Dang it, I should&#x27;ve done that.. I don&#x27;t post much...

Because at least for me, the dallasnews website has been pretty much down all morning.

Why not link to the original news article instead of to a blog that quotes it?

It&#x27;s almost like attempting to traumatize the kid and his peers for no good reason and for what?That&#x27;s pretty simple -- their &quot;authority&quot; depends on never, ever, admitting that they were wrong.

&gt; How difficult was it to not suspect it anymore?Excellent observation. It&#x27;s really about people conditioned to follow scripts.These people were missing the &quot;de-escalation script&quot; in which a teacher laughs, puts their hand on their forehead and says,<pre><code> &quot;Wow, That scared the shit out of me for a minute there. Now let&#x27;s show you how to make a tidy wooden box for your amazing clock project.&quot;</code></pre>

Exactly! Apparently it&#x27;s really difficult for some people to admit they were wrong. How difficult would it be to just say: &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, we screwed up.&quot;? Instead they still insist on calling his clock a &quot;hoax bomb&quot;.

That&#x27;s not even the issue to me. It&#x27;s like fine you &quot;suspected&quot; it. How difficult was it to not suspect it anymore? Like did the arrest and the accusations need to happen. It&#x27;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.

As well as a diversified student body, in my experience. And yet, no bombs.

Nah, it&#x27;s a high school. And the reaction really wasn&#x27;t warranted. He did show it to his engineering teacher before he got nabbed, too. According to the Times,&quot;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.&quot;

We&#x27;re trying to promote stem in the U.S., not say, &quot;middle school is too early&quot;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&#x27;d hate to live in a place where most people have no idea what a circuit board looks like.Also, asking doesn&#x27;t need to get the police involved: &quot;Hey, what is this?&quot; &quot;Oh it&#x27;s a clock I built&quot; &#x27;Why&#x27;d you bring it to school?&quot; &quot;Cuz I&#x27;m proud of it and wanted to show you&quot;If there was still doubt, ok, find someone who knows something about it (there&#x27;s gotta be a tinkerer SOMEWHERE in the school district) and ask them to take a look. Maybe couch it as &quot;Why don&#x27;t we show it to X, I think they&#x27;d get a kick out of it?&quot;But arresting a 14 yr old tinkerer for a clock? Whatever happened to having sane reasonable conversations?

To be fair it&#x27;s a middle school, and most people don&#x27;t really know what a circuit board is for. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s outrageous that they asked.It should have never, however, escalated as far as it did. You&#x27;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&#x27;re still not backing down. It&#x27;s suspension of all logic and reasoning. They should have shown the clock to his engineering teacher and resolved the issue in minutes.

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&#x27;ve also made my share of brittle programming projects where one errant line could act like a &quot;loose wire&quot; and take down everything.

Go into any Electrical Engineering department at any university and you&#x27;ll find plenty of students with boxes filled with circuit boards and electronics.Everybody who&#x27;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&#x27;s no debugger to tell you where you potentially screwed up...Racial profiling and ignorance at it&#x27;s finest.

makes you hate cops for the rest of your life at the very least

Nothing quite so extreme for me but I remember being kicked out of class and sent to see our sadistic assistant principal for &quot;trying to cause a panic&quot; in my computer class.This was around 1993 or 1994 and I was in 11th grade. I was in some fairly &quot;bonehead&quot; 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&#x27;d bring home my disks and work on projects on my dad&#x27;s work laptop. Dad&#x27;s work laptop included a primitive virus scanner so of course I scanned the disk I&#x27;d been using on the school network. The scanner finds some minor virus and cleans it up (in retrospect, I guess it could&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;t lie about such things.In the end, it was my first lesson in &quot;people who don&#x27;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.&quot;

Yup, similar experience here. I&#x27;m now a die hard believer that social structures, governments, and religions are there to make our life&#x27;s as miserable as possible. To me that experience was comparable to that kid in Whiplash.

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 &quot;making a weapon and bringing it to school&quot; (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&#x27;s going through is bullshit, and he&#x27;s likely to have something pretty good come out of this due to all the media attention. If anything, I&#x27;d suspect it would drive him to create more, because if there&#x27;s something kids like to do it&#x27;s sticking it to the man.

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.

Cross-posting from [1]Is there any study to ascertain how these kind of incidents affect children psychologically, the effects of which manifest only years later? (Let&#x27;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] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10225962" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10225962</a>

He might poke one of the five responding police officers with those toothpick arms, obviously.

