Brandon Live!

A student has been arrested for “suspected terrorist activity” after reportedly creating a 3D environment for a game based on the layout of his school.

I once did the same thing.

Well, I never actually finished it.  But it was a school project.  In 10th grade or so, I used a Half-Life map editor to build a 3D recreation of an Egyptian pyramid for part of a presentation in History class.  The next year, I decided to take on a 3D recreation of the school.  I don’t even remember if that was Half-Life or Unreal-engine based, but it was one of them.  I created textures from photographs of walls and floors, and built some 3D models for parts of the school. 

It was part of an indepedent-study sort of program I was in at the Albany Academy, where computer-savvy students would take on personal projects and share resources.  My small computer business even donated computer systems to the program (including a massively powerful 700mhz Athlon machine, the first machine in the program that ran Windows, and Linux - instead of FreeBSD).  At any rate, the act certainly wasn’t “terrorism,” it was even sanctioned by the faculty member who led the independent-study program. 

Unless the student they arrested has a history of violence, threatening behavior, or some serious psychological problems… I couldn’t even imagine the simple creation of a custom video game map to be cause for concern.  Cause for arrest is just mind bogglingly absurd, when I consider that I’d once persued the same task. 

The original story suggests that this is a bigger problem because the kid is asian.  Exactly which century is this again?

Apparently he’s been expelled from school and won’t be allowed to graduate, even though he’s been arrested without being charged of any crime.  That’s illegal, right?  Nope, apparently he’s a terrorist.  Good to see the Patriot Act is being put to good use.