
14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School - ahmad19526
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/16/14-year-old-boy-arrested-for-bringing-homemade-clock-to-school/
======
dang
Since [1] arguably counts as significant new information [2], I guess we'll
leave that one on the front page and demote this one as stale.

I don't feel strongly about this other than not having the story occupy more
than one spot on the front page, so if people have strong objections
otherwise, we can adjust.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230696)

2\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230555)

------
nadams
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 (that I can't find right now) where the administration said they would
have been ok with cancer research folding@home rather than searching for
aliens with seti@home. This combined with the backpedaling of "oh actually he
was a bad employee, stole things, and cost the school millions in extra in
electricity costs!" makes me believe that they just wanted to use it as an
excuse to fire him and make the position open for a friend/relative. [2].

\- Or an honor roll student suspended for buying candy from another student
[3]. His statuses were only restored after it caught media attention.

I would go into my rant about the education system but you should just watch
this video [4]

[1] [http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-
our...](http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-
back.html)

[2]
[https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=5169](https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=5169)

[3]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080313141623/http://edition.cn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080313141623/http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/03/12/skittles.suspension.ap/index.html)

[4]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U)

~~~
chejazi
If public schools are going to succeed, then many states need to "catch up"
when it comes to funding. More funding will attract more teachers, creating a
stronger candidate pool.

If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so
hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely
more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point.

[1] [http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/may0...](http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/may02/vol59/num08/Unequal-School-Funding-in-the-United-States.aspx)

[2]
[http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html](http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html)

(edit) More recent funding figures, from 2013: [http://www.governing.com/gov-
data/education-data/state-educa...](http://www.governing.com/gov-
data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html)

~~~
baldfat
People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children
in school or never had children in school.

We under value in society

1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces)

2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs)

I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over
90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Charter School
over Public Schools (But Charter Schools under perform on test scores and
under pay teachers compared to Public Schools (Money goes to the top in
Charter which gets 100% of the child's local funding)) My city per student was
the state's lowest at $5,700. The next county over some districts were paying
over $28,000 per student. My state has the greatest disparity between haves
and have nots.

Our school board loves to point to Teacher Union and Teacher Pensions as the
problem. How about just give us the money. We need a change in priorities and
not freak out about taxes for education. Sadly I don't see this changing and I
don't think funding is the number one factor for educational success but it is
an easy thing to measure.

~~~
maratd
> We need a change in priorities and not freak out about taxes for education.

People don't freak out over paying taxes for education. Even if they don't
have kids in the system.

They freak out over throwing money at a broken system and the solution isn't
to throw more money at it.

Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to
whichever school they want. End of story.

Stop forcing children to go to broken schools.

~~~
baldfat
> Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to
> whichever school they want. End of story.

Allow it to go where there is little to no public over sight, no public school
board or checks and balances, under performing scores, teachers paid $20,000
less with no pension, and CEOs making millions. Charter Schools are a part of
the problem with American education. Sure some Charter Schools are good so are
some Public School but as a whole Charter Schools are not for America's
children but for the non-profit and for profit companies that run them.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS are the back bone of our educational system and democracy.
Sending to school that take monetary advantage of our tax money with no over
sight is wrong for everyone but the people who get the money.

Who is running America's Charter School:
[https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/whos-
actua...](https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/whos-actually-
running-americas-charter-schools/)

~~~
msandford
Public schools also do plenty of dumb things. It's not as though charter
schools have a lock on this.

A lot of people want "vouchers" so that private schools are more affordable.
And plenty of private schools have a good track record, while having similar
per-pupil costs as public schools.

If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public
school or a private school, why does the state really care which one the child
attends? Why not let parents choose the school?

~~~
baldfat
Charter Schools = They take 100% of the money from the public school and the
money follows the student.

> why does the state really care which one the child attends?

Well I as a tax payer cares. If those school fare even worst and the
administration and CEO/President of the foundations makes millions at the
expense of children there is a concern.

Public Schools work and have worked for decades. We have a problem with inner
city schools and a big part is unfair funding, but killing public schools and
give it over to various schools with no public oversight just government over
sight is scary. We vote on our School Boards and Directors. We can protest and
get Administrators removed. Can't do that to these Charters School. Also
privatizing schools will make being a teacher an even worst job.

~~~
msandford
You're not making very coherent arguments. What's wrong with a voucher system
whereby the PARENTS of the children being educated are the ones who determine
which child the school goes to? Doesn't that make it very easy for the parents
to shut bad schools down very quickly? It seems like that solves all the
problems you're worried about, while also providing more choices to parents
and students. What's the downside?

~~~
baldfat
Voucher and Charter School are two different things. Charter Schools are
taking over Public School System. Vochers are evil for many social reasons.
I'll just focus on one.

So Vouchers really will be the new segregation tool for the 21st Century. Your
money will be used to send kids to religious schools you don't like teaching
Islam, Christianity in all its forms, or who knows what and if they want to
teach the children ignorance and hate and you as a tax payer just flipped the
bill for this and can't stop it. I can't see a good voucher system that would
answer my fears of miss used funds spent on poor education back by people
groups that will not teach based on various world views that are not
politically correct and just wrong. Our Brain Drain in America will go into
Nuclear Meltdown.

To quote the 2002 Supreme Court Voucher Dissent: Justice Breyer on Descent
“... all religious institutions cannot be given equal opportunities to the
government funding and trying to do so not only turns back the clock on the
Constitution, but creates a powder keg in our society.”
[http://www.pewforum.org/2002/06/28/judgment-day-for-
school-v...](http://www.pewforum.org/2002/06/28/judgment-day-for-school-
vouchers/)

Back ground: I went to private school and graduated with a Theology Degree and
worked as a Pastor for years. I absolutely know that many in the voucher
movement see the Government footing the bill for their Christian Education.
You have no idea how deep Crazy Christianity can get (Westborogh is just the
tip of the ice berge). They will spew their version of crazy that they got
with no academic or logically training to children with your tax dollars
paying for it.

~~~
msandford
So the money for education can only be spent on the kind of education YOU
like, and not the kind of education that the parents like? You do realize
that's incredibly arrogant, right? You and other enlightened people know
what's best, but everyone else who disagrees with you about what's best is
unenlightened swine? That's tautological.

~~~
baldfat
Your missing the point. They can spend their money where you would be mad. So
if they go to a school where history is through the lens of white supremacy
and teach that science is evil because it contradicts their narrow version of
the Bible and that God created black people because of the curse on Noah's son
for having homosexual sin with Noah your fine? By the way a LOT of people
believe this especially in the south. (Also BTW Noah's son Cush who did this
"looking on his father naked" the scriptures say they went to Persia and NOT
to Africa but that is another matter of facts getting way to their
fictionalized bibles)

Also show one example where vouchers BETTERED students education? It didn't in
Switzerland it actually made their scores worse since 1992.

~~~
msandford
I am saying that if you apply that argument inductively, then nobody should be
able to do anything because there will always be someone to object to it.
Public money can't be used by anyone for anything because someone will have a
problem with it. You do see how that could be, don't you?

I am in group X and I object to things that you value in group Y. You in group
Y object to things that I, in group X, value. What do we do?

Once you have a particular group that claims to have the moral high ground for
some nebulous definition of "the high ground" the whole argument is lost
because so few people agree on so few things.

I get that creationists are annoying, but I'll give them credit for not
demanding that science not be taught, just that they wanted their pet theory
taught too. That looks a lot more reasonable (from a certain perspective) than
the evolutionists who insist that evolution is the only possible explanation
ever, with quite religious zeal, despite having only circumstantial evidence.
Evolutionary science is nowhere near as rigorous as physics and won't be for
thousands and thousands of years of highly accurate recordkeeping. At that
point the creationists will have suffered a thorough defeat, but until then,
well, truthfully the science isn't settled. At least to the degree of rigor
that I would personally care for.

~~~
taco_emoji
> I'll give them credit for not demanding that science not be taught, just
> that they wanted their pet theory taught too

This was largely demonstrated to be a ruse by so-called "Intelligent Design"
proponents in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial[0].

I would respectfully suggest that you haven't really looked into the evidence
that carefully if you question the degree of rigor that underpins evolutionary
science.

Large parts of evolutionary theory are indeed based on circumstantial
evidence. But the _quantity_ of such evidence is so overwhelming[1] that
questioning its explanatory power is rather foolish. It's the sort of evidence
where coming up with any alternative hypothesis _besides_ evolution quickly
becomes an exercise in futility. Unless, that is, you don't care if the
hypothesis is testable or not, in which case creationists have many.

Moreover, evolution does _not_ only have circumstantial evidence. You and I
are living through the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria - an evolutionary
change that is being observed and documented as it occurs. Fruit flies from
the same species have been split into physically isolated groups, allowed to
breed over many generations, and subsequently reintroduced, only to discover
that they had become reproductively isolated.

There's more evidence discussed here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent)

Or here:

[http://amazon.com/dp/1416594795/](http://amazon.com/dp/1416594795/)

Or here:

[http://www.talkorigins.org/](http://www.talkorigins.org/)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_Schoo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District)

[1] For example, here's Wikipedia's list of transitional fossils (so-called
"missing links" between divergent extant species)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils)

~~~
msandford
Look I'm not suggesting that evolution is completely unfounded or anything
like that. And I agree that we're witnessing it unfold with antibiotic
resistance and the like.

But what I am saying is that physics has a lot more rigor for the claims by
virtue of how it works, and what people are looking for there. Evolution is
punctuated equilibrium and human beings haven't directly witnessed this to the
same degree that people have in physics.

I think the direct witnessing aspect is important, even if others may
disagree. The reason I think it's important is that there are other _possible_
though _highly improbable_ explanations for various physical phenomena we see
on earth.

If there really was a "guy in the sky" he could have absolutely made a bunch
of stuff and "planted the evidence" all over the place to fool people. But if
also for some reason, he always handled the laws of physics just the way
things are now, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

To me it's kind of like the people who suggest that we should try and see if
reality is just a simulation being run in a computer. The odds -- at least in
my mind -- are absolutely astronomical against. But just because it's a "crazy
idea" and there's "no way" it could be true doesn't mean I get to dismiss it
offhand and maintain my intellectual integrity.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Evolution is punctuated equilibrium and human beings haven't directly
> witnessed this to the same degree that people have in physics.

I don't think this is really true. For most important effects in large domains
of physics, _directly_ witnessing the underlying processes is as impossible as
directly witnessing the history of evolution (to the extent that "directly
witnessing" is even meaningful -- on a detailed level, all witnessing other
than of ones own internal subjective mental states is through several layers
of indirection.) We witness them indirectly, through various media whose
mechanism are explained by other well-tested scientific theories.4

> If there really was a "guy in the sky" he could have absolutely made a bunch
> of stuff and "planted the evidence" all over the place to fool people. But
> if also for some reason, he always handled the laws of physics just the way
> things are now, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

IF there's really a "guy in the sky" exercising arbitrary power over the
physical universe, even if he had _not_ always handled the laws of physics in
the same way, we couldn't necessarily tell the difference, since he would also
have the power to make it so that our perception of evidence we examine at any
given time (including our present recollection of what we might have done in
the past) is always consistent with physical law always having been the same,
even if it wasn't, and even if our actual observations in the past would have
differed.

~~~
msandford
How is the idea that our whole universe is merely a simulation inside someone
else's computer practically much different than the idea of there being a
"god"? From a certain perspective, they're one and the same. They can both
change the universe arbitrarily either by changing the rules of the simulation
or the state of the simulation.

I agree that both are incredibly unlikely, but you can't say for certain that
it is not so.

------
austenallred
This hits way too close to home. Not because I have brown skin, or because
I've ever been arrested for making "a bomb" that is not a bomb, but because
when you're that age you're constantly surrounded and disciplined by people
who don't understand you. Or what you're doing. Or why it's cool. I'd be
willing to bet part of the reasoning around his arrest is, "Why would a
student need to make his own clock?"

I wish I could reach out to the boy and say, "Hey, it gets way better. Later
on you can surround yourself with people who not only understand but respect
you. You get to spend all day building cool stuff, and you actually get paid
very well to do so."

~~~
piqufoh
Exactly. To quote the Police spokesman; "He kept maintaining it was a clock,
but there was no broader explanation" and "The concern was, what was this
thing built for?"

Why shouldn't he make his own clock?! Why does there need to be a 'broader
explanation'? How can one develop an interest in anything if you must first
provide an adequate explanation? _sigh_

~~~
owen_griffiths
And those guys learning to fly the planes without the landing, why can't that
just be an interest! With terrorism, if you want to avoid false negatives, you
are going to have a lot of false positives.

