10-Year-Old Muslim Boy Probed For 'Terrorist House' Spelling Error (bbc.com)

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10-Year-Old Muslim Boy Probed For 'Terrorist House' Spelling Error (bbc.com)

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 20, 2016 @02:06AM from the if-you-see-something,-think-with-your-head dept.

AmiMoJo writes: A 10-year-old Muslim boy who mistakenly wrote that he lived in a "terrorist house" during an English lesson at school has been investigated by police. The pupil, who attends a primary school in Lancashire, meant to say he lived in a "terraced house." The boy was interviewed by Lancashire Police at his home the next day, and the family laptop was examined. The 2015 Counter Terrorism and Security Act means that teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected extremist behavior to police since July. Miqdaad Versi, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, the UK's largest umbrella group for Islamic associations, said he was aware of dozens of cases similar to that of the schoolboy.

36 of 315 comments (clear)

News for Nerds? by 110010001000 · 2016-01-20 02:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

They should change the slogan to "Half-Story Clickbait to Bring the Foaming-at-the-Mouth People to the Site". Not catchy enough?
1. Re:News for Nerds? by jdavidb · 2016-01-20 02:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  They should change the slogan to "Half-Story Clickbait to Bring the Foaming-at-the-Mouth People to the Site". Not catchy enough?
  Nerds are frequently concerned with stories about rights and injustice.
  
  --
  Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
2. Re:News for Nerds? by 110010001000 · 2016-01-20 02:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Really? Since when? 5 years ago this story wouldn't even have been submitted to Firehose, much less been posted to the front page. However AmiMoJo has a special relationship, so he can post whatever he wants.
3. Re:News for Nerds? by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-20 03:50 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  However AmiMoJo has a special relationship, so he can post whatever he wants.
  It's true. Years ago I bought a $5 subscription to get rid of the ads on mobile (before adblock was available). There was actually a problem processing it and I felt most embarrassed having to get support involved to process it. Strung that baby out for years.
  Ever since then I've enjoyed a special relationship with the /. editors. They grudgingly tolerate my impertinence, and occasional wrath directed at them (especially around the who beta era, when my signature was less than cordial). They know I'm cheap, the kind of bastard who subscribes for $5 once a decade, but they also know I spend more time posting here than working and these days that's becoming a rare thing.
  Thing is, I just love the down-votes I get whenever I post some SJW bullshit, so I'm kinda addicted now. Sometimes I travel and get withdrawal because I'm stuck on an aircraft with no internet for 12 hours. Well, I mean they have internet, but I'm too cheap to pay for it.
  I used to come here for the insightful commentary and interesting debate, now it's mostly just to annoy MRAs and anti-feminists. I can see you have a rather high ID so are probably a millennial who joined yesterday, but the trick is to learn to let go and not read every single story. Just skip over it if you don't like it, or go to firehose and vote for something else. You could even submit some bullshit of your own, and I'll happily down-vote it and then re-submit a more click-baity, left leaning version myself. Your welcome.
  Obligatory xkcd.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
4. Re:News for Nerds? by Noah+Haders · 2016-01-20 04:15 · Score: 2
  
  it is relevant to tech if it's an autocorrect error. maybe the boy meant tourist house, like a boarding house.
5. Re:News for Nerds? by JazzLad · 2016-01-20 04:40 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Can you not even read TFS?
  
  The pupil, who attends a primary school in Lancashire, meant to say he lived in a "terraced house."
  
  --
  "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
6. Re:News for Nerds? by 110010001000 · 2016-01-20 04:49 · Score: 2
  
  Five years ago was 2011 I think.
7. Re:News for Nerds? by Qzukk · 2016-01-20 04:53 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Everything changed that day! Including the flow of time.
  
  --
  If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
8. Re:News for Nerds? by JazzLad · 2016-01-20 05:44 · Score: 2
  
  "terraced house" is British English for "townhouse" (a common design term)
  
  --
  "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
9. Re:News for Nerds? by sumdumass · 2016-01-20 06:15 · Score: 2
  
  His parents likely have spoken about it in front of him. I knew by the time i was in first grade that i lived in a aframe colonial house and my cousin lived in a modern ranch style house just from my parents talking in front of me.
  But it doesn't really matter. This is a non-story anyways. The kid admitted something, a quick investigation happened and it was determined to be a mistake. If your 10 year old went to school and said you beat him or you leave your crack pipe out when you pass out and your his sister was playing with it, the cops would show up to your house too.
I'm not seeing the problem here by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-20 02:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

The kid's background doesn't come into it - if any kid had written that they live in a terrorist house, it would be checked out. This is not a case of profiling, no matter how much the Muslim Council of Britain tries, without actually saying so, that it was targeted at a Muslim.

