Jophiel wrote:
Yeah, no one thought it was a bomb. But it seems that you can just say something looks like a "hoax bomb" because it has a circuit board and a display. Like a calculator. Or a digital watch. Or a hand held gaming device. Or a a phone. Or a tablet. Or a coffee maker. Or a digital thermometer. Or those old digital pets. Or... a clock.
Sigh. If someone takes those things apart, spreads the components around inside a box, and then wires them together, then yes, some people will think that looks like a bomb. Certainly, most people would think that's out of place. The standard here is "if a random student or faculty member saw this sitting unattended, is it likely they might think it's a bomb (or some other dangerous device)?". If the answer is "yes", then the item isn't something a student should be taking to school, unannounced, and carrying around with out teacher knowledge and supervision.
The answer, clearly, is "yes". I know many of you have latched so firmly onto the "profiled Muslim kid" narrative that you just don't want to see this, but this is the reality. Leave that same device lying around in a school, and someone will tell the faculty that they saw something that looks like it might be a bomb. And the faculty response to that isn't to go check out the device to see if it's a bomb, but to immediately evacuate the school and call the bomb squad. Because their first priority is the safety of the students, not making sure that they don't make a mistake. You can always fix the mistake in the other direction, but if you hesitate, and it is a bomb, people will die.
No one believed this was a bomb. What they believed was that it was something that could be mistaken for a bomb, and therefore should not have been taken to school. I'm really not sure why so many people are having such a hard time understanding this.
Quote:
The standard is apparently "So long as I arbitrarily say it looks like a bomb despite all logic and common sense, that's a good enough reason to have you arrested and taken off in handcuffs. And it'll be your fault for being 'foolish' enough to have brought it."
Despite all common sense and logic? Are you kidding? Because of common sense and logic. Again, leave such a device lying around at a school unattended, and see what happens. You can sit there and declare that no one would ever think it might be a bomb, but the fact is that most people would. More importantly, it only takes *one* person to think it might be a bomb. So how about instead of creating a standard where 100% of all people who might see something must be educated enough about electronics to be able to accurately determine if something is or isn't a bomb, we adopt a standard that says that we should avoid leaving stuff lying around that looks out of place, even if we know it's not dangerous. It's terrifically easy after the fact, when you know it was just a taken apart clock, to be so sure that it wasn't a bomb, and therefore no one could possibly mistake it for such, but that's just plain wrong. Bomb squads get called to investigate
harmless devices whenever some random person *thinks* they aren't harmless.
I find
this image to be relevant here. Can you honestly say that if you hadn't already seen the picture of this kids clock, you'd be able to identify which of these devices isn't an IED? I don't think very many people could.