NB I totally agree it would be a douche move to charge this kid with some BS,
but investigating unusual behavior is much more understandable.

~~~
peu4000
Right, but this is a child who is an American citizen, not a Saudi who's been
in the country for a few months.

I mean, I can't imagine what kind of monster automatically jumps to bomb when
a kid makes a clock. Is that how we want to live, constantly being suspicious
of everyone different?

------
userbinator
Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism
is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligence, so that the
population turns into mindless sheep. "If you don't know how to make a clock,
you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning.

It is seriously disturbing.

I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed
of "hacking", only this is a far more extreme case.

~~~
martincmartin
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor)

~~~
sp332
Stupidity does not adequately explain why they are considering bringing
charges of a "hoax bomb", or sent this letter home with the other students:
[http://www.irvingisd.net/cms/lib010/TX01917973/Centricity/Do...](http://www.irvingisd.net/cms/lib010/TX01917973/Centricity/Domain/9/ParentLetter_SuspiciousLookingItematMacArthur.pdf)
[PDF] Therefore, malice.

~~~
Avenger42
"I recommend using this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student
Code of Conduct and specifically _not bringing items to school that are
prohibited_."

As a parent, can I see the list of "items... that are prohibited"? I'd be
pretty shocked if "clock" is actually on there.

~~~
austenallred
That's the crazy part to me. They _still_ seem to think and act as if it was a
bomb.

~~~
rm445
Remember the Boston Lite-Brite thing? (A more legit incident, since apparently
quite a few people were spooked by the devices, but still a case where the
authorities over-reacted and refused to back down).

Sticking to the line that something was a 'bomb hoax' keeps the responsibility
with the accused: _they_ shouldn't have perpetrated a bomb hoax; not _we_
shouldn't have over-reacted to an innocuous object.

------
mbreese
The real question here is: how can we help this kid? I'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't wrong, it was awesome.

~~~
sp332
Offer support:
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWK...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWKfY3XLPBgbHaZDy3k/viewform?c=0&w=1)

Sign up to be notified when some plans are made:
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4I...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4IxueXZmvrBb-0VjC4/viewform)

~~~
nickhalfasleep
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/when he considers higher education I'm sure there are plenty of
alumni who could consider opening doors for him.

~~~
criddell
He's been invited to the Whitehouse!

[https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656](https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656)

------
jameshart
A story.

So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by
Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you
can imagine what happened next...

Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff,
wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak,
and created the biggest electronics company in the world.

Thank goodness he never took a clock he'd built into school.

~~~
nether
_Biological_ father. His (adoptive) father was white, and Jobs _didn 't look
middle eastern_, the key part. There's a whole spectrum of skin tones within
ethnicities that affects how you are treated in the US more than where your
parents originate.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
> Jobs didn't look middle eastern

Jobs didn't look _stereotypically_ middle eastern.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Jobs didn't look stereotypically middle eastern.

No kidding. Many people in the Middle East are completely "white", by every
definition.

In fact, it's amusing that the word "Caucasian" has been corrupted into a
euphemism for "white", given where the word comes from....[0]. (Most people
who are Caucasian aren't even white!)

While we're on the topic, the most pale and fair-skinned people I've met in my
life were not European; they were Indian (Kashmiri). People have this notion
of what regions stereotypically map to which skin tones, and this doesn't
actually reflect reality at all.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Mountains)

~~~
elektromekatron
For added comedy points, the word 'aryan' means Indo-Iranian, at least
according to Tolkien, who I suspect knows a thing or two about the meanings of
words. [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-
of-...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-of-that-
gifted.html)

------
ams6110
Things are so different now. When I was in high school, all of the following
were common:

\- Boys carrying pocket knives/hunting knives.

\- Boys with firearms in their cars/trucks so they could go hunting after
school.

\- Access to a wide variety of chemicals in chemistry class.

\- Access to a wide variety of electrical and electronic components in physics
class.

\- Access to a wide variety of power and machine tools in industrial
arts/vocational classes.

~~~
bryanlarsen
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.

~~~
swagswag
Back in my day, I'd see friends with their glocks at school. Teachers didn't
even bat an eye.

------
marnett
This whole situation screams a breach of the poor boy's liberties.

According to TEX. FAM. CODE §51.095 [1]:

In order for a custodial written statement to be admissible, the following
sequence of events must occur: 1) the officer must take the child to a
magistrate; 2) the magistrate must then inform the child of his rights to
remain silent, to have an attorney appointed and present during questioning
and to terminate the interview at any time; 3) the child must knowingly,
intelligently and voluntarily waive his rights; 4) the officer may then take a
statement from the child; and 5) upon completion of the statement, the child
shall be taken before the magistrate again and sign the statement in the
presence of the magistrate (and outside the presence of the officer), who will
then certify the statement.

This makes me sick that this kid was seemingly wrongfully interrogated. Sad to
see that 'doing science while brown' results in him being treated as a second
class citizen.

[1][http://www.tmcec.com/public/files/File/Course%20Materials/FY...](http://www.tmcec.com/public/files/File/Course%20Materials/FY13/Judges/Tyler/Johnson%20-%20Juvenile%20Statements%20for%20Magistrates%20-%20BINDER.pdf)

~~~
Karunamon
How in the unholy bleeding _fuck_ is a child supposed to understand the
ramifications of the right to remain silent?!

~~~
goldenkey
Well even if he did it wouldn't matter much. 5 police officers, multiple
school officials in a room, he's the only child. And effectively being
bullied, manipulated, into feeling like a guilty sack of shit that should
count his blessings and admit their version of his intent and give thanks and
apologies. Par for the course. Public school systems are ran by political
patsy thugs when you inspect the few ranks below the top.

------
ahmad19526
Go into any Electrical Engineering department at any university and you'll
find plenty of students with boxes filled with circuit boards and electronics.

Everybody who's played with electronics knows that stuff is brittle and needs
to be protected carefully. One wire coming loose renders your entire work
obsolete and unlike software, there's no debugger to tell you where you
potentially screwed up...

Racial profiling and ignorance at it's finest.

~~~
x5n1
That's not even the issue to me. It's like fine you "suspected" it. How
difficult was it to not suspect it anymore? Like did the arrest and the
accusations need to happen. It's almost like attempting to traumatize the kid
and his peers for no good reason and for what? Security theater? Because he
was brown or a Muslim and did not know that brown or Muslim people should not
bring electronics that might be suspected with them to school because they
should fear being suspected? Perhaps we can excuse his ignorance for not being
old enough.

~~~
t2015_08_25
> How difficult was it to not suspect it anymore?

Excellent observation. It's really about people conditioned to follow scripts.

These people were missing the "de-escalation script" in which a teacher
laughs, puts their hand on their forehead and says,

    
    
        "Wow, That scared the shit out of me for a minute there.  Now let's show you how to make a tidy wooden box for your amazing clock project."

~~~
x5n1
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.

~~~
ashark
I have a feeling a lot of this behavior from teachers and school middle
management is driven by fear of having exactly the same sort of irrational
punishment come down on them.

Didn't treat the clock like a bomb? Might get fired. Did treat it like a bomb,
turned out to be wrong, apologized? Might get fired. Did treat it like a bomb,
turned out to be wrong, uhhh... maybe if I get the police involved I can make
this _not my fault_?

Reasonable errors on all levels are often greeted with harsh punishment and
sometimes demonization by news media. It's not just kids who are subject to
it. People are _rightly_ terrified of being blamed for errors that _anyone_
could make, and their behavior makes a lot of sense in that context.

~~~
goldenkey
It all stems from not having a backbone. Less weasels, more passionate people
with some step in their walk. But all the political bullshit that educators
have to waft through kills most passion and flare to go against the grain, to
do what they feel is right. Unfortunately the nazi-effect is in full swing for
most salaried office workers. No one wants to get fired, so everyone just
obeys arcane rules and doesn't do anything the least bit outside the box. It's
basically raining with grey skies every day.

~~~
ashark
It doesn't help that the consequences of losing a job are substantially higher
in the US than in most other advanced economies. _And_ we're easier to fire,
on top of it[0]. It's harder to take a stand over small(ish) things when it
can bring financial ruin for one's family.

[0] yes, even many teachers. The power of unions in preserving teachers' jobs
is highly regional, and often exaggerated.

------
ceejayoz
> Children are encouraged “specifically [to] not bring items to school that
> are prohibited.”

What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing?
([https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg))

~~~
vatotemking
Why is he handcuffed?

~~~
leni536
IANAL, I guess it's simply a mandatory protocol for arresting somebody. US
police apparently handcuff every people they arrest[1].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Why-do-American-police-always-
handcuff...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-American-police-always-handcuff-
people-they-arrest)

~~~
geggam
Its for their safety so you cant fight back when they are beating / tasing /
shooting you.

~~~
goldenkey
The handcuffs are actually helpful so they can't claim you punched yourself.

~~~
ceejayoz
You'd think.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/handcuffed-
black-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/handcuffed-black-youth-
shot-himself-death-says-coroner-n185016)

------
d0ne
President Obama has extended an invite to Ahmed to show his clock off at the
White House:
[https://twitter.com/potus/status/644193755814342656](https://twitter.com/potus/status/644193755814342656)

~~~
muhuk
Shouldn't he have done proper presidenting to make sure this didn't happen? I
see only PR here.

~~~
mbreese
The President doesn't control what officials in Texas do... But this is a cool
move. It's PR, but it's the best kind of PR, especially from the President
that called on the country to become a "nation of makers".

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/nation-of-
makers](https://www.whitehouse.gov/nation-of-makers)

------
ZachWick
This hits close to home for me too, and I am as WASP-y as it gets.

Just over a year ago I was flying to the middle of US with some prototypes for
an agriculural automation system in my checked luggage. Going through DTW and
O'Hare to my final destination was fine and went without incident. On my way
back, again with a checked luggage bag of protypes and tools, this little
airport in northwest IA got evacauted and I was very forcibly questioned about
why I was flying with these things.

What struck me was that the larger airports (DTW and O'Hare) couldn't have
cared less, but this 5-gate airport in IA freaked out that somebody flying
with three laptops in his carryon would also have a bag of tools and
equipment.

The best part out of all of this was after everything was cleared up, I asked
the head TSA person what I should do in the future to prevent getting searched
and interrogated. His answer was "just open your bag and show the luggage
agent what is in it." I still don't understand how that would help - I
envision that the conversation would go something like "Hi, these look like
pipe bombs. They aren't. You can trust me." and I would immediately be
detained.

(Edited for formatting)

~~~
leesalminen
At the age of 14, I had to fly solo from LGA to ORD for my uncle's funeral. I
had a one-way ticket purchased 18 hours before the flight.

We all assumed that because of my age and appearance it wouldn't be
suspicious.

Wrong! I was stopped and questioned for an hour before being allowed to board.

~~~
ZachWick
I can only imagine the effect of an interrogation like that on a 14yr old. I
was 24 and was completly drained by mine.

I was questioned by each of the TSA, the local sheriff, and the plane's pilot
and an airline rep. Three different interrogations all asking the same
questions just to determine if I was going to be allowed to fly.

------
samsnelling
QOTD from dallas news article: [http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-
news/northwest-dall...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-
news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-9th-grader-arrested-
after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece)

"He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.” what a place of
learning!

~~~
jcromartie
That's always the lesson from these sorts of things: don't try, don't explore,
or possibly don't trust people in authority to know anything.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Which is a double whammy considering all of the other ways schools crush
enthusiasm and willingness to explore. Because grades are a measure of
"achievement" that discourages people from exploring new subjects or taking
challenging courses outside their comfort zone, since that could lower their
GPA. And because all course work factors into your grade, not just your
ultimate competency in the material, that creates even more incentives to not
try anything new. Struggling with new material for even a week or two could
irreparably harm your GPA.

------
ryanlol
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.

~~~
stormcrowsx
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
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare)

~~~
ryanlol
Even then, for an IED to actually be of any use it needs to have an explosive
compound, likely in a container of some kind.

Anyone with half a brain would understand that you can't just magically make
circuitry explode. That's a whole new level of ignorance, they teach this
stuff in elementary school for gods sake.

~~~
Someone1234
> Anyone with half a brain

That's the problem right there. These people have let their common sense be
overtaken by their sense of fear, they're so afraid they aren't thinking.

That's why going after a 9 year old or MIT student with a t-shirt[0] makes
sense, because they literally aren't thinking straight because they're so
convinced there is a threat around every corner (thanks mass media!).

