https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

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

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.

Then again, this is Texas.

Remember the Aqua Teen Hunger Force "bomb" scare in Boston? The city rigorously pursued legal action to spare their police department the embarrassment of having wasted millions of dollars carefully dismantling DIY Lite-Brites.

"Though city prosecutors eventually concluded there was no ill intent involved in the placing of the ads, the city continues to refer to the event as a "bomb hoax" rather than a "scare." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare

The boy's father is from Sudan and is well known for being outspoken against anti-Islamic policies. To an unworldly south/midwesterner that spells "potential terrorist". It's not too much of a stretch to see that diagnosis extended to the son.

The school admins reacted as stereo typically badly as they could have hoped. It should have been assessed quickly and immediately removed from the school. Instead it just got stupid quick.

So this father will now get images of himself with his son with our President. We get some immediate attention to the horrible plight of Muslims in America (there isn't any horrible plight other than some people don't trust them)....

No but embarrassment may explain quite a lot of it.

Calling it a hoax bomb is ass covering by shifting the blame to the person who happens to be the only adult in that bumfuck town's government.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - 1973, Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

What worried me is where is the engineering teacher he first showed the clock to? He or she could've clarified everything in 5 seconds.

And why would you have to be an engineering teacher to presume innocence here? This is a school; anyone involved should have been able to clarify everything in 5 seconds, even without the child explaining himself.

Welcome to 'murrica, kid. You better learn to censor yourself.

Who knows what kind of subversive ideas he might come up with if he's allowed to continue to think for himself.

Happened to me when I was a kid. Opened a DOS prompt. Was labelled a dangerous mind.

It may also be a Southern thing though.

So, in the craigslist example, many American people are afraid because there is overwhelming evidence that craigslist robberies A) really do happen with some significant frequency and B) meeting at a public place is a simple, low-effort way of mitigating that risk. I can understand people living in lower crime areas not worrying about craigslist robberies (though I would take the precautions anywhere because it is so simple).

However, in general, I would agree with you that Americans eat up FUD. You can see it in our DHS/TSA, the Patriot Act, collective disinterest in the Snowden leaks, and general anti-Muslim sentiments.

[0]: http://wlfi.com/2015/08/18/man-robbed-at-gunpoint-while-meet...

[1]: http://wlfi.com/2015/08/18/lafayette-adds-monitored-exchange...

Also, for some reason, whenever something bad happens, the US seems to respond with bigger countermeasures, more stringent laws and heftier punishments. Europeans are amazed when they read that children are sometimes threatened with tens of years of jailtime for relatively small incidents.

The reason why you don't have to be afraid when dealing with Craigslist in europe is that guns are rare, as is gun violence.

But I'm sure some will just buy another gun to feel safer. Isn't that the standard argument after a serial shooting? The first victim should have had a gun, then this wouldn't have happened... that's as perverse as it gets!

Is there evidence, or media reporting well beyond the actual rate of occurrence?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-15190563

There's no relative scarcity of ignorant and authoritarian schoolteachers, but consequences are likely to be confined to school, not involve law enforcement, and parents and pupils are more likely to knuckle down rather than fight or go to the press.

So, taking "such behaviour" much more broadly than this specific incident (and of course granting that Europe is a big and diverse place) - if a kid is found hacking school networks, or distributing a satirical magazine, or bringing possibly inappropriate or dangerous items to school, the schools are just as likely to crack down (even if it infringes the pupil's legal rights) but the matter is likely to end there without ruining the pupil's education. Or making the school administration change its behaviour.

Personally I think the situation as I have described it is favourable. Ideally schools wouldn't be administered by petty tyrants, but as long as everyone finishes their education with a blank slate it's fine. Keeping the police away from schools as much as possible would be a good start.

I see a few possible causes:

– 9/11 was a much bigger attack than anything that happened on European soil

– there is a more influential lobby for militarisation/criminalisation in the US

– Americans are more fearful

– America is more democratic. As such, the unfounded fears of parts of the population (on both sides of the Atlantic) are less likely to be buffered by the more rational thinking of experts

and, my favourite:

– Americans love excitement and violence & it is amplified by the media. Nothing better than a bomb scare on FOX.

Do you have any sources to back up that claim?

It this really their line of thinking? Or did you just deduce this from their actions, i.e. that they seem to think that way?

"Irving police might still charge Ahmed with making a "hoax bomb." Police spokesperson James McLellan said Ahmed "kept maintaining it was a clock" when he was brought in for interrogation, but that he offered "no broader explanation.""

Somewhat related, for a little sense of perspective. I studied E/E in Northern Ireland in the early 90's. I was regularly stopped by armed British Soldiers and searched. Invariably I have some half finished project in my bag. Could easily be passed off as bomb material. All it took was a simple explanation and I was on my way in 5 minutes.

This was a place where actual bombs were being set off on a weekly basis. But, the 'keep calm and carry on' mentality is what persevered. The US seems like it's becoming more of a Police State than N.I. ever was.

I checked twice before crossing the road and a nearby cop car spun around and stopped me saying I had done a double-take when I saw them and they needed to search me.

Turns out the client I was off to see was a porn magazine and I have a bunch of their product in my bag. The nice police officer didn't even blink when she saw that. Perhaps everyone i the City is carrying around lots of porn with them in the middle of the day?

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_steel_(London)

They need to show intent. They cannot just show that others were in fear.

So it seems like they don't have a legitimate case, although "the ride" is often used to get guilty pleas out of otherwise innocent people (i.e. they would lock the kid up pending trial, delay trial, the parents may not be able to afford lawyer fees, so he might plead down to a lesser charge to get out even if the original charge is complete nonsense).

That is pretty standard fare for the US legal system these days. 95% plea rates, 7 minutes of public defender time on average per client, and so on and so forth.

But my 17-year-old brother doesn't live under a racist cloud of "probably a terrorist."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/03/06/6-year-old-finge...

Of course they have. However, the authorities everywhere don't consistently flip their wigs—certainly not as badly as this—every time a student does something like bringing in this project. So the fact that they wigged out badly in this particular case probably—not certainly, but really pretty likely—does have some relation to the fact that the student just happened to be Ahmed Mohamed.

(OTOH there pretty certainly is a selection bias in the fact that this particular case is getting so much publicity. It's the social-media catnip of the perceived (and again, let's be serious here, probably partly real) discrimination that has pushed this one up the charts while others go mostly unremarked.)

I do not know that school administrators have "consistently" flipped out at white kids, either. I don't know what the baseline occurrence of these events are. My suspicion would be that every case we've ever heard of, including this one, is still an outlier, and thus not suitable for drawing sweeping conclusions from, and in fact kids probably do stupid stuff like this every day without making the national news.

One avenue is to focus on those victims that happen to be a racial minority, and force the authorities to treat members of that minority group with kid gloves. This literally forces all of us to keep race and other divisive demographics at the forefront of our consciousness whenever we deal with other people. That's not a good strategy to reach of goal of everyone being blind to race.

Another avenue is to focus on the powers that are being wielded unjustly. By taking away to power to cause such damage, or at least imposing accountability when it's misused, we can force those with power to rein in their abusive behavior to all. This latter seems the winning strategy to me.

I remember a teacher seeing me type "BitchX" into a terminal and freaking out, he apparently thought I was doing something obscene in my terminal window..

It's a Texas thing not a US, or that what I hope the case to be.