--
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
1. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by T.E.D. · 2016-01-20 02:47 · Score: 2
  
  I don't doubt that it OUGHT to be checked out no matter whose kid it was that wrote it. If my blonde-haired blue-eyed kid had written it, I still think the responsible thing would be to check it out.
  OTOH, I'm also pretty sure the "check it out" is likely to be carried out a lot more respectfully on a rich white kid's family than on a relatively powerless poor immigrant's family. Particularly if they are from a background that has a rep for producing terrorists. Not that this isn't to be expected too, but it makes this particular error a lot more unfortunate in the muslim kid's house.
  Another angle is how this particular error got made on the kid's part. Most likely they had only encountered both words verbally and didn't realize that they were actually different words with different spellings. So now ask yourself how this little muslim kid came to hear "terrorist" applied to themselves often enough that they thought it was a word for their kind of house?
2. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by AmiMoJo · 2016-01-20 02:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  if any kid had written that they live in a terrorist house, it would be checked out.
  Even if that were the case, it's still outrageous that teachers apparently feel they are required to report obvious spelling errors and that the police feel they are worth investigating. At any point someone could have said "this is stupid, it's clearly a mistake, let's not waste time and money or cause unnecessary grief for this family", but no one had the guts. This is what happens when you create a climate of fear, where if some kid decides to go to Syria because J1hadi2011 told him to his teachers get blamed for not spotting it.
  Even worse, where is the judicial oversight? Shouldn't searching the family laptop require some kind of check, especially when it is based on such incredibly flimsy evidence? It seems like if someone outside the school/police had looked at it, there might have been a chance for a sane outcome.
  In any case, I really doubt the probability of unfortunate spelling errors being reported to the police is the same for a nice 99% white school in rural Hampshire as for a 99% Muslim school in Birmingham. We need to do a test like those identical CVs with Christian/Muslim names on the top, but with two kids called Dave and Mohammed.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
3. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by FireFury03 · 2016-01-20 02:58 · Score: 2
  
  Even worse, where is the judicial oversight? Shouldn't searching the family laptop require some kind of check, especially when it is based on such incredibly flimsy evidence?
  For police to examine a laptop by force, they would require a search warrant. But in this case they probably asked the family to hand it over voluntarily, which the family agreed to do to make the police go away and stop hassling them.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
4. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by jabuzz · 2016-01-20 02:58 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The thing is legally the teachers had to report it to the police. Failure to do so could lead to prison.
  The other thing is that children are horrible at keeping secrets and will grass even themselves up all the time. Therefore it was appropriate to investigate and the fact that he was from a Muslim household in my view makes it extra worthwhile following up. Now that the Irish terrorist threat has all but gone in the UK, statistically that fact makes it more likely that it was not just a mistake and hence worth investigating.
  Imagine his family had disappeared to Syria in a couple of months to join Daesh?
5. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by Jason+Levine · 2016-01-20 03:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  And they the American Northwest "YallQaeda" folks are being allowed to come and go from the Federal land as they please even after it was found out that they are wrecking havoc on the lands. So you have armed folks taking over Federal lands, ruining them, and they are allowed to come and go without being arrested? Do you really think they would be treated the same way if they were 150 armed black men or 150 armed Muslims?
  