[0] [https://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-
arrested.html](https://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html)

------
chrisBob
People are so worried about terrorists. Guess what: they won! If you don't
believe me then try getting on a commercial flight, or try bringing a cool
electronics project to school some time.

The _hoax bomb_ charge that they are still considering doesn't make sense to
me. As someone who has seen a lot of improvised explosive devices[0] "hoax"
means something very specific. I occasionally encountered hoax devices which
were deliberately placed to monitor our response. Finding one meant you could
be sure you were on camera. Here the police seem to use "hoax" to mean someone
got scared of an empty cardboard box, or in this case a cool electronics
project. The difference is intent just like selling oregeno or baby powder can
get you in trouble for selling drugs if you are portraying it that way. Having
something suspicious means it should be investigated, but it shouldn't be a
crime unless it is intentionally portrayed as an illegal object.

[0] Roughly 100 in Baghdad in 2005.

------
makecheck
Of course the reaction to this is completely insane but what's even sillier is
that they're continuing to assume that real threats would be things that they
can see. If someone wanted to blow up a building they could hide a bomb in a
backpack among hundreds of others and never show it to anyone.

It's the same crap they pull at the airport where you _must_ throw out your
bottled water; and then their solution is to toss this bottle, which was
classified a minute ago as a serious threat, into a pile of other unverified
"threats" in the middle of a densely-populated area of the airport. How this
kind of thing has gone YEARS without any serious backslash is amazing to me.

It is so out of hand. While certainly bad things have happened and could
happen, statistically modern society is pretty safe and we all have to stop
being so damn scared of every little thing.

~~~
mikeash
I think the liquids ban is dumb, but given that it exists, throwing
confiscated liquids into a bin is completely reasonable.

It's one of those weird game theory things. Your goal is to prevent dangerous
liquids from being brought onto planes, but you can't reasonably tell them
apart from other liquids, so you ban all liquids. Because it's banned, you can
be reasonably sure that nobody is going to try to bring dangerous liquids
through security in the first place. (Not because people always obey bans, but
just because they know it'll be confiscated.) So you can be confident that all
the confiscated liquids are not dangerous, and it's safe to just throw them in
a bin. Yet you still need to confiscate them if you want to keep people from
bringing the dangerous materials through.

If someone wants to blow up a security line, there are much better ways to do
it than allowing their liquid explosive to be confiscated, so you can be
pretty confident that nobody is going to attack the system that way either.

~~~
makecheck
The ban means little because the punishment is nothing. If I want to bring
something bad on board, there are two outcomes: I succeed, or I don't, and
maybe I have to endure a brief scolding. The difference now is that if I fail,
I know my mixture will be stuck in the middle of a huge crowd of people for
who knows how long, probably giving me time to go far away.

The decision to throw all liquids into a bin has _created_ a danger that would
not have existed otherwise, which means the confiscations have lowered
security.

And collectively, unnecessary "security" measures slow down security lines,
increasing the probability that more people will be in them and increasing the
temptation to target security lines at all. The real goal should be to move
people through so efficiently that there is barely a "line" to target in the
first place, much less a massive crowd.

~~~
mikeash
What danger is created that wouldn't exist otherwise? If people are bringing
explosives through and they're being confiscated and thrown in a bin, then
without the confiscations those explosives would be making it onto airplanes
instead. Having them explode in a bin would be _much_ preferable to having
them explode on an airplane.

Again, I don't agree with the liquid ban, but it's a problem with the goal,
not a problem with the methods. There's no real evidence that liquid
explosives pose a threat that needs to be countered. However, if you take as a
given that you're tasked with stopping them, the system as it's set up is a
decent way to go about it.

~~~
makecheck
The danger is that, thanks to the act of throwing everything into a bin, there
is now a practically-guaranteed way to leave a dangerous substance in the
middle of a very large crowd and walk far away with no questions asked.

If the person's goal was to bring it on a plane, they're suicidal so they
probably don't care if it accidentally blows them up in the security line
instead.

If instead they expect to set it down and walk away, they can do that anywhere
(even if they clear the checkpoint without having their bottle taken). The
difference is that the added "security" has given them a much more effective
target than they could have anywhere else.

Before the ban, it was always possible for someone to do either one: get on a
plane, or set down an object and walk away. It wasn't happening, which means
the old security precautions were just fine. And if it had happened, there
probably would have been security camera footage of one suspicious individual
setting down an object instead of dozens of suspects throwing objects into a
bin.

~~~
mikeash
You're not going to be throwing very much in there. I don't think a bottle
full of liquid explosives is going to do much.

I don't recall security lines getting noticeably worse after the liquid ban
was enacted. It doesn't take up much time relative to the whole process.

------
god_bless_texas
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.

~~~
vidarh
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.

~~~
barkingcat
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's just really stupid. It's not enforceable and not
even understandable.

~~~
interpol_p
While the scenario described does sound ridiculous, I disagree that it's "not
even understandable." (My understanding is that you meant the four year old
wouldn't understand?)

Many toddlers younger than three could grasp the idea of signing something as
a promise to do that thing in the future. A three or four year old could
easily understand it.

~~~
barkingcat
sorry I meant not understandable as a blanket policy especially since this is
at a school.

I would expect the school (being a place with lots of teachers) to understand
that you get the parent to sign the document - with legally enforceable terms
that the parent is responsible for whatever the kid does.

That's what a kindergarden - grade 8 elementary school field trip permission
form looks like!

I'm sure they've made and processed hundreds of thousands of these forms
before. It's just not understandable why they wouldn't do something similar
with this open house.

------
witty_username
> 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't explain why
I made something it can be presumed to be a bomb? (especially given "and the
police have no reason to think it was dangerous.")

~~~
monroepe
>“He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation."

Did it really need a broader explanation? It's a clock.

~~~
jodah
People tend to assume that everyone else thinks like them. Because the
arresting officer couldn't wouldn't build a clock for the enjoyment of
learning (as opposed to some "broader purpose" like blowing up a building),
then nobody else should either. Simple explanation, but likely true.

------
Stubb
Stupid kid confused school with a place that supported learning and curiosity.

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't make it through high school today.

~~~
traverseda
I didn't. Growing up with access to the worlds largest library makes high
school even more painful.

------
Navarr
It is definitely profiling and I bet his race had a lot to do with it.

But I think the same thing would've happened if I had brought such a device to
school - having been a super dark dressed goth in school, the fear would've
been it's a bomb.

Schools are generally very very extra worried about everything these days,
suspending him was unnecessary but with it only being three days I don't see
it being a terrible thing. The record will get set straight.

So then this just falls back to being unfortunate racial profiling.

~~~
mikeash
The suspension is pretty minor. Dumb, but whatever. At that age I'd have been
happy to stay home for three days.

But there's so much more here. He got _arrested_ and put in _juvenile
detention_. He was interrogated by the police without his parents being
informed.

There's no excuse for this. The police involved should lose their jobs and
spend some time in jail themselves. Not a lot, but perhaps a couple of days
will get some of their colleagues to look up "probable cause" and "civil
rights." The principal should lose his job as well, since he is _clearly_ not
mentally competent to supervise children.

~~~
balls187
> He got arrested and put in juvenile detention. He was interrogated by the
> police without his parents being informed.

This behavior happens _ALL THE TIME._ The police routinely will get away with
what ever they can to get a conviction. The law is complicated and most people
don't have a lawyer on retainer.

The police aren't your friend, and you gain _NOTHING_ by talking to them.

~~~
mikeash
I wonder at what age a parent should have The Talk about shutting up and
asking for a lawyer.

------
cldwalker
If you're angry with the school's horrible reaction to this, let Jose Parra,
[http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/3010](http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/3010),
know: (972) 600-5001 / jparra@irvingisd.net. He can fire the principal of that
school - Dan Cummings

~~~
scottshea
Hey they were recently acknowledged for their use of cutting edge technology!

[http://www.irvingisd.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&Domain...](http://www.irvingisd.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=4&ModuleInstanceID=7900&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=8876&PageID=1)

------
hoopism
I think we're making too big of an issue of this. The trial has already taken
place and the boy was found to not float... so it turns out he must be guilty.

God forbid that an officer drops his walkie talkie and discovers that IT TOO
IS A POTENTIAL BOMB! I mean, it has wires and circuits...

The ignorance here is astounding. I suppose he's lucky they didn't also try
him as a warlock for summoning electricity from a magical box.

------
chipgap98
That letter from the school just adds insult to injury.

> talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduact and specifically not
> bringing items to school that are prohibited

Since when can you not bring a clock to school?

~~~
bargl
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.

~~~
txru
Or even better- start by quietly calling him to the principal's office. Ask
him about his clock. Tell him people were thinking he might be wanting to pull
some bomb pranks, and that would be a very bad idea. Ask him to tell his
teachers the day before the next time he wants to show off his gadgetry. Send
him back to class.

~~~
eropple
Or don't do that, either, because it is not right to assume people are going
to pull off bomb hoaxes. (Doubly so when the only real reason for the
suspicion is skin color.)

~~~
bargl
Yeah but you also don't want to be the admin at a school with a bomb where
there were "signs a student was creating bombs before he went ape shit". I
agree with the color statement, but not addressing the issue at all can be
just as bad as an overreaction.

~~~
eropple
Except there were no such signs, therefore _let 's not be jerks to a kid_.

~~~
bargl
Obviously someone thought there was a sign, even the teacher told him not to
show it to anyone else outside that class. I think saying that a homemade
clock isn't a sign is greatly underestimating how the news is capable of
skewing things to screw people over.

~~~
eropple
I looked at the pictures. Any adult with even the slightest understanding of
_how a bomb must physically work_ \--like, "have something that can actually
explode"\--should be so utterly certain of its purpose that your concern
trolling should horrify them.

------
SovietDissident
So he has a Muslim name, which is why this story went viral. Because racism. I
hope everyone is equally outraged by the nonsense that happens all the
time[0][1] to kids who aren't named Mohammad in public schools.

Sending your high IQ kids to school with adults who are batting 85 should be
regarded as parental malpractice. And the notion that people defend public
schools and tell us taxpayers they just "need more money!1!!1" flies in the
face of reason and the facts (per pupil spending since the 60s has tripled
with no change in test scores).[2]

Public schools suck by their very nature as state-controlled entities. If
education is so important (especially today), why do we allow our kids to be
taught and schools administered by the equivalents of DMV employees? Of course
the poorest kids with broken families suffer the most.

And what happens when charter schools actually succeed? The Teachers Union is
there to try and shut them down, with the help of sympathetic politicians (see
NYC and de Blasio)[3]

[0]
[http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns_and_blogs/columns/dan_ca...](http://www.roanoke.com/news/columns_and_blogs/columns/dan_casey/casey-
not-pot-leaf-gets-th-grader-in-big-
trouble/article_67dc2868-0f0a-53c0-96ad-595a88391aa3.html) [1]
[http://wjla.com/news/local/family-of-md-boy-suspended-for-
po...](http://wjla.com/news/local/family-of-md-boy-suspended-for-pop-tart-gun-
wants-his-suspension-record-expunged-106748) [2]
[http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/mar/02/da...](http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/mar/02/dave-
brat/brat-us-school-spending-375-percent-over-30-years-/) [3]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/nyregion/success-
academy-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/nyregion/success-academy-
charter-schools-force-mayor-bill-de-blasio-to-confront-new-law.html?_r=0)

------
VincentEvans
Personally, i wasn't surprised at the display of racially-biased fear at the
sight of device that appears to a bystander to look like a bomb. People are
people.

But why did it need to lead to arrest, hand cuffs, finger printing after an
interview and a casual examination of the device clearly demonstrated it was a
clock (there was an engineering teacher who could easily collaborate)? It was
an outright excessive reaction to further compound what was a regrettable
mistake.

------
zaphar
In the article it mentions that his engineering teacher advised him to hide it
from the other staff. Which is confusing to me. The teacher obviously knew it
wasn't a bomb and obviously knew the other staff would misinterpret this. So
why didn't the teacher preempt this whole thing by advising the school that
"Yes, this kid brought in a clock to show me. No, it's not a bomb no matter
how scary it looks."

~~~
draugadrotten
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.

