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14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#291

Post by lucretian »

powertower wrote: post #249

There is likely more to this story. I'm basing this on 3 facts: 1. In 2015 it's highly unlikely that you could build a home-made clock that would be of the size and shape resembling a bomb - that is, unless it was made to look like a bomb. 2. Ahmed, his father, and anyone else with a phone camera (that is on Ahmed's side) would have posted a picture of the clock, or given a full description of it (size, shape, etc),…

re: #2, the device was confiscated. it's in the hands of the police now, presumably.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#292

Post by Avenger42 »

vidarh wrote: post #107
god_bless_texas wrote: post #56

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.

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.

Um, if my 4-year-old "signs" something, it will go like this:

Me: "Scribble something on this line."

Kid: scribbles

Me: "Here's your stupid form."

How would that get my kid "invested in complying" ?

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#294

Post by boomlinde »

eldude wrote: post #211
nadams wrote: post #121

If anyone is actually surprised by the administrations intelligence - I should remind you of 3 events: - A teacher confiscates Linux CDs claiming that the student was essentially distributing illegal copyrighted software - because no software is free [1] - A system administrator was fired for installing/running seti@home on school computers. There is a lot of controversy about this case - but I read one news article…

Exactly. Exploiting his race to further a political narrative as the author has done, is both intellectually feeble and misdirects away from the real issue: authoritarian government behavior targeted at school children.

You mean furthering a different political narrative than you are.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#295

Post by Avenger42 »

interpol_p wrote: post #264
tdees40 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, she's four.

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…

> 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.)

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#296

Post by tomswartz07 »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #278
x5n1 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When did DIY electronics become actionable evidence of terrorism?

"..AAANND HOOOOMME OF THE BRAVVVEEEE!"

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#297

Post by jandrese »

powertower wrote: post #249

There is likely more to this story. I'm basing this on 3 facts: 1. In 2015 it's highly unlikely that you could build a home-made clock that would be of the size and shape resembling a bomb - that is, unless it was made to look like a bomb. 2. Ahmed, his father, and anyone else with a phone camera (that is on Ahmed's side) would have posted a picture of the clock, or given a full description of it (size, shape, etc),…

#3 could be that the engineering teacher knows some of the other teachers and administrators are a bunch of panicky idiots and will freak out when "the brown arab kid" brings in something they don't immediately recognize.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#298

Post by boomlinde »

martincmartin wrote: post #34
userbinator wrote: post #21

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 i…

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Hanlon's razor is bullshit when it comes to bureaucratic institutions shifting blame to cover their own asses

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#299

Post by DanBC »

nadams wrote: post #259
ebbv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all in favor of seti@home but it's not like running that on the school computers is free. If he didn't have permission to do it, then setting it up on those computers without getting that authorization was inappropriate. Obviously firing him is an overreaction, but I tend to believe their excuse that if he was fired for that, it wasn't just for that. He was already on thin ice before that incident and it was just…

> If he didn't have permission to do it From a previous news article I've read (not linked) - he claimed the previous system administrator told him to do it and he continued following their instructions. Again this has to have some other side to it - because if someone told me to do that and I googled what it was I would definitely question it and bring it to the administration and let them decide what to do (which s…

> I find it hard to believe that if it truly was using that much more electricity that someone who does the budget for the school didn't catch it right away.

How the fuck are the accoutants supposed to connect "big increases in electricity use" with "unauthorised installation of software on 5,000 school computers"?

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#300

Post by dllthomas »

ryanlol wrote: post #55

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.

"Are we talking about an IED here? That could be literally any fucking thing."

"Student arrested for bringing backpack to school"

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