  --
  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
6. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-20 03:26 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  They would investigate anyone. The UK has a LONG history of dealing with non-muslim, non-arab terrorists.
  2000 1 June: Real IRA bomb on Hammersmith Bridge, London.
  2000 20 September: Real IRA fired an RPG-22 at the MI6 HQ in London.
  2001 4 March: Real IRA detonated a car bomb outside the BBC's main news centre in London. One London Underground worker suffered deep cuts to his eye from flying glass and some damage was caused to the front of the building.[21] (See 2001 BBC bombing)
  2001 16 April: Hendon post office bombed by the Real IRA.
  2001 6 May: Real IRA detonated a bomb in a London postal sorting office. One person was injured.
  2001 3 August: Real IRA bomb explodes in Ealing, West London, injuring seven people. (See 2001 Ealing bombing)
  2001 4 November: Real IRA car bomb in Birmingham.
  If you want, you can go back to the beginning of the '70s - just a bunch of white terrorists until July 2005.
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
7. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-20 03:35 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  When I was about his age, I couldn't tell the difference between "Skull" and "School". They just sounded identical to me, so I would use the spellings interchangeably. Note that I don't have any learning deficits or other disabilities, and I wasn't the only one I knew who had similar word mixups. Young children just sometimes hear words as being the same. Especially with an accent, Terraced and Terrorist can certainly sound similar enough that he could mix up the spellings. This definitely sounds like an honest mistake to me.
8. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by prunus.avium · 2016-01-20 03:54 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  ...Note that I don't have any learning deficits or other disabilities...
  Umm. I hate to be the one to break this to you...
9. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-20 04:24 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  They would investigate anyone. The UK has a LONG history of dealing with non-muslim, non-arab terrorists.
  2000 1 June: Real IRA bomb on Hammersmith Bridge, London. 2000 20 September: Real IRA fired an RPG-22 at the MI6 HQ in London. 2001 4 March: Real IRA detonated a car bomb outside the BBC's main news centre in London. One London Underground worker suffered deep cuts to his eye from flying glass and some damage was caused to the front of the building.[21] (See 2001 BBC bombing) 2001 16 April: Hendon post office bombed by the Real IRA. 2001 6 May: Real IRA detonated a bomb in a London postal sorting office. One person was injured. 2001 3 August: Real IRA bomb explodes in Ealing, West London, injuring seven people. (See 2001 Ealing bombing) 2001 4 November: Real IRA car bomb in Birmingham.
  If you want, you can go back to the beginning of the '70s - just a bunch of white terrorists until July 2005.
  OK, so apart from the the Paddies, the Taffs, the Muzzies, animal rights protesters, working class, anarchists, communists, and people from a criminal background; would they have investigated? No. Clear discrimination.
10. Re:I'm not seeing the problem here by mjwx · 2016-01-20 13:36 · Score: 2
  
  They would investigate anyone. The UK has a LONG history of dealing with non-muslim, non-arab terrorists. [snip, sorry :)]
  If you want, you can go back to the beginning of the '70s - just a bunch of white terrorists until July 2005.
  Whilst yes, this is true there have been a disturbing number of over-reactions like this one directed against Muslims specifically that stand out from the increasing number of general over-reactions by the UK's various constabularies. I think that is the problem here.
  
  During the troubles, when Ireland was sending bombers to England, were ordinary Irish harassed? When anti-GMO protests went on, did they stake out vegans?
  
  It was a 10 year old boy who malpropped a word. The correct thing to do (and what would have been done in my day before the media made out like every Muslim is a terrorist) would have been for the teacher to ask little Achmed what he meant and corrected him. Even if the teacher over-reacted, the police should not have taken it as seriously as to raid someone's house.
  
  Personally I blame the mass media, organisations like the Daily Mail that write at best, cliche laden, hyperbolic nonsense (or in most cases, cliche ridden, utter fabrications) to convince people that every brown person is a terrorist waiting behind a bush to do nasty things to them. Domestic violence is a bigger problem in the UK but the headline "Chavs, Stop Beating Your Wives" would eliminate their target audience and nothing sells papers like fear from unsubstantiated, unquantifiable and nebulous threats.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Re:Polaroid Obama by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-20 02:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Bullshit
Damn autocorrect by paiute · 2016-01-20 02:28 · Score: 5, Funny

A man received the following text from his neighbor:
I am so sorry Bob. I've been riddled with guilt and I have to confess. I have been helping myself to your wife, day and night whenever you're not around. In fact, probably more than you. I do not get it at home, but that's no excuse. I can no longer live with the guilt and I hope you will accept my sincerest apology and with my promise that it won't ever happen again.
The man, anguished and betrayed, went into his bedroom, grabbed his gun, and without a word, shot his wife and killed her.
A few moments later, a second text came in:
Damn autocorrect! I meant "wifi, not "wife" . . . . .