I don&#x27;t understand why US schools have police in them, and they put little kids in handcuffs. It insanity.

IANAL, I guess it&#x27;s simply a mandatory protocol for arresting somebody. US police apparently handcuff every people they arrest[1].[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Why-do-American-police-always-handcuff-people-they-arrest" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;Why-do-American-police-always-handcuff...</a>

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.

Hey, they&#x27;re just doing their jobs. &#x2F;s

Perhaps he is more unhappy about being photographed.

But not sufficiently unhappy to do anything about it.

The cop&#x27;s expression suggests he&#x27;s not happy with what&#x27;s happening to the kid.

He looks so confused in that picture. Even after they handcuffed him, he can&#x27;t believe they&#x27;re being that stupid.

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&#x27;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.

&gt; Children are encouraged “specifically [to] not bring items to school that are prohibited.”What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing? (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;PMgDR7m.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;PMgDR7m.jpg</a>)

With such paranoia as this, you also can bring the inventive genius of a nation down.The US has so much talent, but when such things will continue to manifest, the terrorists already have won!

I didn&#x27;t. Growing up with access to the worlds largest library makes high school even more painful.

Stupid kid confused school with a place that supported learning and curiosity.I&#x27;m pretty sure that I wouldn&#x27;t make it through high school today.

If you watch the video that pic was taken from, you will find that that is a device &#x27;like&#x27; the one taken to the school. Here&#x27;s an actual pic:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ichef.bbci.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;624&#x2F;cpsprodpb&#x2F;10BF6&#x2F;production&#x2F;_85589586_16e23342-6ce7-4c4f-b176-88d94cf667b3.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ichef.bbci.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;624&#x2F;cpsprodpb&#x2F;10BF6&#x2F;production&#x2F;...</a>

Pic here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wfaa.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;dallas-county&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;15&#x2F;irving-isd-student-detained-for-device-resembling-bomb&#x2F;72339246&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wfaa.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;dallas-county&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;1...</a>

A picture of the clock in question would have been nice for inquiring minds to see..

To explain myself,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 &quot;shouldn&#x27;t have had access to.&quot; After about a week of that I&#x27;d had enough, asked for OSS - got it, which I thought was enough but apparently wasn&#x27;t. They ended up wanting to reassign me to an &quot;alternative school&quot; (the type with a dress code, specific hours, locked down no talking etc). I managed to get &quot;homeschooled&quot; for 3 months (re: no school work completed) and somehow still managed to actually graduate High School. It was the most ludicrous situation I&#x27;d ever been in for navigating a folder hierarchy in Windows.3 days is lovely.

You really mean suspending him is not so terrible because it was only 3 days? I hope I&#x27;m misunderstanding you.The child learns to not trust anyone and that his best intentions are twisted into punishment. I&#x27;m pretty appalled by this.

That&#x27;s the type of thing that actually turns people to extremist views.

A 14 year old kid was led out of his school in handcuffs after trying to show off his accomplishment. That&#x27;s a terrible thing.

&gt; Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these daysMaybe in the US, but where I live, and I guess that&#x27;s going to be the case in most countries, no one would ever think that this &quot;suitcase&quot; could be a bomb, regardless of the person&#x27;s appearance. It&#x27;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&#x27;t have the orange marker distinguishing them from real guns). When a teacher saw us I&#x27;m sure the thought that these could be real never ever crossed their mind.

&gt; 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&#x27;t have a lawyer on retainer.The police aren&#x27;t your friend, and you gain NOTHING by talking to them.

The suspension is pretty minor. Dumb, but whatever. At that age I&#x27;d have been happy to stay home for three days.But there&#x27;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&#x27;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 &quot;probable cause&quot; and &quot;civil rights.&quot; The principal should lose his job as well, since he is clearly not mentally competent to supervise children.

It&#x27;s also interesting in light of the supposedly meritocracy we live in - if you&#x27;re smart and work hard, you&#x27;ll succeed!Unless your skin is the wrong colour because then your hard work is seen as suspicious!

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 &#x27;We needed to lay down the law first to assert dominance. That&#x27;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!&quot;

Of course it won&#x27;t get set straight. His &quot;record&quot;, such as it is, will say:- three day suspension for bringing hoax bomb to school- arrest record, juvenile detention, child protective services calledAnd that&#x27;s it. There&#x27;s no &quot;and then the magical internet outrage fairy came in and fixed everything&quot;.

