Slashdot Mirror
Oregon Fines Man For Writing a Complaint Email Stating 'I Am An Engineer' (vice.com)
pogopop77 quotes a report from Motherboard: In September 2014, Mats Jarlstrom, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state's engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don't last long enough, which "puts the public at risk." "I would like to present these facts for your review and comments," he wrote. This email resulted not with a meeting, but with a threat from The Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying [stating]: "ORS 672.020(1) prohibits the practice of engineering in Oregon without registration -- at a minimum, your use of the title 'electronics engineer' and the statement 'I'm an engineer' create violations." In January of this year, Jarlstrom was officially fined $500 by the state for the crime of "practicing engineering without being registered." Since the engineering board in Oregon said Jarlstrom should not be free to publish or present his ideas about the fast-turning yellow traffic lights, due to his "practice of engineering in Oregon without registration," he and the Institute for Justice sued them in federal court for violating his First Amendment rights. "I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found," he said. Sam Gedge, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told Motherboard: "Mats has a clear First Amendment right to talk about anything from taxes to traffic lights. It's an instance of a licensing board trying to suppress speech."
Why didn't he ever register as an engineer, or at least stop going around telling people he's something he is legally not?
I am NOT a lawyer. I am NOT an engineer registered in the state of Oregon.
1) Reserving bare ancient common words such as "engineer" is idiocy of the highest order.
2) In the state of Oregon, James Watt would have been apparently fined for not being "good enough", so this man is in a mighty fine company.
3) Again, what brainless assmonkey came up with the idea that applying math and physics to problems requires registration?
1) do you think the bare ancient common word "doctor" should be reserved for people who have completed a doctorate degree? Or is it cool with you if some high school dropout starts calling himself a doctor and dispensing medical advice despite not having any education, experience or certification to do so?
2) He was fined for claiming to be an engineer when he was not registered as such. As someone who has an engineering degree (but is not a professional engineer) I find it difficult to believe he's a legitimate engineer and yet had no idea you can't claim to be an engineer without being registered. I don't know where he was trained, but it was made expressly clear to me that I am not allowed to do that.
3) It was decided that applying math and physics to problems requires registration because if you let just any asshole that swears he knows what he's doing sign off on it, bridges and buildings collapse and people die. Because someone needs to be held accountable, and because insurance companies prefer that the person signing off on these things has been trained appropriately to minimize the chance of catastrophic failure, yeah. You need to be educated, experienced, qualified and registered.