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Comment by piqufoh | Hacker News Reader

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

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Why are you trying to teach me English? This teacher should be arrested for trying to overthrow the government... What is the "broader explanation" for this English textbook?

Communicate with others.

Sounds like a way to organise the overthrow of the government. Are you some sort of community organizer?

We got a commie here!

Man, have these people never heard of "art for art's sake"?

Why does anyone do anything that isn't obviously beneficial?

Why climb K2? Why spend years writing a book only a handful will read? Why paint? Why make free software? Why modify a car?

Everything about this damn incident is making me angry

I shudder to think what this Police Spokesman would do to a kid that made a full adder in Minecraft!

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.

Clock ownership and general interest in technology are neither suspicious nor unusual behaviors.

It seems pretty logical to me that we would treat people who want to learn to fly without landing differently than a teenager who builds a clock.

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?

> if you want to avoid false negatives, you are going to have a lot of false positives.

Not necessarily, because the more people you alienate, the more enemies you create, and the more genuine threats you will face.

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