[http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-
county/2015/09/1...](http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-
county/2015/09/15/irving-isd-student-detained-for-device-resembling-
bomb/72339246/) [https://archive.is/Q0OLb](https://archive.is/Q0OLb)

~~~
dec0dedab0de
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.

------
ceejayoz
A similar example: [http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-teen-girl-
charged-...](http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-teen-girl-charged-with-
felony-after-science-experiment-goes-bad-6521288) /
[http://magazine.good.is/articles/people-are-awesome-teen-
arr...](http://magazine.good.is/articles/people-are-awesome-teen-arrested-for-
science-experiment-now-heading-to-space-camp)

------
jschwartzi
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't actually have anything to go on, but they still
kicked him out for a week, all over a nickname.

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

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

------
peeters
This is the crux of the issue:

> “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."

Creative people don't need to have a good reason to make something. They
create things because there is joy and satisfaction in creating things. It's a
shame Mr. McLellan had such a boring childhood.

~~~
frobozz
I don't understand what broader explanation one could possibly give, without
starting to sound extremely sarcastic.

It's a clock, you know, for telling the time, because if I made a sundial and
brought it in, it wouldn't work because of the walls and roof.

------
frederickf
The Irving ISD Student Code of Conduct, which the principle alleges the
student to have broken, can be downloaded at
[http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/5183](http://www.irvingisd.net/Page/5183).

I couldn't find anything in there prohibiting a clock or other non-
communication related electronic devices. I didn't read every word so maybe I
missed something.

I did find the following under the prohibited items section: "Any articles not
generally considered to be weapons, including school supplies, when the
principal or designee determines that a danger exists."

But that would seem to create a dilemma in this situation. If it was a bomb it
wouldn't be covered by that stipulation, but if it was a clock then no
reasonable person could consider it to be dangerous.

If we're being charitable we could assume the principled believed it was a
bomb at the time, in which case it would have been covered by other
stipulations in the code. But if that is the case then I would think the
school should have been evacuated. I don't know if that happened or not.

Also, good lord, I don't ever remember having to sign something like that
document (it's a 44 page document that reads like a contract) when I was in
school. Is it even legally binding to have a minor sign that?

------
skbohra123
Many comments here on HN seem to feel that this is an issue with Education
system or schools. But I as a non American feel is that a common American is
too afraid of anything non American or anything strange. The main objective of
terrorist organizations is to instill fear in the minds of people and I think
they have succeeded in it to a greater extent.

------
rogual
The look on the kid's face in that first photo says it all, really.

Welcome to Earth, kid. These will be your fellow human beings. Enjoy your
stay.

~~~
Raphmedia
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.

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

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
What if the kid had gotten his hands on a detonator button transmitter thing?
It could have been a disaster. I'm being sarcastic, but I fear that one of
these tools might use a similar excuse if you questioned them.

------
sirtaj
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!

~~~
exodust
You might have a point if the device was for a school project. But it was his
own "invention" 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 "verify"
a box of wires and circuits? Who would she verify it with if the kid plays
aloof when asked of its purpose?

Just because "authorities apprehend 14yo Muslim kid for home-made clock"
doesn't mean you need to start making accusations of bigotry, ignorance and
cowardice.

~~~
mikeash
Bigotry, maybe. There's a chance (which I'd estimate at smaller than 1%) that
there was no racial motivation here.

But I don't see how you can say there'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.

~~~
exodust
Handcuffs went too far. But that's a protocol issue for US lawmakers etc.
We've all seen protocol out of control in the States for a host of different
incidents.

No need to react so much in the other direction either, making this kid an
ambassador of "freedom to pack electronics in a case and bring it to school"
or whatever.

He made an error of judgement going against his teacher's advice, and a ton of
bricks came down on his head way too hard. Hopefully everyone can learn
something from this.

But you can't deny that "radicalization of young Muslims" isn't a _thing_
these days. No point of covering your ears and insisting everyone wants to get
along.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But you can't deny that "radicalization of young Muslims" isn't a thing
> these days.

Radicalization of young Muslims is among the reasons why acts based on bias
against young Muslims by authority figures in society is especially
problematic, as those acts _contribute rather directly to_ such
radicalization, and directly serve the propaganda interests of those actively
seeking such radicalization.

This would be problematic if radicalization of young Muslims _wasn 't_ a
particular concern, but it doesn't become _less_ problematic because such
radicalization is a real thing, it becomes _more_.

~~~
exodust
So you don't think it's possible that authority figures can initiate _acts
based on statistics_? On research, on scientific data? Or must their
motivations always be grounded in bias, unfair discrimination, misguided old-
fashioned racial profiling?

The point I was making about young Muslims - I wish it weren't true. But it is
true.

Arresting 14yo kids isn't a solution, but neither is patronizingly inviting
him and his suitcase clock to the white house.

I'd love watch the video of him checking into whitehouse security with his
suitcase clock...

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/_85589586_16e23342-6ce7-4c4f-b176-88d94cf667b3.jpg)

~~~
mikeash
OK, what are the relevant statistics, research, and scientific data? What is
the scientifically-determined probability at the time that this kid actually
built a bomb, or was at least trying to scare people with a lookalike?

"I'd love watch the video of him checking into whitehouse security with his
suitcase clock..."

It will probably be quite boring, because unlike paranoid local Texas
policemen, the Secret Service knows what a bomb _actually_ looks like.

------
confiscate
The police knew it wasn't a bomb the moment they saw it. Otherwise they would
have called in the bomb squad right away.

The fact that they continued to play games and arrest the kid is not for
"safety". It's clear they arrested him because of racism.

~~~
latj
My favorite clip is of the police who said something to the effect of, "When
we asked him what it was, he only said it was a clock he didnt tell us why he
brought it to school..." so they arrested him for a hoax bomb.

That statement reeks of a story made up after the fact. You can imagine them
sitting around their police station after they let the kid go.

Police A: "Oh shit, this kid was just bringing in a clock to show his
engineering teacher. There are several witnesses who heard him tell us it was
just a clock. And now everyone in the world is watching. We're fucked."

Police B: "Nothing's fucked, bro. Be cool. Think. Think. Wait, he never told
us whhhhy he brought the clock to school."

Police A: "Why does that matter? he told us it was just a clock and it is just
a clock! Did we even ask why he brought it?"

Police B: "I didnt ask why. Did you? Even if you didnt, its still somethin'
you could say."

Police A: "That is so stupid."

Police B: "Still, you know... it is somethin' you could say."

Police A: "That is so stupid. You are stupid. And, we are fucked!"

...later at press conference

 _clears throat_

Police A: "...he told us it was a clock buuuuut, he never told us whhhhy he
brought the clock..."

 _glances over at Police B who has the stupidest grin on his face_

------
punnerud
The letter to this parents:
[https://twitter.com/jkfecke/status/644094380534591488/photo/...](https://twitter.com/jkfecke/status/644094380534591488/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

~~~
draugadrotten
Just in case it "disappears" from twitter here it is archived -
[https://archive.is/1wJhp](https://archive.is/1wJhp)

~~~
tcbawo
It's unfortunate that students are encouraged to report 'suspicious' things,
but not 'exceptional'. Only bad things can come of it, never good.

------
Animats
What probably happened here is that the kid bought one of the many digital
clock board kits available.[1][2] The problem is that these look just like the
TV/movie version of bombs, because, of course, prop people use the same
boards.

Not real bombs, though. Richard Marcinko, the founder of Seal Team Six, once
wrote that he'd blown up a lot of things in his career and he'd never seen a
count down timer with glowing numbers.

[1] [http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-digital-
clock-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-digital-clock-kit-
based-on-Atmel/) [2]
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10930](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10930)

~~~
danjayh
Thanks! I was curious about this, because having volunteered for FIRST
robotics, I can tell you that the number of HS students in the US with the
skills to design and build a digital clock is pretty much 0. Looking at the
picture, I think that maybe he re-homed a commercial clock into a different
case and added some leads to run it off a battery ... which is still beyond
the capabilities of 99% of US HS students.

Either way, congrats to Mohamed for being curious about how things work, shame
on his teachers for not doing due diligence (maybe asking the electronics
teacher to take a look before calling the police?), and I wish there were more
information available about exactly what Mohamed had done, because I find
_that_ to be the interesting part of the story.

Not that the response was appropriate, but I'm pretty sure that if I'd taken a
similarly looking device into my very WASP-y suburban school, even though I'm
white as a sheet, my school administration would have had a similar response.
People are really paranoid these days, and right or wrong, we all have to deal
with it.

------
BurningFrog
Some true stories go viral because they "confirm" what a lot of people think
is wrong with society.

Because they go viral, there is a lot of talk about them, which "confirms"
even further that this is a Big Problem, and that it is caused by What I've
Been Saying All Along.

In reality this is one single idiotic decision by some local knuckleheads. As
a social science study, it has a sample size of 1 and a huge selection bias.
The problems you think it "shows" _may well be real_ , but retelling this
anecdote does not prove that.

------
pppp
If police really thought this was a bomb, why didn't they evacuate the school
and call the bomb squad? Their motives are suspect.

~~~
drjesusphd
It's all about showing everyone who's boss.

------
TheRealDunkirk
The real problem here is that everyone in positions of responsibility in the
government -- the school and the police -- feel the need to justify their
existence by doing... something. The default action of the school is to call
the police, and then what? You have only 4 outcomes once the police are
involved: 1) nothing, 2) citation, 3) arrest, 4) death. How many times do the
police just walk away from something? That's right. So (1) isn't really an
option at all. Citation? For what? They were trying, but you don't write
tickets for making "hoax bombs." Killing a scrawny 14-year-old kid is extreme,
even for the most jaded cop, so that leaves (3), arrest. Then the legal system
has to justify IT'S existence, and, well, we know how this goes. Then the ACLU
has to get all up in it, and probably CAIR, and the Justice Department. All
because everyone has abandoned their common sense and replaced it with fear
and deference to the State since 9/11\. Thanks, Bush AND Obama.

------
andrewpi
This really reminded me of the Star Simpson case. The police actually held her
at gunpoint so it was perhaps even worse:
[http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html](http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html)

~~~
chippy
She ended up with a criminal record, had to plead guilty, and had to state
that she feels like she did the wrong thing.

This case put me off living in the USA.

------
ja27
Students all over the country should bring digital clocks and circuits to
school this week as a protest.

------
radmuzom
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's assume
that this boy is a gifted engineer, and this incident leaves deep
psychological scars not expressed in the next few years, but eventually leads
him to take up activities later in life which are harmful for American
citizens)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10225962)

~~~
Vexs
Honestly, I had a very similar thing happen to me at an even younger age.
Almost got expelled for hacking when I was just making stupid shit with batch
programming. Similarly, I made a crappy little audio amp a couple years later
at the same school, and again, almost got expelled for "making a weapon and
bringing it to school" (they thought it was a stungun)

All it did was make me anti-establishment at a slightly younger age. The kid
in this story knows that what he's going through is bullshit, and he's likely
to have something pretty good come out of this due to all the media attention.
If anything, I'd suspect it would drive him to create more, because if there's
something kids like to do it's sticking it to the man.

~~~
soylentcola
Nothing quite so extreme for me but I remember being kicked out of class and
sent to see our sadistic assistant principal for "trying to cause a panic" in
my computer class.

This was around 1993 or 1994 and I was in 11th grade. I was in some fairly
"bonehead" computer class and we often worked on simple projects and saved
them to floppy disks to take home or work on later.

At the time, the family computer was still an aging Commodore 128 but I was
working mostly in DOS at school so I'd bring home my disks and work on
projects on my dad's work laptop. Dad's work laptop included a primitive virus
scanner so of course I scanned the disk I'd been using on the school network.
The scanner finds some minor virus and cleans it up (in retrospect, I guess it
could've easily just been a false positive but who knows).

After taking the disk back to school and working on projects again, I scanned
it at home the following evening. Virus once again detected. So the next day
in class I mention to the teacher that there's probably some innocuous virus
on the classroom network and offered to help get rid of it. I was interested
in that stuff even if I was still mostly a novice.

But instead of giving me a new project, the teacher flipped out. She accused
me of trying to start a panic and disrupting class and sent me to see the ass.
principal. Now, this dude hated kids (especially the ones who clearly had no
respect for authoritah). I had to sit in his office without speaking while he
held a (no joke) half hour conversation on the phone with his friend about
some fishing trip they had planned for the weekend. Afterward he reamed me out
and basically told me I was full of shit because the teacher wouldn't lie
about such things.

In the end, it was my first lesson in "people who don't get computers or trust
them will often avoid dealing with issues that make them uncomfortable and
possibly view you with hostility for suggesting otherwise."

------
dovereconomics
Honestly, more and more, I challenge the idea of ever having a child: bright
and smart kids have never been so intimidated.