And the cop said (and I&#x27;m paraphrasing) &quot;Yup that&#x27;s who I thought&quot;

It is definitely profiling and I bet his race had a lot to do with it.But I think the same thing would&#x27;ve happened if I had brought such a device to school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would&#x27;ve been it&#x27;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&#x27;t see it being a terrible thing. The record will get set straight.So then this just falls back to being unfortunate racial profiling.

And while jade helm is still in effect....  The kid with the homemade clock was how &quot;it&quot; was to begin.

It wouldn&#x27;t necessarily be a bad thing.  Rosa Parks was staged to go to suit, as was Lady Chatterley.

His father has been in the news several times.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;local&#x2F;muslim-at-koran-trial-says-he-didnt-know-the-holy-book-would-be-burned&#x2F;2011&#x2F;04&#x2F;05&#x2F;AFKNR3oC_story.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;local&#x2F;muslim-at-koran-trial-s...</a>

Or the pooice know the father and are looking for ways to fuck with the family.

In fairness it was probably staged by the father to end in civil lawsuit.&quot;His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, came from Sudan and is famous for arguing against anti-Islamic policies&quot;

This really needs to end in a civil lawsuit.

Stupidity is not an excuse for being an asshole.

In this case, we&#x27;re dealing with malicious stupidity. Edge of the razor?

Hanlon&#x27;s razor doesn&#x27;t apply to politics.

That&#x27;s for dealing with authentic human beings, not with mindless order-followers.

Stupidity does not adequately explain why they are considering bringing charges of a &quot;hoax bomb&quot;, or sent this letter home with the other students: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irvingisd.net&#x2F;cms&#x2F;lib010&#x2F;TX01917973&#x2F;Centricity&#x2F;Domain&#x2F;9&#x2F;ParentLetter_SuspiciousLookingItematMacArthur.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.irvingisd.net&#x2F;cms&#x2F;lib010&#x2F;TX01917973&#x2F;Centricity&#x2F;Do...</a> [PDF] Therefore, malice.

There&#x27;s a variant of Clarke&#x27;s third law which applies here: &quot;Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.&quot;

Hanlon&#x27;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)

It seems more like some kind of quiet collective insanity to me.

Hanlon&#x27;s razor is bullshit when it comes to bureaucratic institutions shifting blame to cover their own asses

Power corrupts. As such we should always assume malice when dealing with people in power.

A wise tool to be employed by the malicious.

&quot;Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hanlon%27s_razor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hanlon%27s_razor</a>

In law there is a thing called mens rea. They should look that up.

Sorry if I was unclear; I mean that&#x27;s what they seem to be doing. That&#x27;s why I prefaced my comment with &quot;apparently&quot;.

Yes, it is unfortunately. The kid couldn&#x27;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.&quot;Irving police might still charge Ahmed with making a &quot;hoax bomb.&quot; Police spokesperson James McLellan said Ahmed &quot;kept maintaining it was a clock&quot; when he was brought in for interrogation, but that he offered &quot;no broader explanation.&quot;&quot;Somewhat related, for a little sense of perspective. I studied E&#x2F;E in Northern Ireland in the early 90&#x27;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 &#x27;keep calm and carry on&#x27; mentality is what persevered. The US seems like it&#x27;s becoming more of a Police State than N.I. ever was.

These topics bring the tin foil wearers out in droves. No, the government isn&#x27;t cracking down on the intelligence of youth, it requires it to progress and grow. I don&#x27;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&#x27;t take it far enough and they felt I could add more features and better design.

&gt; If you don&#x27;t know how to make a clock, you won&#x27;t know how to make a time bomb&quot; is their reasoningDo 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?

The kid was too smart for his own good. He broke away from the other mindless sheep and learned things on his own.Who knows what kind of subversive ideas he might come up with if he&#x27;s allowed to continue to think for himself.

This is why it&#x27;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 &quot;state&quot; might believe you&#x27;re doing something wrong and punish you, that tends to make you not even want to try something anymore.

that&#x27;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.

I&#x27;d say this is a case of collective stupidity punishing original thought. So I would phrase this exactly as &quot;collective stupidity in authority turning people to mindless sheep&quot;.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 &#x27;murrica, kid. You better learn to censor yourself.

&quot;never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence&quot;  isn&#x27;t the case here I think. I think this is more about racial profiling more than anything.

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&#x27;ve clarified everything in 5 seconds.

Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligenceIt&#x27;s a Texas thing not a US, or that what I hope the case to be.

I realize it may seem like fun to try to bring &quot;discrimination&quot; 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.

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&#x27;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&#x27;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 &quot;McFreckles&quot; 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).

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.

