An MIT student named Star Simpson was apparently picking up a friend at Boston Logan airport and wore a sweatshirt with a breadboard and some LEDs and a 9V battery. She had created it for a student career day. Big mistake. She was nearly killed by police (armed with semiautomatic weapons that some jurisdictions prevent law-abiding Americans from owning) who surrounded her. State Police Maj. Scott Pare actually told the press that she was "extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used... She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue." Star was charged with violating the state's hoax device/infernal machine law, which shows you just how officious -- and perhaps even crazed -- police and prosecutors are nowadays. That law provides up to five years in prison. As I wrote back in February after the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident, for prosecutors to win their case, they must prove that (1) Star transported the LED-sweatshirt (2) "with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort." (3) Also, a person must "reasonably" believe that the LED-sweatshirt was (4) a "device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion." See: http://politechbot.com/docs/massachusetts.infernal.hoax.device.020107.txt Obviously the state will lose this case, but filing charges is more politically convenient than admitting the cops made an error, or at the very least admitting that the student was just wearing a harmless sweatshirt. Here are the "infernal machine" cases in which the state *did* win -- when the devices actually were dangerous: http://politechbot.com/docs/massachusetts.infernal.machine.cases.020107.txt More: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html http://wbztv.com/topstories/local_story_264104114.html http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/21/1849208 http://www.politechbot.com/2007/02/02/aqua-teen-hunger/ -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE