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This article is more than 1 year old

Brown kid with Arab name arrested for bringing home-made clock to school

Dallas cops cuff hardware hacker for making 'movie bomb'

Video It should come as no surprise in a paranoid world addicted to security theatre: a 14-year-old hacker – in the old sense of the word – has been arrested in Dallas for bringing a home-made clock to school.

While the device the student brought to school was harmless, The Dallas Morning News reports that 9th-grader and electronics enthusiast Ahmed Mohamed might still be charged with “making a hoax bomb”.

It apparently took four police to arrest the 14-year-old, with the principal threatening to expel the boy if he didn't make a written statement. 14 year-old Mohamed told The News one of the officers said his device looked like “a movie bomb”.

As the newspaper continues, “Ahmed’s been suspended, his father is upset and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again eyeing claims of Islamophobia in Irving”.

The apparent contents of the “bomb” were a circuit board, a power supply, and a digital display, all of which prompted Dallas police spokesperson to say “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?”

The spokesperson, James McLellan (who must surely be wondering why it had to happen on his shift) also told the Dallas newspaper “We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb. He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation”. ®

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