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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."
Take that Freedom and creativity!
Well done Timothy. I submitted this story earlier and the submission by mbeckman appears to be copied from my submission.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes, well, obviously he was trying to make some sort of statement of some kind, maybe having to do with "art", and maybe not.
But seriously, I think he planned this for exactly what happened.
Moron.
Dear Moron, no need to sign your posts.
01-31-2007 Never Forget
Remember kids, just don't say, look, or do anything weird and nothing will happen to you.
I'll reserve judgement until I see the boots and the watch.
From the article, it seems as if the TSA did the safe thing and called the bomb squad, which I guess is the right thing to do. I don't expect the guy at the checkpoint to be able to decide if the "modified" watch is dangerous or not, and so they called in the experts (who decided that there were no explosives).
What bothers me is that he was then arrested: "McGann was taken to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin where he was charged with possessing materials to make an explosive device" (emphasis mine). Isn't that too broad a charge? I'm sure every household has material that could conceivably be used to make an explosive device. Is everyone a threat now (in an actual enforceable sense, not in a we-assume-everyone-is-guilty sense)?
With all the bullshit pictures on the linked site, one would think there would be an image of the fucking watch... so I watched the video where bubbly mc blonde flaps along for a min and nothing.
can someone show the god damned watch already? how ornate is a watch before the bullshit squad get your face on the news?
I was traveling from LAX to New Orleans to shoot Bit Momma's House 2 (you remember that, don't you?) After some bad experiences checking baggage, I carried on my supplies, including my tracking kit.
Now, my tracking kit was a small Pelican case filled with watch batteries, short wires, and LEDs. After it went through the X-Ray machine, the TSA agent looked at the screen, looked at me, looked at the screen, then picked up the box. He carefully unlatched it, and held it out *as far as he could* as he opened it, turning his head away and looking through the corners of his eyes.
Needless to say, I was insulted.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I bet everyone has bomb making materials in their garage and under their sink.
faced with a budget surplus and a terrorism deficit, the Oakland Airport TSA spring into action and arrest the most suspicious thing they can come up with after 3 red bulls and a half dozen cruellers: a 50 year old white man with a nice watch and a pair of comfy shoes.
freedom has been preserved once more thanks to the watchful eye of a handful of overweight highschool drop-outs in cheap polyester slacks and clip-on ties....but for how long?
tune in for an exciting conclusion to next weeks "Security theatre." Will the man in the comfy shoes buy a new, even more dastardly ornate watch with his lawsuit payout? What devious new orthopaedics will our nemesis equip himself with next? All this and more will be revealed in, "episode 25: I elected obama twice, this shits not funny anymore"
Good people go to bed earlier.
Since no one mentioned it yet, Casio F91W.
Remember, choosing the wrong brand of watch could land you in Gitmo.
Casio, not even once.
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.
Who builds a watch with wires and "fuses" hanging out of it and then walks thru airport security?
Really, who does that?
You're right, but only in this very refined case. About 10 years ago I built a noise cancelling system out of a microphone, some electronics and I was young so it all looked very home made. It worked well, almost as well as the Bose QuietComfort series headphones. Flying was a real treat with my custom contraption on. Yet now I suddenly can't take it through airport security for fear of me not actually getting to my destination.
There are documented cases of artists, students, professionals, teachers, vendors with tech equipment, and likely more all having major problems with airport security for the same reason, they dared to build something.
This guy may be a fool and an attention seeker, but many others aren't.
Not only analog watches, digital watches are even easier, set the alarm for a specific time, and connect to the buzzer...
Of course he wasn't arrested because he had a big ridiculouse watch, he was arrested because he made someone look stupid when the bomb squad showed up and couldn't find a bomb... the law for "making an authority figure look bad" isn't written down anywhere, but it is one of the crimes that is guaranteed to get you arrested almost every single time.
I hear that there's a vast conspiracy to load up every airplane that flies with a highly flammable and explosive material, that sometimes this material even makes up the bulk of the weight of the aircraft in flight. It's everywhere on the plane and people doesn't even realize it, even stored in vast quantities inside the wings of most commercial airliners. The rumor I heard, and I know this sounds a bit outlandish, is that it's even pumped into the engines, where it's actually very common for it to cause small explosions that most people don't even realize or think about.
The thought of it scared me so much that I decided that I would only drive places in my car instead.
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.
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.
In a time of actual invasion or insurrection, the President can do a lot of things he can't otherwise do. Our founding founders knew this.
The closest we've come in the last 30 years on a national scale were the events involving the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11 and the unknown but thought to be very real and very high threat in the days after.
On a local scale, there have been some domestic "attacks on the United States" that would warrant Lincoln-esque restrictions on civil liberties in a very small geographic area - city blocks perhaps - for maybe a few hours at most. Had I been in downtown Oklahoma City in the hours before the Federal Building was bombed AND had the feds had specific, credible intelligence, I would forgive them if they denied me my right to be in that part of downtown during that time frame. But I'd demand they explain themselves later or I'd sue them for violating their oath of office, namely, to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.