Because adults in education over here are still capable of independent thought, probably.

After living in the US as a European for 1.5 years, I&#x27;ve come to the conclusion that americans tend to be more afraid in general. For example I&#x27;ve never heard in Europe of recommendations like &#x27;when selling stuff through craigslist always meet at a starbucks but never at home&#x27; either. Also being smart and&#x2F;or nerdy actually is valued in Europe.It may also be a Southern thing though.

There was an athlete doing hill runs with a weight vest in the UK: the neighbours called the anti-terrorism squad.<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-england-oxfordshire-15190563" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk-england-oxfordshire-15190563</a>

I suspect there are similar incidents with much less overblown outcomes.There&#x27;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 &quot;such behaviour&quot; 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&#x27;s legal rights) but the matter is likely to end there without ruining the pupil&#x27;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&#x27;t be administered by petty tyrants, but as long as everyone finishes their education with a blank slate it&#x27;s fine. Keeping the police away from schools as much as possible would be a good start.

The trend towards a &quot;security theatre&quot; 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&#x2F;11 was a much bigger attack than anything that happened on European soil– there is a more influential lobby for militarisation&#x2F;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 expertsand, my favourite:– Americans love excitement and violence &amp; it is amplified by the media. Nothing better than a bomb scare on FOX.

I find it striking that you almost never hear about such behavior occurring in Europe (correct me if I&#x27;m wrong). Any ideas why things seem to be very different there?

Oh my, I don&#x27;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&#x2F;late 90s was not appreciated as Mac OS 8 by my peers.

&gt; I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of &quot;hacking&quot;, only this is a far more extreme case.Happened to me when I was a kid. Opened a DOS prompt. Was labelled a dangerous mind.

&gt; I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of &quot;hacking&quot;, only this is a far more extreme case.I remember a teacher seeing me type &quot;BitchX&quot; into a terminal and freaking out, he apparently thought I was doing something obscene in my terminal window..

...meanwhile in reality: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;us&#x2F;ohio-boy-suspended-finger-gun&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;us&#x2F;ohio-boy-suspended-fing...</a>

C&#x27;mon, this is prejudice. If the kid&#x27;s name were Jack or Sean or even Claudio, nothing would have happened except his teacher would have said &quot;cool!&quot;

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. &quot;If you don&#x27;t know how to make a clock, you won&#x27;t know how to make a time bomb&quot; is their reasoning.It is seriously disturbing.I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of &quot;hacking&quot;, only this is a far more extreme case.

I bet today the principal and staff would think you guys were terrorists planning to siege the local strip mall. &#x2F;s

My school had a rocketry club. Bringing this kind of stuff to school was encouraged.

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.

Back in my day, I&#x27;d see friends with their glocks at school. Teachers didn&#x27;t even bat an eye.

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.

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 &quot;tool long&quot; or &quot;too bulky&quot;. 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&#x27;t connected to &quot;racism.&quot;

See Columbine and the influx of &#x27;zero tolerance&#x27;.  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&#x27;ll find a similar story).

And so we come to the realisation that the &#x27;war on terror&#x27; 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.

Things are so different now. When I was in high school, all of the following were common:- Boys carrying pocket knives&#x2F;hunting knives.- Boys with firearms in their cars&#x2F;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&#x2F;vocational classes.

It really saddens me that this kid (or other kids in similar circumstances) could find the experience so traumatising that they lose the motivation&#x2F;interest to pursue these creative activities.

Or even better- start by quietly calling him to the principal&#x27;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.

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.

Flavor Flav is going to be in HUGE trouble.

I looked at the code of conduct, and it makes absolutely zero mention of this sort of thing.

That letter from the school just adds insult to injury.&gt; talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduact and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibitedSince when can you not bring a clock to school?

It&#x27;s unfortunate that students are encouraged to report &#x27;suspicious&#x27; things, but not &#x27;exceptional&#x27;.  Only bad things can come of it, never good.

Just in case it &quot;disappears&quot; from twitter here it is archived - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;1wJhp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;1wJhp</a>

The letter to this parents:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jkfecke&#x2F;status&#x2F;644094380534591488&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;jkfecke&#x2F;status&#x2F;644094380534591488&#x2F;photo&#x2F;...</a>

I think we&#x27;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&#x27;s lucky they didn&#x27;t also try him as a warlock for summoning electricity from a magical box.

Personally, i wasn&#x27;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.

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.

That is not a picture of the actual device. That&#x27;s an example of something else he had laying around. Here&#x27;s what he actually brought to school:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ichef.bbci.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;624&#x2F;cpsprodpb&#x2F;10BF6&#x2F;production&#x2F;_85589586_16e23342-6ce7-4c4f-b176-88d94cf667b3.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ichef.bbci.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;624&#x2F;cpsprodpb&#x2F;10BF6&#x2F;production&#x2F;...</a>

It must be one hell of a clock if a teacher actually told the student to hide it from plain sight!EDIT: A picture of the actual device is here.<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wfaa.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;dallas-county&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;15&#x2F;irving-isd-student-detained-for-device-resembling-bomb&#x2F;72339246&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wfaa.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;dallas-county&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;1...</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Q0OLb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Q0OLb</a>

I&#x27;m sure this isn&#x27;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&#x27;t want to stick his neck out.

I was thinking of this quote from the article:<pre><code> the teacher recommended he hide it from the rest of the staff. 
</code></pre>
However it&#x27;s not a direct quote so I don&#x27;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&#x27;t know but the details as shared stuck out to me.

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 &quot;hide&quot;, 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.

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&#x27;t a bomb and obviously knew the other staff would misinterpret this. So why didn&#x27;t the teacher preempt this whole thing by advising the school that &quot;Yes, this kid brought in a clock to show me. No, it&#x27;s not a bomb no matter how scary it looks.&quot;

&quot;They&quot; are the administrators involved.Don&#x27;t hold your breath.

This is outrageous... They need to offer a public apology to this kid, and take punitive actions against the administrators involved.

Five cops, the device presumably in another room, and they needed a kid who looks like his arms are made from toothpicks in handcuffs?

It seems like a few big figures did pick this it up and offer the kid some awesome opportunities. Obama, Facebook, NASA, etc.

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.

The look on the kid&#x27;s face in that first photo says it all, really.Welcome to Earth, kid. These will be your fellow human beings. Enjoy your stay.

Make three boxes. Label them BOMB 1, BOMB 2, and BOMB 4. Put them in various places around the school. Grab some popcorn and a comfy chair.

If you really want to tie them in knots, get a bunch of small &quot;Amazon&quot;-type (empty) cardboard boxes, and write &quot;BOMB&quot; in bold letters with a magic marker on the sides. Distribute the boxes in slightly-hidden spots, like Easter eggs. Fun times!EDIT: Thanks Mike, that&#x27;s a great improvement!

Well, people have thought LED signs were bombs...<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2007_Boston_bomb_scare" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2007_Boston_bomb_scare</a>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&#x27;s a huge centre of electronics manufacturing, I&#x27;d guess that almost everyone is accustomed to seeing such things.

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&#x27;t just magically make circuitry explode. That&#x27;s a whole new level of ignorance, they teach this stuff in elementary school for gods sake.

There was also the MIT student with an LED shirt that walked into an airport wearing it.<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;boingboing.net&#x2F;2007&#x2F;09&#x2F;21&#x2F;mit-student-arrested.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;boingboing.net&#x2F;2007&#x2F;09&#x2F;21&#x2F;mit-student-arrested.html</a>
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boston.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2008&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;mit_student_apologizes_for_shirt_that_led_to_logan_disturbance&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boston.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2008&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;mit_stu...</a>I&#x27;m pretty sure the apology was for a more lenient sentence.

Of course, the best part about that Aqua Teen &quot;bomb scare&quot; was how the guys that were charged for putting up blinking LEDs (and their lawyer) handled the press: &quot;That&#x27;s not a hair question&quot;.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=X2fGzmphx4U#t=44" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=X2fGzmphx4U#t=44</a>

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.It reminds me of the Aqua Teen bomb scare back in 2007 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2007_Boston_bomb_scare" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2007_Boston_bomb_scare</a>

Not just cartoons but media in general. Pick a movie with a bomb involved, it&#x27;s probably a mess of wires and electronic components along with a digital clock of some sort.

Aren&#x27;t lots of bombs in cartoons represented as clocks? Maybe that&#x27;s how.

From a Dallas News article, Ahmed said “He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”  FTA it&#x27;s unclear who &quot;he&quot; is.  I think it&#x27;s the principal.

How can they think that the clock was a bomb when it is ticking up rather than down.

And they didn&#x27;t even call the bomb squad. Evacuated the school, etc. So I doubt they were even that concerned it could potentially be a bomb.

