Bummer, it seems college sometimes prepares you for the real world by turning its back on you just like the real world does.
> Star Simpson’s actions were reckless and understandably created alarm at the airport. — MIT News Office, Sep 21 20
Ouch, fuck MIT
It seems like something a student ought to consider, I mean, that MIT seems to be more concerned about it's reputation with the legal community than with it's reputation with students.
I could understand MIT distancing itself from what would have been a PR stshow because of how obviously threatening that device looks.
If anyone is wondering where I found this image, it can be located here ( http://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html ). It seems hard to find a photo of this with any article on the subject. It took a bit of digging to find that few year old BoingBoing story. This link also contains more details on the incident that were not covered in the story.
Would you take a suit case with a bread bored, exposed wires, and a 9V battery through security at an air port? How about higher security areas than that?
There is a very, very big difference between what was worn and something that one would associate with being a light up sweeter.
When I heard the story I assumed this ( http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0070/8002/products/g513a-ch... ) was what was being worn.
There is a big difference between exposed wires, batteries, with blinking LEDs stuck together on a breadboards and Legos. When going to an area with elevated tension, security, and crazed guards the gap between "weird" and "threatening" is quickly closed.
I'm not saying she deserved everything that happened to her, but wearing a breadboard with a cluster of lights and a 9v hanging off your chest, at an airport, might be the very definition of reckless.
Ok, I get it, you're a maker. That doesn't give you the right to scare the shit out of people. Would it be ok for air-soft fans to start a shooting war at an airport and expect people to understand?
It's not as if there's a high school civics lecture on the topic of Strange American Fears, and parents don't tell their kids not to have something that looks like a bunch of messy electronics, so I'm not sure where she is supposed to go and figure this out. As a result, it's hard for me to say she did something wrong.
I don't agree with this claim. In fact, I think it's extremely easy to identify what might scare other people. So much so that it can be reduced to a single question:
"Is this outside the norm?"
Doesn't matter if it's full body tattoos, 30 body piercings, electronics plastered all over you, you're lit up like an X-mas tree, wearing a full-body suit, wearing a balaclava, what have you. Do you see other people doing it? No? Chances are you're going to raise suspicion and suspicion not only can cause fear but I argue it will cause fear.
Normality is a social comfort zone. Nobody bats an eye at anyone who isn't standing out from the crowd.
Now before anyone tries to wage some sort of moral war against me for stating how things are. I don't pass any judgement on if this is "good" or "bad" behavior. However, there is an evolutionary explanation for this: "People who don't fit with your community are outsiders. Outsiders can be friend or foe. Be suspicious of them."
Nobody would be scared of what they were wearing if they were at a Hackathon or some place where "this is normal". But they were at an airport. That isn't normal for an airport.
While it nice to know some people would rather literally die than be politically incorrect, I prefer to take caution around people I perceive to be a threat.
Again, look at the pics of her "device" and her for that matter. A crude triggering mechanism wouldn't look much different from a distance.
