Schneier on Security

thevoid • September 17, 2015 7:11 AM

@tarikq

good points. obviously they musn’t have actually thought it was a bomb, or they were extrememly negligent.

@all

the hysteria has obviously gotten worse, but is nothing new. i recall when i was in high school (in the 90’s) that we had a ‘bomb scare’ that was nothing more than someone’s casette player that, when it reached the end of the tape and still was playing, would make a clicking sound (rather then automatically stopping). it was in a locker, and someone heard it and thought BOMB! and we had to be evacuated. today that kid would have probably been arrested, because his cassette player was accidently left on play…

another time, someone phoned in a threat, and we were duly evacuated then as well.

but this case is insane (but not surprising, even more insane things have been happening in past years, like 6 year olds being handcuffed, etc).

the teacher kept this ‘bomb’, and he was arrested even though obviously nobody REALLY thought it was a bomb. does anybody at that school or in the police actually have a brain capable of logical reasoning? (rhetorical, few have such capabilities anymore).

Boyd said Ahmed was then handcuffed ?for his safety and for the safety of the officers?

Asked if the teen?s religious beliefs factored into his arrest, Boyd said the reaction ?would have been the same? under any circumstances.

i believe that is true to some degree. some people still think ‘columbine’, not just ‘911’.

i think maybe the muslim angle got people more paranoid, but the idea that this wouldn’t happen to a white anglo too is bull. maybe there is a lesser chance, but it would still happen. police brutalize innocent white people too for no good reason, maybe less than black folk, but it happens.

?We live in an age where you can?t take things like that to school,? he said. ?Of course we?ve seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution.?

things like what? are there rules about homemade clocks? are there definitions of ‘suspicious’ available so we know? or is this just more secret laws you are just supposed to know? something i understand well having Aspergers. you are expected to follow rules you don’t know, and noone will tell you what they are (sometimes because they don’t know themselves, consciously at least), so i am particularly sympathetic.

so we are supposed to know what is suspicious in other people’s minds, so that we can avoid it? shades of kafka.

i guess wires and circuit boards are suspicious. so as @Archon said:

If anyone from that county whines about not having enough STEM students I will punch them right through the Internet.

?That is not America,? Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed said of his son?s humiliation after being handcuffed in front of his classmates.

it is now, and has been for a while… i (and most here) can remember a time when it wasn’t, but there is a whole generation entering the ‘real world’ who have known nothing else.

The teen said he hasn?t spoken to anyone from MacArthur High, where he was suspended until Thursday.

and what, precisely, did he do? not use his crystal ball to know people would flip out over nothing? or i guess he scared people, intentional or not, so he must be punished.

i mean, WE (experienced, politically aware adults) ‘know better’, but he’s a fucking kid.

?We were doing everything with an abundance of caution to protect all of our students in Irving,? she said.

contradicted by the fact that they did not evacuate. my own pre-911 experience would lead me to believe this is standard.

Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne took to Facebook to defend the actions of the school district and police … ?I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat,? Van Duyne wrote. ?We have all seen terrible and violent acts committed in schools. … Perhaps some of those could have been prevented and lives could have been spared if people were more vigilant.? The mayor later amended her post, acknowledging that she would be ?very upset? had the same thing happened to her own child.

Josh Earnest, Obama’s press secretary, said the case goes to show how stereotypes can cloud the judgment of even the most ?good-hearted people.?

i still maintain this wasn’t an exclusively muslim thing. being smart is more ‘suspicious’ to many people.

but people who are willing to persecute others based on hollywood stereotypes do not qualify as ‘good-hearted’ in my book.

there are many fair-weather ‘good-hearted people’. it’s in these cases you find out if a person REALLY has a good heart, because truly good-hearted people don’t do such things, because they know it’s not ok to treat people badly for no reason (and hollywood drivel is no reason).

So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb ? though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it?s a clock.

?She was like, it looks like a bomb,? he said.

?I told her, ?It doesn?t look like a bomb to me.??

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn?t get it back.

‘looks like a bomb’? these idiots watch too much TV.

so the crime is not knowing what his idiot teachers may think?

you can’t KNOW what other people are going to think about something. my mother thinks she’s ‘white’ (and being 96+% northern european would argue in her favor), but she looks American Indian (some think hispanic). i know cases where she was treated differently because of that, but it never dawned on her that other people don’t see her as white, because that’s how she sees herself– and rightfully so (despite skin color, etc she’s whiter than many white people).

this young’n built a clock, and saw it as a clock, because that’s what it was. but… he should have known what everybody else would think about it.

He loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school.

this speaks to his real intent. what HE was thinking. but instead of just building things, he should have been spending his time (uselessly) thinking about what other people MAY think.

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an
officer he?d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: ?Yup.
That?s who I thought it was.?

i don’t doubt racism had a part, but i can imagine the same thing being said to my celto-germanic self (because i tend not to conform). alot of seeming racism is probably more other-ism than anything (racism being a subset of other-ism). this may speak only to that particular officer’s racism, and not necessarily what prompted the situation.

?They were like, ?So you tried to make a bomb??? Ahmed said.

?I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.?

?He said, ?It looks like a movie bomb to me.??

i’m sure these idiots don’t realize how stupid they sound. ‘looks like a movie bomb to me’. seriously? (granted this is the kid’s account, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that is what they actually said. bush administration officials were using the show ’24’ as both inspiration and justification, so they themselves said.)

Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, said police spokesman James McLellan. And police have no reason to think it was dangerous. But officers still didn?t believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.

?We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,? McLellan said. ?He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.?

Asked what broader explanation the boy could have given, the spokesman explained:

?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??

and the question of what broader explanation could have been given was ignored, and instead, this tripe: ‘it could be mistaken … if X’. except none of that relates to what ACTUALLY happened.

so what ‘broader explanation’ did they want? this kid just started high school a couple of weeks ago, you can imagine he is not that sophisticated, but maybe he is at fault again for not reading minds or having left his crystal ball at home. he wasn’t giving them the ‘right’ explanation, to their minds.

and yet, there is still no reference to the building being evacuated. so they didn’t REALLY think it was a threat. and if the only crime was a ‘hoax bomb’, what was the need for being led out in handcuffs with an officer on either side? if it was a hoax, was he really such a threat?

as an aside, i like Greenwald less every time i read him, he’s almost as
opinionated as Bill O’Reilly, just on the other end.