Many of the hacks I did as a child could have gotten me in jail today.
Something 'silly' or 'funny' becomes dangerous/offensive/harassment;
creativity, ingenuity and imagination are turned into dullness, self-hatred
and nihilism.

~~~
rhino369
Ironically, you are engaging in the same sort of fear mongering and paranoia
that these schools and police are engaging in. You are taking a rare event
(idiotic profiling or terrorism) and concluding they are very common.

These sorts of overreactions are very uncommon. That isn't to say these sorts
of zero tolerance, jail what you don't understand, actions shouldn't be
strongly condemned.

But there are probably hundreds of thousands of kids who are into tinkering
and hacking who haven't ever been bothered.

~~~
DanBC
Hang on: the route from school misdemeanor to criminal justice is well known
and much talked about.

The combination of zero tolerance with police stationed in schools means many
children end up with criminal records for very minor events.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-
sc...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools)

> In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 "Class C misdemeanour" tickets to
> children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which
> result in fines, community service and even prison time

That feels pretty common. It doesn't feel rare.

It's known as the School to Prison Pipeline:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-
prison_pipeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline)

~~~
rhino369
How much of that is actual bad behavior. The school to prison pipeline is a
worthy discussion.

But this sort insane, zero tolerance of total normal behavior is much more
limited.

I agree we shouldn't be using the criminal system of kids who bring pot to
school or who get into fights. But it's a different issue than a kid getting
arrested for being a hacker.

~~~
fao_

      it's a different issue than a kid getting arrested for being a hacker.
    

How so? Actually in some states the kids who bring pot to school are more
worthy for being in the criminal system than the kid being arrested for being
a hacker, seeing as the former qualifies as actual criminal activity (again,
in some states).

That is to say, I agree with not using the criminal system for those
relatively minor excursions, but at the same time I do not see how it is a
different problem.

------
ahmadss
Here's President Obama's tweet on the matter --

"Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire
more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great."

[https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656](https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656)

~~~
Tepix
Amazingly clever twist!

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

~~~
jerf
"They" _are_ the administrators involved.

Don't hold your breath.

------
carrja99
Well this is what happens when you blare Islamophobia from all the twenty-four
hour "news" channels.

~~~
venomsnake
No, this is what happens when you have stupid police and school officials that
are tough on everything. There are enough outrageous cases in the last year
for students of a lot of different backgrounds.

~~~
mikeyouse
In this case it's definitely about the Muslim thing.. Their mayor is known
nationally for being an ignorant bigot..

[http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2015/03/20/anti-muslim-
sent...](http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2015/03/20/anti-muslim-sentiment-
bubbles-up-in-irving-and-the-imam-who-has-to-tolerate-it/)

~~~
nsxwolf
Was the mayor involved in this?

~~~
mikeyouse
Yep, she spearheaded it..

[http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/mayor-wont-back-down-from-
muslim-...](http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/mayor-wont-back-down-from-muslim-
brotherhood/)

------
pathdependent
I posted this once regarding a related incident, but it's appropriate here
too.

One day in college, a friend and I decided to pack a plastic bottle with dry
ice and hot water. In our hung over state, we thought this would be fun to
watch. I was in my apartment. It took all of five seconds to realize that I
couldn't rip apart the bottle. So, if the force of this explosion was
sufficient to do so, it was probably really fucking dangerous. I figured it
was too late to take the cap off -- the bottle was already making weird
sounds. So, I threw it in the bathroom tub, and shut the door. Two minutes
went by, and I felt momentarily foolish. Almost as I thought "nothing is going
to happen," it exploded. The force knocked my friend to the ground. Granted
she was tiny, and it was partly from fear, but I felt the shock wave rattle my
bones.

I lived in the more expensive apartment building on campus. No one even came
to say, "what's going on." If they did, they would have seen the bent metal of
the tub's faucet.

And, that was accidentally but _very literally a bomb_.

------
QUFB
Looks like he's been invited to the White House:

[https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656](https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656)

~~~
carbide
I just experienced a moment of pride in the leadership of our country

------
kazinator
"You are under arrest for making a circuit board with a clock display, while
bearing a name such as 'Ahmed Mohamed' and exhibiting a brown appearance."

------
earleybird
It seems Amazons recommendation system has acquired 'irony' \- it's
recommending [http://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-
Pri...](http://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-
Principles/dp/0262640686). 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.

------
mikehollinger
It's remarkable the difference that ~20 years can make. In middle school,
someone's science fair project was building an actual briefcase bomb (with
clay). It had a variety of sensors, and laid out (on a tri-fold poster board,
of course) the guts of how each one worked.

~~~
Someone1234
Even 20 years ago that is still unusual.

And even pre-9/11 I'm still not sure what the legal status of that is. Since
it was designed to be a "bomb," even if it is inert, several laws do cover
that.

Essentially as soon as you describe a pile of distinct legal parts as a "bomb"
you've now got a class of controlled weapon even if it has no explosive
components.

~~~
aianus
> Essentially as soon as you describe a pile of distinct legal parts as a
> "bomb" you've now got a class of controlled weapon even if it has no
> explosive components.

Source? If I describe a chicken finger as a gun, is that also a controlled
weapon?

------
eastbayjake
This seems like a great opportunity for us to show our support for kids who
build things. Would anyone be interested in a GoFundMe to get Ahmed some
Arduino gear or send him to an electronics camp? (I would just create one but
I'm not sure what people would most readily donate toward -- gear or
scholarship funds.)

------
richardwigley
14 year old boy is going to meet POTUS and he can bring his cool clock.
[https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656](https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656)

------
aarestad
Hey Ahmed - if you're reading this, post the plans to your clock. I'd love to
build one in solidarity with you.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's not quite the same, but WIRED linked to some videos of how to make
clocks:

[http://www.wired.com/2015/09/make-homemade-clock-isnt-
bomb/](http://www.wired.com/2015/09/make-homemade-clock-isnt-bomb/)

------
rsingel
Why is this a link to an aggregation piece by TechCrunch, rather than the
original reported story by Dallas Morning News?
[http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-
dall...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-
county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-
clock-to-school.ece)

~~~
kochb
The Dallas News version was submitted at least 4 times, TechCrunch was the one
that stuck:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224216)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224223)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224649)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10224747)

~~~
rsingel
Thanks for checking that. I wish the mods would replace the link, since
rewarding original reporting makes more of it, and rewarding aggregation makes
more of that.

------
norea-armozel
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?

~~~
ams6110
My school had a rocketry club. Bringing this kind of stuff to school was
encouraged.

~~~
norea-armozel
I bet today the principal and staff would think you guys were terrorists
planning to siege the local strip mall. /s

------
fudgy73
Being handcuffed is the worst thing I have ever felt. It is inhumane and
should not be practiced in a civilized society. The fact that a 14 year old
child with that look on his face felt it makes my blood boil.

------
tcfunk
They can probably change the title to "14 YO boy arrested for not being white
and having the name Ahmed Mohamed".

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

~~~
draugadrotten
Pic here: [http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-
county/2015/09/1...](http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/dallas-
county/2015/09/15/irving-isd-student-detained-for-device-resembling-
bomb/72339246/)

~~~
danjayh
If you watch the video that pic was taken from, you will find that that is a
device 'like' the one taken to the school. Here's an actual pic:

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/_85589586_16e23342-6ce7-4c4f-b176-88d94cf667b3.jpg)

------
wolfwyrd
More discussion here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10226196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10226196)

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

------
nsxwolf
I don't understand where the race angle is coming from. How is this definitely
a case of "making while brown"? What's the evidence, besides the kid's brown
skin?

I _would_ "stand with Ahmed", but if that means being attached to race baiting
and Islamophobia accusations, I won't.

------
zyxley
> Update at 11:20 a.m. Wednesday: At a press conference this morning, Irving
> Police Chief Larry Boyd said Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing "a hoax
> bomb" to school -- and not a clock, as Mohamed said he repeatedly told his
> teachers.

> But, Boyd said, "we are confident it's not an explosive device" intended to
> cause "alarm." Rather, he said, officers determined it was "a hoax bomb" and
> a "naive accident."

> As a result, he said, no charges will be filed against Ahmed, and "the case
> is considered closed." He also said "the reaction would have been the same
> regardless" of the student's skin color.

------
ambrop7
When I was in high school (in Slovenia), I have actually brought a home-made
"bomb" to school. It had an LCD and a keypad, you would arm it and it would
count down while beeping with increasing frequency, unless you entered the
correct deactivation code.

Nobody mistook it for a real bomb and nobody had any trouble with it, except
for when it was set up in the middle of class to annoy the teacher :)

A later improvement was the addition of "detorator circuit" based on the flash
electronics for a disposable camera, and you could hook up something like a
resistor to it which would then be fried by who knows how many volts...

------
rflrob
I don't want to suggest that what the school and police did to this guy is
anything but terrible, but I suspect that he'll actually be fine in the long
run. If I were an admissions officer at MIT, I'd jump at the chance to admit
someone with an essay "I was arrested for building a clock".

I think the bigger concern is all the people who get in trouble with the
powers that be, and don't have media savvy parents with time or knowledge or
connections to get something in the local paper and/or get in touch with civil
rights organizations.

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

------
electic
Frankly, if someone showed up with a clock and a circuit board with wires
leading to a box on the board, what would people think? Keep in mind, there
have been multiple mass shootings at schools already this year. They have to
investigate it.

What if someone showed up to the mall with a gun in an open-carry setting?
People panic.[2] The setting matters. Especially if the setting in question, a
school, has been a victim of mass violence numerous times. This is not a HP
lab. They were right to take a look at the device with police. However, this
is where things went terribly wrong:

> When Ahmed was called out of class, he said he was brought into a room with
> four police officers, one of whom said, "Yup. That's who I thought it was."
> [1]

Frankly, the school and police should have been more professional. They
weren't. What is more disturbing, is the police have inadvertently admitted
they are profiling people in this community. There is far more details in the
CNN article:

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-
muslim-...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-
bomb/index.html)

[2] [http://www.fayobserver.com/news/local/fort-bragg-soldier-
arm...](http://www.fayobserver.com/news/local/fort-bragg-soldier-armed-at-
cross-creek-mall-sparks-gun/article_01e2e2a6-2fd1-5e88-bd0f-ee0d3990ed63.html)

~~~
zardo
Frankly, if someone showed up with a clock and a circuit board with wires
leading to a box on the board, what would people think?

I don't think we should assume that everything we don't understand is a
weapon. I don't understand a lot of things, the vast majority of which are not
bombs.

~~~
electic
Did I say that? Don't think I did. You are basically arguing that they should
not have investigated?

------
austenallred
Here's a photo of the device he was arrested for having:
[http://i.imgur.com/upANL9d.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/upANL9d.jpg)

~~~
mynameishere
What an odd picture. Not sure why you didn't link to a real source. This seems
to have a similar looking circuit board:

[http://fusion.net/story/197958/irving-texas-police-arrest-
mu...](http://fusion.net/story/197958/irving-texas-police-arrest-muslim-teen-
clock/)

But then this article has a completely different picture:

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/15/student...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/15/student-
detained-police-mistake-clock-fake-bomb/72348060/)

If it was really mounted in that case in your picture, it's indeed a little
funny looking. I mean, all of this politically correct rage is misplaced if
the fucking thing _actually_ did look like a bomb. You gotta know that's not
something to take into a school...

And who "invents" a clock anyway? It's sort of already-done. I mean, 50 years
ago kids were putting together AM radios with electronic kits. At least that's
sort-of interesting. It picks up signals from a 1000 miles away--cool! I mean,
a clock? Why not invent an inclined plane next?

Oh, well. The media needs to push its narrative.

~~~
DanBC
> And who "invents" a clock anyway? It's sort of already-done.

Clocks use a variety of circuit blocks - you need something to keep time; you
need something to display that time; you can add other features.

With just "keep time" and "display time" you still have a variety of different
methods. You can count mains frequency; you can use crystals and dividers.
Displays can be 7 segment LEDs or LCDs or binary or analogue motors. Each
require different approaches.

Even if it's just a shop-bought off the shelf kit the student learns a bit of
component identification and handling and some soldering skills.

~~~
danjayh
I don't think it was even that. From the pics, it looks like he liberated a
commercial clock from its housing and put it in a different case. Unless it
had battery backup, he may have soldered in a 9V battery connector, but since
it still has a power cord I kind of doubt it.

------
jrarredondo
Texas Education Agency (TEA)'s Accountability Report shows "NO DISTINCTION"
for Science at MacArthur High School in 2015.

You would think these teachers would appreciate all the help they can get to
earn some distinction in Sciences.