&quot;Are we talking about an IED here? That could be literally any fucking thing.&quot;&quot;Student arrested for bringing backpack to school&quot;

we don&#x27;t know wether the teacher made the bad call. (s)he could have updated the principal to ask if it&#x27;s ok to demo electronics projects in a K-5, only to have the principal think it&#x27;s a bomb.
let&#x27;s trust everyone until they give a reason not to.

What the hell is a fake bomb? How does a schoolteacher know what a &quot;bomb&quot; 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&#x27;t help feeling like some people should be forcibly removed from the gene pool.

What exactly does that accomplish? It&#x27;s not like it&#x27;s a binding contract, it&#x27;s a child.

Similar thing happened when my son started kindergarten. His &quot;signature&quot; was in red marker that smelled like cherry, took up half the page and kind of looked like an alligator to me.

No, it&#x27;s as stupid as it sounds and your trying to rationalize stupid. She&#x27;s 4.

&gt;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.No, it doesn&#x27;t. If anything, the opposite (if the child is a teenager). If it&#x27;s 4 it&#x27;s just stupid.

You don&#x27;t have much recent experience with actual four-year-olds, do you?

It is as stupid as it sounds. 4 year old will listen to instructions and if they disobey you take away toys or have silent time, etc.But signing something? That&#x27;s just really stupid. It&#x27;s not enforceable and not even understandable.

Um, if my 4-year-old &quot;signs&quot; something, it will go like this:Me: &quot;Scribble something on this line.&quot;Kid: scribblesMe: &quot;Here&#x27;s your stupid form.&quot;How would that get my kid &quot;invested in complying&quot; ?

The intent is not to legally bind her, which it obviously wouldn&#x27;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&#x27;s any evidence that works, I don&#x27;t know, but it&#x27;s not quite as stupid as it might seem at first glance.

&gt;You can&#x27;t legislate intelligence.Not but you can severely punish idiocy, so that it doesn&#x27;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 &quot;in the trade&quot;, 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&#x27;s network except where such use was unavoidable. Turn off WiFi on their phones when on school campus. They didn&#x27;t need the kids to sign it, fwiw, because the goal was to make me financially liable for any action taken by MPAA&#x2F;RIAA et al.

You can&#x27;t legislate intelligence.  Yesterday I went to my daughter&#x27;s school&#x27;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&#x27;s 4.

They can probably change the title to &quot;14 YO boy arrested for not being white and having the name Ahmed Mohamed&quot;.

If he had taken the plastic case off an existing electronic clock and brought it in, would they have had the same reaction?  If it was a different kid?

People tend to assume that everyone else thinks like them. Because the arresting officer couldn&#x27;t wouldn&#x27;t build a clock for the enjoyment of learning (as opposed to some &quot;broader purpose&quot; like blowing up a building), then nobody else should either. Simple explanation, but likely true.

&gt;“He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.&quot;Did it really need a broader explanation? It&#x27;s a clock.

&gt;so what&#x27;s the deal?What you just did is the deal.What do I mean? You just said that had he left the device in a bathroom it would be more reasonable to charge him with the crime. They shifted the debate over and you followed with it. Instead of arguing if a kid should be charged over leaving a clock in the bathroom, you&#x27;ve now given them that ground and have moved on to debating charging them for having a clock at all.Of course, on an individual level this doesn&#x27;t do much. But they are pulling this sort of trick on the whole of society. At that scale, it is not ineffective.

&quot;It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car.&quot;Okay, so charge him with a hoax bomb if he does that, but he didn&#x27;t so what&#x27;s the deal?

I feel like the common sense explanation of why he built it, &quot;because he could&quot;, is what scares them so much. Because they can&#x27;t and can&#x27;t imagine how to even begin. People fear what they don&#x27;t understand and him being Brown, Muslem, and doing things that they can&#x27;t understand is like the trifecta of terror and ignorance. Fear, bigotry, and ignorance this is what the the reaction to it looks like.

&gt; It could reasonably be mistaken as a deviceOh no. A device!?

&gt; The newspaper quoted a police spokesman, James McLellan, as saying that Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, and the police have no reason to think it was dangerous.But officers still did not believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” Mr. McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”Duh, the thing tells the time. And are they saying that if I don&#x27;t explain why I made something it can be presumed to be a bomb? (especially given &quot;and the police have no reason to think it was dangerous.&quot;)

...was wondering how not one, but two stories rocketed to the top (#1 and #2) of the front page.

More discussion here - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10226196" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10226196</a>

Students all over the country should bring digital clocks and circuits to school this week as a protest.