--
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Terrace by DougReed · 2016-01-20 02:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

I live on a street called a 'Terrace' ... when I first moved here, and changed all of my magazine subscription addresses... one of them came next month addressed to "S.E. Terrorist"....
Officials by internerdj · 2016-01-20 02:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'm not much of one to sympathize with politicians but I'm pretty certain this is what we sound like to someone in office:
Terrorist attack...
Constituents: "Why didn't you stop all these people from dying? Do something to keep it from happening again."
Does something...
Constituents: "Why are you attacking the freedoms of all these innocent people? You are being racist and evil."
Terrorist attack...
Constituents: "Why didn't you stop all these people from dying? Do something to keep it from happening again."
1. Re:Officials by amiga3D · 2016-01-20 03:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You can either be free or you can have the illusion of safety. Most people willingly choose the latter.
Re:Plot twist by gstoddart · 2016-01-20 02:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, yeah. It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
If you try hard enough, you can likely find a super tenuous connection to an act of terrorism to almost anybody.
Somewhere there's a bizarre chain of crap which says "Rik Sweeney went to school with a guy who went to the same mosque as a guy who washed the floors where a guy was in the same English class with the guys who delivered pizza to guys who did the Boston Marathon shootings". Ta da, you're linked to terrorism.
If you go chasing shadows you can make up any old crap. It doesn't make it evidence of a damned thing.
The problem is both the press and the idiots who claim they're trying to protect our freedoms treat these tenuous links as if they are meaningful.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:Poor kid by JustNiz · 2016-01-20 02:41 · Score: 2

This is in England. They don't have a president.
Re:Plot twist by tinkerton · 2016-01-20 02:52 · Score: 2

Don't forget the public pressure. Perceived cost of doing nothing about something that turns out to be dangerous: huge. Perceived cost of getting up all in arms about nothing: tiny. We hardly have a concept of risks we should accept . Deliberately doing nothing is hard to sell.
Out of the mouth of babes.. by daq+man · 2016-01-20 02:58 · Score: 3, Funny

When I was a little kid I wrote "When I grow up I want to be a scientist and work in a lavatory". I did grow up to be a scientist but, fortunately, I work in a laboratory.
1. Re:Out of the mouth of babes.. by jbeaupre · 2016-01-20 03:55 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Are you surrounded by chrome and tile? Running water nearby? Odd smells? People stopping by, crapping all over you, then leaving? Do people drop off pieces of paper to you?
  You might be in that lavatory you wrote about.
  
  --
  The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Fucking hell, the comments here are awful. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-20 03:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Here's how you "investigate" the problem. Here's how teachers would have "investigated" things before laws saying that anyone saying something slightly wrong had to be reported to the police.
Teacher: What do you mean by "terrorist" in this sentence?
Boy: Well, the houses are joined together in both sides.
Teacher: Are you sure you're using the right word?
Boy: Um well I'm not sure how to spell it but I thought that was it, I heard it yesterday.
Teacher: Yesterday we used [these words], was it any of these?
Boy: Ohhh! it was "terraced".
Here's how teachers are expected to behave now:
Teacher: A likely spelling error! I MUST CALL THE POLICE OR I CAN GO TO JAIL!
I would not have children in the UK today. I'm terrified by this environment. My father was brought up in a dictatorship, and taught in a school under that same dictatorship, and not even he was supposed to monitor kids like this.
Re:Of course its gonna get checked by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-20 03:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

The Christian bible is just as bad ...

--
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:Of course its gonna get checked by MorePower · 2016-01-20 06:04 · Score: 2

They believe the Koran is good, but most Muslims disagree with the idea of torturing or killing people. They might "understand" a non-literal interpretation, they might rationalize that it only applies in a narrow historical context, they might just be ignorant of the actual passages in in. JUST LIKE CHRISTIANS, they believe what they want to believe anyway; which for most ends up being a cherry-picked, metaphorical, has-to-be-understood-in-context "understanding" that their holy text is all about peace and brotherhood.

If the self-identified Muslims want to believe that God expects them to be peaceful and loving, why the hell would you want to tell them they're wrong?
Re:Of course its gonna get checked by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-20 08:33 · Score: 2

Christianity still is promoting murder in Africa, with government support. Christianity is still fighting against gay, lesbian, and transsexual rights, and also promoting violence against lgbt. Christians are still promoting hate, intolerance, and fear based on the bible, even to the level of the presidential race.
The bibie:
One Book to rule them all,
One Book to find them,
One Book to bring them all,
And in the darkness bind them.
Saying that someone else is worse nowadays is not an excuse.

--
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:Polaroid Obama by TheReal_sabret00the · 2016-01-22 04:55 · Score: 2

Those poor Christians - they rape children, drone civilians and plunder, and the whole world doesn't want to live with them! What's wrong with the whole world?