Slashdot Mirror
Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts
An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here's the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents. Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He's not accused of aiding terrorists, synthesizing explosives, nor even of making illegal fireworks. Deeb fell afoul of the Massachusetts authorities for... doing experiments... Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, 'I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.' Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: 'Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.'"
... that something is wrong with Kansas ?
These hyper-red and hyper-blue states both have issues with people. The former set of control freaks try to make you a religion borg while the latter set of control freaks try their hand making you a state-uber-alles borg.
This is what the environment of hysteria is doing to the US.
Who exactly is terrorizing us these days? Seems like our "elected officials" just want us to be scared all the time so we won't really think about what's going on.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
SO call the FBI and complain that the local police entered and arrested you without a warrant. Call the local and national media. Make a big stink about it. Start a website. The Massachusetts police are morons and they need to be put in their place.
There are regulations about how much [of various chemicals] you're supposed to have, how it's detained, how it's disposed of.
Depending on the specifics of what this guy's dealing with, he may be subject to rules regarding the safe disposal of certain chemicals, etc.
Amnesty International
I wonder how long before people in possession of scary "hacking software and equipment" are subjected to similar intrusions? Welcome to the NewUSA, where all knowledge is classified.
Caveat Utilitor
If you have enough laws, then anyone is a criminal. They'll either claim its a violation of zoning ordinances, environmental hazard or an OSHA violation.
Don't you?
Now, a bunch of silly fools that never took chemistry even in college are doing their best to outlaw what every intelligent child in the 60s and 70s did for fun.
As a result, the US has not been doing groundbreaking chemistry in over a decade.
Granted, computers are a big lure, but chemistry is the basis of our industry. We need to ENCOURAGE kids and adults to do chemistry, not prevent it with idiotic, foolish laws.
If it is not more dangerous than fertilizer and diesel fuel, or styrofoam and gasoline, than it should be legal for a 16 year old kid to buy in the mail, without a license.
Anythinge else is rank hipocracy and stupidity.
P.S. I am not recommending a 12 year old do explosive experiments unsupervised, but I hate to tell you, THEY DO IT ANYWAY. They just go and get an aerosole can and a lighter, instead of ordering a kit.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
i[Now, if it turns out he was indeed following all local / state laws, then the authorities certainly owe him an apology at least.]i
Yeah, I bet they will slap their wrists and say they are very very sorry and it'll never happen again too.
I have a computer. One of those new fancy technology machines that store "files" on it. The local cops should come take it because I may or may not have "illegal" files on it. Once they analyze it they should possibly give it back depending on how they feel. Or they could just keep it. Oh they should also do this without obtaining one of those pesky warrant things. That will help save them time. It won't bother me at all because it's not an invasion of my privacy if it keeps the world safe from evil.
This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.
I find it troubling that hobbyists are less trusted than corporations (assuming that these same experiments, performed by a corporation, would pose no problem - which I think the above quote pretty clearly implies). First, it is a really stupid idea from the American economy standpoint - we've made a lot of hay in this country's history on garage hackers (think: personal computer, for example). Second, what exactly makes corporations (which are made up of individuals) more trustworthy than non-corporate individuals? Timothy McVeigh? USAMRIID Anthrax. This is utterly stupid, and clearly the result of a panic'd mind more concerned with a pretense of safety than with the success of this great nation.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
We all do chemistry on a daily basis, the difference is that we usually don't do it as our daily plan. Brush your teeth, take a bath and even breathing. Cooking is actually an advanced version of chemistry.
The area of chemistry is so wide that it's in no way possible to ban it all. And some people are stupid enough to think that it's dangerous to create huge soap bubbles or analyze the water yourself.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
In other words, they don't know a law he violated, they just knew that we have lots of laws and they disliked what he did so they investigated.
They even CONFISCATED STUFF without yet finding any real law breakage. How would you like it if someone said, you know your car is full of tons of dangerous explosives, then they confiscate and say "We likely think we MIGHT find something illegal on it."
Would you be satisified if they returned it three days later? Would you be satisfied if they returned MOST of it 3 days later, but kept parts of it saying "We haven't definitely found anything illegal yet, but we want to keep looking?"
A reasonable response would have been to let the police look around for ONE HOUR. If they want to take stuff, or even stay for more than one hour, they should have got a warrant.
There are a ton of 'not really laws'. that the government does not enforce unless they dislike you. I won't bother to mention the president and his little "arrested but not charged for cocaine" thing.
I WILL bother to mention the fact that large chemical companies ROUTINELY break the law and no one does anything about it. They get a pass from an inspector after a promise of "we'll fix it later".
The citizen was trying to be nice and proove he did nothing wrong. I'm sure he expected a quick once over and nothing. He knew he was doing nothing seriously wrong.
But instead he got shafted by a stupid government
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Really, the above is a bit far from the inflamitory accusations of ironshod goosestepping that the blog author insinuates.
There is a difference between having a hobby bench and doing 'science' and running a chem lab. One is harmless, the other is only harmless when you take the proper safety percautions.
As usual on Slashdot, what the submitter says happened and what the article says happened aren't the same.
According to the article:
A fire broke out on the 2nd floor of the subject's home. In the process of responding to this, firefighters found a LOT of chemicals, about 1500 different ones to be exact. The home was not zoned to be a chemical lab, so doing so much chemical work there violated zoning laws.
So while it's quite fun to blame "evil" governments, had a fire not broken out nothing would have happened. And nobody who's railing about the government seems to have any smart ideas on how a home user is going to properly dispose of chemical waste in a legal and environmentally sound way. For all we know he was just dumping stuff down the toilet, which probably isn't legal.
Yes, it does look like a zoning problem. But the typical first response to a zoning issue is the issuance of an injunction, not the seizure of large amounts of property. A reasonable response would be a court order to move it out of his house within 30 days.
What's the big deal?
This is yet another example of the end of freedom, that's what. This is one set of people deciding that you are making the wrong choices with your freedom and they need to make all your choices for you from now on.
They want to choose
- your hobby,
- what games you can play,
- whether you can smoke,
- what you can drink,
- what you can eat,
- what kinds of cars you're allowed to drive,
- how fast,
- where you can live,
- how you celebrate the 4th of July,
- how much money you can make,
- how much money you can pay your employees,
- how you raise your children,
- what jokes you can tell at work,
- the precise mix of fuel in your gas tank,
- what health care you are to be allowed,
- who you can rent housing to,
- what's on your cable TV,
- and what days you can water your lawn.
What's the big deal? Why don't we all just make exactly the choices you might make and then we'll never have a problem?
And the worst thing: the only "solution" people talk about is getting "person C" to be in charge of making everyone's choices for them instead of "person D".
Even the newspaper article linked by the person making the sensational claim doesn't support the claim. The story appears in several places and the facts in each don't support the thesis that "Home Science is Under Attack".
The chemist in question had a fire in his house. While the fire department was responding to the fire, they happened upon the lab with an unusually large array of chemicals and equipment. They asked the man what he was doing with them and he noted that he was a retired chemist, doing his own development at home now, and was even patenting and marketing some of the things he developed.
The fire marshall was concerned that the lab might pose a fire hazard and contacted the DEP per the usual protocol, and they went through and checked it out. They notified the town of the situation, who noted that he was doing commercial chemical R&D (by his own admission, he was) in a residential area in violation of applicable zoning laws. The DEP was required to "close" the lab and clean up any chemicals for which there's a prescribed disposal procedure (e.g., you're not supposed to pour large quantities of it down the sink).
The guy broke zoning laws and he got caught because of an unrelated fire in his house. That's it.
Yes, and notice the intentionally vague items list. A "flask heater"? An "adapter tube"? A "transformer"?!?!