[http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2015/static...](http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2015/static/summary/campus/c057912003.pdf)

------
postitnotecode
Their twitter page promoted their first "maker space" which I have trouble
squaring with this story. Is the message the school wants to send: creation,
making, and learning is very very dangerous and only allowed under strict
supervision?

[https://twitter.com/MacReads/status/643784222394552320/photo...](https://twitter.com/MacReads/status/643784222394552320/photo/1)

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

~~~
jimktrains2
In most states children in a school have little to no rights as the school is
assuming responsibility for the welfare of the children.

------
unfamiliar
Something doesn't seem quite right about this story. He made a clock and then
chose to store it in a metal briefcase with the numbers on the outside. In
other words, he built something that looks exactly like a bomb from a movie:
briefcase with red numbers on it. Maybe this appearance was entirely
accidental; but I would bet that he originally intended it to look like a
bomb, probably for humour.

~~~
panzagl
And it started beeping in class- depending on the kid's history/attitude
sending them to an administrator is not an over-reaction. The zero-tolerance
b.s. that happens next is the problem, but even there it's hard to blame
administration- I'm sure there's zero tolerance for anything that looks like a
weapon, and unfortunately a beeping case full of electronics qualifies.

------
fapjacks
This isn't surprising to hear coming from Texas, the state where legislation
has titles like "The Save Orphans of Firemen Act" but actually when you read
it, you find out they just want to bulldoze some poor peoples' homes on the
east side of town to build a dump. And the bill includes some gerrymandering
in the Ferengi print. Texas is like that.

------
beauSD
For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you won't see this photo
shown much, here is the homemade clock that Ahmed brought to school. [1]
[http://www.wired.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/AP_250782557...](http://www.wired.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/AP_250782557912-582x462.jpg)

Regardless of what someone looks like or what their name is, if you see them
at a school with a device like this and it's beeping, I think it's reasonable
to call the police. Allow them to come and have someone with expertise ensure
that it isn't a bomb and determine the student's intention. Hopefully the
police that arrive do their job well - with diligence, compassion,
professionalism, and without animosity or bias.

Police were called, he was detained and questioned, and then released without
charges [2]. It's a tragedy that we see bombings and shootings in schools -
but we do see them, and far too often. These are the times we live in. So how
should this have been handled?

Hopefully Ahmed doesn't lose any passion for science or electronics because of
this afternoon, but I think if people handle the situation with rational
thought rather than instigation, then he will have a much better chance at
that.

1\. [http://www.wired.com/2015/09/heres-bomb-clock-got-ahmed-
moha...](http://www.wired.com/2015/09/heres-bomb-clock-got-ahmed-mohamed-
arrested/) 2\. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/09/16...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2015/09/16/they-thought-it-was-a-bomb-ahmed-mohamed-texas-9th-grader-
arrested-after-bringing-a-home-built-clock-to-school/)

~~~
NhanH
For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you might forgot you have
seen this photo, this is what happened when the police arrived:
[https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625...](https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625/photo/1)

Regardless of what someone looks like or what their name is, if they did not
do anything wrong and is 14 years old, I think it's reasonable to expect them
not being handcuffed and parade out of school in front of their peers. It's
hard to take in good faith that the police have done their job well - with
diligence, compassion, professionalism, and without animosity or bias.

Police were called, kid were arrested, detained massively erroneously,
interrogated without the present of an attorney [0], and potentially having
his life turned upside down, or side way (for better or worse). It's a tragedy
that we see people without understanding of Bayesian statistics (or
frequentist, for that matter) - but we do see them, and far too often. These
are the times we live in. So how should this have been handled?

Hopefully _some_ will learn that reasonable and probable cause needs to have
some basis in certain priori, and that opportunity cost and the boy who cries
wolf are really and very harmful issue. I think if people handle the situation
with rational thought rather than instigation, and understand that P(massacre
| kids = 14 years old in the US) is some number that probably is smaller than
IEEE floating point error, then everyone will be better off for that.

[0]: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-
muslim-...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-
bomb/)

~~~
beauSD
The police detained him until they could investigate the device and question
him about his intentions, then released him. Sounds like a rough afternoon,
but hardly a ruined life. He's been released and he's exonerated.

> Hopefully some will learn that reasonable and probable cause needs to have
> some basis in certain priori, and that opportunity cost and the boy who
> cries wolf are really and very harmful issue.

I put the security of a school full of other kids above the 'opportunity cost'
of being questioned by police. I'm guessing many other people would as well -
especially the parents of the other kids at the school.

> understand that P(massacre | kids = 14 years old in the US) is some number
> that probably is smaller than IEEE floating point error, then everyone will
> be better off for that.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't
happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in
violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents.

~~~
NhanH
If you truly assume that the world is a dangerous place that we really need to
be _that_ careful, then it's the opportunity cost of the police force of NOT
preventing the actual problems (there has to be some bad things being done/
will be done that is not prevented, right? That's the basis of your argument).

And if they truly believed it was a dangerous bomb, was the school evacuated?

> Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Just because it doesn't
> happen in the US often, doesn't mean it won't. 14 years old are involved in
> violence all over the world, especially in bombing incidents.

This is not even wrong, and it's terrifying if politicians would be thinking
the same way as you does here. There is no guarantee EVER that anything will,
or will not happen. But due to the limited resources and capability that we
human have, we have to act and behave rationally based on the _probability_
that something will happen. A scenario that comes from an unfounded basis and
human imagination can not be treated with the same weight as a scenario that
has some more reasonable chance to happen (based on past performance or what
not). And note that P(something) indicate the probability that something can
happen (or your belief of something to happen, in Bayesian interpretation), it
has nothing to do with past performance/ events. The past changes your belief
of P, but probability is predicting the future.

People in certain area of the world are involved in violence all year round,
having bombed dropped on their roof, their hometown decimated. Are you
preparing for that scenario to happen to you in the US in the present? Why or
why not?

------
davewasthere
I used to make FM transmitters (very small 'bugs') and take them to school to
sell.

But I was white, so unlikely to get arrested/expelled.

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

------
wdhilliard
Why is there never any intelligent person with enough of a moral compass to
intervene and tell these people to leave the kid alone?

------
thebouv
My daughter is about to work on a IoT-ish wearable using conductive thread, a
LilyPad Arduino board and battery pack. As a school project.

I'll report back if she ends up in prison. It's not Texas, but Indiana isn't
much brighter unfortunately.

(Thankfully the school is more hippy than dippy, and the teachers are aware
and excited about the project).

------
snarfy
This really needs to end in a civil lawsuit.

~~~
rasz_pl
In fairness it was probably staged by the father to end in civil lawsuit.

"His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, came from Sudan and is famous for
arguing against anti-Islamic policies"

~~~
jcromartie
His father has been in the news several times.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-
trial-s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-says-
he-didnt-know-the-holy-book-would-be-burned/2011/04/05/AFKNR3oC_story.html)

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
That puts the whole thing in a different shade of light. Seriously. I wrote
the kid on Anil's support page, but this makes me feel like there was more
going on here than is being reported. I know, surprise, surprise, right?

------
Macsenour
When I was ten, 1971, I asked my father for a chemistry set for Christmas. My
parents were divorced so when vacation was over, I had to return to living
with my mother. This involved a short plane ride from SoCal to NorCal on PSA.
I was traveling by myself.

I recall putting my bags on a table so they the airlines people could look at
what I was taking on the plane. When the FLIGHT ATTENDANT looked at my
chemistry set, she turned to another official and said: "He could make a bomb
out of these chemicals", My first reaction was to laugh.

I waited a minute while the adults thought it over and said: "I'm 10, I don't
know how to make a bomb or anything. I jusy got this for christmas!"

They taped it up and made me check it, so I could not carry it on to the
plane. To this day I marvel at the idea that a child would be suspected of
making a chemical bomb.

------
eldude
> In short, Ahmed was arrested for making while brown.

This sort of demagoguery masquerading as journalism has got to stop. Upvoting
exploitative personal political propaganda like this contributes to an
atmosphere of narrow-mindedness on HN that plays to the bigotry of its
readers, with the majority of comments here responding in like.

I'm certainly not defending it, but in reality this sort of (over) reaction,
is perfectly explainable when you consider the risk of government employees
responsible for the lives of children NOT reacting and being wrong.

Yes, those involved need some education, but no more so than the author
regarding journalistic ethics, or the commenters here stirring up a witch-
hunt. You can see all the anti-Texan/Conservative/School/Government-ists
overreacting here right on cue.

~~~
mikeash
You're right that the reaction is explainable by pervasive CYA and the risk of
not reacting and being wrong.

However, you're missing that pervasive and institutional racism is a big part
of that risk.

Imagine a kid brings an actual bomb to school, the authorities don't react,
and he detonates it. Then what?

The kid's race is going to play a huge role in how that decision is analyzed
afterwards. If the kid was white then the discussion is likely to be of the
form, "We need better mental health treatment to catch this stuff early!" If
the kid was the wrong shade of brown then it's going to be, "He was obviously
a terrorist and the administration should be thrown in a hole for not taking
appropriate measures."

~~~
eldude
I'm not ignoring institutional racism, merely not assuming it, which is
consistent with the American justice system tenet of never presuming guilt,
even when you really want to and everyone around says you should.

You're making a lot of wild assertions that really are tangential and not
intellectually consistent with my original point that there are no facts
specific to this case to support the author's narrative, merely the
assumptions and presumptions you espouse.

~~~
mikeash
I love it when "guilty until proven innocent" gets brought up in internet
conversations, as if it were somehow the right way to have a conversation.

This isn't a court of law. Skepticism is, of course, always warranted, but
equating it with high principles of justice is ridiculous. We're not putting
someone in prison here.

And institutional racism against certain categories of brown people is far
beyond a mere assumption at this point. Just ask one of the many, many such
people who get "randomly" selected for additional security screening every
time they take a plane, for one random example.

You say that we shouldn't assume racism here because the incident is
adequately explained by CYA. I say that CYA is _not_ an adequate explanation
without also looking at race, because CYA would not have happened like this if
the kid had been white and named John Smith.

~~~
eldude
You're misunderstanding, mischaracterizing, and conflating your own arguments.

It's a rhetorical appeal to authority, so implicitly, in addition to anyone
who shares my respect for and identifies with the values of the American legal
heritage, I agree with it. Therefore, even though it has no direct
application, as you unnecessarily point out, it is a rhetorical convenience
for delineating our very different views of right and wrong.

You misunderstand / mischaracterize me in that despite the existence of
institutional racism, I think it is morally wrong and intellectually dishonest
to presume or even assert that the specific police are racist, without
personally specific supporting evidence.

    
    
        And institutional racism against certain categories of brown people is far beyond a mere assumption at this point.
    

Ha, ah yes, the old, "I'm not going to justify my stance, because anyone who
disagrees with me is self-evidently delusional." It must be nice to use
leverage your inclusion in the ideologically "privileged" majority as an
excuse to ignore the merits of my argument. Some would refer to this as a
microagression.

I'm not interested in engaging the rest of your arguments. It's not related to
my original point, there's too much material to cover, and we clearly have
wildly divergent views of right, wrong and what constitutes appropriate
treatment of the individual police officers in this situation.

I will say, to avoid being mischaracterized, that we are in agreement that the
student was mistreated. We merely draw different conclusions as to why. Mine
upon the specific facts; yours upon generic presumptions, assumptions,
assertions and other views that are not specific to this situation. As a
personal admission, I don't see any avenue for myself for effective
communication with someone that communicates as you have chosen here.

~~~
mikeash
Oh yes, the good old "my argument is based entirely on facts, while yours is
based entirely on nonsense, so they are not comparable."

Except I don't see a single fact in your original comment.