Presumably an English teacher has the communication skills to ask any one of the number of staff who were involved in the entire affair. You know, like the engineering teacher. Did he somehow go on vacation in between? And how about the police - they have nobody on staff who can tell the difference between a homemade clock and some sort of &quot;unauthorized device&quot;?The accusations are justified. Your apologetics are misguided.

Bigotry, maybe. There&#x27;s a chance (which I&#x27;d estimate at smaller than 1%) that there was no racial motivation here.But I don&#x27;t see how you can say there&#x27;s no grounds to make accusations of ignorance and cowardice. Being unaware of what a bomb looks like is clearly ignorance, and being so terrified that you get an innocent kid arrested for it is clearly cowardice.

You might have a point if the device was for a school project. But it was his own &quot;invention&quot; which is own engineering teacher warned him against showing around.He not only showed it around, but plugged it in during English class where it made beeping noises. Do you expect the English teacher should need to &quot;verify&quot; a box of wires and circuits? Who would she verify it with if the kid plays aloof when asked of its purpose?Just because &quot;authorities apprehend 14yo Muslim kid for home-made clock&quot; doesn&#x27;t mean you need to start making accusations of bigotry, ignorance and cowardice.

Perfect trifecta of bigotry, ignorance and cowardice. And at a school too, where any number of apparently educated staff could have verified what the device was in a moment. Great job!

There is something really wrong in this nation. Texas is just in a leadership position.

Are the authorities here abnormally incompetent or is there something really wrong in the community where this happened?

Not really. It was just a thing that happened and when the administration backed down nothing else really came of it.

Holy shit... Is there any follow up on this?

When I was in high school there was a guy there we all nicknamed terrorist because he always played for the terrorists in Counterstrike. When the school found out they expelled him and sent the cops out to his place. The cops found nothing, and the school didn&#x27;t actually have anything to go on, but they still kicked him out for a week, all over a nickname.

In most states children in a school have little to no rights as the school is assuming responsibility for the welfare of the children.

Is it legal to search and interrogate a juvenile, without the parents present, in Texas?

I was thinking of buying one of those on Ebay - do you see any better alternatives these days?

I used to make FM transmitters (very small &#x27;bugs&#x27;) and take them to school to sell.But I was white, so unlikely to get arrested&#x2F;expelled.

In the little video, it looks like a lot of it was just cannibalized parts. I&#x27;d be interested in the actual thought process that built the monstrosity (and I say that as a person who just loves that sort of gizmo work). When I was his age, I didn&#x27;t know anything about proper electronics, and so I only took stuff apart and tried to figure out how to get it combined. I remember one of the big problems I had was figuring out enclosures, and frankly a $5 box from Target really would be the perfect thing; the other stuff likewise followed similarly.Think of it as the Git-R-Done philosophy, like installing Postgres for a single two column table. It ain&#x27;t elegant, but I wouldn&#x27;t make a kid feel bad for trying.

Honestly, when I was 14 I would have thought it was cool as hell to have a realistic looking suitcase bomb if I had the skills to make one.I am kind of leaning towards this being a publicity stunt, as a digital clock project really wouldn&#x27;t require much circuitry, wiring or case space(with the result looking nothing like a bomb ). That being said I find it absurd for the child to be detained over any of it.

Exactly my thoughts. Depending on the kid, this experience could be so traumatizing to the point of killing his enthusiasm and curiosity. We need more tinkering not less. It starts with teachers. Too many teachers turn up in body only. Teaching is a role that should be held in much higher esteem than it is but instead we irrationally hold high paying but stupid money jobs like finance in high regard and leave the teaching jobs to the &#x27;failures&#x27; of society.

This needs to be at the top of this thread.

Perhaps we can all pitch in on an airplane ticket to someplace he can get a tour of a facility where people like him are valued and rewarded. SpaceX? Mountain View? Cape Canaveral?Also, if&#x2F;when he considers higher education I&#x27;m sure there are plenty of alumni who could consider opening doors for him.

Maybe there should be a fund to provide a workshop for the teachers, administrators, and police of Irving to attend and acquire some critical thinking skills.

Offer support: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWKfY3XLPBgbHaZDy3k&#x2F;viewform?c=0&amp;w=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWK...</a>Sign up to be notified when some plans are made: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4IxueXZmvrBb-0VjC4&#x2F;viewform" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4I...</a>

President Obama has invited him to the White-House in a very public fashion, and Zuck has invited him to visit Facebook. That, at least, show help show Ahmed, and other kids, that there is support for kids who like to tinker.The one person I personally wish would extend a similar offer, is Elon Musk. I think a lot of nerds &#x2F; hackers &#x2F; etc. see him as one of the most prominent and awesome nerds around, and if he offered Ahmed a tour of Tesla and&#x2F;or SpaceX... well, how cool would that be?

