“A look at the crap in the case shows that it’s the guts of a typical alarm clock, and there’s nothing else evident there.”
To a typical layman, who unlike you has no idea what a real suitcase bomb actually looks like, but knows that in general it is a bunch of wires and circuit-like boards hooked together with a ticking timer and placed inside of a suitcase; to that person it would look like what could be a suitcase bomb.
What I am very curious about is why you are so eager to try to show that you are some kind of expert on suitcase bombs and what they look like. Are you trying to puff up your ego by showing how knowledgeable you are to your fellow Freepers, showing how vastly superior in intellect you are on this subject of bombs.
Or have you made suitcase bombs yourself in the past? Or there is something else in your past that we all should know about when evaluating your somewhat obsessive defense of this kid and his phony clock? Especially as you are aware the kid’s father holds to radical thoughts and actions. What is it that is motivating you here, as what you are saying is just not a particularly normal reaction after seeing the pictures of what it was the kid brought to school, unsolicited and not for any assigned project. In other words, for no known reason at all and most likely at the instigation of his father to make trouble. And he did it a few days after 9/11. His timing was better than the ticking of his suitcase “clock.”
I’m an electrical engineer and computer scientist. Your reaction to a couple of circuit boards in a metal case is different from my reaction to a couple of circuit boards in a metal case.
I am not an expert on suitcase bombs, nor have I ever seen one; however, I can design and generally identify the functions of circuit boards. Nothing in the pictures of what this kid put together looks like anything other than a harmless disassembled alarm clock.
Clearly the teachers who blew the whistle on this kid had never seen a real bomb...and they still haven’t.
I’m not quite sure the guy IS claiming that he is an expert on suitcase bombs. He said he flies with prototypes, which I am assuming are electronic in nature. He says he has no problem flying with them, however, I’m sure his prototypes are looked at closely. If they are not, then that violates standard X-ray security tech protocol (at least in the late 1980’s), which requires that any time two threat markers are present, the luggage gets hand-searched.
I am not an expert on suitcase bombs, however, I have had some exposure to security x-ray technology and procedures.
Electronics can be repurposed in flight, which is the reason they make you switch on your laptop.