread quickly to others, and a mass delusion can be formed based on faulty or incomplete information.
This is a lesson that shouldn't be new to social media, because "proper" news outlets have made horrible mistakes in early reporting many times as well, but it's worth noting: never, ever blindly assume that you've heard the whole story, no matter what the source. This is doubly true if the story you're hearing seems to imply that one or multiple actors are a combination of incompetent and malicious that stretches credulity.
Humans make decisions for reasons, and although we all make mistakes, usually we're not malicious imbeciles.
This thread is one of the reasons why I come to HN. It turns out that yet another important story of this year was utter fabrication and lies. I wouldn't know about it if not for HN, and would keep believing falsehoods.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/22/clock-controversy...
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tzyos/e...
TLDR: People believe everything was set up by his sociopath Dad, who has a background in being obsessed with the spot light.
Even if any of that were true, I'm not sure why it should change anything at all. The issue from the very beginning was the school's reaction to the clock.
If any of them really did get fooled into thinking it was a bomb, then they definitely wouldn't have handled it the way it did (handling the bomb themselves instead of evacuating and calling in professionals). This was simply a display of power by the school officials and police, and an attempt to make an example out of a kid that was somewhat disobedient.
If they acted reasonably, this whole ordeal would have ended there and there would have been nothing to further orchestrate by the kid's parents. They didn't. And now they're paying the price and being made an example of themselves. The irony is delicious.
If you truly believe that a parent could send their child into a situation where there is a high probability of a fatal or long term negative outcome for the child, then you do not know what being a parent is.
There are plenty of bad parents, but believing this is orchestrated by the parents is the height of cynicism.
I pass such "parents" on the street every day. Begging is an organized operation in big cities in Poland, and there were reports that children are actually drugged or fed alcohol, so that they're asleep. Fatalities happen.
There's a lot of sad stuff going on in this world.