He definitely needs some reparations, and shows of support are great.But there are probably very many young people like him who could also do with a bit of mentoring, a bit of tutorship, some tools and equipment. It&#x27;d be nice if the publicity from Ahmed&#x27;s case could be used to provide more support to a wide range of people.

Also, I&#x27;m a member at Splatspace, the hackerspace in Durham, NC. I&#x27;ve just sent an email to our group list, soliciting ideas for ways we could make a show of support to Ahmed. My first thought is maybe send him a box with some parts, kits, tools, and&#x2F;or books of some sort. Nothing is definite yet, but I have a feeling we&#x27;ll be able to put something together.If anybody else is in a hackerspace, let me encourage you to try and get your group involved, and do something as a group. Better yet, do it and send out a press release and announce it to the world.

Make have offered to send him and his school a carton of books:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;make&#x2F;status&#x2F;644219347079143425" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;make&#x2F;status&#x2F;644219347079143425</a>and also an offer from somebody at NASA to come see how they drive the Opportunity rover:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mikeseibert&#x2F;status&#x2F;644152049525899265" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mikeseibert&#x2F;status&#x2F;644152049525899265</a>Stuff like this somewhat restores my faith in humanity. At least it shows we&#x27;re not all complete assholes, all of the time.

The real question here is: how can we help this kid? I&#x27;m not talking about from the legal perspective, but rather what can we (me, you, the larger tech world) do to make it so that this kid and others like him keep tinkering. He needs to know that what he built wasn&#x27;t wrong, it was awesome.

A similar example: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.miaminewtimes.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;florida-teen-girl-charged-with-felony-after-science-experiment-goes-bad-6521288" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.miaminewtimes.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;florida-teen-girl-charged-...</a> &#x2F; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;magazine.good.is&#x2F;articles&#x2F;people-are-awesome-teen-arrested-for-science-experiment-now-heading-to-space-camp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;magazine.good.is&#x2F;articles&#x2F;people-are-awesome-teen-arr...</a>

It seems Amazons recommendation system has acquired &#x27;irony&#x27; - it&#x27;s recommending <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.ca&#x2F;Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-Principles&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0262640686" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.ca&#x2F;Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-Pri...</a>. If I acquire it, I will then have to hide it from my son lest he build something and show it to his high school teacher.

Where did you get the idea it was &quot;approved&quot;?Let&#x27;s look at the facts...1. His own engineering teacher &quot;suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers.&quot; He should have listened, but...2. During his English class the case made beeping noises. Not smart bringing it to English.3. When questioned, he didn&#x27;t explain what it was all about, and was described as playing &quot;passive aggressive&quot;.4. He calls it an &quot;invention&quot;, but a digital clock in a case is not an invention. He&#x27;s 14 years old, not 8. There&#x27;s nothing inventive about it.5. Admitted in the video he chose a &quot;simple cable&quot; to lock the case so it &quot;wouldn&#x27;t look threatening&quot;. So let&#x27;s be clear, he did think about the possibility of it looking threatening, and his own teacher warned him about it.Are the pieces coming together for you?if he&#x27;s smart, which apparently he is, then he should move on from clocks in cases to something that approaches an actual invention.

&quot;things like this&quot;Please clarify. Things that are relevant to what you are studying in school and have been approved by your teacher for you to bring into class?For someone who is speaking out against ignorance, this statement sure comes across as... ignorant.

&quot;but being overly alert on this is better than ignorant.&quot;Please cite any evidence that this is true in practice.Seriously.The long-term cost to treating kids like this is probably vastly higher than any possible damage caused by the threats.
(IE i would even expect it causes more kids to die younger over time)Humans are very good at significantly overestimating the risks they can easily reason about, and significantly underestimate the ones they can&#x27;t.

this mentality is insane.It&#x27;s no surprise that our school systems are such shit when people actually feel there are two sides to a kid wanting to show his teacher something interesting and academic that he made.

A 14-year old was interrogated without notifying his parents.You don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s a gross violation of civil rights?

Yeah. And the NSA should have access to all our data. You know, just to be safe.

I have kids at school and I&#x27;m actually for the responses from the teachers, yes it&#x27;s overacting and could be dealt with _much_ better, but being overly alert on this is better than ignorant.and it&#x27;s better to show it at his house instead of at school for things like this I feel.

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