Sorry, but we're both in the same boat here. We're both making political
comments while bringing in our own biases based on a lot of assumptions about
how things went down. The difference is, I admit it.

~~~
eldude

        "my argument is based [...] on facts, [...] yours ... on nonsense, [they're] not comparable."
    

I said your stance was based on presumptions, mine on facts, which are by
definition incomparable since one is the basis for a conclusion, the other is
a search of evidence to fit a pre-concieved conclusion and is typically based
on prior context or experience.

    
    
        Except I don't see a single fact in your original comment.
    

Then you missed it. The TechCrunch author's controversializing use of race is
not supported by any specific facts and is merely a presumption based on
circumstantial evidence.

Now, we're in agreement that you believe presumptions are sufficient to reach
different conclusions, and I do not.

    
    
        while bringing in our own biases based on a lot of assumptions
    

You're confused and not following along. Not only do I make no assumptions on
this issue; that assumptions should never be made is my _whole point._

    
    
        The difference is, I admit it.
    

Your position is that we both make assumptions. My position is that
assumptions should not be made and that your stance is justly objectionable.
Do you see that admitting the above would not only be a self-contradiction,
but, in fact, it would be a reversal?

------
xacaxulu
The Nanny State didn't Show Up, You Hired It.

[http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3095062/posts](http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3095062/posts)

------
sgustard
This is the logical result of "if you see something, say something."

And, I can assure you that almost any science fair project found in a bathroom
or under a car would look suspicious. So would a backpack or cardboard box.

------
jobu
_" Because it consisted of a board with a digital display and a tiger hologram
on the front, the teacher recommended he hide it from the rest of the staff._"

Anyone know why the teacher had him hide it? Are they restricted from having
electronic devices and toys at school? Is it because the teacher thought it
looked suspicious?

Either way it's unfortunate that the teacher didn't just ask to hold on to it
until after school was out. If one reasonable adult had stood up for him
before another adult freaked then it may not have been an issue.

------
andygambles
POTUS liked it
[https://twitter.com/potus/status/644193755814342656](https://twitter.com/potus/status/644193755814342656)

------
jonnyisbad
Condition 1. As long as teachers are drawn from most the lowest deciles of the
graduating class, this will continue.

Condition 2. As long as we fail to value the education of children, Condition
1 will continue

Condition 3. As long as the majority of parent perceive that the life outcome
of their children are less important than the parent's own desires for money,
assets, sexual intercourse and self validation, Condition 2 will continue

Condition 4. As long we are humans, Condition 3 will continue.

Iterate ad infinitum ( or recurse if you love Lambda )

------
brianmcconnell
Next time he should build a cuckoo clock that shouts Allahu Akbar.

------
sarne777
This doesn't surprise me. People are paranoid about bombs and terrorism, and
most average people have never seen an exposed circuit board. To them anything
with a circuit board and wires looks like the bombs they've seen on TV. I've
had an arduino hooked up to an ipod for an art installation confiscated by
police. Of course part of the problem was lack of communication by the
administrators who had given approval for the project.

------
ChuckMcM
This sort of thing is very sad, and a symptom of a larger problem. School
district policy is a largely political process with a variety of actors with
their agendas involved. Making effective change involves people with children
in those schools coming together and making their opinions known. We have had
a couple of successes in the bay area using NextDoor as a communication portal
for this sort of activism.

------
ignoramous
I find 'Refuse to be Terrorized' by Bruce Schneier to be an excellent account
of mindset of people in a post 9/11 world:
[http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securi...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/08/71642?currentPage=all)

------
chromaton
I'd love to send this kid a gift certificate for some free waterjet and laser
cutting. Does anyone know how to get in touch with the family?

~~~
marnett
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWK...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWKfY3XLPBgbHaZDy3k/viewform?c=0&w=1)

here is a google doc where you can tell them just that yourself (:

------
danjayh
Anyone have any actual technical details on what Mohamed built? Judging from
the pics I've seen, it's clearly a commercial PCB. I'm wondering if maybe he
worked out a power supply or display driver himself or if he simply re-homed a
commercial clock into a cooler case... I don't expect that anyone in the
'news' actually cares enough to go into detail.

------
CIPHERSTONE
When tasked with the protection of human capital, it's not a big surprise that
the administration takes the most extreme response when confronted with
uncertainty. That being said, the Engineering professor could have prevented
the whole situation if he had just kept it in his class for the rest of the
day instead of advising the student to "hide it".

------
mc32
Making while brown, really? That's the best explosive phrase they could come
up with?

Maybe it was stereotyping of one kind of another or maybe not. When Asians or
whites are arrested under questionable judgement is it also appropriate to say
making while while or Asian?

Dammit, there is an injustice here, but going inflammatory is not helpful. Who
does the editing for tv? Are the awol?

------
riebschlager
What's _incredibly_ sad to me is all the kids whose parents wouldn't let them
leave the house with a homemade clock.

"What are you doing? If you take that to school they'll think it's a bomb!"

Even Ahmed's engineering teacher advised him not to show his clock to any
other teachers. Fear and suspicion are the default now. That's heartbreaking.

~~~
meric
The war on terror is over. Terror has won. The people of America are
terrified. Osama bin laden has successfully dragged U.S. into conflicts in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq(there would be no war if not for 9/11), ISIS(who
appeared from power vacuum left by U.S.) and Syria. U.S. has spent trillions
fighting wars and maintaining bureaucracies' expansions that feed on the
terror of the American people, and in return through security theatre further
encourage this terror. U.S. is in a positive terror feedback loop. It is a
kind of hell the U.S. nation state will never escape.

On the plus side, where the end is coming into sight, so is a new beginning.

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

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

------
narner
So, what can be done to help this kid? What can be done to make sure he
doesn't lose his love of learning?

------
ipsin
Perhaps the correct response would be to ban circuit boards and items
containing circuit boards from school grounds.

This would be quite educational, as everyone learned the hard way that cars,
clocks, cell phones, loudspeakers, and so forth are packed with "threatening"
fake bombs.

------
rebootthesystem
> Ahmed was arrested for making while brown

This line really bothers me. Probably because I simply don't think this way. I
don't see color in people.

It is because of this, perhaps wrongly, that I can't accept the idea that this
kid was arrested because he is brown. I think a white kid would have been
arrested just the same.

Why?

Because the problem, as I see it, is our schools, in some areas, are bastions
of ignorance. And this goes beyond K12 into colleges and university.

The problem in this case is an "Engineering" teacher who probably isn't
anything close to an engineer. In other words, incapable of evaluating what
the kid actually built. For this teacher what was in this little box might as
well have been alien technology.

Why do I say this? Because it would have taken any engineer all 30 seconds
--if that-- to understand what this kid built.

This could not have been the first time this kid brought some of his work to
school. It sounds like he is really into making stuff. His "Engineering"
teacher should have known this and should have known his profile.

My oldest kid had a "robotics" class in middle school. In quotes because the
teacher would come into the room, sit down and browse the 'net on her iPad
while the kids did whatever they wanted. She got to earn extra cash by
pretending to teach this class. The union protected her from any potential
consequence of her ineptitude. The only reason the other kids learned anything
is because my son actually taught them (we have an FLL table in our living
room).

Now in college, he's come across the same sort of thing. A calculus 1
"professor" who quite literally copies from the book onto the blackboard and
will not answer any questions during class. Students are asked to write the
questions down and they might be answered during the next class. She clearly
knows nothing. And, to be politically incorrect, is likely to have gotten her
job due to "equal opportunity" rules. If I didn't devote a serious amount of
time to help my kid Calculus he would have come out of that semester way
behind in his understanding. I feel sorry for the other kids if they didn't
have a parent with the requisite knowledge and the time to do the teacher's
job at home.

Yet in another case, a professor in an arts class devoted half of nearly every
class meeting to a monologue about her ongoing attempts to become an actress,
professional dancer, whatever. No tests. No teaching. Just ranting about
various aspects of her personal life every class. At the end everyone got an
A. Sad. Truly sad.

There are many problems with our schools. I feel a huge part of it has to do
with ignorance, incompetence and union contracts that prevent us from a
"survival of the fittest" approach to evolving good schools with truly
intelligent, well-informed, balanced, knowledgeable teachers.

Then there's the deeper political element. Teaching, K12 through University,
is largely populated with a wide spectrum of people of Liberal ideology. There
was a study [2] that concluded some majors have a ratio of 44:1 in favor of
left to extreme-left teachers. And, with that, comes the use of their position
to indoctrinate kids --consciously or not.

If you don't think this is a problem, please take a moment to go through the
mental exercise of inverting that ratio. How about 44:1 extreme right
teachers? Or, today's favorite punching bag, 44:1 Islamic extremist teachers?

Right. The extremes are not good for anybody. Before you jump-up in joy if you
like the idea of academia being permeated by left-leaning teachers you need to
take a rocket up to low earth orbit and consider what that looks like from
many points of view and what the consequences of a mono-ideology might have on
society. As an Atheist and moderate Libertarian I feel I am firmly rooted
somewhere around the center of both ideologies in many ways. I am with most
Liberal social ideas while wanting to see less government intervention and a
Conservative fiscal approach to things. Having a 44:1 ratio of teachers
pushing one ideology on the kids is a bad thing, no matter where you are
standing.

And so, there's also a high likelihood that the teachers who are ignorant,
acted like morons and had this kid arrested are Liberal and highly intolerant
[1]. Nobody wants to talk about how, for some strange reason, the Left has
become the most intolerant group over the last several decades. Principles are
great to put down on paper, but, if you don't follow them, what do they mean?

This kid was arrested due to everyone around him being ignorant morons.

A few videos to consider:

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTd4-WXw2SM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTd4-WXw2SM)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVE-7OFk_tk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVE-7OFk_tk)

~~~
teraflop
> This line really bothers me. Probably because I simply don't think this way.
> I don't see color in people. It is because of this, perhaps wrongly, that I
> can't accept the idea that this kid was arrested because he is brown.

If you really "don't see color", then that's commendable. If you don't think
it's possible that _other_ people see color -- well, that's just willful
ignorance.

The rest of your comment is irrelevant speculation. You have no idea about the
political backgrounds of the teachers of this school. And if _I_ had to
speculate, I wouldn't think it's likely that you'd find a lot of hard-line
liberal teachers in a suburban Texas high school, in a town whose mayor is
notoriously anti-Islam. [1] In any case, it wasn't the teachers who put this
kid in handcuffs and interrogated him, it was the cops.

I'm not going to watch a couple of hour-long videos of talking heads, but I'm
well aware that people like Sam Harris believe liberals are "intolerant" of
anti-Islam sentiment. I'm struggling to see how it's relevant to this issue.

[1] [http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-
dall...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-
county/headlines/20150319-national-islamic-furor-focuses-on-irving-vote-
tonight.ece)

~~~
rebootthesystem
> If you don't think it's possible that other people see color -- well, that's
> just willful ignorance.

I didn't say that anywhere. Yes, of course, bigots do exist.

Perhaps the greater point is that we shouldn't jump at any conclusions,
including one that proposes this kid was singled-out because of the color of
his skin or his religion. Nobody knows, right?

I am proposing it was ignorance on the part of the teachers, particularly the
Engineering teacher.

Had I been in that position I would have had the kid do a full presentation in
front of the class on how he built the clock and how it worked and perhaps see
about having him teach the other kids how to build their own in school or as a
home project.

Had other teachers expressed concern I would have said something like "Calm
down, he is a great kid who'd been tinkering with technology for years. We
need to encourage him, not smash him down. He just build a fantastic clock.
How about everyone learns from him.".

Then again, that's me. A non-engineer engineering teacher might think he is
looking at Martian technology that could end life on the planet.

This kid should not have suffered one bit due to the ignorance of the adults
that surrounded him at school.

Beyond that, I think about what he said in the video: They took him into a
room with five cops who interrogated him. I, as a parent, would be angry
beyond description for that alone.

------
CodeSheikh
And then teachers (some of them at least) complain why are they getting paid
less? Go figure...

------
SimplyUseless
This is so wrong! Instead of encouraging tinkerers, schools have become a
dumbing-machine.

------
jbob2000
All parents should send their kids to school with clocks tomorrow as a show of
support.

------
jeo1234
The case seems a little reminiscent of what happened to Aaron Swartz, large
bureaucracy is unable to understand what someone is doing and so it attacks
them. Fortunately it appears that the outcome will not be tragic.

------
noipv4
I feel so sorry for the kid :( I used to make my own beeping LED flashers with
BC109C transistors and AA batteries when I was his age, and brought them to
school to show my friends how cool electronics is.

------
digitalneal
And now, every time that kid thinks about pushing the limits of his own
personal education, he will reflect on this event and think twice. Will his
effort be worth the outcome. Sad day. Very sad day.

------
keithflower
President Obama just tweeted: "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the
White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what
makes America great."

------
ilamont
Ahmed and his family have started a twitter account, @IStandWithAhmed:

[https://twitter.com/IStandWithAhmed](https://twitter.com/IStandWithAhmed)

------
kyleblarson
Texas doesn't deserve this young man. Come on up to Seattle.

~~~
saryant
By all means, paint 20 million people with the same brush.

~~~
vacri
You make it sound like Texas has no other stories about a regressive education
system.

~~~
saryant
Having grown up in the California school system and then moved to Texas I can
assure you that is not an attribute unique to Texas.

