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Man Arrested At Oakland Airport For Ornate Watch

First time accepted submitter mbeckman writes "A man was arrested at Oakland airport for having bomb-making materials. The materials? An ornate watch and extra insoles in his boots. Despite the bomb squad determining that there was no bomb, The Alameda county sheriffs department claimed that he was carrying 'potentially dangerous materials and appeared to have made alterations to his boots, which were Unusually large and stuffed with layers of insoles.' The man told Transportation Security Administration officers that he's an artist and the watch is art."

21 of 519 comments (clear)

  1. Take that! by jhoegl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take that Freedom and creativity!

    1. Re:Take that! by DarkOx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The home the brave, where we fear unusal timepieces and footwear.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    2. Re:Take that! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It did reach its "out of the closet" phase with the Bush II regime - and has been normalized into permanence under the Obama intelligence-state.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    3. Re:Take that! by travbrad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and it certainly hasn't ended with Obama. He has extended most of the policies of Bush, but seems to get a free pass from most of the people who were up in arms about Bush.

    4. Re:Take that! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It didn't start with Bush.

      The terrorist/TSA paranoia very much did. He managed to push through the most significant change (per person dead).
      No catastrophe, even of larger proportions, has ever advanced us so far towards police state.

    5. Re:Take that! by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No offense, but read up on what Lincoln did during the Civil War.

      Suspended Habeus Corpus. Declared martial law in several US cities.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    6. Re:Take that! by EdIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No shit.

      Some people still have their heads so far up his ass, reveling in the smell of "hope".

      As far as I am concerned Obama is a traitor in every way possible by not coming through on his promises, and basically doing everything he can to destroy freedoms and turn us into a police state.

      No, ObamaCare does not make up for it, nor has anything else he has done make up for it either.

      The only thing more disgusting is the fact Romney would have been far worse.

    7. Re:Take that! by Chewbacon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've long admitted that the terrorists won: we are fucking terrified.

      --
      Chewbacon
      The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
  2. Never forget... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    01-31-2007 Never Forget

    Remember kids, just don't say, look, or do anything weird and nothing will happen to you.

  3. Aloha Snackbar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll reserve judgement until I see the boots and the watch.

    1. Re:Aloha Snackbar by Mitreya · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'll reserve judgement until I see the boots and the watch.

      NO! The judgement is complete once they found no trace of explosive materials
      Having wires on you or wearing thick shoes is absolutely no reason for being detained. Even if he had an actual bomb timer, that's nothing without a bomb

      I hope he sues them

  4. Re:Moron. by saihung · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I find your willingness to speculate about the motivations of a complete stranger based on no information adorable.

  5. Re:materials... by rhook · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I bet everyone has bomb making materials in their garage and under their sink.

  6. So they find nothing and feel stupid by future+assassin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and in retaliation they charge the guy with a real crime. He should set up a donation site so we can donate to his legal fund so he can stir up moire shit. Now for those will will spout the If you got nothing to hide... Well he had nothing to hide yet the authorities still railroaded him.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  7. Re:"first time plagiarist" by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know this is headed for a -1, but when given the choice slashdot authors have always chosen the summaries that come from their buddies over everyone else. This is a tradition going right back Rob Malda himself. A summary of one of their buddies has to be pretty bad for them not to chose it over someone they don't know. It's a bit of the assholery that Slashdot was founded on.

    Yes, I know. When I met Rom Malda personally he was an asshole to my face. He is smart but he is an asshole. That's the way it is.

  8. Re:materials... by TrekkieGod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who builds a watch with wires and "fuses" hanging out of it and then walks thru airport security? Really, who does that? Fools and idiot attention seekers.

    How far have we fallen that slashdot readers are asking that?

    Who does that? Nerds. Nerds do that. Incredible nerds like Steve Wozniak for example.

    People wear things I find to be ridiculous all the time that everyone has no problem labeling as fashion statements. But if it's wires and fuses, it can't be a statement of the types of things you enjoy, it has to be an idiot attention seeker?

    Personally, I find it much more easy to label people idiots when they think every exposed wire and fuse is a bomb.

    --

    Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.

  9. Re:He must be very smart by evil_aaronm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But to arrest him after the bomb squad said, "No danger"? What's the point? If the bomb squad had been worried about it, Ok, there's justification. This is just the cops being assholes because they can. Cops are not there to teach us lessons, or punish bad fashion sense. Either the guy was dangerous, had illegal materials, or indicated that he had intent to cause harm, or the cops were wrong to arrest him. I can find quite a few things wrong with just about every person I meet: if I were a cop, should I be able to arrest them for that?

  10. Re:What about Woz's watch? by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are losers still on about this 1% crap?

    Yes. As long as "loser" stays a perjorative with implied stigma and/or a license to be treated as anything less than an average human being, they will be, for the simple reason that for one winner there will always be several losers, thus making the average person a loser. That current society requires 99 losers for 1 winner simply makes that more so.

    It was the 1% that declared war on the 99%, not the other way around.

    You don't see 1 in 100 people being able to walk through without scrutiny.

    Of course you don't, they don't take the regular flights but have private jets. Which would be fine by itself, it's not that much of a burden on other people, but it's not enough for them. They're never happy as long as anyone else has anything at all.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  11. TSA -- Keeping America safe from Communism. by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

    America used to be the greatest nation of tinkerers and inventors in the world. Now we're a nation of consumers. The ability and inclination to create things is now considered prima facia evidence of anti-social tendencies.

    There's recently been an Internet-driven renaissance of inventing things -- the maker movement. But there's something sinister about the movement. It's *international*. Consider the Arduino. It was developed in the *commune* of Ivrea Italy, and the design is the property of *nobody*. The Trilateral Commission is probably behind it, assisted by the socialist Obama administration.

    People who know more than you are scary. People who know more than you *cooperating* with each other is scarier still.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  12. Re:materials... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Probably more "fool" then attention seeker, but it should be a wake-up call that anyone who wants to travel should know better than to wear a piece of art around lest you tick off security check points.

    You suggest 300+ million Americans should self-censor in order to placate the TSA.
    I suggest that XY,000 TSA agents learn how to do their jobs better.

    One of these suggestions chills free speech, the other does not.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  13. Re:You shouldn't be surprised by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know why you guys expect a constitutional lawyer to do anything other than maintain the status quo

    I might expect him to be aware of the Fourth Amendment, along with the standard interpretation prior to the TSA that it's illegal for government agents to just blanket search everyone unless there's a specific identified threat of immediate concern. Before the TSA, when we were searched essentially by private screeners operated by the airlines, we consented to (limited) searches as part of a private commercial transaction -- if we refused to submit, we were just told we couldn't fly. Police or the FBI could only get involved if there were a reasonable suspicion to search further.

    Now we have government agents doing invasive searches, and if you don't comply, you can be detained and arrested. That's exactly the kind of thing the Fourth Amendment was passed to avoid.

    The interpretation of the Fourth Amendment changed suddenly and radically in the past decade, and I would expect a Constitutional lawayer to know something about it.