The whole idea here is apparently to make EVERYONE in TX a criminal, so that they can be charged with *something* any time the pigs want to....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
What qualifies at scientific research? My brother-in-law tested the absorbency of several brands of diapers for a school project. I just want to know if the police can come after him for doing this at home.
Zoning laws also keep neighbors from toxic gases, explosions, and contaminated ground water.
I've got mixed feelings about this. From the news article it would appear that everything Deeb did was on the up and up. If you are responsible and safe you don't pose a threat to your neighbors.
That said, it wasn't as if the authorities entered Deeb's house on a routine basement chemistry lab inspection. They found his lab while responding to a (unrelated) fire. Even if all the chemicals in the basement were ordinarily benign who knows what the environmental consequences would have been had a fire ravaged his basement.
There's a reason industrial sites have contact with the fire department and State EPA. Deed almost certainly didn't.
Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, 'I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.'
The actual article says:
Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro's code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws. It is a residential home in a residential neighborhood," she said. "This is Mr. Deeb's hobby. He's still got bunches of ideas. I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation. ... There are regulations about how much you're supposed to have, how it's detained, how it's disposed of."
Either the poster didn't properly read, or he/she just considers zoning bylaws useless. For those that do think zoning bylaws serve no point, let me reference the recent propane explosion that occured in the middle of a Toronto residential neighbourhood, leaving two people dead and hundreds of homes damaged, and is now the subject of a zoning review
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I think you've got this situation well characterized. The question is, how much? You can do a little light manufacturing in your house, after all, without getting a zoning variance.
Likewise a little chemistry is not a problem, but at some point you should have the proper permits to discharge your waste into the sewers (which will probably require inspections), and you really should hire a private trash hauler to deal with your refuse.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It is a long-standing American tradition to run home-based businesses, invent things in home workshops, etc.
In other words, fuck off and die, you fascist!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Uggg... more knee jerk reaction to a pretty obvious case of prudent police work.
There's a fire in his house. The fire dept. and police come, and put out the fire. In the process of putting out the fire, they notice hundreds of vials of chemicals. Not in a rack, not on a shelf, not even on a table, but all over the place. On the floor, on furniture, everywhere. No reasonable chemist would be dumb enough to do that with any chemicals.
What would you want the police to do? Walk out without doing a little due diligence? There's a good chance he is storing these chemicals unsafely, and he is endangering his life and possibly others as a result. So they call in the experts to clean it up. And then they take a look at what he's done wrong, and probably will give him a fine and a slap on the wrist.
It's amazing how many Slashdotters don't even bother to do a bit of research before coming to their black-and-white conclusion about how The Man is bad and this poor fellow is being an upstanding citizen with his rights violated. How dare the police invade this man's home! It's an attack on science! They hate the science!
RTFA!
There are alot of Slashdotters that seem to take pride in their critical thinking, intelligence, and analysis skills. Honestly, alot of you really don't demonstrate it very often here. It's more like a lynch mob than a bunch of intelligent people discussing issues.
Yup. As it was in the past, so it is today.
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens' What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
"With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him."
- former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1940
But as long as you carry at least one gun with you at all times, then you're OK, right? And the gun rack on the back of your pickup truck scores double, I've heard...
Actually, Texas is one of only six states in the nation that bans openly carrying a firearm. In Texas, the ONLY way to legally carry a gun on your person is with a concealed carry permit. That means that in Texas, the constitutional right to bear arms is granted or not at the whim of the government.
There is a growing movement in Texas to correct this situation. An on-line petition has collected nearly 23,000 signatures and several legislators have promised to introduce a bill to join the majority of the nation and allow open carry.
It sounds like they need to go after the glassware restrictions next. Actually, what we really need to do as a nation is give up the ridiculous "war on drugs" which, to date, is the source of more civil liberties infringements than any other issue, including the "war on terror".
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.