------
InclinedPlane
Did they call the bomb squad? Nope, they never believed it was a _real_ bomb.
Did he ever claim it was a bomb? Nope, never.

Somehow they still claim that Ahmed made a "hoax bomb".

------
PythonicAlpha
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!

------
wedesoft
At my school somebody _did_ build a small time bomb and he made it go off in
the dust bin at the playground. Even then the police didn't get involved.

------
aresant
Reddit turned up a picture of the clock

[http://i.imgur.com/jGZ8RBU.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/jGZ8RBU.jpg)

------
noobie
Reminds of that time where I ordered an Arduino online only to have it stuck
and ceased at customs because terrorists that's why.

------
jkestner
1) Nerdism is stronger than religion or race. 2) We need younger teachers who
don’t think circuitboards are bombs.

------
moo
Why aren't these good officers out looking for Flavor Flav? I mean, let's stop
all this nonsense.

------
crikli
Public educators frequently make stronger arguments for home-schooling than I
ever could.

------
davidgerard
Engineering While Brown.

~~~
TheCondor
And while jade helm is still in effect.... The kid with the homemade clock was
how "it" was to begin.

------
bkeating
Make Magazine should put him on the cover of their next issue.

------
EmpressNicole
I really hope that the teacher gets fired for this stupidity

~~~
seanalltogether
The press release from the school tells you everything about how they view
this situation. They took a bad course of action, and now they're going into
overdrive to justify why everything the adults did is ok. They'll probably add
even more restrictions on what students can bring to school to make sure they
don't look like fools again.

------
slr555
When they outlaw clocks only outlaws will be on time.

------
marze
Sounds like the four "arresting officers" were so ignorant they didn't know
that you need explosive material, not just a trigger, to form a bomb.

------
joncp
No, he was arrested because his name is Ahmed Mohamed. The clock was just the
pretense.

------
thisway
This guy fucks

------
elektromekatron
_" What are you doing out?"_

"Walking," said Leonard Mead.

 _" Walking!"_

"Just walking," he said simply, but his face felt cold.

 _" Walking, just walking, walking?"_

"Yes, sir."

 _" Walking where? For what?"_

"Walking for air. Walking to see."

 _" Your address!"_

"Eleven South Saint James Street."

 _" And there is air in your house, you have an air conditioner, Mr. Mead?"_

"Yes."

 _" And you have a viewing screen in your house to see with?"_

"No."

 _" No?"_ There was a crackling quiet that in itself was an accusation.

 _" Are you married, Mr. Mead?"_

 _" No."_

 _" Not married,"_ said the police voice behind the fiery beam, The moon was
high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.

"Nobody wanted me," said Leonard Mead with a smile.

 _" Don't speak unless you're spoken to!"_

Leonard Mead waited in the cold night.

 _" Just walking, Mr. Mead?"_

"Yes."

 _" But you haven't explained for what purpose."_

\---

Excerpted from Ray Bradbury's short story 'The Pedestrian'.

For fairly obvious and somewhat depressing reasons.

~~~
mikeash
Until I got to "viewing screen" I thought this was going to be a transcript of
some real police encounter. (I didn't notice "but his face felt cold.")

------
venomsnake
I guess he realizes how lucky he is, that he had not had his soldering gun on
him. He would have been shot on sight. /not sure if sarcastic, sadly.

And back in the day we played with sodium, benzene, nitroglycerin, nitrogen
triodide as part of the curriculum.

With the way current students are treated - the surprising thing about pupils
going postal, is that so few of them are.

On the other hand that is a great way to incubate terrorists. Local and
organic.

------
notNow
What really strikes about this story is the fact that Ahmad was the party who
came forward to the teacher and notified him of his invention and even demoed
it but that wasn't enough for the school staff to deter suspicions since and
this elementary school logic level if he were intent on doing harm, he would
have concealed completely the fact that he built such a device and kept the
info to himself without sharing with anybody till the operation is carried
out.

But apparently everything is indeed BIGGER in Texas and this applies to
stupidity, ignorance and prejudice as well.

------
joesmo
So how do we get his idiot school admin fired? That's the only way to fix this
now. He's essentially marked the kid for life now with an arrest record
because of his own stupidity. If our society doesn't punish these people (and
it doesn't) then this would be a good use for Twitter shaming. He deserves to
lose his job.

------
PopeOfNope
This post is a living embodiment of this CGP Grey video[0].

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

------
AC__
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'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.

~~~
HCIdivision17
In the little video, it looks like a lot of it was just cannibalized parts.
I'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'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't elegant, but I wouldn't make a kid feel bad
for trying.

------
sklogic
Why would anybody be surprised by a pumpkin-positive cop? They're explicitly
selected this way: [http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-
cops/sto...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-
cops/story?id=95836)

------
powertower
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), in defense of Ahmed - that is, if it made sense,
otherwise they would not. And I have not been able to find an image, nor a
good description.

3\. The initial teacher told him not to show it to anyone. You can break this
down into that teacher having one of two opinions: A) It really did look like
a bomb or B) its all about racism / hate / being anti-Muslim / anti-brown in
that school (check the school's panel
[http://www.irvingisd.net/domain/2031](http://www.irvingisd.net/domain/2031)
\- that school is half brown and black).

~~~
mikeash
You're assuming that it actually looked like a bomb.

It clearly did not. (There are pictures linked elsewhere in this comment
thread, so you can see.) What happened is that a bunch of complete idiots
_thought_ it looked like a bomb, only because they have no idea what a bomb
looks like, and they are additionally ignorant of their own ignorance.

------
it_learnses
The situation sucks, but I find it so amazing, the outpouring of support for
the boy from everybody! Hopefully his faith in people will be restored.

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

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

------
curiousjorge
only in america

------
minusSeven
this is fucked up beyond belief.

------
InfiniteEntropy
'Murica.

------
werber
I guess we can add science-ing while brown to the list of de facto racist laws
in america

------
sakri
This story is at 1 and 2 on both reddit and Hacker News. Why is this so
interesting?

~~~
coldtea
Because it's a person making something, authority denying him that for stupid
reasons, etc. It has all the elements of something that appeals to hackers (in
the "maker" sense).

But seriously, if you have to ask you will never know. This is more of a "you
get it or not" thing, related to how HN's targeted demographic feels on such
issues.

~~~
sakri
I'm not a banker or a lawyer, I get the story bro, I just don't recall ever
seeing a story reach 1&2 in both places at the same time. I would maybe expect
the discovery of extra terrestrial life to get that kind of fascination.

------
briandherbert
Wow, this thread makes me ashamed to be nerd. It's all bashing the
intelligence of administrators/educators while hypocritically trying to make
the point that we shouldn't scorn groups of people. "Hey, kid, if a person
can't tell a clock circuit from a bomb, it invalidates all their motives and
education."

------
fasteddie31003
<sarcasm>Hey maybe bomb making might be correlated with success in Silicon
Valley [http://valleywag.gawker.com/peter-thiel-admits-the-paypal-
ma...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/peter-thiel-admits-the-paypal-mafia-built-
bombs-in-hi-1632734435) </sarcasm>

------
ausjke
I have kids at school and I'm actually for the responses from the teachers,
yes it's overacting and could be dealt with _much_ better, but being overly
alert on this is better than ignorant.

and it's better to show it at his house instead of at school for things like
this I feel.

~~~
slayed0
"things like this"

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.

~~~
exodust
Where did you get the idea it was "approved"?

Let's look at the facts...

1\. His own engineering teacher "suggested that he not show the invention to
other teachers." 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't explain what it was all about, and was
described as playing "passive aggressive".

4\. He calls it an "invention", but a digital clock in a case is not an
invention. He's 14 years old, not 8. There's nothing inventive about it.

5\. Admitted in the video he chose a "simple cable" to lock the case so it
"wouldn't look threatening". So let'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's smart, which apparently he is, then he should move on from clocks in
cases to something that approaches an actual invention.

~~~
slayed0
_" Ahmed, for his part, wanted to bring the clock to show an engineering
teacher. Because it consisted of a board with a digital display and a tiger
hologram on the front, the teacher recommended he hide it from the rest of the
staff."_

This statement implies there was a conversation with the teacher before
bringing it in and that the teacher told him to bring it, but to not bring it
out in other classes/in front of other teachers.

Your other points are not even worth replying to and border on trolling.
You're upset that he didn't invent something new at 14? Building a homemade
clock is too simple for his age and only 8 year olds should do it? This is one
of the most insane posts I've ever seen on HN.

------
joeclark77
So... kid with an Arabic name, whose father is a belligerent Islamist known to
the townspeople to rail against imagined anti-Muslim racists in the town
square, shows up at school with a homemade electronic device with a timer on
the front of it. He takes someone's bad advice to conceal it under his
clothing, and walks into a classroom where it starts _beeping_.

I think reasonable people can understand why the police might have been
called.

It was of course _unreasonable_ for the police to have actually arrested the
boy, once they found out what they were dealing with. Reading between the
lines though, maybe the article's use of "arrested" just means they took the
kid home to his parents.

~~~
kaitai
The father is an anti-Islamist. Anti. It means opposite. The guy is
sufficiently anti-Islamist to go run for president of Sudan. That takes some
dedication.

Muslim != Islamist, just as Christian != Westboro Baptist.

~~~
joeclark77
The article said the father is outspoken _against_ (presumably imaginary)
anti-Islamic policies.

You may not know this, but Sudan is ruled by its Muslim, Arab north and is
often quite happy to enslave or murder the black Christians in its south.
Hardly a model of an anti-Islamist republic.

~~~
jcromartie
I'm not sure what kind of policies he's outspoken against, but if someone is
against policies that they perceive to be hostile to Muslims, how does that
make them Islamists who want to establish Islamic rule?

He is a Sufi (mystic, esoteric) and more than a bit eccentric. I saw his brand
of Islam described as "New Testament" elsewhere. He has tried to argue
(contrary to most Islamic scholarship) that the earlier peaceful Meccan
sections actually abrogate the later warlike Medinan sections of the Quran. I
don't think he's any sort of Islamist at all.

"He says he has serious issues with the hardline, traditional readings of the
text, and he's writing a book about his reading of the Koran -- with working
titles like Jesus Among Us With the Quran, or The New Understanding of the
Quran."

[http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/why-mohamed-elhassan-
the-...](http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/why-mohamed-elhassan-the-dallas-
imam-who-played-defense-attorney-in-quran-torching-church-says-he-admires-
terry-jones-7130292)

------
exodust
Sounds like he was asking for it.

Notice in the video he says "he used a simple cable to lock it so it wouldn't
look like a threat".

People are forgetting that there's nothing impressive about a "clock in a
case". He called it an "invention". Sorry kid, you're 14, not 8. Nothing
inventive about sticking a digital clock in a case.

His own engineering teacher suggested he not show it to other teachers. So
what does he do? Takes it to English class where it makes beeping noises. Real
smart kid, real smart.

It's a clock in a case. NASA are not interested.

Then, when first questioned he was apparently "passive aggressive", not
explaining why he made it or why he brought it to school. Gee kid, you're
really making all the smart moves.

Ask yourself, why would his own teacher suggest he not show it to other
teachers? Here's why... his "invention" looked dodgy as all hell.

Hashtag "I'm not standing with this kid, not this time".

~~~
ajross
I can't see anywhere in that diatribe where he was asking to be arrested. The
outrage is at the reaction here, not the kids level of martyrdom. We still
aren't supposed to arrest 14 year old jerks with PCBs.

~~~
exodust
I'm sure it's always diatribe when you don't agree.

"Asking for trouble" is what I mean. The default processes in the USA are not
what I'm talking about, but everyone here is defending his "right to be
creative". Nobody is saying "hang on, he put a clock in a case, brought it to
school, not part of any school project, advised not to show it around, showed
it around anyway and was passive aggro when asked about it".

He was asking for trouble, and got it.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
> showed it around anyway

A teacher discovered it when it beeped. I'm not sure how you've lept from that
to "showed it around".

EDIT:

> and was passive aggro when asked about it

I'm not sure where you got this from either.

~~~
exodust
> 'I'm not sure where you got this from either.'

The police officer was quoted as saying he was "passive aggressive" when
questioned about the device.

~~~
sirtaj
Haha wow, have you ever met a 14-year-old?

~~~
exodust
Yes I have.

The point was that the police said he acted very differently in his video than
he did when questioned.

We've only seen his victim video. And finally his clock...

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/10BF6/production/_85589586_16e23342-6ce7-4c4f-b176-88d94cf667b3.jpg)

